"HISTORY OF THE WARS" (PROCOPIUS) & "PELOPONNESIAN WAR" (THUCYDIDES).   Term Paper ID:25180 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Compares selected chapters to show similarities of style, content, reliability, focusing on depiction of plague.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Compares selected chapters to show similarities of style, content, reliability, focusing on depiction of plague. Paper Introduction: A comparison of Book II, chapters xxii and xxiii of Procopius' History of the Wars with Book II, chapter v of Thucydides' Peloponnesian War demonstrates the influence the classical historian had on the Byzantine writer. The episodes of plague that attacked Athens and Byzantium are constructed in nearly identical fashion. Both provide extensive descriptions of the course of the disease: its geographic origins, symptoms, variations, and effects. Both establish themselves as eyewitnesses to most of the things they report. And both writers reflect on topics such as the futile efforts of the physicians and the effect of the plague on general morality, but leave it to others to explain the reasons why the terrible disease arose in the first place. Thucydides' account clearly provided a model for Procopius. But the resemblance between the two historians is Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. He outlined his method andasserted that he had either witnessed the events he reported or hadcarefully sifted the accounts of other eyewitnesses. Or this is whatProcopius felt was the reaction most worthy of notice. But in both histories the reader is struck at some point bythe fact that the writers were in the midst of the horrifying scenes theydescribe. This happens with Thucydides' remark about being ill andwhen Procopius, mentioning the empty streets of Byzantium, suddenly makes asubtle alteration in tone and says "And if one did succeed in meeting a mangoing out, he was carrying one of the dead" (472). It is striking to a twentieth-century reader that, in the nearly1, years that had elapsed between the two episodes of the plague, therehad been almost no advance in scientific thinking that enabled theByzantines to comprehend the disease any better than the Athenians.Procopius does offer more clinical details than Thucydides. But where Thucydides concerned himself with therelative sizes of the armies in the Homeric and contemporary conflicts,Procopius is concerned to show that the fighters of his day were every bitas heroic as those described by the ancient poet. And thisattitude is reflected in the plague episodes when, unusually, they are notdescribing the operations of war or politics but a phenomenon that has justas many consequences as either of these human activities. Why was he in the streets? And both writers reflecton topics such as the futile efforts of the physicians and the effect ofthe plague on general morality, but leave it to others to explain thereasons why the terrible disease arose in the first place. The curiosityof the Byzantine doctors is notable, for example. In most respects, however, the two historians report on events thatwere very similar and, since Procopius does take a few different paths, theconclusion the reader draws is that the events really were quite similarand the resemblance is not entirely due to the mere copying of Thucydides'manner and presentation. The ultimate example of the objective reporting in the two historiesis, of course, Thucydides' passing remark that "I had the disease myselfand saw others suffering from it" (124). But he also goes intogreater detail in describing the disposal of bodies as well; the filling ofthe towers of the fortifications at Sycae being a particularly horribleinstance. A comparison of Book II, chapters xxii and xxiii of Procopius'History of the Wars with Book II, chapter v of Thucydides' PeloponnesianWar demonstrates the influence the classical historian had on the Byzantinewriter. It seems, therefore, thatProcopius is somewhat selective in his description though it is also verylikely that the Byzantines' fear of hell, like Procopius' ability to reportthe occurrence of supernatural apparitions, really amounted to a change inthe people's outlook strong enough to bring about a substantially differentreaction to imminent death. Both historians, even though they found themselves in the midstof all the horrifying sights and suffering they describe, suppress thepersonal in their accounts and attain an almost clinical tone. In Byzantium, however, the people, as described byProcopius, "shook off the unrighteousness of their daily lives andpractised the duties of their religion with diligence," learning to behavemorally simply because they believed they were about to die and must behavethemselves out of "sheer necessity" (469, 471). The principal differencesseem to be related to religion. Was hesimply insatiably curious, or was he too carrying one of his own dead? Procopius even echoes Thucydides'reference to Homer. This forces thereader's attention onto the narrator. Thucydides'account clearly provided a model for Procopius. Certainly the important aspect of usingThucydides as a model was not, for the Byzantines, a matter of style alone. Hispurpose in writing was not to entertain but to provide an account thatwould be "useful [to] those who want to understand clearly the events whichhappened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, atsome time or other and in much the same way, be repeated in the future"(24). Thus Procopius' history,and the events he described, joined an established tradition of reliably-reported historical events of universal importance to the civilized world. Thucydides summarized the history of the Hellenes and,referring to the authority of Homer, "if we can believe [his] evidence,"estimated the size of the conflict between the Greeks and Troy recounted inthe Iliad. In such matters Procopius, like Thucydides, maintains a tone ofdetachment but also makes general comments on the collapse of morality andcustom that come about as the result of the plague. At the emperor'scommand Theodorus made, in Procopius' account, the only substantive effortat maintaining some semblance of order by using the emperor's funds to seeto the burial, or at least the disposal, of the unclaimed bodies in thecity. Thucydides claimed tostick to the facts and to leave out "the romantic element" (24). The size ofthe wars and the valor of the soldiers are carefully shown to surpass theevents of the past through careful examination of the available evidence.The conclusions the historians draw, being based on such a rational,disinterested analyses of the evidence, are meant to assure the reader thattheir accounts will be impartial, factual, and utterly reliable. In both cases the authors use the continuation of the state asanchors in the crisis. Works CitedProcopius. Both establish themselves aseyewitnesses to most of the things they report. He concluded that the fifth-century war was the greaterconflict and used this as an example of the manner in which he drewconclusions from the available evidence. Itcomes home to the reader in both instances that the writers who now adoptthis cool tone could have been no less fearful for their lives than othersin their cities and that large numbers of those they knew--friends,neighbors, professional acquaintances--must have succumbed to the disease.The potential starvation, the breakdown of order, and all the other horrorsmust have affected them as deeply as anyone else. Procopius argues that hisaccount of the empire's wars will be "most helpful to men of the presenttime, and to future generations as well, in case time should ever againplace men under a similar stress" (3). But he also states that his purposein writing is to avoid having these great events obliterated by the passageof time since, echoing Thucydides again, "it will be evident that no moreimportant or mightier deeds are to be found in history than those whichhave been enacted in these wars" (5). The episodes of plague that attacked Athens and Byzantium areconstructed in nearly identical fashion. There is so seldom a break in the dispassionate tone in whichthey recount the events that the slightest intrusion of the personal hasthe effect of re-focusing the reader's attention on the first-person natureof the accounts. The fear of eternaldamnation evoked by the Christian religion evidently made a greatdifference in the response of the populace to the plague. History of the Wars.Thucydides. But the resemblancebetween the two historians is not just superficial and the method ofreporting the story of the plague also reflects their specific approach tohistory. Thus Procopius adoptednot just Thucydides' style but his conception of history-writing as well. Both provide extensivedescriptions of the course of the disease: its geographic origins,symptoms, variations, and effects. In both casesthe historians' assertions of the endurance of the state in the mostadverse circumstances provides a clue to the purpose of their objectivehistories which are meant to shore up the reputations of the nations andrulers they discuss. It is hard tobelieve that there was not at least some of the sort of despairing reactionin Byzantium that Thucydides observed in Athens. The Peloponnesian War. Despite the similarity of approach, however, there are a few strikingdifferences between Procopius and his model. Similarities appear from the beginning of the twobooks in opening sections in which the two state their reasons for writingand establish the grounds of their reliability. At the same time, ofcourse, they ascribe high import to the events about which they write and,by extension, to the political entities and leading figures involved inthese events. Rex Warner. Thucydides announced that he had decided to write about thewar from its very beginning because, with the two nations at the height oftheir powers, it was likely to be "the greatest disturbance in the historyof the Hellenes" (Greece), affecting, perhaps, "the whole of mankind" (13). In the long run, however, even the emperor became ill and the moststriking effect of the plague, "to put it all in a word," was thatofficials ceased to operate on behalf of the empire whose might was stalledby the plague (473). Procopius seems far more credulous thanThucydides when he reports the apparent immediate origins of the plague inthe "apparitions of supernatural beings in human guise" that were said tohave materialized before those who contracted the plague (455). Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1954.NOTE TO CLIENT:The number of the chapter of Thucydides containing the plague accountvaries considerably from one translation to another. If Athens, weakened by the plague, did not have Pericles'strength, or if the emperor could not continue despite his illness and thespread of the plague "in the Roman empire at large as well as at Byzantium"overwhelmed the imperial machinery, then two historians would have had tore-focus their subjects (Procopius 473). The classicalmodels also established a continuity between the Greek-writingintellectuals of Byzantium, always somewhat at odds with the imported Latinculture of the emperors, and the ancient, and noble, past of the easternregions of the Roman empire. Procopius followed Thucydides on every point. The similarities between the two historians is not limited to theirchapters on the plague. Trans. The continuity between their objective accounts ofthe plague, detached despite their personal involvement, and their reportsof the persistence of the state lends credence to the notion that thestate, in each case, is not only stable but that its continuity isnecessary. But the plague, like all theadvances and reverses in the various wars, did not substantially diminishthe state. Though it was difficult to "acquire a really precise knowledge" of ancientand recent history, based on the evidence he could assemble Thucydides didnot believe that there had been an earlier war that could equal the scopeof this one (13). Procopius cannot make exactly thesame claim. Thucydides did not usechapters and Warner divided the text into more chapters than mosttranslators.Also note that there was no bibliographical information on the Procopiustext. In the view of these writers the very factthat these ancient models were employed lent a certain gravity tocontemporary events that they might not otherwise have seemed to possess.The events of Justinian's reign were, by using Thucydides as a model, puton a level with the grandeur of Athenian culture--and the Homeric heroism,which Thucydides had evoked in a similar fashion. Procopiusgoes on to relate that most people subsequently contracted the diseasequite suddenly though, as in Thucydides' account, they otherwise felt well. Theobjectivity of their reports is a rhetorical strategy meant to establishthe truthfulness and reliability of their accounts. Both authors establish their reliability at the outset. Thucydides reported that while the plague went on"Pericles was still general" and continued his history by returning to thepersistence of the Athenian state despite the plague (128). He says that, havingbeen an adviser to the general Belisarius, he was "an eyewitness ofpractically all the events" he describes (5). Procopius says that "it fell to the emperor, as wasnatural, to make provision for the trouble" (467). Though the classical Greeks were, to a large extent, models of excellentprose, the idea of history and its purposes that were embodied inThucydides' history was even more important to Procopius. But the report of these ghosts, as though he believed in the possibility,fits with the later report of the general moral reaction to the plague.Thucydides describes how the Athenians, in despair, reverted to "a state ofunprecedented lawlessness" because the gods seemed indifferent to theirfate while there was little chance that they would live to be punished byhuman law (126). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.