HiST 201 Essay 2: What was History to the First Historians? Comparing Herodotus and Thucydides

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Start here!

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Pelops was a legendary ancestor of Agamemnon and Menelaos, after whom the Peloponnese of southern Greece is named. He was said to come from Phrygia, which suggests this tradition post-dates the Late Bronze Age.

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Eurystheus was a legendary king of Mycenae and Tiryns who made Heracles embark on his 12 famous labors.

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Atreus is Agamemnon's father.

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Here he is referring to the Greeks who lived on the west coast of Anatolia, the same ones who broke out in revolt against Darius in 499 BCE.

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Triremes were warships with three banks of oars and covered decks. They had a ram out front to sink enemy ships.

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Yes, here he refers to Cyrus conquering Croesus!

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Here Thucydides makes a statement of his general aims in writing about the past.

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Stop here and skip to the next section on the next page of the PDF.

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Megara was a city state just to the northwest of Attica.

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Resume here!

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The "empire" referred to here refers to Athens power over allied Greek city states, the sort of arrangement Thucydides describes in chapter 19.

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Sparta was ruled by a pair of kings, a unique situation in ancient Greece, as far as we know.

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Hoplites were the armored spearmen that made up the bulk of ancient Greek armies. They are called "hoplites" because of their use of a round shield called a "hoplon."

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Here Herodotus begins a summary of events between the end of the Persian Wars and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. You can read on if you are interested in the immediate aftermath of those wars or skip ahead to page 22 of the PDF and continue there.

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This truce was made in 446 BCE, and ends in 431 BCE.

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Plataea is just to the west of Athens.

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Resume here!

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This is a great illustration of how small the territory of Greek city states was. Thebes and Plataea were both independent city states, but only 8 miles apart.

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The Boetians are from Thebes, just to the west of Attica. They are allied with the Spartans.

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These walls connected Athens to the port at Piraeus, meaning that they had continual access to the sea even if besieged.

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The Megarid is the territory of Megara, a small city state to the west of Athens.

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Stop here!