The Mind of Thucydides

What makes Thucydides’ History more than a record of war is the way it explains why events unfold as they do. Jacqueline de Romilly studies that intellectual architecture, asking how Thucydides turns political decisions, conflict and human behaviour into patterns of cause and consequence.

Speeches and narrative are central to her reading: they do not simply interrupt the history, but help expose motives, choices and the pressures acting on individuals and states. In Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings’ English translation, de Romilly’s study reveals a historian concerned not only with what happened, but with the forces that made events intelligible.