"Thucydidies - The History Of The Peloponnesian War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thucydidies)

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The History of the Peloponnesian War
By Thucydides


Translated by Richard Crawley

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THE FIRST BOOK

Chapter I

The State of Greece from the earliest Times to the Commencement of
the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the
Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it
broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy
of relation than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without
its grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every
department in the last state of perfection; and he could see the rest
of the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed
doing so at once having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the greatest
movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a
large part of the barbarian world- I had almost said of mankind. For
though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately
preceded the war, could not from lapse of time be clearly ascertained,
yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as far back as was practicable
leads me to trust, all point to the conclusion that there was nothing
on a great scale, either in war or in other matters.

For instance, it is evident that the country now called Hellas had
in ancient times no settled population; on the contrary, migrations
were of frequent occurrence, the several tribes readily abandoning
their homes under the pressure of superior numbers. Without commerce,
without freedom of communication either by land or sea, cultivating
no more of their territory than the exigencies of life required, destitute
of capital, never planting their land (for they could not tell when
an invader might not come and take it all away, and when he did come
they had no walls to stop him), thinking that the necessities of daily
sustenance could be supplied at one place as well as another, they
cared little for shifting their habitation, and consequently neither
built large cities nor attained to any other form of greatness. The
richest soils were always most subject to this change of masters;
such as the district now called Thessaly, Boeotia, most of the Peloponnese,
Arcadia excepted, and the most fertile parts of the rest of Hellas.