The last time I read Thucydides, it was in Greek and it damn near killed me. As a high school classics student (multiple decades ago), I was a strong Thucydidean partisan, holding the Athenian's rigour against Herodotean flights of fancy. As I aged, I surprised myself with my growing affection for Herodotus, whose self-deprecation and attribution to sources and use of humour enhance, rather than detract from, a quest to encourage critical thinking. I retained loyalty to Thucydides, though, unwilling to concede flaws in one so determined to write absolute truth for future generations. So I was thrilled when we tackled the first book of The Peloponnesian War in my final year of University Greek (we called it Histories then). I am not, alas, a particularly talented languages student, and it quickly became clear that reading Thucydides was going to be like doing a ridiculously difficult crossword puzzle: hours of work followed by giving in and asking for the answer, followed by pretending to understand why that solution, as opposed to the four others that seem to fit equally well, was preferred. This, however, just made me love good old Thuc more - anyone who can use language that well must be amazing right?
So it was a given when I realised I was in for a trip to Athens a couple of decades later, that I would reread Thucydides, clearly in translation. Steven Lattimore's translation - chosen for its accuracy - is so close to the Greek that I was immediately plunged back into the ageing flat of my student days, my well-thumbed lexicon, and the feeling that I was slowly losing my mind. When the nostalgia wore off, however, I suddenly realised ... I was bored, and frustrated, and most frighteningly, thoroughly out-of-love with Thucydides. Lattimore captures the pedantry, the interminable chronicling of military events, broken yes, by the intellectual rigour, opportunism and nuance of rhetorical speeches. Without the gloss added to many of these by a translator keen for a quotable translation, the speeches reveal political manoeuvring and exhaustion more than super-heroics - better history if less entertaining. Thucydides lets you feel the character of his subjects, Nikias' lack of either corruption or imagination, Brasidas' energy, Alcibiades brilliance, recklessness and balance of self-interest and loyalty to his polis. But these moments feel too brief, and the focus on fact over analysis, truth over ambiguity is relentless and serves to disempower, rather than draw in, the reader - as frankly, does the dense and demanding nature of the text.
I count translation a success, even if the result was a loss of enthusiasm for this reader. I wouldn't recommend this for a roaring good time, but I would like to get a taste of Ancient European historiography without rose-tinted glasses.