This week on Thucydides Abuse Watch | Daniel W. Drezner

This week on Thucydides Abuse Watch Daniel W. Drezner
Another post, summarizing the types of "Thucydides abuse" seen in current political commentary. At this point, I'm thinking, like a snobby classicist, that we should perhaps cut non-Greek-readers (the "Greekless," we like to call them) some slack. If they make mistakes in their interpretations of him, it's to be expected: they're dealing with translations of an almost untranslatable author. Maybe that's the real source of the "abuse." Take enough Greek to be able to read Thucydies, and then get back to me. I believe in my case, it took three years, and then I could still just read him in a halting, painful manner.