Rise Fall of States Jerome Lectures Series Vol 11

by Jacqueline de Romilly

Book Overview

A survey of how Greek historians explained the conditions of a state's success and the dangers of power

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472087622
• ISBN13: 9780472087624
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.

Customer Reviews

History and Tragedy

The wheel of fortune revolves mercilessly, simultaneously making shepherds into kings and kings into corpses. In Jacqueline de Romilly's introduction, she introduces the "tragic pattern of history." Examining Herodotus, Thucydides, and others, Romilly shows that Greek authors had no sense of historical continuity as we know it today. For them, history seemed to follow a rhythm that is fundamentally antagonistic to the rationalizations of philosophers. Even for moderns like Hegel and Marx, The History and The Peloponnesian War have little to provide for grandiose theories of historical progression. However, upon more careful, these stories do provide a universal significance that brings them closer to tragedy than previously thought. Romilly asserts that the Greek theory of history parallels the pattern of Greek tragedy. In Sophocles play, Oedipus has qualities which make him unable to do anything but fulfill Teiresias' oracle of doom. In the same way, Croesus in Herodotus' history can do nothing but lead his kingdom into calamity. The parallel is more meaty than one would think. Greek histories overwhelmingly point towards the pathos of the unending human struggle against fortune and the inevitability of the rise and fall of states.