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How Did Thucydides Affect The Peloponnesian War?

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Being alive to witness the events that occurred in and around fifth century B. C. E. Greece meant that Thucydides could not help but write down his experiences. The Athenians of Greece and the people of the Persian Empire were constantly at odds with each other, and these differences eventually led to the Peloponnesian war. This war lasted from 431-404 B.C.E. and began an era of conflict between the two peoples (Bulliet). This power struggle not only inflated the ego of the Athenians, but created many negative viewpoints of the Persians. Thucydides, being an Athenian, was therefore extremely biased against the Persians. A Mesopotamian creation story that was very popular in Persia was The Epic of Gilgamesh. If a fellow Athenian were to have …show more content…

Throughout his writing, Thucydides used language that implies that he viewed Athenians as superior to Persians (Thucydides). It could be said that he was an extreme nationalist and created propaganda to paint Persia in a bad light. The Epic of Gilgamesh originated from Mesopotamia, an ancient region within the Persian Empire, and would no doubt have provided Thucydides to draw from it the negative aspects of Persian life. The little information that has been written about Persians and their history has come from outside their culture, so there is not really any concise information about Persian life from an internal point of …show more content…

The Melians were a civilization that the Athenians conquered. Before they were conquered, however, the Melians were telling the Athenians that they would not surrender and that the Spartans would come to their aid (Thucydides). The Melians did not want to give up or surrender and the Athenians viewed them as foolish for thinking that the Spartans would save them. Gilgamesh, in a similar fashion, did not want to surrender to death. He wanted Utnapishtim to give him eternal life because, after Enkidu died, he became fearful of death (George). Thucydides would draw the parallel that both were weak and ignorant for not accepting an inevitable

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