Acknowledgments

It took a long time to write this book, and I have accumulated many debts, great and small, along the way. Lisa Cerrato, Maria Daniels, Carolyn Dewald, Lowell Edmunds, Jennifer Goodall, Albert Henrichs, Donald Lateiner, Thomas Martin, Robin Orttung, David Smith, Neel Smith, Daniel Tompkins, and Krista Woodbridge all read sections of this work as it evolved over the years. Martin Mueller and Gregory Nagy both suffered through an early version of the manuscript, and their reactions were enormously helpful to its revision and development. More recently, the reviewers for the University of California Press made a tremendous contribution, providing thoughtful criticisms that allowed me to improve this work in many ways. An anonymous reviewer did a great deal to help me sharpen the arguments for classicists and ancient historians. Writing a book that meets the needs of readers beyond my own field has proven particularly challenging. Insofar as I have succeeded in doing so, I owe an enormous debt to Peter Euben, whose own work has made the task of straddling disciplines look deceptively easy. Peter’s suggestions caused me to rethink the entire manuscript and to frame it as a study not only of Thucydides, but of Thucydides’ contribution to the development of political realism. In particular, Peter prompted me to begin grappling with the difficult but rewarding work of Hannah Arendt. Finally, Thomas Habinek, of the University of Southern California, and Mary Lamprech, classics editor for the University of California Press, deserve a great deal of credit for bearing with this book as it evolved over the past several years.

I have also been privileged to work in an intellectually stimulating and warmly collegial environment at Tufts University. My colleagues both in classics and in other fields have made it easy for me to ask questions and pursue topics that go beyond my traditional expertise. At the same time, my collaborators in the Perseus Project have provided many kinds of support for my research on Thucydides.

Access to the “prepublication” version of the Perseus database has allowed me to make convenient use of many existing translations. Although I have freely modified these to clarify the points that I needed to make, all English translations of Greek texts in this book, unless otherwise indicated, are based on those in Perseus 2.0: Interactive Sources and Studies on Ancient Greece (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Mary Thomas Crane, and my children, Thomas and Parker, who have borne with me in my labors on this book and in so much else. I dedicate this book to them—a small gesture in return for what they have given me.

Gregory Crane, Tufts University Medford, Massachusetts April 1996