Jonathan Gordon (A2009)
I am married with three kids and live on the Upper West Side in New YorkCity. I am an investment bankerwith The van Tulleken Company, an M&A boutique firm focused on information,media, publishing, education and technology companies. Prior to joining them, I worked withVNU Business Media (subsequently Nielsen), Primedia and JP Morgan in variousfinancial, operational and business development roles. I qualified as an attorney in SouthAfrica where I grew up and spent the earliest part of my professional career.
From Bruce
Thucydides Study questions Book 2
Ravi Bhatia (A2009)
I am a Project Executive with Madison Equities, a mid-sized real estate development firm in Manhattan. Currently, I am in charge of construction of an 11-story boutique condominium on Irving Place and am working on design development of a hotel in the West Village. I have over 20 years of project management experience spanning real estate, electrical construction, construction management, general construction, telecommunications deployment and technology integration.
I reside in Roslyn, NY with my wife of 18 years and my three-year old daughter. I was born in Mumbai, India and emigrated to the U.S. in 1970. I was raised in Flushing, NY and have lived in NYC most of my life. I enjoy reading, traveling, teaching, public speaking and connecting with people. I serve as an Adjunct Associate Professor at NYU’s School of Continuing Education (Real Estate Institute).
I’m a registered Professional Engineer (PE) and a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP). I have a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (Polytechnic University), a MBA (Hofstra University) and a M.S. Telecommunications and Information Management (Polytechnic University).
Thucydides December 2008 Book 1 – audio recording
Here’s the audio recording for the Thucydides book 1 call. Listen online or download the mp3 file and listen to it as a podcast on your ipod.
Anne Dunning (A2008)
Anne Dunning was born and raised in Canada. Before coming to New York, she spent ten years with the Danny Grossman Dance Company in Toronto where she was director of communications, associate general manager and administrative director. She became a principal consultant at ARTS Action Research, a Brooklyn-based consulting group specializing in strategic planning, organizational development and resource building for the nonprofit arts, in March, 2004. In Canada she was founding chair of the national council of the Canadian Dance Assembly, whip of The Creative Trust endowment campaign and continues to serve on the George Cedric Metcalf Foundation’s Strategic Initiatives Advisory Committee. In the United States, she has been a trustee and Chair of the Board of Dance/USA, the national service organization for dance. She has contributed to the Dance Umbrella of Ontario’s Step by Step electronic workbook, has taught for Humber College’s arts administration program and been a mentor and guest speaker for the University of Toronto’s arts administration program. Before becoming involved in the arts, Anne studied biology at McGill University in Montreal, where she received an honors Bachelor of Science in ecology, evolution and behavior. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, Gary, who is executive director of the Big Apple Circus.
Mike Nagel (T2008 & A2008)
Mike is the Online Producer for Care.com, where he manages blogs and creates and edits site content. After leaving a career in network television journalism, Mike earned a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Emerson College. His freelance work has appeared in the Boston Globe, with the Beijing Olympic News Service, Good Catch Publishing, and as a featured travel writer for STATravlers.com. In his spare time, Mike is an avid traveler, sports fan (Red Sox and Bills), music junky, coffee enthusiast and mildly interesting blogger. He lives in New Hampshire’s seacoast region and will marry his fiance, Sonja, in June of 2009.
Book I
Dear all,
I have enjoyed reading all of the responses to reading Thucydides. It is a very inspirational book for Phil and me. I hope that your reading is continuing to be as enjoyable as mine is. I have been thinking much on how Thucydides wraps up his first Book, probably the most difficult book to read in the whole history. We will of course talk more about Book I in detail about a week from now, but I want to leave you with this thought as I depart incommunicado to Kansas for Thanksgiving week.
Why does Thucydides take the time to digress on the fates of both Pausanius, the Spartan hero of Plataea, and Themistocles, the Athenian hero of Salamis in I.129-138? Is this really necessary to the unfolding of the root causes of the Peloponnesian War? I really am not sure about this.
Below are Thucydides’ final words for Book I. They are deliberate and I believe ironic.
“These were the charges and differences existing between the rival powers before the war, arising immediately from the affair at Epidamnus and Corcyra. Still intercourse continued in spite of them, and mutual communication. It was carried on without heralds, but not without suspicion, as events were occurring which were equivalent to a breach of the treaty and matter for war” (I. 146).
Happy Thanksgiving!
Andre
thucydides book 1 thoughts.
Gang,
From just the opening emails and thoughts, it’s clear this will be a great group. Really looking forward to the call Monday night. Like others, I have been unable to put it down and I’ve read the speeches back through several times. Thought I’d throw my thoughts on at least one of Andre’s questions, and on the speeches, which I have particularly enjoyed.
Cheers,
Tim
ANDRE’s Q4:
Who is his audience circa 400 BCE now that Athens has been conquered and other Greek city states are filling the power vacuum? Does he expect Athenians, for example, to be excited about reading about a war that they had just lost? Does he think Spartans will care to read this? Thebans? Americans???
I think this is an interesting question that has implications for historical trends today. For example, how long did it take for German historians to consider Germany’s role in WWII? How do these historians’ views ebb and flow a half century later (with considerably more complete archives/records/et cetera than Thucydides had at hand)? I think Thucydides wrote for Athenians in an effort to understand what happened to them and why. We’ll see how the rest unfolds, but I don’t think he is exploring the “loss” or the “defeat”. The real question in my mind is about the character of the society. The “agreement” Athens had with Sparta was clearly seen as complicated by both powerful states for different reasons as the years since the Persian War have passed. For me, this makes the speeches particularly rich. I have read and reread the them several times. Keeping Thucydides conditionals in mind, they are amazingly complex. I can really see how they can be interpreted in a number of ways depending upon your assumptions about motive and tone.
Notes on Speeches in Book 1:
First thing I noticed is the broad narrative structure: There is an appeal made to Athens, then an appeal made to Sparta. (Corinth pivots neatly in the narrative because they present in both cases.) The rhetorical structure of the appeals and the ultimate decisions are made more interesting because, according to the treaty, Sparta and Athens should submit their differences to arbitration as well (and indeed Corinth would then be an arbiter). They ultimately don’t, but I think putting them each in the role of arbiter is a keen introduction. I haven’t had time to write up all my thoughts, but I’ve been thinking about the two pleas/decisions in Book 1 in the following ways:
a) What is the structure of the arguments made to the Athenians/Spartans: what is appealed to? what avoided? what assumptions are made about the how binding the Athens/Sparta peace treaty really is?
b) How do the Athenians/Spartans discuss the pleas and make their decisions? Who speaks, who doesn’t, and who carries the day?
c) Is the Athenian/Spartan decision really just in light of their own principals and is it really an obvious affront and one of the small but foreseeable steps that lead to the war?
I have a lot of favorite, quotable passages underlined in the speeches, either for their rhetorical power or the subtlety of their influence on the arbiter. I can read each of these (at least) two ways: earnestly, with heartfelt appeal, or more cynically, as when a US Senator begins with “My dear friend and colleague…” and it’s clearly an insincere convention meant to be back-handed.
A couple of favorite zingers:
1.69.5 -6 (Corinth to the Spartans)
“And yet you know that on the whole the rock on which the barbarian was wrecked…” ending with the: “men remonstrate with friends who are in error, accusations they reserve for enemies who have wronged them.”
1.72.2 – 1.73.all (Athenian Envoys to the Spartans)
“The object of our mission was not to argue with your allies.” […] and ending with: “We need not refer to remote antiquity: there we could appeal to the voice of tradition, but not to the experience of our audience.” Then, of course, they do recount their supremacy in the Persian War. J
1.76.all (Athenian Envoys to the Spartans)
“You, at all events, Spartans, have used your supremacy…”
I’m sure you all have others underlined, but you’ll get the point. Looking forward to our discussion.
Thucydides in the Movies?
Hello everyone,
It was fun to rent a movie during my Herodotus reading when someone mentioned that his book was part of the movie, “The English Patient.” I was wondering if you know of any movies that contain Thucydides?
I believe I ran across one by chance this week. While channel flipping, I saw a short clip from “Patriot Games” where the character named Jack, played by Harrison Ford, is teaching history at Annapolis. He’s asking the students what reasons were given for going to war with Athens. I think he was referring to one of the speeches in Thucydides, but its not called out specifically in the movie. One of the students says the reason is pride. It was a very brief scene, but it made me wonder if there were other movies where Thucydides looms larger.
Jim
08. December 2008 by Arrian
Categories: Commentary, Thucydides | Tags: Commentary, Thucydides | 1 comment