Abstract
In his Prose Life Hobbes writes of his translation of Thucydides’ History:
Of all of the Greek historians, Thucydides was his source of particular delight. Gradually, in his own time, he translated the works of Thucydides into English. This work received considerable praise when it was published in 1628. In it the weaknesses and eventual failures of the Athenian democrats, together with those of their city state, were made clear (Prose Life, 246).
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Notes
On the accuracy of Hobbes’s translation, see C. Orwin, ‘Stasis and Plague: Thucydides on the Dissolution of Society’, Journal of Politics, 50 (1988) 831–847, 834, footnote 6.
See, for example, Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan, The Power to Tax, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
For a critique of Brennan and Buchanan’s interpretation of Hobbes, see M. La Manna and G. Slomp, ‘Leviathan: Revenue-Maximizer or Glory-Seeker?’, Constitutional Political Economy, 5 (1994) 159–172.
See also Richard Schlatter, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Thucydides’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 6 (1945) 350–362,
and his ‘Introduction’ Hobbes’s Thucydides. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1975);
C.W. Brown, ‘Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Derivation of Anarchy’, History of Political Thought, 8 (1987) 33–62;
G. Klosko and D. Rice, ‘Thucydides’ and Hobbes’s State of Nature’, History of Political Thought, 6 (1985) 405–409.
Peter T. Manicas, ‘War, Stasis, and Greek Political Thought’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24 (1982) 673–688, 684;
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© 2000 Gabriella Slomp
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Slomp, G. (2000). Ambition: Paradoxes and Puzzles. In: Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333984437_6
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