Rhetorik und Geschichte

This work considers the function of the speeches in Thucydides' history, and how they are related to the presentation of the historical facts. In a detailed analysis of the war speeches dealing with the origins of the Peloponnesian war in Thucydides' first book, the author shows how the historian went further than Herodotus in functionalising the epic tradition of incorporating direct speech into the narrative for the processes of historical analysis.