Richard Crawley (26 December 1840 – 30 March 1893) [1] was a Welsh writer and academic, best known for his translation of Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War . [2]
Crawley was born at a Bryngwyn rectory on 26 December 1840, the eldest son of William Crawley, Archdeacon of Monmouth, by his wife, Mary Gertrude, third daughter of Sir Love Jones Parry of Madryn, Carnarvonshire. From 1851 to 1861 he was at Marlborough College. He matriculated at University College, Oxford, as an exhibitioner on 22 May 1861, and graduated with a B.A. in 1866, having taken a first class both in moderations and in the school of Literae Humaniores. In 1866, he was elected to a fellowship at Worcester College, Oxford, which he held till 1880. [3]
Called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn on 7 June 1869, Crawley never practised; in poor health, he lived abroad for many years. In April 1875, he became director of a life assurance company, and that business largely occupied him until his death on 30 March 1893.
In 1868 he published Horse and Foot, a satire on contemporary literary effort in the manner of Alexander Pope. Venus and Psyche and other Poems appeared in 1871. The Younger Brother, a play in the style of the Elizabethan drama, followed in 1878. Crawley contributed verse to conservative newspapers during the general election of 1880. These he collected in a volume called Election Rhymes in the same year. His most substantial work was a translation of Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War . The first book came out in 1866, and the whole was issued in 1874. [4]
Herodotus was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He is known for having written the Histories – a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars. Herodotus was the first writer to perform systematic investigation of historical events. He has been described as "The Father of History", a title conferred on him by the ancient Roman orator Cicero.
Thucydides was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.
Pericles was a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Ancient Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, and was acclaimed by Thucydides, a contemporary historian, as "the first citizen of Athens". Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire and led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. The period during which he led Athens, roughly from 461 to 429 BC, is sometimes known as the "Age of Pericles", but the period thus denoted can include times as early as the Persian Wars or as late as the following century.
The History of the Peloponnesian War is a historical account of the Peloponnesian War, which was fought between the Peloponnesian League and the Delian League. It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian historian who also served as an Athenian general during the war. His account of the conflict is widely considered to be a classic and regarded as one of the earliest scholarly works of history. The History is divided into eight books.
The Battle of Tanagra was a land battle that took place in 457 BC between Athens and Sparta during the First Peloponnesian War. Tension between Athens and Sparta had built up due the rebuilding of Athens' walls and Spartan rejection of Athenian military assistance. The Athenians were led by Myronides and held a strength of 14,000. The Spartans were led by Nicomedes and had a total of 11,500 soldiers. Both sides suffered losses; however, the Spartans left victorious.
Phormio, the son of Asopius, was an Athenian general and admiral before and during the Peloponnesian War. A talented naval commander, Phormio commanded at several famous Athenian victories in 428 BC, and was honoured after his death with a statue on the acropolis and a state funeral. He is considered one of Athens' many great admirals, alongside Themistocles and Cimon.
Lacedaemonius was an Athenian general of the Philaid clan. He served Athens, notably in the naval Battle of Sybota against the Corinthians in 433 BC.
Donald Kagan was a Lithuanian-born American historian and classicist at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece. He formerly taught in the Department of History at Cornell University. Kagan was considered among the foremost American scholars of Greek history and is notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War.
The ecclesia or ekklesia was the citizens' assembly in the Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. Unlike its more famous counterpart in Athens, the Spartan assembly had limited powers, as it did not debate; citizens could only vote for or against proposals.
Hellenica simply means writings on Greek (Hellenic) subjects. Several histories of 4th-century Greece, written in the mould of Thucydides or straying from it, have borne the conventional Latin title Hellenica. The surviving Hellenica is an important work of the Ancient Greek writer Xenophon and one of the principal sources for the last seven years of the Peloponnesian War not covered by Thucydides, as well as the war's aftermath.
The Samian War was an Ancient Greek military conflict between Athens and Samos. The war was initiated by Athens's intervention in a dispute between Samos and Miletus. When the Samians refused to break off their attacks on Miletus as ordered, the Athenians easily drove out the oligarchic government of Samos and installed a garrison in the city, but the oligarchs soon returned, with Persian support.
Hagnon, son of Nikias was an Athenian general and statesman. In 437/6 BC, he led the settlers who founded the city of Amphipolis in Thrace; in the Peloponnesian War, he served as an Athenian general on several occasions, and was one of the signers of the Peace of Nicias and the alliance between Athens and Sparta. In 411 BC, during the oligarchic coup, he supported the oligarchy and was one of the ten commissioners (probouloi) appointed to draw up a new constitution.
The Areopagite constitution is the modern name for a period in ancient Athens described by Aristotle in his Constitution of the Athenians. According to that work, the Athenian political scene was dominated, between the ostracism of Themistocles in the late 470s BC and the reforms of Ephialtes in 462 BC, by the Areopagus, a traditional court composed of former archons. Modern scholars have debated the existence of this phenomenon, with some concluding that Aristotle and his contemporaries invented it to explain Ephialtes' need to limit the Areopagus' powers, and arguing that the lack of concrete measures establishing the Areopagus' dominance shows that the Areopagite constitution is "palpably unhistorical". Other scholars, such as Donald Kagan, have countered that no concrete measures were necessary, as the Areopagus' dominance was established not through actual changes in the laws but through the prestige of its leading members. Aristotle specifically cites the Areopagites' distribution of money to the public as the citizen body prepared to abandon Athens in the face of the advancing Persian army.
The Thasian rebellion was an incident in 465 BC, in which Thasos rebelled against Athenian control, seeking to renounce its membership in the Delian League. The rebellion was prompted by a conflict between Athens and Thasos over control of silver deposits on the Thracian mainland, which Thasos had traditionally mined.
Charles Duke Yonge was an English historian, classicist and cricketer. He wrote numerous works of modern history, and translated several classical works. His younger brother was George Edward Yonge.
Martin Hammond is an English classical scholar and former public school headmaster.
Rev William Lucas Collins was a Church of England priest and essayist.
Sir Richard Winn Livingstone was a British classical scholar, educationist, and academic administrator. He promoted the classical liberal arts.
The Congress of Gela was a diplomatic meeting between a number of Sicilian cities in 424 BC. It brought a temporary halt to several years of warfare between cities on the island. At the conference, the Sicilian cities agreed to a Syracusan proposal to make peace and agree to a platform of "Sicily for the Sicilians", which has been compared to the Monroe Doctrine. Though the agreement was intended to be perpetual, both war and outside involvement in Sicilian affairs resumed within a few decades.
How to Write History is the title of a study by the classical Syrian writer Lucian, which may be considered the only work on the theory of history-writing to survive from antiquity.