Bishop Thirlwall's History of Greece: A Selection

Connop Thirlwall's History of Greece appeared in eight volumes between 1835 and 1844 and ran to a second edition (1846-52). This single volume provides a representative selection from the original eight. Each selection has been edited to suit the conventions of modern scholarship, while the introduction places Thirlwall's history in the context of nineteenth-century historiography of ancient Greece, examines his intellectual background, and analyses his disavowal of certainty, his use of material evidence and his use of analogy.

Religiously a freethinker, like his contemporary Thomas Arnold, the value of Thirlwall's history lies in its author's powers of synthesis, his honest willingness to admit to uncertainty regarding historical problems, his readiness to include, for the first time, material evidence (including epigraphy) and his sophisticated understanding of the relations between ancient and modern.

Thirlwall's work was later somewhat superseded by the twelve volumes of George Grote, but it differs substantially from its illustrious successor in outlook and tone, and this gives it an intrinsic interest for the reception of ancient Greece. Unlike Grote, Thirlwall had no particular axe to grind: scholarship, narrative clarity and frank acknowledgment of ambiguity were more important to him than any political message. He was both objective and innovative.

Peter P. Liddel is Lecturer in Ancient History in the University of Manchester. He is author of articles on Athenian democracy and of Liberty and Obligation in Classical Athens (OUP, forthcoming).