Studies in Greek History and Thought

Book excerpt: Peter Brunt was Camden Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford from 1970 to 1982. This book contains a selection of his writings on Greek history and thought. Some were previously published as papers in journals, but about a third of the volume is new. There are essays onGreek political history of the fifth century BC and on historiography, including an introduction to Thucydides designed for the more general reader, to which the author has now annexed a new study of Thucydides' funeral speech. Of the new essays, two examine the extent to which Plato and his pupilssought, or were able, to make any impact on the actual world of their time and the practicality of the model city in Plato's Laws; and a third discusses Aristotle's theory of slavery in relation to the actual Greek institution and to other attempts to justify slavery, as well as in the context ofAristotle's ethical doctrines.