91 pages • 3 hours read
ThucydidesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Throughout his work, Thucydides discusses the human motivations behind historical events. In Thucydides’s view, what are humans chiefly motivated by? Consider these points as you reflect on the text:
Teaching Suggestion: As students begin working on this Discussion/Analysis Prompt, consider encouraging them to explore Thucydides’s use of symbols, motifs, and language. How do figures in Thucydides’s history use rhetoric to manipulate those around them and disguise their true motivations? To deepen discussion, you might also ask students if they see parallels with modern politics or politicians.
Differentiation Suggestion: For auditory learners, consider providing audiobook clips of several important speeches from Thucydides (such as Pericles’s Funeral Oration and the Melian Dialogue) for students to listen to and analyze. Hearing the speeches might help them develop insights on their rhetorical qualities; you could even encourage students to compare audio versions of Thucydides’s speeches with videos or recordings of recent political speeches.
By Thucydides