Ranke and Niebuhr: the Tucididean apothesis

Abstract

The modern representation Thucydides crystallized in the nineteenth century in the works of the so-called "Thucydidean´s Germans": Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Leopold von Ranke, Wilhelm Roscher, and Eduard Meyer. Thucydides`reputation then underwent a kind of historiographical apotheosis, his history coming to be thought of as a unique and extraordinary work. Niebuhr was emphatic in his judgment: "the first real and true historian, according to our notion, was Thucydides: as he is the most perfect historian among all that have ever written, so he is at the same the first: he is the Homer of historians". As for the subject matter of his History, Niebuhr likewise proclaimed that "the Peloponnesian War(...) is the most immortal of all wars, because it is described by the greatest of all historians that ever lived". In a similar vein stated that"(...), Thucydides, who is the real originator of historical writing, still cannot be surpassed (...). No one can (...) have a pretension to be a greater historian than Thucydides".