Workshop: ‘Hobbes's Translation of Thucydides: Philology, History, and Politics’

University of California (Berkeley), 16 April 2019

Thomas Hobbes’s Translation of Thucydides:

First of all, let me sincerely thank my friend Kinch for inviting me today and, of course,
thank you all for coming: it is a real pleasure to be here and discuss with you our
common project on Hobbes’s translation of Thucydides. As you may imagine, this
afternoon we do not have enough time to present all of the outcomes of our work-in-
progress (probably, a whole day would not be enough…). That is why today we will
focus on how and why our annotated critical edition is expected to provide readers with
a better understanding of Hobbes’s Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre.
As you know, Hobbes’s version – first issued in 1629 – is one of the great
accomplishments of Renaissance humanism in England and is one of the most
important episodes in Thucydides’ afterlife, not only in exegetic and antiquarian terms,
but also as a political meditation. This implies that the preparation of a scholarly edition
requires a tremendous amount of work and a huge set of skills (historical, editorial,
linguistic, theoretical, etc.). This is the reason why Kinch and I have been collaborating,
combining forces, since a couple of years – and, by the way, this is also the very reason
why no proper scholarly edition of the Eight Bookes has ever been produced…
Of course, our own – when completed – [click] will hopefully cast a new light on
several aspects of Hobbes’s masterpiece. Picking out some of the most important ones:
- [click] first, by establishing a critical text, we will reconstruct the complex
editorial history of the work, which was repeatedly published during Hobbes’s
lifetime (1629, 1634, 1648, 1676), with inevitable textual changes;
- [click] secondly, by systematically comparing the English version with the
Greek text used by Hobbes [Aemilius Portus’ edition of Thucydides, published
at Frankfurt in 1594], we will provide a better grip on Hobbes’s practice of
translation and his understanding of the ancient text;
- [click] thirdly, by identifying sources other than the 1594 Greek – e.g. Latin
versions, commentaries, dictionaries, and so on – we will explore Hobbes’s
participation into the Renaissance humanist culture – a participation which
shines out not only through his most accurate English renderings, but also
through the impressive scholarly apparatus of the Eight Bookes, consisting of
maps, critical marginalia, siege illustrations and topographical indexes;
- [click] finally, by reconstructing the political and cultural milieu of 1620s
England, we look further into the purposes of Hobbes's version and his
interaction with Thucydides’s intellectual legacy.
[click] However, behind all this, there is a more general idea of what the Eight Bookes
actually are, which lies at the core of our whole project and which I am going to focus
on during my presentation. Let me briefly illustrate this point.

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[click] As you know, the Eight Bookes comprise the first work published by Thomas
Hobbes in his long and troubled life and they represent – in many respects – the
crowning achievement of his so-called ‘humanist phase’. This period, marked by
Hobbes’s commitment to the five canonical disciplines of the studia humanitatis
(grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and civil philosophy), is generally considered as
spanning between 1610s and mid-1630s, when Hobbes began to desert humanist studies
and started developing his tripartite philosophical system: the Elementa philospohiae.
Put in this context, the Eight Bookes have been generally described as an essentially
literary and erudite work. Only their prefatory materials have been considered as a sort
of exception. [click] This section, including a triptych of brief writings – a dedicatory
epistle to his patron (William Cavendish), a second epistle to the readers, and a bio-
bibliography of Thucydides –, reveals, among other things, some original ideas that are
going to be taken up in Hobbes’s later treatises. For example, the predilection for
monarchy, the causal link between fear, prudence and good choice, the absolute
incompatibility between democracy and prudence, and so on.
It was precisely this conceptual continuity between the preface of the Eight Bookes and
Hobbes’s later treatises, that has led critics to consider these proses as a sort of foreign
– ‘philosophical’ – body within a strictly literary-erudite context. [click] In the long
term, this has meant that the Eight Bookes have been increasingly perceived as a sort
of two-face work with a hybrid status: ‘philosophical text’ in the introductory section;
mere vernacular translation in the remaining part. The result has been to draw an
imaginary but clear dividing line between the first 17 pages of the book (the prefatory
materials) – “Hobbes’s earliest known political work”, according to John Watkins’
assessment – and the other 543 (consisting of the translation and apparatuses) – which
have been considered as almost irrelevant to theoretical matters.
Through our editorial project, [click] we would like to precisely avoid this kind of
‘Manichean’ approach to the text, trying to valorize, on the contrary, the whole work as
a valuable source for studying the earliest strata of Hobbes’s thought. From our point
of view, indeed, Hobbes could scarcely have reflected on Thucydides in a most original
way in prefatory materials, without the whole translation – and apparatuses – being
themselves, in some way, part of this meditation. To put it more simply: in our
perspective, the Eight Bookes can’t be merely a faithful translation of a Greek text
preceded by a philosophical prose, but rather a work entirely shaped by a powerful,
complex and multifaceted thought.
[click] Today, my speech aims precisely at proving the legitimacy of this point of view,
by presenting a case study showing that the political issues put forward in the prefatory
materials actually pervaded the whole body of the Eight Bookes (English renderings,
apparatuses, marginalia, indexes, etc.), thus confirming the need of superseding the
traditional, too dichotomic approach to the work. [click] To do so, I am going to focus
on a very specific topic, which is probably the most emphasized one in the whole
introduction: the polemic against Athenian democracy. A kind of polemic we will try
to reconstruct, starting from the frontispiece – the entrance-door of the work, so to speak
– and then delving deeper and deeper into Hobbes’s edition.

***
However, before getting to the heart of the matter, it is nevertheless essential to briefly
explain why the anti-democratic theme stands out as a crucial aspect of the Eight

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Bookes. As you probably know, Hobbes himself identified the polemic against the
democracy as the political goal of the whole translation. [click] At least, this is what he
claimed in a most famous passage of his late verse Latin autobiography, composed in
1672. Here, the old philosopher, looking back on his youth, recalled his numerous
classical readings, explaining his predilection for Thucydides and making the purpose
of his translation explicit: [click] [I read my own translation]
Above all, I liked Thucydides. He demonstrated to me how inept democracy is, and how much
wiser is the rule of a single man than that of a multitude. I decided to translate him, in order to
make him speak to the Englishmen about the need to avoid the rhetoricians whom they were at
that time planning to consult.
Of course, we are dealing with authorial statements made more than 40 years after the
editio princeps and not necessarily reflective of the original purpose of the Eight
Bookes. Moreover, as you may imagine, it would be absurd and anachronistic to think
that a popular government was a real threat in 1620s England, in a political climate that
appears so distant – for example – from the republican revival flourished during the
Civil War. Nonetheless, it is another matter altogether when we assign to the term
‘democracy’ a more general meaning and consider Hobbes’s anti-democratic polemic
as a reprimand against a political system granting unbridled power to an assembly.
[click] Seen in this light, the criticism against Athenian democracy fitted perfectly the
context of the 1620s, when England was experiencing a dramatic escalation of tensions
between the Crown and broad swathes of English society, which gathered in unruly and
quarrelsome Parliaments. In this perspective – as Kinch and I are currently trying to
demonstrate, but unfortunately I have no time to go into details –, the criticism against
Athenian democracy might actually warn English people against the risks of any
political system granting excessive powers to unruly assemblies. And, on this basis, the
anti-democratic theme may actually be considered, if not the political goal of the whole
translation, at least as a substantial part of its political agenda.
So, against this background, Hobbes developed a pervasive and sophisticated polemic
against democratic Athens that underlies the entire edition, going far beyond the
perimeter of the prefatory materials, and spreading throughout visual apparatuses,
learned critical marginalia, indexes, and, above all, translation choices.
Let’s start from the title-page [click]. As it will later happen with the more famous
images of De Cive and Leviathan, the frontispiece of the Eight Bookes aimed at
summing up per imagines the main contents of the work by comparing the war
protagonists – Sparta and Athens – through a bipartite composition arranged in three
superimposed registers of scenes. [click] The first register shows the two cities: Sparta,
on the left, appears “not close built and scatteringly inhabited, after the ancient manner
of Greece” [according to Th. I.10], while Athens, perched behind the Long Walls, is
crowned by sumptuous buildings and gives the impression of pomp and majesty. [click]
Both the leaders, Archidamus and Pericles, appear in the second register: the Spartan
king, with the sword drawn and the shield held, embodied the Lacedaemonian fighting
spirit. The Attic general is on the contrary leaning on a spear with the shield laid down,
assuming a tranquil posture which expresses Athens’ more relaxed way of life,
repeatedly extolled by Pericles himself in his Funeral Oration.
[click] The third and last register is the most important for us because it compares the
two forms of government: [click] on the left side, we see the Spartan kings presiding
over a small group of wise counsellors in a quiet and secluded room; on the right a

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towering demagogue is haranguing a blurred Athenian crowd in a public square. The
foreground provides an even starker contrast: on the left, we have the admirable decor
of the Lacedaemonian meeting hall, with the books and the fine garments of the
advisors; on the right, the plain clothes, the saddlebags, the loaves of bread and the
sticks of the Athenian audience.
Finally, the captions make Hobbes’ verdict explicit [click]: if the Athenian assembly is
labelled with the generic ΟΙ ΠΟΛΛΟΙ (“the many”), the Spartan council – led by the
king – is defined in openly eulogistic terms: ΟΙ ΑΡΙΣΤΟΙ (“the best men”), according
the Aristotelian characterization of the government of Sparta as an aristocracy, that is
to say a ‘right’, ‘not deviated’ constitution. Clearly, the ultimate effect is to contrast
Athens’ popular and chaotic government with Sparta’s well-ordered monarchy, which,
not surprisingly, allowed the Lacedaemonians to win the war.
[click] This kind of reading is definitely confirmed – almost ironically – in the very last
section of the Eight Bookes, the thematic index, which, despite its apparently
compilatory nature, actually provides important data about Hobbes’s overall
understanding of Thucydides’ History. [click] With regard to our specific case, the
entry “the Best men”, for example, clearly translating the phrase οἱ ἄριστοι, refers to
Th. I.84 – Archidamus’s famous eulogy of Spartan virtues –, thus inviting the readers
to focus on Lacedaemonians good qualities: sound judgement, prudence, self-restraint.
[click] On the contrary – and even more significantly – the entry “Democracy, what it
is” does not refer to any eulogistic passage (taken, for instance, from Pericles’ Funeral
Oration), but recalls Alcibiades’s scornful definition of democracy as a “confessed
madnesse” (Th. VI, 89), in which “it was necessary in most things to follow up the
present course” (hardly ever the best one…) and the “headstrong humour of the People”.
Moving from frontispiece to prefatory materials, the polemic against Athenian
democracy grows bitter, especially in the bio-bibliographical section entitled Of the Life
and History of Thucydides. Here Hobbes recounted the life of the historian on the basis
of ancient sources – notably Marcellinus [= Vit.Thuc.], Pausanias, Plutarch –
highlighting Thucydides’ most problematic dealings with the Athenian citizens.
[click] At first, Hobbes recalled Thucydides’ descent from Thracian kings, not entirely
dismissing the possibility that the historian belonged to the family of the tyrant
Pisistratus. Subsequently, we are informed about his apprenticeship with a Fifth-
century largely unpopular intellectual: the oligarch Antiphon. [click] Like his master –
Hobbes says –, Thucydides “was sufficiently qualified to have become a great
Demagogue […], but it seemeth he had no desire at all to meddle in the gouernment,
because in those times it was impossible for any man to giue good and profitable
counsell for the Common-wealth and not incurre the displeasure of the People”.
Therefore, Thucydides’ refusal to engage in any form of vita activa was not the outcome
of any individualistic choice, but rather the result of the perverse Athenian regime.
In the following paragraph, we are faced with an unprecedented interpretation of
Thucydides’ constitutional thought. [click] According to Hobbes, “it is manifest that he
least of all liked the Democracy” and “upon diuers occasions hee noteth the emulation
and contention of the Demagogues, for reputation, and glory of wit”. On the contrary,
[click] Hobbes stated, Thucydides preferred monarchy, as shown by his outspoken
praise of Pisistratus’ tyranny (Th. VI, 54) and Pericles’ government, “Democraticall in
name, but in effect Monarchicall” (according to a very free adaptation of Th. II, 65.9).

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Anyway, despite his beliefs, the historian never avoided his civic duties: he served in
the Athenian army during the Peloponnesian War, [click] being unjustly exiled because
of his misfortune during the Amphipolis campaign (424-3 BC), a rash decision
advocated by the demagogue Cleon. [click] But it would be Thucydides’ death which
would put a definitive end to his difficult relationship with his motherland: after
spending his exile in Thrace, he had the chance to come back to Athens, but while
returning he was murdered “by treachery” by some political enemy.
[click] Therefore, Thucydides’ biography – so tendentiously reconstructed – became a
symbol of Athens’ distorted regime: the historian, who decided not to participate in
government affairs in the name of his social, cultural and political incompatibility with
the demos, was unfairly convicted, exiled and martyred. At the same time, Thucydides’
work, which resulted from his tragic experience, represented the spiritual testament
transmitted by an irreproachable man, who deliberately abandoned active life to devote
himself to a detached and rational scrutiny of historical events in order to speak against
the foolishness of the Athenian system.
[click] However, as we said, the anti-democratic polemic was not confined to the title-
page and the prefatory materials, but it also spread throughout the whole body of the
Eight Bookes, thanks to a sophisticated interaction of marginal notes and free
renderings, which projected some political issues discussed in the introductory sections
on the bulk of Hobbes’s translation. I will give you four very brief examples.
[click] The first one is provided by Th. II, 40, one of the most famous passages of
Pericles’ Funeral Oration. Here, the Attic strategos praises the high degree of popular
involvement in Athenian democracy [I read Hobbes’s translation; of course, the Greek
text is quoted according to Portus’s edition]:
Moreover there is in the same men, a care, both of their owne, and of the publique affaires, and
a sufficient knowledge of State matters, euen in those that labour with their hands.
The English version is substantially faithful to the Greek original, but it is accompanied
by a caustic marginalium, which mocks lower-class participation in public debates
[click]:
In Athens no men so poore but was a Statesman. So S. Luke, Act. 17. 21. All the Athenians
spend their time in nothing but hearing and telling newes. The true character of politicians
without employment.
In the same vein – example number 2 – another bitter annotation highlighted the
perverse logic driving Athenian assemblies faced with unexpected military failures.
[click] In book IV chapter 65, Thucydides reports that the Athenians exiled and fined
three generals – Pythodorus, Sophocles, and Eurymedon – on the mere presumption
that they had been bribed to accept a disadvantageous peace agreement on behalf of the
whole city. Hobbes’ marginalium promptly stigmatizes the arrogance of the demos and
the vile maneuvers of the demagogues [click]:
Nothing was more frequent in the Athenian Assemblies at this time, then when things went
amisse, to accuse the author of bribery for it was a sure way to win fauour with the people, who
thought that nothing was able to resist their power.
But even more significant was the way Hobbes translated the Greek sentence that
explained Athenians’ behaviour [click]: αἰτία δ’ ἦν ἡ παρὰ λόγον τῶν πλειόνων
εὐπραγία, αὐτοῖς ὑποτιθεῖσα ἰσχὺν τῆς ἐλπίδος (“The cause of this was the success,
beyond any prediction, of most of their operations, and this had fuelled their hope”).

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[click] Clearly departing from the plain meaning of the original, Hobbes rendered the
phrase ἡ παρὰ λόγον εὐπραγία (“success beyond any prediction”) with an important
semantic disambiguation, which condensed into a single lexical choice his negative
judgement on the entire Athenian political system:
The cause whereof, was the vnreasonable prosperity of most of their designes, subministring
strength vnto their hope.
[click] In this interpretation, the successful conclusion of Athens’ undertakings was not
merely ‘unexpected’ – as Thucydides said – but “unreasonable”, that is to say ‘not based
upon sound reason’, in a sense much closer to the meaning of the adjective ἄλογον
(‘irrational’/‘absurd’) than to the one conveyed by the phrase παρὰ λόγον. In sum, it is
clear that here Hobbes is highlighting – more radically than the Greek permits – the
intrinsic irrationality of the democratic rule, the real source of the Athenian military
defeats during the war.
This kind of necessary association between democracy and unsuccessful undertakings
is powerfully emphasized – once again through a malicious rendering – in VI, 8.3-4
(our third example). [click] We are at the very beginning of Athens’s disastrous
expedition to Sicily (415-413 BCE): the assembly of the Attic polis, on the basis of
false information, had just decided to send a huge fleet against Syracuse. “In the fifth
day after this – Thucydides said [I read my own translation] – a meeting of the assembly
was again held, to determine in what way the ships could be equipped most speedily,
and in case the generals need anything further for the expedition, to vote it for them”.
[click] The Greek – as you may see – is absolutely perspicuous and Hobbes’s translation
plain, except for a tantalizing lexical choice, which rendered the most common phrase
ταῖς ναυσί (“the ships”) with a Spanish, most unexpected word: Armada (written in
italics with initial capital letter). “Five dayes after this, the people assembled again to
consult of the meanes how most speedily put this Armada in readinesse” etc. etc.
The term Armada, per se rare and never occurring elsewhere in the Eight Bookes, must
have sounded as greatly evocative for English readers and could not fail to recall
another naval Armada – the Invincible Armada – sent against England by Philip II of
Spain in 1588. This kind of association had at least a threefold effect:
- [click] firstly, it openly suggests a close historical parallel between Athens’s
disastrous expedition to Sicily and Philip II’s unsuccessful campaign against
England;
- [click] secondly, it preempted – not without a good measure of dramatic irony
– the fatal outcome of Athens’ undertaking;
- [click] thirdly, and most importantly, it ended up to implicitly projecting some
defects commonly attributed to Philip II’s expedition on the Athenian one:
vainglory, arrogance, presumptuousness, miscalculation. A number of flaws we
have seen that Hobbes often referred to Athens’s initiatives.

Our fourth and final example – taken from Thuc. I, 17 – reflects instead the desire to
bring out the image of a pro-monarchical Thucydides. Here, the historian states that
ancient tyrants did not undertake great military campaigns, but governed their cities in
the safest way possible, “having regard for their own interests only, both as to the safety
of their own persons and as to the aggrandizement of their family”:
As for the tyrants in the Greek cities, since they had regard for their own interests only, both as
to the safety of their own persons and as to the aggrandizement of their family (τὸ ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν

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μόνον προορώμενοι, ἔς τε τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἐς τὸ τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον αὔξειν, δι’ ἀσφαλείας ὅσον
ἐδύναντο), security was as far as possible their greatest political aim.
Once again, this passage does not pose any particular exegetical problem and Portus’
Latin translation – which is often the model for Hobbes’s one – is even more explicit
than the original Greek by openly referring to a tangible growth in tyrants’ family
fortunes:
Tyranni verò, quotquot in Graecis vrbibus erant, suis tantum rebus prospicientes, vt & corpus
tuerentur, & suam familiam [ac patrimonium] amplificarent, quam tutissimè poterant, vrbes
incolebant etc. etc.
Hobbes’ version is, on the contrary, clearly unfaithful, since it deliberately excludes
any reference to aggrandizement of wealth or power by presenting the tyrants’ pursuit
of self-interest just in terms of personal protection:
And as for the Tyrants that were in the Grecian Cities, who forecasted onely for themselues,
how, with as much safety as was possible, to looke to their owne persons, and their owne
Families, they resided for the most part in the Cities (Hobbes [1629], 11).
The outcome is surprising and ends up concealing and deflating – not by chance, in my
opinion – a potential allusion to a well-known Aristotelian anti-tyrannical argument,
which was widespread among Renaissance thinkers: unlike the legitimate king
(basileus), who impartially pursues the public welfare, the tyrant (tyrannos) looks only
after himself by increasing his own power and wealth. Finding this idea in some way
implied by the text of Thucydides – who was trumpeted by Hobbes as a strong advocate
of tyrannical government – would probably have generated some confusion among
English readers and this – I think – is the most likely reason why Hobbes decided to
translate this sentence so freely.
Anyway, such a rendering, far from being the result of a generally unfaithful approach
to the Greek, was rather the extreme and paradoxical outcome of a translation method
based on a maximum degree of transparency. Almost everywhere, Hobbes tended to
accurately convey the literal meaning of the original, but sometimes he swayed from
the letter, in an attempt to make an aspect he perceived as not expressly (or properly)
stated in Thucydides more explicit. The departure from the Greek we have just
examined – like many other similar examples – stems precisely from this kind of
attempt and reflects Hobbes’ intention to harmonize the English renderings with the
overall political interpretation of Thucydides’ History.

***
[click] Therefore, if we consider the whole collection of passages so far discussed, we
cannot help but notice that Hobbes never missed the opportunity to recall, even within
the tightest meshes of his version, the political issues put forward in his introductory
sections. Page after page, those issues are being propagated throughout the work,
enriched by a wider range of nuances emerging from translation choices and critical
marginalia. This confirms what we have said at the beginning of our talk: namely that
only an approach considering the Eight Bookes as a work entirely shaped by a powerful
and multifaceted thought will enable us to fully understand the political and intellectual
agenda lying behind the translation. And it is precisely with this in mind that Kinch and
I started working on our annotated critical edition, trying to break down all those
artificial barriers which has so far prevented critics from fully recognizing the strong
unity of inspiration and thought pervading Hobbes’s entire version.

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However, our analysis must not limit itself – like I did today – to merely pointing out
the conceptual continuity between the introduction and the rest of the work. The unique
intellectual significance of the Eight Bookes extends far beyond this particular aspect
and deserves to be explored through a multi-level approach to the English text.
[click] First of all, we must also valorize the English version as an autonomous source
of Hobbes’s thought, that is to say apart from what is written in prefatory materials. I
tried to do this some years ago when I published an article focusing on a specific theme
of primary relevance in both Thucydides’ History and Hobbes’s later political
philosophy: the feeling of fear. In it, I considered all of the Thucydidean passages in
which the vocabulary of fear occurs and I checked the Hobbesian version in order to
detect some possible indications of Hobbes’s early political thought “hidden” in his
translation, especially where this appears unfaithful to the Greek.
In this way, I have noticed that some occurrences of the term awe – both noun and verb
– rendered the Greek text quite freely, translating words and phrases that did not convey
the feeling of fear, but belonged to other semantic fields – φυλακὴν ποιεῖσθαι “keep
guard”, ἀπείργω “prevent”, κατέχω “restrain” –, thus suggesting the idea that Hobbes
considered the feeling of awe as the psychological root of obedience, control and
restraint. Precisely the same idea that would be taken up – both in form and content –
in some key passages on the origin of the state in Elements of Law and Leviathan.
[click] Anyway, our analysis won’t just focus on free renderings, but also reconstruct –
as we have already said – Hobbes’s overall translation method. In particular, we will
try to: a) identify the essential guiding principles involved in Hobbes’s modus vertendi;
b) evaluate the literary and stylistic quality of the English renderings; c) point out the
learned tools at Hobbes’s disposal (Portus’s Greek-Latin edition, Johannes Scapula’s
Greek-Latin lexicon, etc.), determining their impact on the English version. Only an
exhaustive examination of all these aspects – [click] together with a full-detailed
analysis of the erudite apparatuses (maps, illustration, indexes, and marginalia) – will
indeed outline the main features of Hobbes’s way of translating and interpreting
Thucydides; which is the necessary precondition for any subsequent attempt to
reconstruct Hobbes’s early and original thought on the basis of his translation.
[click] Last but not least, we are currently establishing a critical text of the English
version, by carrying out a careful collation of the four major printings and
systematically recording substantial and in-press variants as well as literal faults. In
fact, such a comprehensive investigation is the only way to establish the historical
development of the text, showing the different successive stages through which
Hobbes’s translation evolved during his lifetime, ascertaining the degree of Hobbes’s
involvement in the preparation of each version and – sometimes – even reconstructing
his work, side by side, with printers during the publication process.
In sum, this will be a complex and very difficult task, which is going to keep us busy
for a long time. The hope is not to be overwhelmed by the work piling up. Certainly,
corrections along the way will be unavoidable and these will probably come up in many
of the work-in-progress workshops that we will organize. Anyway, without being
overly pessimistic, we could perhaps envisage completing our edition in 4/5 years, just
a little bit ahead of the 400th anniversary of the first publication of Hobbes’s Eight
Bookes. In the meantime, we shall be very much pleased to receive your comments and
answer your questions and, of course, thank you all for your attention.