Thucydides

In Kyle’s John Quincy Adams notes, Thucydides appears as a pillar of the classical education that formed citizens of the early republic. A highlighted passage names him “the great historian of ancient Greece,” listed alongside Cicero, Tacitus, Plutarch, and Sallust as the “curricular core” of an emerging “education for citizenship.” The note’s argument is that “the classics” functioned not as a subject like geography but “as a lens through which to examine and understand the life around you” — Thucydides standing in for the ancient-history training that shaped Adams and his generation.

Context: Thucydides (c. 460–400 BC) was an Athenian general and historian whose History of the Peloponnesian War is regarded as a founding work of rigorous, cause-seeking historiography and a touchstone of realist thought about power and politics.

Where this appears

• John Quincy Adams — cited as the exemplary Greek historian within the classical curriculum that trained early-republic citizens for public life