Hobbes's Thucydides

obbes’s translation of the Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre () was the first made into English from the Greek text; it was preceded by that of T. Nicolls (), made from the French translation of C. de Seyssel () which was itself made from the Latin translation of L. Valla, and was followed in England by an edition of the Greek text with Latin notes by J. Hudson (). This book begins with four chapters on Greek studies and the knowledge of Thucydides in England between  and  (but despite the dates on the title page has little to say of –), and then proceeds to four chapters on Hobbes and his translation. After the Conclusion there are a catalogue of sixty manuscript and printed versions of Thucydides acquired by Oxford and Cambridge libraries up to , a bibliography, and indexes of names of persons and of passages in Thucydides. In ch. i Iori stresses that, if England could not match continental countries for works of classical scholarship until after the Restoration of , from the beginning of the sixteenth century study of the classics was widespread. Crucial were the foundation of St. John’s College, Cambridge (), Corpus Christi College, Oxford (), and at a more junior level the refoundation of St. Paul’s School, London (), while about the same time the nobility who did not send their sons to school took to employing tutors of Latin and Greek, and some of the leading clergy attracted scholars to their households. Religious changes contributed to the development of Greek studies, and the Regius Chairs of Greek at Cambridge and Oxford were established in the s. As careers in government and in the Church were separated, classics became an essential part of a gentleman’s education, and B. Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier () and T. Elyot’s Boke Named the Gouernour (), with their recommendation of classical learning, were extremely influential, though Puritans objected to the study of pagan texts. Textbooks of Greek grammar were published, beginning with one by N. Cleynaerts in . Steady expansion under