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Saturday, June 22, 2019

**Special Guest Episode on Translating Thucydides’ Speeches w/Johanna Hanink**



In this special guest episode, I am joined by Dr. Johanna Hanink, Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University in Providence, RI. Her primary teaching and research areas focus on various aspects of Greek antiquity and its legacy, but she is especially interested in Classical Athens, particularly the cultural life of the city's 4th century BC, and the strange relationships between modern politics and the ancient past. She is active in Brown’s Program in Modern Greek Studies and serves on the editorial boards of The Journal of Modern Greek Studies and EidolonShe is the author and editor of a number of articles and books, including Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy (Cambridge University Press 2014), Creative Lives in Classical Antiquity: Poets, Artists, and Biography (Cambridge University Press 2016), and The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity (Harvard University Press 2017), which explores how Western fantasies of classical antiquity have created a particularly fraught relationship between the European West and the country of Greece, especially in the context of Greece's recent "tale of two crises.” Her most recent book, How to Think about War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy (Princeton University Press, 2019), is the topic of today’s conversation. 

"Why do nations go to war? What are citizens willing to die for? What justifies foreign invasion? And does might always make right? For nearly 2,500 years, students, politicians, political thinkers, and military leaders have read the eloquent and shrewd speeches in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War for profound insights into military conflict, diplomacy, and the behavior of people and countries in times of crisis. How to Think about War presents the most influential and compelling of these speeches in an elegant new translation by classicist Johanna Hanink, accompanied by an enlightening introduction, informative headnotes, and the original Greek on facing pages. The result is an ideally accessible introduction to Thucydides’s long and challenging History."

I am very excited that Dr. Hanink agreed to come onto THOAG to discuss what it was like to translate Thucydides and the deeper meaning behind many of his speeches.

Dr Johanna Hanink
Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University