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Led by Thucydides Simulacrum
The second Greek depth study of OCR GCSE Ancient History (J198/01), taught by Thucydides — who lived it, commanded in its war, and recorded Pericles' words. The high summer of the Athenian democracy and its turn to war: how the democracy worked, the Delian League's hardening into empire, the building of the Acropolis, and the position of women. Source-led, with the historian himself part of the story.
Led by Thucydides Simulacrum
The question
Thucydides explains how the democracy actually worked, not how the orators flattered it. After Ephialtes stripped the Areopagus of power, sovereignty lay with the ecclesia, prepared by the boule, administered by the archons, led in war by the ten elected generals. The student maps these institutions and traces a real decision through them. Then the puzzle of Pericles: a man with no permanent office who dominated a democracy by persuasion, year on year — what Thucydides called "democracy in name, the rule of the first man in fact." The student studies oratory, the Sophists, and ostracism (which exiled Cimon and others), and weighs that famous verdict as the judgement of a participant the system itself exiled.
Outcome
The student can explain how the democratic institutions worked and how a law was made, account for Pericles' leadership and the use of ostracism, and evaluate Thucydides' verdict as interested testimony.
Sub-units
Led by Thucydides Simulacrum
The question
Why did Athens and Sparta go to war? Thucydides teaches the student to distinguish the pretexts — the Megarian decree, Corcyra, Potidaea — from what he called the truest cause: the growth of Athenian power and the fear it inspired in Sparta. The student traces the Delian League's hardening into empire (the treasury moved from Delos to Athens, allies reduced to subjects), the immediate grievances and the Long Walls, Pericles' cold strategy of abandoning the land to trust the fleet, and the plague that struck inside the walls and killed Pericles himself. Throughout, the student practises Thucydides' central move — stripping pretext from cause — and weighs his analytical history against a comic source like Aristophanes.
Outcome
The student can explain the League's transformation into empire, the grievances and Pericles' strategy and the plague, and can apply the distinction between pretext and truest cause while weighing analytical against comic sources.
Sub-units
Led by Thucydides Simulacrum
The question
Pericles spent the empire's tribute on marble — the Parthenon, the great statue of Athena, the Acropolis crowned — and his enemies cried that he beautified Athens with money the allies gave to fight Persia. The student studies the building programme and its religious meaning, the criticisms (the tribute question, the trial of Pheidias), the great festivals of the Panathenaia and City Dionysia, and the place of Athena in Athenian identity. The culminating source is the Funeral Oration — Athens as "the school of Greece" — which raises the central problem of Thucydidean method: how far his speeches report what was said, and how far they reconstruct it.
Outcome
The student can explain the building programme and its religious significance and the criticisms of it, account for the major festivals and Athena's place in civic identity, and evaluate the Funeral Oration given the problem of Thucydidean speech-composition.
Sub-units
Led by Thucydides Simulacrum
The question
Thucydides gave the women of Athens a single line — that the greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked of — and that silence is itself the evidence. The student reads against the grain to recover women's experience: marriage and daily life; Pericles' citizenship law requiring two Athenian parents, which raised citizen women's status even as it confined them; the women of the tragic stage, like Medea, who reveal what Athenian men feared; the priestesses and Arrephoroi who held real religious office; and Aspasia, whom the comedians would not leave alone. The central source problem is a record written almost entirely by men — and the technique of reading it for what it does not say.
Outcome
The student can explain the position of women in daily life and the democracy and the effect of the citizenship law, use dramatic and religious evidence to analyse attitudes, and read a male-authored record against the grain.
Sub-units