First published in 1907 and reissued in 1965, this is a fascinating study of Thucydides's History. Thucydides set out to write a truthful account of the Pelopennesian war, but his work reflects his Athenian fourth-century B.C. context, which was of a particular interest to Cornford. In this fascinating title, Cornford analyses the causes of the war as shown by Thucydides and other sources, and then goes on to comment on the History.

First published in 1907 and reissued in 1965, this is a fascinating study of Thucydides's History. Thucydides set out to write a truthful account of the Pelopennesian war, but his work reflects his Athenian fourth-century B.C. context, which was of a particular interest to Cornford. In this fascinating title, Cornford analyses the causes of the war as shown by Thucydides and other sources, and then goes on to comment on the History.

Aristotle, great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and writer, born at Stagirus in 384 BCE, was the son of Nicomachus, a physician, and Phaestis. He studied under Plato at Athens and taught there (367 47); subsequently he spent three years at the court of a former pupil, Hermeias, in Asia Minor and at this time married Pythias, one of Hermeias s relations. After some time at Mitylene, in 343 2 he was appointed by King Philip of Macedon to be tutor of his teen-aged son Alexander. After Philip s death in 336, Aristotle became head of his own school (of Peripatetics ), the Lyceum at Athens. Because of anti-Macedonian feeling there after Alexander s death in 323, he withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322. Nearly all the works Aristotle prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as follows: I. Practical: "Nicomachean Ethics"; "Great Ethics" ("Magna Moralia"); "Eudemian Ethics"; "Politics"; "Oeconomica" (on the good of the family); "Virtues and Vices."

II. Logical: "Categories"; "On Interpretation"; "Analytics" ("Prior" and "Posterior"); "On Sophistical Refutations"; "Topica."

III. Physical: Twenty-six works (some suspect) including astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc.

IV. "Metaphysics" on being as being.

V. On Art: "Art of Rhetoric" and "Poetics."

VI. Other works including the "Athenian Constitution"; more works also of doubtful authorship.

VII. Fragments of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and of treatises on rhetoric, politics and metaphysics. The Loeb Classical Library(r) edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes.

"Cornford arrived at a picture of the origins of Greek philosophy which was historically superior to that which anyone else has so far reached." -- "The Classical Review." This exploration of early Western philosophy traces the religious roots of science and systematic speculation. Cornford, a distinguished historian of ancient philosophy, combines deep classical scholarship with anthropological and sociological insights to examine the mythic precursors of enduring metaphysical concepts -- such as destiny, God, the soul, substance, nature, and immortality.

1907. In this essay Cornford strives to emphasize the essentially artistic aspect of Thucydides' work. Contents: Part I. Thucydides Historicus: The Causes of the War; Athenian Parties Before the War; The Megarian Decrees; The Western Policy; Thucydides' Conception of History. Part II. The Luck of Pylos; The Most Violent of the Citizens; Mythistoria and the Drama; Peitho; The Mellan Dialogue; The Lion's Whelp; Eros Tryannus; The Tragic Passions; and The Cause of War.

1937. The commentary in this text is designed to guide the reader through a long and intricate argument and to explain what must remain obscure in the most faithful translation; for the Timaeus covers an immense field at the cost of compressing the thought into the smallest space. Only with some such aid can students of theology and philosophy have access to a document that has deeply influenced mediaeval and modern speculation. Contents: The Timaeus; The Discourse of Timaeus; What Comes About of Necessity; The Cooperation of Reason and Necessity.

This is a 1950 collection of eight essays about Plato and the Presocratic philosophers who were F. M. Cornford's particular interest in the field of Greek thought. In the essay that gives the collection its title Cornford develops the two complementary themes which run through much of his writing: the effects of individual style and human character which must be reckoned with in reconstructing a philosopher's system from fragments or interpreting a complete philosophic work; and the influence of abstract schemes of conception which the philosopher assumes within his cultural tradition. These themes recur in essays discussing Pythagoras, Hesiod and Plato. Cornford's enthusiasm for his subject will communicate itself to any reader. In the memoir of Cornford which accompanies the essays Professor W. K. C. Guthrie describes the Hellenic qualities of Cornford's writing: 'the living symmetry of form, the grace and delicacy of the details, the humour, irony and occasional fantasy enlivening a fundamentally serious theme'.