Although I have been in journalism for more than 30 years, it was not until this summer that I have got around to reading one of the greatest works of journalism, writes Vincent Browne.
It is about an ancient war, written by a person who was part participant in the war and who claimed to have spoken to all sides in the war before writing his famous work, one that has survived more than 2,400 years.
It is called a history, but because it is based on what the author saw and on what he was told, rather than on, for instance, documentary sources, it is more a work of journalism. It is The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides.
It is a stupendous work in its detail, in its balance, in its overview and in its exposition of the reasons for what was done in that war. But it also has some of the hallmark flaws of journalism.
Thucydides was born around the year 460 BC and took part in the early part of the Peloponnesian War as a general in what is now the north eastern part of Greece. Because of a strategic error he was exiled and, he claimed, because of that experience, he was in a better position to report on the two sides of the war than he otherwise would have been.
The war began in 431 BC (actually, what is known as the First Peloponnesian War began in 460 and continued until 446 with what was to be a 30-year peace, but for Thucydides this earlier war was merely a prelude).
It was fought between the two major states of Greece, Athens and Sparta and their respective allies. It continued for 27 years and ended with the defeat of Athens.
For Thucydides it was the greatest war that had ever occurred - a characteristic presumption of journalists who regard "their" war the most important ever. But even allowing for that occupational pretension, it is a surprising claim.
It was only a few decades previously that the Greeks had defeated the Persians, first at the battle of Marathon in 490, then at Salamis in 480 and finally at Platea in 479.
Had the Persians defeated the Greeks, the character (and religion?) of western civilization would have been very different.
In contrast, the Peloponnesian War was a local affair. Although it did extend as far as Sicily, it was fought almost entirely in what is now Greece and western Turkey, which then was part of the Greek empire
He brilliantly describes the events that led up to the outbreak of the war but summarises the cause of the war as "the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta". Quite simply, Athens, under the much revered Pericles, built itself an empire on the back of the success in the war against the Persians - a war won, crucially, with the help of Sparta and other Greek states - and so great was its power and hubris that other Greek states feared Athenian domination.
There are just two aspects of his account which I want to focus upon today (I will return in later columns to other aspects of the book): his report of the speeches made at assemblies and congresses during the course of the war, and his account of how Greek civilisation was brutalised by the war.
A very large part of the "history" is given over to speeches which explain the motivation of the players in the war and the contending arguments advanced for proposed courses of action, including whether to go to war at all.
The speeches are reported in direct speech, full of close intricate reasoning. Clearly, Thucydides was not present during most of these speeches - he says he relied on accounts of the speeches by others who were present.
However, he also says: "My method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for in each situation".
In other words, where a speaker might not have offered a clear enough argument for the proposition he was advancing, Thucydides filled in the gaps.
This is a journalistic device much copied today. A journalist in the Sunday Times a few years ago acknowledged he made up quotes on the basis of a reasonable guess of what might have been said. A commentator, much travelled between media organisations, believes such devices are fine - the facts don't matter, it is the meaning that it's all about. It is of course nonsense, and evil nonsense.
At least Thucydides had the good grace to acknowledge at the outset that this was his device.
In a section dealing with the civil war in Corcyra, an ally of Athens, he recounts how the Corcyraeans loyal to Athens, on seeing the Athenian fleet come to their rescue, put to death all their enemies, including those to whom they had given guarantees of immunity.
The occasion was used for a general slaughter; people begin killed on the grounds of personal hatred. "There was death in every shape and form," he writes.
From the particularised observation he goes on to write how revolutions broke out in city after city in Greece and how these involved "unheard of atrocities in revenge". Anything short of fanaticism was regarded as suspect, the civilized conventions of humanity were abandoned and the most violent passions were unleashed.
Quite some observation by the most famous reporter of "classical" Greece.