Average Rating: 
Rating: - An excellent edition - The best you can buy!
I bought the Landmark Thucydides because it was the only hardback edition I could find. I was pleasantly surprised because it happens to be the best modern edition available. The editor, Robert Strasser, set out to make the most authoritative book on Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, and I believe he has succeeded brilliantly.Strasser uses Richard Crawley's translation, apparently revised and updated. In any case the text is very good, though Thucydides syntax is sometimes complex and even a bit confusing. Strasser uses marginal notes besides each paragraph to summarize the events described in the text. The most valuable additions are the maps- there are maps every few pages, illustrating the geography described in the text as needed. Other welcome additions are a timeline, breaking down the events of the book according to date, appendices covering topics such as Athenian and Spartan government, trireme construction, land and naval warfare in ancient times, and even an essay on the monetary units and religious festivals used in the ancient world. There is also an introduction, discussing both the text and the author in detail and in the context of their time. There is also a full and complete index. If you want Thucydides, this is the book to buy!
Rating: - Would Strassler only edit more.......
Robert Strassler has done a remarkable editing job with Thucydides' Peloponnesian War. He has included three key features which provide the reader much luxury: One, he has provided maps throughout the text, to the extent of repetition, to ensure that textual geographic references are always accompanied, in close proximity, cartographically. Two, he has provided paragraph summaries on the margin throughout the work so that a reader, who has put the edition down for any length of time, may refresh their memories quickly by reading as many of these one to two sentence summaries as necessary. Three, as Thucydides provides his narrative in chronological order, he must often leave one narrative to begin another. Strassler has provided a thread to follow each narrative through to its' end by way of footnotes. These editorial enhancements greatly enrich the reading experience and would be a welcome addition to any historical text. Thucydides, himself, presents the reader with a narrative unromanticized, strictly adhering to the events of the Peloponnesian War. His work possesses many passages that rivet the reader, but also contains areas where the sheer and voluminous recitation of fact can render one foggy. This is not a book for the light-hearted, though Strassler's editorial enhancements make for a pleasurable experience. It is, in short, a classic which has been classically edited.
Rating: - Comprehensive to the nth Degree
Robert B. Strassler's edition of the famous Richard Crawley translation of Thucydides is a remarkable work, not only because of its intrinsic merit but also because it is quite simply unique. Mr. Strassler has provided the ultimate in critical apparatus, an exhaustive series of tools with which to understand and appreciate one of the great books of world civilisation. I have never seen anything like it. First of all, there is the index; if an index can be said to be a work of art, the Strassler index is a work of art in the way it organises and informs the text. Next there are the maps - dozens of them - not clumped together in the middle of the book or hidden away at the end, but strategically placed throughout the appropriate points in the text, right at the reader's fingertips when he or she needs them. The footnotes (yes footnotes, not those pesky and inconvenient endnotes!) would fill a small volume of their own and add immeasurably to one's understanding. And as if this were not enough, there are 11 appendices - short essays by prominent classical scholars on different aspects of the Greek world in the time of Thucydides, from "Athenian Government" and "Trireme Warfare" to "Religious Festivals" and "Classical Greek Currency." As far as I am concerned, the only problem with Mr. Strassler's edition is that is has made me greedy for more of the same - a similar edition of the Mahabharata, say, or Gibbon! Any takers?
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