The Conception Of "Destiny" In The Ancient Greek Historical Explanations

In the ancient Greek historical writings,the conception of “destiny” was significant and pivotal.This essay intends to illustrate how the word “fate” did embodied in the multiple historiographies of Homer's The Iliad& The Odyssey,Herodotus' Histories,and Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War.Their narratives about natural environment,warfare as well as lives of the human beings all shed lights in the historical consciousness of the “fate”.Firstly,this essay plans to reveal the interactions between destiny and natural environment in the three writings.In Contrast to The Iliad& The Odyssey which emphasized the sign of birds,Herodotus preferred to refer dreams,storms with thunder and lightning,and strange things happened around animals to omens.In addition to them,Thucydides thought that destiny shaped by natural environment was illogical,and he denied the invisible or visible relationship between destiny and natural environment.Secondly,regarding the power of destiny in warfare,Homer completely believed that gods had mapped out anyone's fate before the nascence of war.In Herodotus' writing,it began to be suspected the destiny were omnipotent via intensive details of discrepancies between behaviors and interpretations.Following Herodotus,Thucydides expatiated on the clash further and he attributed the destiny to ensuing occasional events.Thirdly,to clarify the connection between destiny and life,Homer referred death to the core of destiny.In the way,Zeus was supposed to be the ruler of destiny.Herodotus and Thucydides built links between morality,sensibility and destiny,which rendered the last one humanism.Overall,whole of the three writings were homogenous in terms of “destiny”.Moreover,the chronicle inclination to deny the myth of destiny was distinct and identifiable among those writing.The two points both indicated that historical consciousness of humanism was awakening in the ancient Greece.