Thucydides discussion response

I thought Prof. Jackson's question of whether The History of the Peloponnesian War would be as relevant to IR discussions today if it had begun, "Once upon a time..." was an interesting one. If Thucydides had not set up his project in the introduction, and instead just began with a brief introduction to set up where the narrative would go (even including that he intended to write a work for all time), I think we would have a decidedly different work from a scholarly perspective. Yes, many of the Truths would remain, and many of the same lessons could be applied, but I don't think it would have had the foundational impact that it has actually had on IR as a field.

Without the elaboration of the Thucydidean project (to write an historical account of the Peloponnesian war, to stick as closely to the facts as possible, and to eschew, as far as it is possible, myth and popularization of the story), I think The History of the Peloponnesian War would have been more likely to be viewed (and subsequently taught) as a work of literature in the same way that Homer (The Iliad) and Shakespeare (The history plays) are. Without the Thucydidean project, the work would probably be examined much more as a narrative work. It would still be useful in IR for its analysis of power, alliances, and proper governance (sort of like Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of Great Powers is useful as an analytic narrative), but I really do believe that it would have been viewed differently by IR scholars.

What if Homer had set up a Thucydidean program in an introduction to The Iliad? One could certainly gain some IR insight from the work as it is currently written, but would it have become an 'IR work' (By 'IR work' I mean a work which is an established reference point in the intellectual history of IR)? I don't mean to say that Thucydides and Homer are interchangable--with similar narratives and/or lessons to be gleaned, but I think it is a mostly valid comparison.

So what does this mean? Does this mean that the applicability of Thucydides’ History would be null and void if it began, “Once upon a time…”? I think that the applicability would, in some senses, remain, but the lens through which scholars (of many different fields) view the work would be quite different.