MorkTheFiddle wrote:What I wanted was a fresh point of view, if there is one.
What exactly do you mean by "point of view"? Because if by that you mean a global or general interpretation of the author or his work, that's usually the sort of thing that you
don't find in a commentary. For that there's usually monographs like the
Brill's Companion to Thucydides, Rusten's
Thucydides, Herter's
Thukydides or Erbse's
Thukydides-Interpretationen, that try to encompass what scholars think about this author. There's also individual monographs like
Hornblower's or
Kagan's. Jacqueline de Romilly is particularly prolific and has many of those like
Histoire et raison chez Thucydide or
Thucydide et l'impérialisme athénien, and, of course
Canfora.
There's many good interpretations like those, evidently they all contradict each other and they are all very modern. Thucydides is the sort of author that never let's you get a stable point of view of him.
This resource page is very useful, in the section "interpretations" you may find more books like the ones I've just mentioned.
By the way, you'll be surprised how fresh and sensible some very old books are and how antiquated some very recent books are. In general, be very distrustful of books (specially if they are recent) that offer a "offer a fresh and detailed point of view", at least when dealing with Classical Authors.
MorkTheFiddle wrote:What I was hoping for and expecting from a commentary was help understanding the text as well as historical help rather like what How and Wells provided for Herodotus.
Those are two very different things you mention. (Also How and Wells is very, very outdated and has received much criticism, the only reason it's still around it's because there's no better alternative in English for the whole Herodotus, there's only one of
Book V and
Book III. If you can read Italian, look for the commentaries of the
Fondazione Lorenzo Valla).
If you want help in understanding the text I must tell you that what most scholars understand by "helping someone to understand a text" is not what normal people mean by it. There's a very famous anecdote (probably false) about Einstein.
A journalist asked him 'Can you explain the Theory of Relativity to me?'.
Einstein replied: 'Can you tell me how to fry an egg?'
The journalist looked at him in surprise and said: 'Well, yes, I can.'
To which Einstein replied: 'Well, then do it, but imagining that I do not know what an egg is... Nor a frying pan, nor oil, nor fire.'
Basically most commentaries will explain the Theory of Relativity but they will assume you have all the background knowledge (and language skills) necessary to understand their explanations. There's very few beginner friendly commentaries like
Cameron's that will actually help you understand the Greek text at the most fundamental and basic level.
For instance Gomme's five volume
Historical Commentary on Thucydides is the reference to go but he assumes that you understand the text perfectly and without fail, he's just providing context. Hornblower's three volume
Commentary on Thucydides is also focused on historical and literary interpretation, plus since he assumes that his readers don't know Greek (and have no intention of learning it) he provides translations instead of help in understanding difficult passages (a very common defect in the most recent books, and another reason to give more credit to older books).
Again, Dover's commentaries to books VI and VII are excellent and very useful if you already are at an advanced or at least upper-intermediate level of Greek. The same thing can be said about Canfora's commentary to the Melian dialogue (
Tucidide e l'imperio. La presa di Melo).
My suggestion for the most student friendly commentary would be the old Classen & Steup commentary (look in the resources page I mentioned) but it's in German, the next best thing is Arnold's. There are a couple of commentaries in English based on Classen & Steup listed in the resources page that should also be helpful.
Although not a commentary, Kagan's
New History of the Peloponessian War is excellent and I wholeheartedly recommend it. You can borrow an
abridged edition on Archive.org.
Omnis lingua usu potius discitur quam praeceptis, id est audiendo, legendo, relegendo, imitationem manu et lingua temptando quam creberrime. – Iohannes Amos Comenius