What caused the tsunami in Thucydides' history?

In his 5th-century BC work History of the Peloponnesian War, the Greek historian Thucydides investigated the devastating 426 BC Malian Gulf tsunami. He concluded that such massive waves could only be explained as a consequence of submarine earthquakes. This made him historically the first known person to correctly connect tsunamis to preceding geological events, moving away from divine attributions like those of Herodotus.

What we know

• The ancient Greek historian Thucydides inquired into the causes of tsunamis in his book History of the Peloponnesian War around 426 BC. [4, 5]
• Thucydides concluded that tsunamis were related to and caused by submarine earthquakes, seeing no other possible cause. [3, 4]
• Thucydides was historically the first known writer to correctly interpret the cause of a tsunami as a preceding geological event. [5]
• In contrast to Thucydides' rational explanation, other writers like Herodotus attributed earlier tsunamis to the divine wrath of Poseidon. [5]

Where to go next

• a case in pointWhat was the 426 BC Malian Gulf tsunami?
• how it workedHow do submarine earthquakes generate tsunamis?
• compared withHow did Herodotus explain the tsunami at Potidaea?
• the bigger pictureWhat else does the History of the Peloponnesian War cover?
• whenWhen did scientific understanding of tsunamis advance past antiquity?
• an unexpected connectionHow does an ancient historical text overlap with modern tsunami research?Thucydides applied an early rational, scientific inquiry to natural disasters in the 5th century BC, long before modern oceanography and seismology established the mechanics of submarine earthquakes.

Sources

• [1]History of the Peloponnesian War (Wikidata Q639493) · CC0 1.0
• [2]History of the Peloponnesian War · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Tsunami · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]List of tsunamis · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]426 BC Malian Gulf tsunami · CC BY-SA 4.0