Thucydides and the History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides was an Athenian historian born around 460 BCE. The son of Olorus, he possessed Thracian mining wealth and served as a general in 424 BCE during the Peloponnesian War. His failure to defend Amphipolis resulted in a twenty-year exile, which allowed him to gather information from both sides of the conflict with greater impartiality. He likely returned to Athens after 404 BCE and died sometime after 400, leaving his great work unfinished.

His sole surviving work is the History of the Peloponnesian War, an unfinished account in eight books covering the conflict from its origins to 411 BCE. Thucydides established a new standard of accuracy and critical evidence, rejecting myth and divine causation in favour of human action and political power. His rigorous method and his attention to political rhetoric, power, and the psychology of war made his history a standard model for later historians.