Thucydides' Histories is a prose account of the war between Athens and its allies and the Peloponnesians led by Sparta, which began in 431 BCE. Thucydides, an Athenian general exiled after the loss of Amphipolis, says he began writing when the war broke out; the history breaks off unfinished in 411 BCE, seven years before the war's end. It is arranged by the years of the war, each divided into summer and winter, and the division into eight books was made after him.
Book I sets out his method and the causes of the war, from Epidamnus and Corcyra to the congress at Sparta and the fifty years of Athenian growth. Books II to V run from the attack on Plataea, the Funeral Oration and the plague through Mytilene, Corcyra, Pylos and Amphipolis to the Peace of Nicias and the Melian Dialogue. Books VI and VII tell the Sicilian expedition and its destruction, and Book VIII the revolt of the Ionian allies, Persian money and the rule of the Four Hundred. The speeches are his own composition: he says he wrote what each occasion required, keeping as close as he could to the general sense of what was said.
The work survives complete in medieval manuscripts, with fragments on papyrus from antiquity.
Contents
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Αʹ Book I
Thucydides introduces his war and his method, arguing from the weakness of early Greece that this conflict would prove greater than any before it. The causes follow: the quarrels over Epidamnus, Corcyra and Potidaea; the congress at Sparta, with speeches by the Corinthians, Athenian envoys, Archidamus and Sthenelaidas; the growth of Athenian power in the fifty years after the Persian Wars; the ends of Pausanias and Themistocles; and Pericles' counsel to refuse Sparta's demands.
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Βʹ Book II
The war opens in 431 BCE with the Theban night attack on Plataea and the Spartan invasion of Attica under Archidamus. Here are Pericles' Funeral Oration for the first dead, the plague at Athens, Pericles' defence of his policy before an angry assembly and Thucydides' judgement of him after his death, then the siege of Plataea, Phormio's naval victories in the Corinthian Gulf and Sitalces' Thracian campaign, to the end of the war's third year.
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Γʹ Book III
Covering the fourth to the sixth years of the war, the narrative turns on the revolt of Mytilene and the Athenian debate between Cleon and Diodotus over how to punish its people. Plataea surrenders, and its men plead against the Thebans before Spartan judges who put them to death; civil war at Corcyra draws Thucydides' analysis of faction, and Demosthenes campaigns in Aetolia and Amphilochia. The book ends with an eruption of Etna.
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Δʹ Book IV
Pylos and Sphacteria, where Demosthenes and Cleon force Spartan hoplites to surrender, dominate the seventh year of the war. Hermocrates urges the Sicilian cities to make peace at Gela; Athens attacks Megara and Nisaea and is beaten by the Boeotians at Delium; Brasidas marches north, wins over Acanthus and takes Amphipolis before Thucydides can save it. After a year's truce, the book closes with Brasidas's failed night attempt on Potidaea.
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Εʹ Book V
From the deaths of Cleon and Brasidas at Amphipolis the history moves to the Peace of Nicias and the uneasy years after it, with Thucydides' second preface on the length of the war and his own exile. Alcibiades draws Argos, Mantinea and Elis into alliance against Sparta, and the Spartans win the battle of Mantinea. The book ends with the Melian Dialogue and the Athenians killing the men of Melos and enslaving its women and children.
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Ϛʹ Book VI
Athens votes to conquer Sicily, and the book begins with an account of the island's peoples and the debate in which Nicias opposes the expedition and Alcibiades urges it. The mutilation of the Herms leads to a digression on Harmodius, Aristogeiton and the tyranny of Hippias; the fleet sails, Alcibiades is recalled, flees and advises Sparta, and the siege of Syracuse begins, costing Lamachus his life. It closes with Athenian ships raiding the coast of Laconia and the Argives invading Phlius.
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Ζʹ Book VII
Gylippus arrives from Sparta to save Syracuse, and the Athenian position collapses. Nicias writes to Athens for help, Demosthenes brings a second fleet, and a night assault on Epipolae ends in rout; an eclipse of the moon delays the withdrawal, and the Syracusans win the last battle in the Great Harbour. The retreat overland ends at the river Assinarus, with Nicias and Demosthenes put to death and the prisoners held in the quarries.
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Ηʹ Book VIII
News of the Sicilian disaster reaches Athens, and the war shifts to Ionia, where Chios and other allies revolt with Spartan support and Persian money. Alcibiades advises Tissaphernes to wear both sides down, Sparta and Persia make treaties, and at Athens the Four Hundred seize power while the fleet at Samos holds to democracy and recalls Alcibiades. The narrative breaks off in 411 BCE, with Tissaphernes sacrificing to Artemis at Ephesus.