Thucydides (c. 460–c. 400 BCE) was an Athenian historian and general who lived through the Peloponnesian War. Exiled after failing to save Amphipolis, he turned his experience into an analytical history of the conflict between Athens and Sparta. His work is famous for its severity, political realism, invented or reconstructed speeches and search for durable causes beneath public rhetoric.
The History of the Peloponnesian War is Thucydides’ unfinished account of the war between Athens and Sparta from 431 to 411 BCE. Unlike Herodotus’ broad storytelling, Thucydides narrows his gaze to power, fear, interest, decision and the deterioration of civic language under pressure.
