History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides was a young man, probably in his late twenties, when the war began. It is a guess that he was born about 460 B.C., but a good guess.

Translator’s Note

But they could not have said everything attributed to them, and they said important things the historian omitted. Our trouble is that it is normally impossible to distinguish, though my credulity stops short of believing that Pericles ever said in the Athenian Assembly that ‘your empire is now like a tyranny’ (II, 63, echoed by Cleon in III, 37 wit

Herodotus, we must remember, tried to re-create, for the most part, the atmosphere and the events of the past, some of it so remote that he would not have been able to interview anyone who had been alive at the time.

Thucydides sorted out the essential from the casual, the primary causes from the more immediate grievances and the pretexts. The latter he wrote up in great detail, devoting the whole of the first book to the background.

INTRODUCTION

Book One

Yet there is not even a hint of the decree in the book.9 In a different vein, there is the way he deals with civil strife.

Introduction