History of the Peloponnesian War

Third, there is the short section, at the beginning of the story of the Sicilian expedition, summarizing the colonization of Sicily by Greeks and non-Greeks (VI, 2–5).

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.

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.

Politics, like philosophy, was a Greek ‘invention’.

The conclusion is that the speeches are not what we should call historical reporting in the same sense as the narrative.

because of the man who wrote its history, Thucydides the Athenian.

fought between Athens and Sparta from 431 to 404, with a scarcely honoured seven-year ‘peace’ in the middle.

Knowledge must lead to understanding. In the field of history, even when largely restricted to contemporary history, that meant trying to grasp general ideas about human behaviour, in war and politics, in revolution and government.

It was necessary only to bridge the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars; and Thucydides did that by writing a brief digression (I, 89–118), in which he singled out some important events that occurred between 479 B.C. and the beginning of the Corcyra affair in 435.