History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume I: Books 1-2
Thucydides of Athens, one of the greatest of historians, was born
about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the
inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the
Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague which
he described so graphically. Later, as general in 423 he failed to
save Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced. He tells about
this, not in volumes of self-justification, but in one sentence of
his history of the war- that it befell him to be an exile for
twenty years. He then lived probably on his property in Thrace, but
was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war, and
returned to Athens after her defeat in 404. He had been composing
his famous history, with its hopes and horrors, triumphs and
disasters, in full detail from first-hand knowledge of his own and
others. The war was really three conflicts with one uncertain peace
after the first; and Thucydides had not unified them into one
account when death came sometime before 396. His history of the
first conflict, 431- 421, was nearly complete; Thucydides was still
at work on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict
(415- 413) likewise complete in his awful and brilliant record,
though not fitted into the whole. His story of the final conflict
of 413- 404 breaks off (in the middle of a sentence) when dealing
with the year 411. So his work was left unfinished and as a whole
unrevised. Yet in brilliance of description and depth of insight
this history has no superior. The Loeb Classical Library edition of
Thucydides is in four volumes.
