Description: The Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.E.) was the greatest "disturbance" in Greek history to that time. The bitter rivalry between the two chief city-states, Athens and Sparta, and their respective allies ended with the ruin of Athens' naval hegemony and what the Greek historian Thucydides (ca. 460-400 B.C.E.) called a "convulsion" affecting all humankind. With the detachment of a clinician and the dramatic skill of a poet, Thucydides recreates the often savage events of the war and brings to life its chief protagonists: Pericles, Nicias, Cleon, Alcibiades, and others. The first of the "scientific" historians, Thucydides makes use of documentary material and relies on eyewitness accounts; even where direct documentary evidence is lacking, his keen understanding of human nature helps him to uncover the truth of what actually happened. The loftiness of its ideals, its painstaking research, and its beauty of expression have made the History of the Peloponnesian War a work that is in the author's own words, "a possession for all time."
Brief description:
Thucydides (c. 460-c. 400 BC) was an Athenian general and historian. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens. In the first sentence of the book, he describes himself: "Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the war of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians as they warred against each other, beginning to write as soon as the war was on foot, with expectation it should prove a great one and most worthy the relation of all that had been before it."
Review Quotes:
"Thomas Hobbes's translation of Thucydides brings together the magisterial prose of one of the greatest writers of the English language and the depth of mind and experience of one of the greatest writers of history in any language. Those interested in Hobbes's philosophy will find instruction not only in his epistle to his readers but in the fact itself that the modern author invested the enormous labor needed to present the antique monument to his contemporaries. Those interested in antiquity will be stirred by the prescience or the timelessness of the ancient author's window on the human condition. For every reason, the current availability of this great work is a boon."
--Joseph Cropsey, University of Chicago