The Greek historian Thucydides (ca. 460-ca. 401 BC) wrote on the Peloponnesian War. The greatest ancient historian, he is in a real sense the creator of modern historiography. Little is known about the life of Thucydides. Most modern scholars place his...

The historian Thucydides was a citizen of Athens and lived during the most fertile period of Greek culture. His only preserved writing is his history of the Peloponnesian War, fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies (431-404 B.C.)....

Thucydides(460–399 Bce) Thucydides wrote a history of the epic struggle between Athens and Sparta. His work has proved to be—as he hoped—a "possession for all time," though perhaps not in quite the way he intended....

c. 471-401 B.C. Greek historian known for his eyewitness account of the plague that struck Athens in 429 B.C. at the outset of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) "The bodies of dying men lay one upon another," Thucydides wrote,...

Thucydides (c. 460 BC – c. 395 BC) (Greek Θουκυδίδης, Thoukudídēs) was an ancient Greek historian, and the author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411...

Ranking with the Rosetta Stone and Dead Sea Scrolls, the recently discovered transcripts of the Hellenic Political Science Association Conferences represent a scholarly find that opens up new avenues of understanding into the ancient past. Hidden for over two thousand years, the existence...

[Introduction from Acorn: We recall from ancient times the long war between Athens and Sparta, and the Melian Dialogue that preceded the Athenian siege of the isle of Melos, which is about equidistant from Athens, Sparta, and Crete. In the summer of 416 BCE,...

Annapolis is a college town in love with history. Now history is coming to Annapolis in the form of a Middle East peace conference, offering students a close encounter with world events.Though it's unlikely the 4,400 students at the U.S. Naval Academy will get a...

After more than 100 years of existence, the New York Public Library is closing down. Movers have already begun the gargantuan task of emptying the main building, an ornate Beaux-Arts structure located on Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd streets. Within a few weeks, 86...

Jebb was a Scottish-born classicist, translator, and author of numerous works on ancient literature, and the founder of the Cambridge Philological Society, the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, and the British School of Archeology in Athens. In the essay excerpted below, originally published in 1880 in Hellenica: a Collection of Essays on Greek Poetry, Philosophy, History, and Religion, Jebb approaches the speeches as a vital part of the History for their "light on the inner workings of...

Focusing on the opening chapters or "archeology" of the History in the following excerpt from his 1942 monograph, Finley asserts that the material reveals Thucydides' "belief that history is both useful and scientific. "

In the following excerpt, Grundy suggests that Thucydides imbued the History with his own philosophical perspective—an "essentially practical" or cynical view-point—despite his claims to objectivity.

In Thucydides's writings about the Peloponnesian War and the Lacedaemonian kings, he is critical of the thought processes of many of his fellow Greeks. He writes that they indescriminately accept the history they are told, with no attempt to challenge the stories to see if they are accurate.

Explains how Thucydides' idea of history compares to the Greek notion of tragedy embodied in Sophocles' Oedipus plays.

Provides biographical detail on the life of the ancient historian, Thucydides.' Examines his belief that life is not really led by the gods and their will, as Homer, the writer of the Iliad and the Odyssey, said, but rather by mere humans. Describes how this is exemplified by the life of Abraham Lincoln who started out as a farmer but, in the end, became one of the United State's greatest presidents.