Thucydides Popular Books

Thucydides Biography & Facts

Thucydides (, thew-SID-ih-deez; Ancient Greek: Θουκυδίδης, romanized: Thoukudídēs [tʰuːkydǐdɛːs]; c. 460 – c. 400 BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.He also has been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as ultimately mediated by, and constructed upon, fear and self-interest. His text is still studied at universities and military colleges worldwide. The Melian dialogue is regarded as a seminal text of international relations theory, while his version of Pericles' Funeral Oration is widely studied by political theorists, historians, and students of the classics. More generally, Thucydides developed an understanding of human nature to explain behavior in such crises as plagues, massacres, and wars. Life In spite of his stature as a historian, modern historians know relatively little about Thucydides's life. The most reliable information comes from his own History of the Peloponnesian War, in which he mentions his nationality, paternity, and birthplace. Thucydides says that he fought in the war, contracted the plague, and was exiled by the democracy. He may have also been involved in quelling the Samian Revolt. Evidence from the classical period Thucydides identifies himself as an Athenian, telling us that his father's name was Olorus and that he was from the Athenian deme of Halimous. A somewhat doubtful anecdote of his early life still exists. While still a youth of 10–12 years, he and his father were supposed to have gone to the agora of Athens where the young Thucydides heard a lecture by the historian Herodotus. According to some accounts, the young Thucydides wept with joy after hearing the lecture, deciding that writing history would be his life's calling. The same account also claims that after the lecture, Herodotus spoke with the youth and his father, stating: Oloros your son yearns for knowledge. In all essence, the episode is most likely from a later Greek or Roman account of his life. He survived the Plague of Athens, which killed Pericles and many other Athenians. There is a first observation of acquired immunity. He also records that he owned gold mines at Scapte Hyle (literally "Dug Woodland"), a coastal area in Thrace, opposite the island of Thasos. Because of his influence in the Thracian region, Thucydides wrote, he was sent as a strategos (general) to Thasos in 424 BC. During the winter of 424–423 BC, the Spartan general Brasidas attacked Amphipolis, a half-day's sail west from Thasos on the Thracian coast, sparking the Battle of Amphipolis. Eucles, the Athenian commander at Amphipolis, sent to Thucydides for help. Brasidas, aware of the presence of Thucydides on Thasos and his influence with the people of Amphipolis, and afraid of help arriving by sea, acted quickly to offer moderate terms to the Amphipolitans for their surrender, which they accepted. Thus, when Thucydides arrived, Amphipolis was already under Spartan control.Amphipolis was of considerable strategic importance, and news of its fall caused great consternation in Athens. It was blamed on Thucydides, although he claimed that it was not his fault and that he had simply been unable to reach it in time. Because of his failure to save Amphipolis, he was exiled: I lived through the whole of it, being of an age to comprehend events, and giving my attention to them in order to know the exact truth about them. It was also my fate to be an exile from my country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis; and being present with both parties, and more especially with the Peloponnesians by reason of my exile, I had leisure to observe affairs somewhat particularly. Using his status as an exile from Athens to travel freely among the Peloponnesian allies, he was able to view the war from the perspective of both sides. Thucydides claimed that he began writing his history as soon as the war broke out, because he thought it would be one of the greatest wars waged among the Greeks in terms of scale:Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.This is all that Thucydides wrote about his own life, but a few other facts are available from reliable contemporary sources. Herodotus wrote that the name Olorus, Thucydides's father's name, was connected with Thrace and Thracian royalty. Thucydides was probably connected through family to the Athenian statesman and general Miltiades and his son Cimon, leaders of the old aristocracy supplanted by the Radical Democrats. Cimon's maternal grandfather's name also was Olorus, making the connection quite likely. Another Thucydides lived before the historian and was also linked with Thrace, making a family connection between them very likely as well. Combining all the fragmentary evidence available, it seems that his family had owned a large estate in Thrace, one that even contained gold mines, and which allowed the family considerable and lasting affluence. The security and continued prosperity of the wealthy estate must have necessitated formal ties with local kings or chieftains, which explains the adoption of the distinctly Thracian royal name Óloros into the family. Once exiled, Thucydides took permanent residence in the estate and, given his ample income from the gold mines, he was able to dedicate himself to full-time history writing and research, including many fact-finding trips. In essence, he was a well-connected gentleman of considerable resources who, after involuntarily retiring from the political and military spheres, decided to fund his own historical investigations. Later sources The remaining evidence for Thucydides' life comes from later and rather less reliable ancient sources; Marcellinus wrote Thucydides' biography about a thousand years after his death. According to Pausanias, someone named Oenobius had a law passed allowing Thucydides to return to Athens, presumably shortly after the city's surrender and the end of the war in 404 BC. Pausanias goes on to say that Thucydides was murdered on his way back to Athens, placing his tomb near the Melite gate. Many doubt this account, seeing evidence to suggest he lived as late as 397 BC, or perhaps slightly later. Plutarch preserves a tradition that he was murdered in Skaptē Hulē and that his remains were returned to Athens, where a monument to him was erected in Cimon's f.... Discover the Thucydides popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Thucydides books.

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  • Thucydides synopsis, comments

    Thucydides

    Thucydides & Jeremy Mynott

    Thucydides' classic work is a foundational text in the history of Western political thought. His narrative of the great war between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BC is now...

  • Peloponnesian War synopsis, comments

    Peloponnesian War

    Thucydides, Xenophon & J.B. Bury

    The Peloponnesian War took place in the 5th Century BC. This war was fought between Athens and Sparta – at the time the two most powerful citystates in ancient Greece. The Peloponn...

  • The Histories synopsis, comments

    The Histories

    Herodotus & Aubrey De Selincourt

    'The first example of nonfiction, the text that underlies the entire discipline of history ... it is above all a treasure trove' Tom HollandOne of the masterpieces of classical lit...

  • The Complete Works of Xenophon synopsis, comments

    The Complete Works of Xenophon

    Xenophon

    This meticulously edited Xenophon collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Historical and Biographical Works Anabasis Cyropaedia ...

  • The Thucydides Anthology synopsis, comments

    The Thucydides Anthology

    Thucydides

    This Bybliotech version of Thucydides "History of the Peloponnesian War" with unique illustrations has been compiled and optimised for ereaders. It includes an active table of cont...

  • Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War synopsis, comments

    Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War

    George Cawkwell

    Understanding the history of Athens in the all important years of the second half of the fifth century B.C. is largely dependent on the work of the historian Thucydides. Previous s...

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    Annals

    Tacitus & Cynthia Damon

    A compelling new translation of Tacitus' Annals, one of the greatest accounts of ancient Rome, by Cynthia Damon.Tacitus' Annals recounts the major historical events from the years ...

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    The Greek Histories

    Mary Lefkowitz & James Romm

    From the leading scholars behind The Greek Plays, a collection of the best translations of the foremost Greek historians, presenting a sweeping history of ancient Greece as recorde...

  • Delphi Complete Works of Thucydides synopsis, comments

    Delphi Complete Works of Thucydides

    Thucydides

    The Ancient Classics series provides eReaders with the wisdom of the Classical world, with both English translations and the original Latin and Greek texts.  This comprehensiv...

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    BDD in Action

    John Smart

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  • On Writing History from Herodotus to Herodian synopsis, comments

    On Writing History from Herodotus to Herodian

    John Marincola

    What is history and how should it be written? This important new anthology, translated and edited by Professor John Marincola, contains all the seminal texts that relate to the wri...

  • THE HISTORIES synopsis, comments

    THE HISTORIES

    Herodotus

    This eBook edition of Herodotus' Histories has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. The Histories of Herodotus is one of...

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    Thucydides

    Walter Robert Connor

    This fullscale sequential reading of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War will be invaluable to the specialist and also to those in search of an introduction and companion ...

  • Cyropaedia synopsis, comments

    Cyropaedia

    Xenophon

    Cyropaedia is a biography of Cyrus the Great, the founder of Achaemenid Empire and the first Persian Empire. It is "a political romance, describing the education of the ideal r...

  • The Portable Greek Historians synopsis, comments

    The Portable Greek Historians

    M. I. Finley

    Essential passages from the works of four "fathers of history"Herodotus's History, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Xenophon's Anabasis, and Polybius's Histories.

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    Thucydides

    P.J. Rhodes

    Thucydides was labelled the 'greatest historian that ever lived' by Macauley and no study of Classical Greece is complete without encountering his history of the Peloponnes...

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    Escaping the Thucydides Trap in political commentary

    Neville Morley

    Thucydides is often confidently invoked as a source of timeless political principles – in reality, his narrative explores the complex, unpredictable nature of e...

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    Thucydides

    Perez Zagorin

    This book is a concise, readable introduction to the Greek author Thucydides, who is widely regarded as one of the foremost historians of all time. Why does Thucydides continue to ...

  • Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity synopsis, comments

    Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity

    Gregory Crane

    Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analy...

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    The Landmark Thucydides

    Robert B. Strassler

    Thucydides called his account of two decades of war between Athens and Sparta “a possession for all time,” and indeed it is the first and still the most famous work in the Western ...

  • The Complete History of the Peloponnesian War and Its Aftermath synopsis, comments

    The Complete History of the Peloponnesian War and Its Aftermath

    Thucydides & Xenophon

    The History of the Peloponnesian War is a historical account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was fought between the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta, and the Delian...

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    Thucydides on Strategy

    Athanassios Platias & Constantinos Koliopoulos

    Masterfully crafted and surprisingly modern, "History of the Peloponnesian War" has long been celebrated as an insightful, eloquent, and exhaustively detailed work of class...

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    Stories from Thucydides

    Herbert Lord Havell

    This is a biographical story. The Aeginetans had obtained the first prize for valour displayed in the battle of Salamis, and for many years they had pressed the Athenians hard in t...

  • The Collected Works of Thucydides synopsis, comments

    The Collected Works of Thucydides

    Thucydides

    This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works or all the significant works the Œuvre of this famous and brilliant writer in one ebook easytoread and easytonavigate: The ...

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    Hellenica

    Xenophon

    Hellenica is one of the most important primary sources for the History of the Peloponnesian War and the war's aftermath. Many consider this a very personal work, written by Xen...

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    A History of Histories

    John Burrow

    Treating the practice of history not as an isolated pursuit but as an aspect of human society and an essential part of the culture of the West, John Burrow magnificently brings to ...

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    The Life and Legacy of Socrates

    Xenophon

    As a student of Socrates, Xenophon, like Plato, is an authority on Socrates. Except for the dialogues of Plato, Xenophon's writings are the only surviving representatives of th...

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    Destined For War

    Graham Allison

    NATIONAL BESTSELLER | NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR. From an eminent international security scholar, an urgent examination of the conditions that could produce a catastro...

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    The Histories

    Herodotus

    The Histories of Herodotus is one of the first accounts of the rise of the Persian Empire, as well as the events and causes of the GrecoPersian Wars between the Achaemenid Empire a...

  • Thucydides and the Shaping of History synopsis, comments

    Thucydides and the Shaping of History

    Emily Greenwood

    Thucydides' work was one of the most exciting creations in the cultural history of Greece in the fifth century BC one of only two monumental prose works to have survived and ...

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    Thucydides

    G.F. Abbott

    First published in 1925, this thoughtful volume constitutes an excellent English introduction to one of the great ancient historians. Originating from its author’s rereading of Thu...

  • The Complete Historical Works of Xenophon synopsis, comments

    The Complete Historical Works of Xenophon

    Xenophon

    eartnow presents to you this meticulously edited collection of Xenophon's historical works, formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devic...

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    On the History of Political Philosophy

    W Julian Korab-Karpowicz

    Intended for use in courses on political philosophy or the history of political philosophy, On the History of Political Philosophy provides a critical account of Western political ...

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    The End of Everything

    Victor Davis Hanson

    A New York Times–bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of oblite...

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    A War Like No Other

    Victor Davis Hanson

    One of our most provocative military historians, Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the...

  • The Humanity of Thucydides synopsis, comments

    The Humanity of Thucydides

    Clifford Orwin

    Thucydides has long been celebrated for the unflinching realism of his presentation of political life. And yet, as some scholars have asserted, his work also displays a profound hu...

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    Making History

    Richard Cohen

    A “supremely entertaining” (The New Yorker) exploration of who gets to record the world’s historyfrom Julius Caesar to William Shakespeare to Ken Burnsand how their biases influenc...

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    Chip War

    Chris Miller

    The Financial Times Business Book of the Year, this epic account of the decadeslong battle to control one of the world’s most critical resourcesmicrochip technologywith the United ...

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    Red Roulette

    Desmond Shum

    “THE BOOK CHINA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ.” CNN​SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by THE ECONOMIST and FINANCIAL TIMESThis “powerful and disturbing” (Bill Browder, author of Red N...

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    The Real Socrates

    Plato, Xenophon & Samuel Griswold Goodrich

    Socrates was an enigmatic figure; he made no writings, and is known chiefly through the accounts of his students Plato and Xenophon. After Socrates was accused of impiety against t...