The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.
5th-century BC Athenian historian and general
Thucydides (or Thoukydides)(c. 472 BC – c. 400 BC) was an ancient Greek historian, author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens. This work is widely regarded a classic and represents the first work of its kind.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Native Name:
Θουκυδίδης
From Wikidata (CC0)
the most splendid of sepulchres – not the sepulchre in which their bodies are laid, but where their glory remains eternal in men’s minds, always there on the right occasion to stir others to speech or to action. For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial: it is not only the inscriptions on their graves in their own country that mark them out; no, in foreign lands also, not in any visible form but in people’s hearts, their memory abides and grows.
It was indeed a strange alteration in the ordinary run of things for Athenians to be fighting a battle on land – and Spartan land too – against Spartans attacking from the sea, and for Spartans to be trying to make a naval landing on their own shores, now hostile to them, against Athenian opposition. For at this time Sparta chiefly prided herself on being a land power with an unrivalled army and Athens on being a sea power with the greatest navy in existence.
There are also clear heroes and villains in Thucydides’ history. To a modern audience steeped in the behavioral and social sciences, Thucydides can appear to miss nuances in human temperament, concentrating instead on “objective” and absolute criteria such as timidity and heroism or recklessness versus self-control. In his eyes, human behavior is not predicated on or explained by one’s specific environment or upbringing, but instead directed by the play of chance, fate, and hope upon innate character — conditions universal to all and particular to no man.