Thucydides, (born 460 BC or earlier?—died after 404 BC?

), greatest of ancient Greek historians and

author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the struggle between Athens and
Sparta in the 5th century BC. His work was the first recorded political and moral analysis of a nation’s
war policies.

Life

All that is certainly known (perhaps all that ancient scholars knew) of Thucydides’ life is what he reveals
about himself in the course of his narrative. He was an Athenian, old enough when the war began to
estimate its importance and judge that it was likely to be a long one and to write an account of it,
observing and making notes from its beginning. He was probably born, therefore, not later than 460—
perhaps a few years earlier since his detailed narrative begins, just before 431, with the events which
provoked the war. He was certainly older than 30 when he was elected stratēgos, a military magistrate
of great importance, in 424. Hence, he belongs to the generation younger than that of the Greek
historian Herodotus.

His father’s name was Olorus, which is not known as an Athenian name; Olorus was probably of
Thracian descent on his mother’s side. Thucydides was related in some way to the great Athenian
statesman and general Miltiades, who had married the daughter of a Thracian prince of this name. He
himself had property in Thrace, including mining rights in the gold mines opposite the island of Thasos,
and was, he tells us, a man of influence there.

He was in Athens when the great pestilence of 430–429 raged; he caught the disease himself and saw
others suffer. Later, in 424, he was elected one of the 10 stratēgoi of the year and, because of his
connections, was given command of the fleet in the Thraceward region, based at Thasos. He failed to
prevent the capture of the important city of Amphipolis by the Spartan general Brasidas, who launched
a sudden attack in the middle of winter. Because of this blunder, Thucydides was recalled, tried, and
sentenced to exile. This, he says later, gave him greater opportunity for undistracted study for his
History and for travel and wider contacts, especially on the Peloponnesian side—Sparta and its allies.

He lived through the war, and his exile of 20 years ended only with the fall of Athens and the peace of
404. The time and manner of his death are uncertain, but that he died shortly after 404 is probable, and
that he died by violence in the troubled times following the peace may well be true, for the History stops
abruptly, long before its appointed end. His tomb and a monument to his memory were still to be seen
in Athens in the 2nd century AD.

Scope and plan of the History

The History, which is divided into eight books, probably not by Thucydides’ design, stops in the middle of
the events of the autumn of 411 BC, more than six and a half years before the end of the war. This much
at least is known: that three historians, Cratippus (a younger contemporary), Xenophon (who lived a
generation later), and Theopompus (who lived in the last third of the 4th century), all began their
histories of Greece where Thucydides left off. Xenophon, one might say, began the next paragraph
nearly as abruptly as Thucydides ended his. So it is certain that Thucydides’ work was well known soon
after publication and that no more was ever published other than the eight books that have survived; it
may reasonably be inferred from the silence of the available sources that no separate section of the
work was published in his lifetime. It may also be inferred that parts of the History, and the last book in
particular, are defective, in the sense that he would have written at greater length had he known more
and that he was trying still to learn more—e.g., of internal Athenian politics in the years of “uneasy
truce.” His existing narrative is in parts barely understandable without some imaginative guesswork.

It may be assumed, then, that there are three fairly definable stages in his work: first, the “notes” he
made of events as they occurred; secondly, the arrangement and rewriting of these notes into a
consecutive narrative, as a “chronicle,” but by no means in the final form that Thucydides intended;
thirdly, the final, elaborated narrative—of the preliminaries of the war (Book i), of the “Ten Years’ War,”
and of the Athenian expedition to conquer Sicily. Thucydides supplemented his note stage throughout
the project; even the most elaborated parts of the History may have been added right up to the time of
his death—certainly many additions were made after the war was over.

All this is significant because Thucydides was writing what few others have attempted—a strictly
contemporary history of events that he lived through and that succeeded each other almost throughout
his adult life. He endeavoured to do more than merely record events, in some of which he took an active
part and in all of which he was a direct or indirect spectator; he attempted to write the final history for
later generations, and, as far as a man can and as no other man has, he succeeded.

It is obvious that he did not rush his work; the last of the complete narrative (stage three, above) took
him to the autumn of 413, eight and a half years before the end of the war, the last of stage two, to six
and a half years before. During these last years he was observing, inquiring, writing his notes, adding to
or modifying what he had already written; at no time before the end, during all the 27 years of the war,
did he know what that end would be nor, therefore, what would be the length and the final shape of his
own History. It is evident that he did not long survive the war since he did not leave any connected
account, even at stage two, of the last six years. But in what he lived to complete, he wrote a definitive
history.

Character studies of Thucydides

Besides the political causes of the war, Thucydides was interested in and emphasized the conflict
between two types of character: the ever-active, innovating, revolutionary, disturbing Athenians and the
slower-moving, more cautious Peloponnesians, especially the Spartans, “not excited by success nor
despairing in misfortune,” but quietly self-confident. Thucydides was not really concerned with
individuals but rather with the actions, sufferings, and the characters of states (“the Athenians,” “the
Syracusans,” etc.); but he did understand the significance of personalities. Besides depicting by their
words and deeds the characters of some who influenced events—such as Cleon, the harsh demagogue
of Athens; Hermocrates, the would-be moderate leader in Syracuse; the brave Nicostratus; and the
incompetent Alcidas—he goes out of his way to give a clear picture of the characters and influence of
four men: Themistocles (in a digression, the Athenian hero of the Second Persian War), Pericles,
Brasidas, and Alcibiades. All four of them were of the active, revolutionary type. Pericles of Athens was
indeed unique for Thucydides in that he combined caution and moderation in action and great stability
of character with a daring imagination and intellect; he was a leader of the new age. During the war
each of them—Pericles and Alcibiades in Athens, Brasidas in Sparta—was in conflict with a conservative,
quietist opposition within his own country.

The conflict between the revolutionary and the conservative also extended between the generally
daring Athenian state and the generally cautious Peloponnesians. It is a great loss that Thucydides did
not live to write the story of the last years of the war, when Lysander, the other great revolutionary
Spartan, played a larger part than any other single man in the defeat of Athens. This defeat was, in one
aspect, the defeat of intellectual brilliance and daring by “stolidity” and stability of character (this last
the quality most lacking in Alcibiades, the most brilliant Athenian of the second half of the war); but it
was largely brought about by Brasidas and Lysander, the two Spartans who rivaled the Athenians in
daring and intellect.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thucydides-Greek-historian