History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides's c. 411 BCE founding work of critical historiography and political realism

Tradition: Classical Greek historiography

Thucydides's c. 411 BCE founding work of critical historiography and political realism — a "possession for all time"

The History of the Peloponnesian War is Thucydides's late-fifth-century-BCE history of the war between Athens and Sparta (431-404 BCE). Thucydides — an Athenian general exiled in 424 for a military failure — sets out his methodological principles: careful sifting of testimony, reasoned reconstruction of speeches by what was likely said, refusal of mythical or theological causation. The work's great set pieces — the Funeral Oration of Pericles, the Plague of Athens, the Mytilenian Debate, the Melian Dialogue, the Sicilian Expedition — established Western historiography. Foundational for political realism (Hobbes, Morgenthau, Waltz) and Western historical writing.