The History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides fought as an Athenian general in the long war between Athens and Sparta, then set out to record it with a rigor no earlier writer had attempted. His account of the Peloponnesian War, waged across the Greek world from 431 BC, refuses myth and divine explanation, weighing causes, speeches, and human motives instead. The famous set pieces include Pericles’ funeral oration, the plague of Athens, the cold Melian dialogue on power and justice, and the disastrous Sicilian expedition. Written to be, in his words, a possession for all time, it breaks off unfinished in mid-sentence. It remains a founding work of history and a text still read by students of politics and war. Offered here as a free PDF and EPUB.