Thucydides largely eliminated divine causality in his account of the war between Athens and Sparta, establishing a rationalistic element which set a precedent for subsequent Western historical writings.

Similarly, in a Corinthian Oration, Dio Chrysostom ( or yet another pseudonymous author ) accused the historian of prejudice against Corinth, sourcing it in personal bitterness over financial disappointments-an account also given by Marcellinus in his Life of Thucydides.

* 401 Thucydides, Greek historian, leaves account of Golden Age of Pericles and Peloponnesian War at his death ( History of the Peloponnesian War )

Historians Arnold W. Gomme and Raphael Sealey believe, and Thucydides reports, that Alcibiades was offended that the Spartans had negotiated that treaty through Nicias and Laches, overlooking him on account of his youth.

Theramenes also appears in several ancient narrative histories: Thucydides ' account includes the beginnings of Theramenes ' career, and Xenophon, picking up where Thucydides left off, gives a detailed account of several episodes from Theramenes career ; Diodorus Siculus, probably drawing his account from Ephorus at most points, provides another account that varies widely from Xenophon's at several points.

Three great historians were Herodotus, regarded as the father of history, known for The Persian Wars ; Thucydides, who generally avoided myth and legend and applied greater standards of historical accuracy in his History of the Peloponnesian War ; and Xenophon, best known for his account of the Greek retreat from Persia, the Anabasis.

The metaphor with which the poem ends is most likely an allusion to a passage in Thucydides ' account of the Peloponnesian War.

Historians Arnold W. Gomme and Raphael Sealey believe, and Thucydides reports, that Alcibiades was offended that the Spartans had negotiated that treaty through Nicias and Laches, overlooking him on account of his youth.

The richest source for the period, and also the most contemporaneous, is Thucydides ' History of the Peloponnesian War, which is generally considered by modern historians to be a reliable primary account.

Thucydides only mentions this period in a digression on the growth of Athenian power in the run up to the Peloponnesian War, and the account is brief, probably selective and lacks any dates.

Possibly the oldest account of the military use of a fire ship is recorded by the Greek historian Thucydides on the occasion of the failed Athenian Sicilian Expedition ( 415 – 413 BC ).

At the end of the 8th century BC, however, Eretria and Chalcis fought a prolonged war ( known mainly from the account in Thucydides as the Lelantine War ) for control of the fertile Lelantine plain.

The Melian dialogue, contained in Thucydides ' History of the Peloponnesian War, is an account of the confrontation between the people of Melos, a small island in the southern Aegean Sea, and the Athenians in 416 – 415 BC.

Despite being an Athenian and a participant in the conflict, Thucydides is often regarded as having written a generally unbiased account of the conflict with respect to the sides involved in it.

*** Thucydides ' account of the evils of civil strife.

The motto of the Hellenic Navy is " Μέγα το της Θαλάσσης Κράτος " from Thucydides ' account of Pericles ' oration on the eve of the Peloponnesian War.

The Menexenus consists mainly of a lengthy funeral oration, satirizing the one given by Pericles in Thucydides ' account of the Peloponnesian War.

More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plague, massacres, as in that of the Melians, and civil war.

"( or give in ) Thucydides created the Dialogue in order to represent the actual events of the Athenians speaking to the Melians.

As for Thucydides ' point of view, it would seem that he may have had a bias in favour of the Melians because of his exile from Athens.

Lewis declares that, " Thucydides, with his strong feeling for the power and glory of Athens, may have seen this differently and regarded the Melians ' heroics as foolish and unrealistic ; and the fact that they had been offered a relatively painless alternative might affect his view of the massacre.

" Lewis also questioned how much of a reaction Thucydides wanted to get from his readers, based on the cruelty the Athenians showed the Melians.

Due to his literary style and the thoroughness of his research — which seemingly included studying Roman imperial archives and heavily relying on Thucydides — and his apparent rigor — for he tended not to support any character or subject, taking an impartial point of view — he was by far the most read and admired historian during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the early Modern Era.

Scholars traditionally view Thucydides as recognizing and teaching the lesson that democracies need leadership, but that leadership can be dangerous to democracy.

Leo Strauss ( in The City and Man ) locates the problem in the nature of Athenian democracy itself, about which, he argued, Thucydides had a deeply ambivalent view: on one hand, Thucydides ' own " wisdom was made possible " by the Periclean democracy, which had the effect of liberating individual daring, enterprise and questioning spirit, but this same liberation, by permitting the growth of limitless political ambition, led to imperialism and, eventually, civic strife.

Unlike Thucydides, however, these historians all continued to view history as a source of moral lessons.

Thucydides has no political aim in view: he was purely a historian.

Contemporaries Thucydides and Aristophanes represented him as a warmonger and a demagogue ; modern historians provide a more balanced view.

In a celebrated passage, Thucydides stresses that " most Spartan institutions have always been designed with a view to security against the Helots ".

This view is embodied in the words of W. R. Connor, who describes Thucydides as " an artist who responds to, selects and skillfully arranges his material, and develops its symbolic and emotional potential.

His work Thucydides Mythistoricus ( 1907 ) argued that Thucydides ' History of the Peloponnesian War was informed by Thucydides ' tragic view.

In literature and history though, he follows classical models, as is evident in the precision and lucidity of his narrative acquired from Thucydides, and in the reliability of his information, qualities of special merit in the historian.

Bury, however, have noted parallels between them: If, instead of a history, Thucydides had written an analytical treatise on politics, with particular reference to the Athenian empire, it is probable that.

Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek lifestyle-the polis or city-state-whereas the interplay of civilizations was more relevant to Asiatic Greeks ( such as Herodotus himself ), for whom life under foreign rule was a recent memory.

These authors, in such works as The Republic and Laws by Plato, and The Politics and Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, analyzed political systems philosophically, going beyond earlier Greek poetic and historical reflections which can be found in the works of epic poets like Homer and Hesiod, historians like Herodotus and Thucydides, and dramatists such as Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Euripides.

That Thucydides was clearly moved by the suffering inherent in war and concerned about the excesses to which human nature is prone in such circumstances is evident in his analysis of the atrocities committed during civil conflict on Corcyra, which includes the phrase " War is a violent teacher ".

Cochrane, the son of a physician, speculated that Thucydides generally ( and especially in describing the plague in Athens ) was influenced by the methods and thinking of early medical writers such as Hippocrates of Kos.

Subsequent Greek historians — such as Ctesias, Diodorus, Strabo, Polybius and Plutarch — held up Thucydides ' writings as a model of truthful history.

A virtual cult following developed among such German philosophers as Friedrich Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Nietzsche, who claimed that, " Thucydides, the portrayer of man, that culture of the most impartial knowledge of the world finds its last glorious flower.

After all, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes such natures as Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward in the face of reality -- consequently he takes refuge in the ideal: Thucydides is a master of himself -- consequently he is able to master life.

According to Thucydides, the trireme was introduced to Greece by the Corinthians in the late 8th century BC, and the Corinthian Ameinocles built four such ships for the Samians.

Pericles had such a profound influence on Athenian society that Thucydides, his contemporary historian, acclaimed him as " the first citizen of Athens ".

Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato and Aristotle.

Funeral orations, such as the famous speech put into the mouth of Pericles by Thucydides, also partook of the nature of panegyrics.

It should be noted that classical writers such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Theodore Roosevelt, are often cited as " founding fathers " of realism by contemporary self-described realists.

Theramenes protested strongly against the building of this fortification, arguing that its purpose was not to keep the democrats out, but to be handed over to the Spartans ; Thucydides testifies that his charges were not without substance, as the extremists were actually contemplating such an action.

The theory claims to rely upon an ancient tradition of thought which includes writers such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes.

The earliest proto-social scientific observations are to be found in the founding texts of Western philosophy ( Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Polybius and so on ), as well as in the non-European thought of figures such as Confucius.

Thucydides references Homer frequently as a source of information, but always adds a distancing clause, such as “ Homer shows this, if that is sufficient evidence ,” and “ assuming we should trust Homer's poetry in this case too .”

However, despite Thucydides ' lack of trust in information that was not experienced firsthand, such as Homer's, he does use the poet's epics to infer facts about the Trojan War.

" By distancing himself from the storytelling practices of Homer, Thucydides makes it clear that while he does consider mythology and epics to be evidence, these works cannot be given much credibility, and that it takes an impartial and empirically minded historian, such as himself, to accurately portray the events of the past.

Instead it seems likely that, as with the speeches, Thucydides is looser than previously thought in inferring the thoughts, feelings, and motives of principal characters in his History from their actions, as well as his own sense of what would be appropriate or likely in such a situation.

In later antiquity, Thucydides ' reputation suffered somewhat, with critics such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus rejecting the History as turgid and excessively austere.

The principal historical sources covering the two are Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War ( VI, 56-59 ) and The Constitution of the Athenians ( XVIII ) attributed to Aristotle or his school, but their story is documented by a great many other ancient writers, such as Herodotus and Plutarch.