One, as early as Thucydides, reported in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that the Delphic oracle warned Hesiod that he would die in Nemea, and so he fled to Locris, where he was killed at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried there.

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

All three chroniclers agree that Themistocles's next move was to contact the Persian king ; in Thucydides, this is by letter, while Plutarch and Diodorus have a face-to-face meeting with the king.

Authors who mention the oracle include Aeschylus, Aristotle, Clement of Alexandria, Diodorus, Diogenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Julian, Justin, Livy, Lucan, Ovid, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides, and Xenophon.

Further information is contained in the excerpts from Ctesias by Photius ; Plutarch ’ s lives of Artaxerxes II and Lysander ; also Thucydides ' History of Peloponnesian War.

The only histories of Sparta are from the writings of Xenophon, Thucydides, Herodotus and Plutarch, none of whom were Spartans.

In addition to several school editions of portions of Cicero, Thucydides, Xenophon and Plutarch, he published an expurgated text of Aristophanes with a useful onomasticon ( re-issued separately, 1902 ) and larger editions of Cicero's De officiis ( revised ed., 1898 ) and of the Octavius of Minucius Felix ( 1853 ).

According to Plutarch and Thucydides ( 1. 126 ), they were persuaded by the archons to leave the temple and stand trial after being assured that their lives would be spared.

Thucydides did not mention it, however Herodotus does, as does Plutarch, who thought it had either been signed after the Battle of the Eurymedon in 466 BC, or that it had never been signed at all.

Diodorus, probably following Timaeus, represents him as inducing the Syracusans to pass sentence of death on the captive Athenian generals, but there is also the statement of Philistus ( Plutarch, Nicias, 28 ), a Syracusan who himself took part in the defence, and Thucydides ( vii.

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.

He compares this to the work of the historian Thucydides, who found it difficult recording speeches verbatim but instead had the speakers say what he felt was appropriate for them to say on the occasion while adhering as much as possible to the general sense.

Pausanias goes on to say that Thucydides was murdered on his way back to Athens.

Lucian refers to Thucydides as having given Greek historians their law, requiring them to say what had been done ().

Thucydides reports that when a Spartan man went to war, his wife ( or another woman of some significance ) would customarily present him with his shield and say: " With this, or upon this " ( Ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς, Èi tàn èi èpì tàs ), meaning that true Spartans could only return to Sparta either victorious ( with their shield in hand ) or dead ( carried upon it ).

According to Thucydides, who wrote within living memory of the events, the ship eventually landed safely at Ephesus, where Themistocles disembarked.

Themistocles died at Magnesia in 459 BC, at the age of 65, according to Thucydides, from natural causes.

Thucydides evidently held Themistocles in some esteem, and is uncharacteristically fulsome in his praise for him ( see above ).

He alludes to other notable male figures, such as Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles and Thucydides, and casts doubt on whether these men produced sons as capable of virtue as themselves.

* Stesimbrotos of Thasos, opponent of Pericles and reputed author of a political pamphlet on Themistocles, Thucydides, and Pericles.

Just as the Athenians were preparing to sail home, on August 28, there was a lunar eclipse, and Nicias, described by Thucydides as a particularly superstitious man, asked the priests what he should do.

Thucydides the son of Milesias ( not the historian ), an aristocrat, stood in opposition to these policies, for which he was ostracised in 443 BC.

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.

Thucydides, who had been trained in rhetoric, became the model for subsequent prose-writers as an author who seeks to appear firmly in control of his material, whereas Herodotus with his frequent digressions appeared to minimize ( or possibly disguise ) his auctorial control.

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.

Herodotus's recitation at Olympia was a favourite theme among ancient writers and there is another interesting variation on the story to be found in the Suda, Photius and Tzetzes, in which a young Thucydides happened to be in the assembly with his father and burst into tears during the recital, whereupon Herodotus observed prophetically to the boy's father: " Thy son's soul yearns for knowledge.

Eventually, Thucydides and Herodotus became close enough for both to be interred in Thucydides ' tomb in Athens.

But, as it was mainly within living memory and Thucydides himself was alive throughout the conflict and a participant in many of the events, there was less room for myths and tall tales.

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.

Professor of classics at Auckland University, E. M. Blaiklock, wrote: " For accuracy of detail, and for evocation of atmosphere, Luke stands, in fact, with Thucydides.

These sanctions, known as the Megarian decree, were largely ignored by Thucydides, but some modern economic historians have noted that forbidding Megara to trade with the prosperous Athenian empire would have been disastrous for the Megarans, and have accordingly considered the decree to be a contributing factor in bringing about the war.

Thucydides was dispatched with a force which arrived too late to stop Brasidas capturing Amphipolis ; Thucydides was exiled for this, and, as a result, had the conversations with both sides of the war which inspired him to record its history.

For instance, the historian Thucydides, who is known for his critical spirit, considers it a true event but doubts that 1, 186 ships were sent to Troy.

Eucles, the Athenian commander at Amphipolis, sent to Thucydides for help.

Brasidas, aware of Thucydides ' presence on Thasos and his influence with the people of Amphipolis, and afraid of help arriving by sea, acted quickly to offer moderate terms to the Amphipolitans for their surrender, which they accepted.

The remaining evidence for Thucydides ' life comes from rather less reliable later ancient sources.

Thucydides admired Pericles, approving of his power over the people and showing a marked distaste for the demagogues who followed him.

Thucydides ' presentation of events is generally even-handed ; for example, he does not minimize the negative effect of his own failure at Amphipolis.

It is no accident that even today Thucydides turns up as a guiding spirit in military academies, neocon think tanks and the writings of men like Henry Kissinger ; whereas Herodotus has been the choice of imaginative novelists ( Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient and the film based on it boosted the sale of the Histories to a wholly unforeseen degree ) and — as food for a starved soul — of an equally imaginative foreign correspondent from Iron Curtain Poland, Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that the best antidotes for Platonism were to be found in Thucydides:

" There is no more radical cure than Thucydides for the lamentably rose-coloured idealisation of the Greeks ... His writings must be carefully studied line by line, and his unuttered thoughts must be read as distinctly as what he actually says.