In contrast, Thucydides claims to confine himself to factual reports of contemporary political and military events, based on unambiguous, first-hand, eye-witness accounts, although, unlike Herodotus, he does not reveal his sources.

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

Later, Thucydides claims that since Homer never makes reference to a united Greek state, the pre-Hellenic nations must have been so disjointed that they could not organize properly to launch an effective campaign.

In fact, Thucydides claims that Troy could have been conquered in half the time had the Greek leaders allocated resources properly and not sent a large portion of the army on raids for supplies.

Thucydides claims that " this was the only day on which it was possible for the citizens who formed the parade to assemble armed without arousing suspicion ".

What then ensued was a period, referred to as the Pentecontaetia ( the name given by Thucydides ), in which Athens increasingly came to be recognized as an Athenian Empire, carrying out an aggressive war against Persia.

Thucydides identifies himself as an Athenian, telling us that his father's name was Olorus and that he was from the Athenian deme of Halimous.

Herodotus wrote that Thucydides ' father's name, Όloros, was connected with Thrace and Thracian royalty.

Thucydides does not mention his counterpart by name, but his famous introductory statement is thought to refer to him:

The second word was Lacedaemon ( Λακεδαίμων ); this is the name commonly used in the works of Homer and the Athenian historians Herodotus and Thucydides.

Olorus was also the name of the father of the 5th century BC Athenian historian Thucydides, the author of the History of the Peloponnesian War.

One may come across many references of the " Vrilissos " ( or alternatively " Vrilittos ") name in some of Thucydides, Herodotus and Strabo's writings.

Socrates says this, and then proceeds to name names, including Pericles and Thucydides.

Thucydides applies the name to all who preceded him, including Herodotus ( I, 21 ).

In the antic description by Thucydides Bolbe was the name of a lake in Mygdonia, located at no great distance from the Aegean Sea.

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

Another author, Thomas Geoghegan, whose speciality is labour rights, comes down on the side of Herodotus when it comes to drawing lessons relevant to Americans, who, he notes, tend to be rather isolationist in their habits ( if not in their political theorizing ): " We should also spend more funds to get our young people out of the library where they're reading Thucydides and get them to start living like Herodotus — going out and seeing the world.

In Thucydides ' account, the Melians express this view as follows, " If such hazards are taken by you to keep your empire and by your subjects to escape it, we who are still free would show ourselves great cowards and weaklings if we failed to face everything that comes rather than submit to slavery.

The first mention of Dion in history comes from Thucydides, who reports that it was the first city reached by the Spartan general Brasidas after crossing from Thessaly into Macedon on his way through the realm of his ally Perdiccas II during his expedition against the Athenian colonies of Thrace in 424 BC.

Many illustrious Athenians, including Cimon, Miltiades, Alcibiades and the historian Thucydides, traced their descent from Ajax.

The siege of Thasos marks the transformation of the Delian league from an alliance into, in the words of Thucydides, a hegemony.

Thucydides noted that people who had recovered from a previous bout of the disease could nurse the sick without contracting the illness a second time.

Thucydides noted that people who had recovered from a previous bout of the disease could nurse the sick without contracting the illness a second time.

Thucydides ' history of the Peloponesian War and Herodotus ' history of the Persian War ( both written in the 5th century BC ) survives in about eight early copies, the oldest ones dating from the 10th century AD.

In Western society, the use of oral material goes back to the early Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, both of whom made extensive use of oral reports from witnesses.

Thucydides (; Greek: Θουκυδίδης, Thoukydídēs ; c. 460 – c. 395 BC ) was a Greek historian and author from Alimos.

This is all that Thucydides wrote about his own life, but a few other facts are available from reliable contemporary sources.

Once exiled, Thucydides took permanent residence in the estate and, given his ample income from the gold mines, he was able to dedicate himself to full-time history writing and research, including many fact-finding trips.

Inferences about Thucydides ' character can only be drawn ( with due caution ) from his book.

Therefore Thucydides ' method served to rescue his mostly oral sources from oblivion.

But it was part of the method of both alike to eliminate conventional sentiment and morality. In the seventeenth century, the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan advocated absolute monarchy, admired Thucydides and in 1628 was the first to translate his writings into English directly from Greek.

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.

This adapts Thucydides ' text, together with short sections from Plato's dialogues.

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.

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

His Hellenica is a major primary source for events in Greece from 411 to 362 BC, and is considered to be the continuation of the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, going so far as to begin with the phrase " Following these events ...".

According to Thucydides, the Sicani people arrived from the Iberian Peninsula ( perhaps Catalonia ).

It was founded, according to historian Thucydides, by a colony from the Sicilian city of Megara, or Megara Hyblaea, under the conduct of a leader named Pammilus, about 100 years after the settlement of that city, with the addition of a fresh body of colonists from the parent city of Megara in Greece.

The date from Thucydides, which is probably the most likely, is incompatible with this earlier epoch.

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.

A quotation frequently attributed to Thucydides on the Internet, but which is in fact spurious ( ref needed ), is:

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.

Based upon striking descriptive similarities with recent outbreaks in Africa, as well as the fact that the Athenian plague itself apparently came from Africa ( as Thucydides recorded ), Ebola or a related viral hemorrhagic fever has been considered.

In fact, there is no trace of this, neither in Thucydides nor in Xenophon both of whom give an account of the history of that conflict ( in History of the Peloponnesian War and in Hellenica respectively ).