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.

Due to the loss of the ability to read Greek, Thucydides and Herodotus were largely forgotten during the Middle Ages in Western Europe, although their influence continued in the Byzantine world.

According to Thucydides, it was largely the Carians who settled the Cyclades prior to the Minoans.

A stronger reason Webster gives for this dating is that he believes that the structure of Woman of Trachis is similar to that of Sophocles ' lost play Tereus, which Webster dates to this time period based largely on circumstantial evidence from Thucydides.

Unlike Herodotus, whose stories often teach that a foolish arrogance — hubris — invites the wrath of the gods, Thucydides does not acknowledge divine intervention in human affairs.

Contrary to Herodotus, who portrays the gods as active agents in human affairs, Thucydides attributes the existence of the divine entirely to the needs of political life.

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.

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.

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.

Thucydides documents the example of Melos, a small island, neutral in the war, though originally founded by Spartans.

As the preeminent Athenian historian, Thucydides, wrote in his influential History of the Peloponnesian War, " The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.

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 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.

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.

Thucydides informs us that he fought in the war, contracted the plague and was exiled by the democracy.

According to Pausanias, someone named Oenobius was able to get a law passed allowing Thucydides to return to Athens, presumably sometime shortly after the city's surrender and the end of the war in 404 BC.

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 ".

To be an admirer of Thucydides ' History, with its deep cynicism about political, rhetorical and ideological hypocrisy, with its all too recognizable protagonists — a liberal yet imperialistic democracy and an authoritarian oligarchy, engaged in a war of attrition fought by proxy at the remote fringes of empire — was to advertise yourself as a hardheaded connoisseur of global Realpolitik.

However, his great rival Thucydides promptly discarded Herodotus's all-embracing approach to history, offering instead a more precise, sharply focused monograph, dealing not with vast empires over the centuries but with 27 years of war between Athens and Sparta.

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 ).

Thucydides speaks of Selinunte just before the Athenian expedition as a powerful and wealthy city, possessing great resources for war both by land and sea, and having large stores of wealth accumulated in its temples.

In classical times, Thucydides condemned the Thebans, allies of Sparta, for launching a surprise attack without a declaration of war against Plataea, Athens ' ally – an event that touched off the Peloponnesian War.

Sparta took the island from Argos early in the sixth century, and ruled it under a kytherodíkes ( kυθηροδίκης, " judge on Cythera "), in Thucydides ' time ; Athens occupied it three times when at war with Sparta ( in 456 during her first war with Sparta and the Peloponnesians ; from 426 to 410, through most of the great Peloponnesian War ; and from 393 to 387 / 386, during the Corinthian War against Spartan dominance ) and used it both to support her trade and to raid Laconia.

It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian general who served in the war.

Another distinctive feature of the work is Thucydides ' inclusion of dozens of speeches assigned to the principal figures engaged in the war.

It is commonly thought that Thucydides died while still working on the History, since it ends in mid-sentence and only goes up to 410 BC, leaving six years of war uncovered.

Thucydides was exiled for his failure to protect Amphipolis, thus ending the period of the war in which he directly participated.

The war began over a dispute between Corcyra and Epidamnus ; the latter was a minor enough city that Thucydides has to tell his reader where it is.

Thucydides famously wrote " The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.