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.

The main classical authority on the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, does not mention Hegetorides at all, and appears to mention Thasos itself only once, in the context of Galepsus, a colony of Thasos ( Book V of his History of the Pelponnesian War ).

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

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 ...".

Among the most notable were the historians Herodotus ( 484 – 425 ), who described the Greco-Persian Wars ; Thucydides ( 460 – 395 ), who wrote the great History of the Peloponnesian War ; and Xenophon ( 427 – 335 ), who, although sometimes considered a partial and poorly documented writer, in the opinion of historians left a useful source of information about the first years of the 4th century BC.

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 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 .”

Our primary source for the war, Thucydides, puts very little emphasis upon the decree in his analysis of the cause of the war, treating it as a pretext on the part of the Spartans.

Professor Miller, in her reinvestigation of ancient source materials has determined that they point to various dates of foundation from 758 BC ( per the Chronikon of Eusebius ) to 728 BC ( from her reconstructions of dates from Thucydides ).

* The Landmark Thucydides, Edited by Robert B. Strassler, Richard Crawley translation, Annotated, Indexed and Illustrated, A Touchstone Book, New York, NY, 1996 ISBN 0-684-82815-4

They are first mentioned in the writings of the Ancient Greeks, in Herodotus ( Histories Book IV XCIII: " the noblest as well as the most just of all the Thracian tribes ") and Thucydides ( Peloponnesian Wars, Book II: " border on the Scythians and are armed in the same manner, being all mounted archers ").

* Thucydides: Book VI ( BCP Greek Texts ) ( editor )

After World War II, Classical scholar Jacqueline de Romilly pointed out that the problem of Athenian imperialism was one of Thucydides ' central preoccupations and situated his history in the context of Greek thinking about international politics.

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.

* Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, II, 79

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.

According to Thucydides, the Laeaeans, along with the Agrianes, the Thracian Dii, and other tribes, joined Sitalkes in his unsuccessful campaign against Perdiccas II of Macedon.

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

* Thucydides ii.

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

According to Thucydides, the official aim of the League was to " avenge the wrongs they suffered by ravaging the territory of the king.

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

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

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.

In the second year of the Peloponnesian War ( 430 BC ), Thucydides described an epidemic disease which was said to have begun in Ethiopia, passed through Egypt and Libya, then come to the Greek world.

Many changes that were subsequent with ancient historians, despite following in his footsteps, criticised Herodotus, starting with Thucydides.

Nevertheless, Thucydides chose to begin his history where Herodotus left off ( at the Siege of Sestos ), and may therefore have felt that Herodotus's history was accurate enough not to need re-writing or correcting.

Galen states that the skin rash was close to the one Thucydides described.

Furthermore, Thucydides mentions the use of tubed flamethrowers in the siege of Delium in 424 BC.

* Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner ; with an introduction and notes my M. I.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus characterized these historians as the forerunners of Thucydides, and these local histories continued to be written into Late Antiquity, as long as the city-states survived.

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, the Athenian historian Thucydides dismissed Herodotus as a ' logos-writer ' or story-teller.

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.

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.

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.

Such at least was the opinion of Marcellinus in his Life of Thucydides.

Herodotus and Thucydides were as the founders of the discipline of history.

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.

Thucydides and Plutarch say that Themistocles asked for a year's grace to learn the Persian language and customs, after which he would serve the king, and Artaxerxes granted this.

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