Thucydides: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring

In 432 BCE the powerful city-state of Sparta on the peninsula of the Peloponnesus in southwestern Greece declared war on Athens, head of a mighty naval coalition. The war would last until Sparta finally brough Athens to its knees in 404. The Athenian aristocrat Thucydides, suspecting the magnitude of the conflict that was unfolding before his eyes, at once undertook to record its history, exploring the causes and course of the war in the context of his great interest: human nature. An introduction to Thucydides’ thought and background, this book examines Thucydides’ account of the war in the context both of the international situation in the classical Greek world and of the intellectual traditions of the fifth century BCE, exploring the historian’s connection to prose writers like Herodotus as well as poets like Homer and the tragedians, and investigating the complex dynamics of the war that changed the Greek world forever.

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Jennifer T. Roberts, Professor of Classics and History, City College of New York and City University of New York Graduate Center

Jennifer Roberts is Professor of Classics and History at the City College of New York and the City University of New York Graduate Center. A past president of the Association of Ancient Historians, she specializes in the theory and practice of democracy and in the intellectual and political history of Greece during the classical period. Her publications include Accountability in Athenian Government (1982), Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought (1994), editions of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War (1998) and Herodotus’ Histories (2013), both co-authored with Walter Blanco, and The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece (2017).