Classic political realism. Thucydides of Athens was born about 471 BC. He witnessed the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he contracted and survived the dreadful plague that he described with such vivid detail.

Later, as a general in 423, he failed to save Amphipolis from the enemy and faced disgrace. He recounts this not in volumes of self-justification, but in a single sentence of his history of the war—that he was exiled for twenty years. He then probably lived on his estate in Thrace but was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war and returned to Athens after her defeat in 404.

He had been writing his famous history, filled with hopes and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in great detail from first-hand knowledge, coupled with accounts from others. The war was actually three conflicts with one uncertain peace after the first; and Thucydides had not unified them into a single narrative when death came sometime before 396.

His history of the first conflict, 431–421, was nearly complete; Thucydides was still working on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict (415–413) that was also comprehensive in his tragic and brilliant record, though not woven into the entirety. His narrative of the final conflict of 413–404 abruptly ends (in the middle of a sentence) when addressing the year 411.

Thus, his work was left unfinished and overall unwritten. Yet in terms of descriptive brilliance and depth of insight, this history stands unparalleled. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is available in four volumes.