Thucydides set out to narrate the history of what he believed would be a great war, one requiring both great power and great leadership. Although he measured greatness through both economic and military prowess, Thucydides dictated the history of...

In his oration, Pericles sheds new light on traditional Greek virtues by examining not only the accomplishments of the Athenian empire, but the particular qualities and institutions that have facilitated Athenian greatness. Pericles defies the...

In Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, the conflict between Athens and Sparta is illustrated not only with direct, fact-based wartime accounts but also with dramatized orations and debates that are interwoven into the narrative. Through...

Pericles’s famous funeral oration is, without a doubt, one of the greatest speeches passed down in history, yet there is dispute as to the true meaning of democracy put forth. Most believe that Pericles was praising Athenian democracy, yet some...

While Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War primarily serves as a straightforward historical text—bereft of the grand digressions and parables of Herodotus’s Histories—there are moments that strike one as especially poetic in tone. One...