History of the Peloponnesian War
Athens · -400
T
Thucydides
Thucydides
c. 460 BCE–c. 400 BCE · Athens
Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BCE) was an Athenian historian and general, author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the conflict between Athens and Sparta. Born into a wealthy Athenian family, he served as a general (strategos) in 424 BCE but was exiled after failing to prevent the Spartan capture of Amphipolis, an exile that gave him time and access to gather material for his account, including contacts on the Peloponnesian side. His work is noted for its emphasis on factual accuracy, political and military causation, and the avoidance of supernatural explanation, and it includes reconstructed speeches such as Pericles' Funeral Oration. The unfinished narrative breaks off mid-sentence while treating the year 411 BCE. He is commonly regarded as a foundational figure in the development of critical historiography and political realism.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→
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Stop 1 of 1460 BCE–400 BCELived
AthensAttica (Greece)
What they did here
Athenian general and historian of the Peloponnesian War.
About Athens
Athens, the capital of Greece since 1834, was the leading intellectual centre of the classical Greek world. Socrates taught there, and four major philosophical schools took root in the city: Plato's Academy, founded around 387 BCE, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa of Zeno, and Epicurus' Garden. Under Hellenistic and Roman rule Athens remained a place of study that drew students from across the empire; in the 4th century CE the Christian writers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus studied there together, while Neoplatonist teachers kept lecturing. Emperor Justinian's ban on pagan teaching of philosophy in 529 is generally taken to mark the end of the city's ancient history.
In Athens at the same time
Aeschylus, Themistocles, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Gorgias of Leontini
Across the traditions, in Athens at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Thucydides’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Aeschylus, Themistocles, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Gorgias of Leontini, Herodotus, Euripides, Antiphon, Socrates, Prodicus, Democritus, Critias, Antisthenes, Aristophanes, Lysias, Andocides, Isocrates
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Thucydides’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.