school making us read this should be illegal.

This is (at least) what I call a level 3 book: if you are a hardcore history buff and want to go straight to the source about the Pelopennesian war, I guess this is it. If you just have just a passing interest in that war, you'd be better off with a more introductory level 1 book instead. This is just too long, too detailed for a casual reader.

As my to-read list has been slowly dwindling as of late, I've found myself returning to books that I abandoned 10 years ago, 20 years ago, etc.; it turns out that I was arguably right to abandon Thucycides back in 2008, as this is definitely up there with the most boring books ever written. I did end up slogging through to the end but it was a near-run thing, and I can't exactly recommend this book to anyone; I guess the philosophical bits are impressive if you don't compare them to, like, actual Greek philosophy? Incidentally, the book serves as a curious sort of prologue to Plato's dialogues imo. Anyway, the first 25-30% is definitely worth reading but I think it's probably fine for the reader to give up after Pericles' funeral oration.

This is only about the Plague of Athens, interpreted by Thucydides in The Peloponnesian War.

One of the scariest pandemics on the record, the Plague of Athens was recorded by Thucydides in his famous History of the Peloponnesian War.

Why should one read this fragment? It offers a short and concise description, but one which contains ambitious ideas. It reminds us that the mix of war, pandemic and economic issues is not a novelty and that we should take all of them seriously. The typical Byronian motive also matters: who goes to Athens and meditates at the ruins has something to gain from the awareness that another disease has led to this. The reader should be wary that the depictions can be though.

The context is well known. Brief, the war starts between Athens and Sparta. The Athenian mastermind Pericles gathers the population behind the wall, impregnable at that time, gathers a big war treasury and uses the fleet to harass his enemies.

Then the plague strikes. Thucydides' story grows from the cold facts to deep conclusions about the basis of society and politics. It also has something to say about democracy and military strategy. He hoped that his description will be useful to future generations who try to understand not only plagues, but how communities work in times of stress, too.

This very old story still has something meaninful to tell us.

Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is a fascinating and gripping account of the war between the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League, with democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta respectively at the head of these alliances. This was a was a drawn out, brutal, thuggish and opportunistic war of Greeks against Greeks with the respective state models (democracy versus oligarchy) having nothing to do with the actual politics of the war. As Thucydides mentions in the beginning of the book, Sparta and her allies decided to wage war against Athens because of the growth of Athenian geopolitical power at the time. In this sense, the Peloponnesian war was a pre-emptive one.

Thucydides describes events as they happened year to year, summer to winter. Some reviewers on Goodreads find his choice to be problematic - I love it. He takes readers all across the theatres of war and from event to event as they happened chronologically. This helps (a lot!) to grasp the spatial and temporal dimensions of the war. It also emphasizes all the limitations and conditions of warfare in the Ancient world: the (small) scale of warfare, natural boundaries and limitations, dependencies on seasonality and geography, importance of community for survival, political tensions, the mythical foundations of 'poleis' (mostly relating to the Trojan War) etc.

Truly a masterpiece in Ancient literature. The only reason why I won't give 5 stars is the final chapter which is unfinished and unedited. This is a minor disappointment.

The Peloponnesian War is something that historicly interests me the most from the ancient greek history, so this book was something that I've read with ease. In addition the writing is quite understandable and easy to follow.

Ugh!

i think this should be prescribed to anyone struggling with insomnia. worst case scenario if the text doesn't put you to sleep you can bludgeon yourself with the book as it's the size of a cinderblock

It has been said that Earthling civilization, so far, has created ten thousand wars, but only three intelligent commentaries on war—the commentaries of Thucydides, of Julius Caesar and of Winston Niles Rutherfoord.
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—Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

Some years ago, I waded through the Barnes & Noble edition of Herodotus’ Histories. It was one of the most painful reading experiences of my life. I blame 95% of this on the translator (G.C. Macaulay), who broke new ground in dry, prolix, knotty prose. The final result was to make Herodotus’ narrative—already full to the brim with digressions and asides—into a tangled mess that gave me a never-ending headache.
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However, Donald Lateiner’s introduction to that edition was so good that I was left wanting to read more of him. So when I found out that the B & N edition of Thucydides’ famous history also featured an introduction by that scholar, I picked up a copy. But the memory of the pain wrought by Herodotus still burned. It took a few years before I could bring myself to give Greek history another go. But I’m glad I did.
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In many ways, Thucydides is the polar opposite of Herodotus. Whereas the latter is relaxed and easygoing, Thucydides is forceful and dogmatic. Herodotus is more than willing to report an entertaining anecdote, to indulge in an aside, or to report multiple occurrences of the same event. Thucydides, by contrast, is always on topic, never indulgent. From the first few sentences, one is aware that he is cutting down and refining his material with ruthless precision. Every fact that makes it to the page has been culled from an ocean of information; every sentence has been written and re-written dozens of times.
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The merits of Thucydides are twofold. The most obvious is that he virtually invented modern history—concentrating on political and military developments, and keeping scrupulously to verifiable facts. The other is his rhetorical prowess. From what I’ve been told, his Greek prose was cutting-edge. There is only the faintest echo of this quality in Crawley’s translation (which I still liked, by the way). Nevertheless, the History is at times as gripping as any good novel. The speeches (however closely they adhered to actual fact) are without exception masterpieces—both of drama and of political analysis. The battles, the intrigues, the plots, the strategies, the movements of men and ships—all come alive in Thucydides’ terse, muscular writing.
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The Greeks were truly remarkable. In mathematics, Euclid was the standard textbook for over two millennia; in philosophy, Plato and Aristotle still cast their long shadows over the present-day; in literature, there are few authors whose influence can compare with Homer, Sophocles, or Aristophanes. And now we must add Thucydides to their ranks of geniuses. The man managed to set the stage for an entire field of enquiry, and do so with a book that remains both readable and relevant after over two thousand years. If America suffers the same fate as Athens, I at least hope we leave behind half as many great books

But none of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their vengeance and to let their wishes wait; and while committing to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met danger face to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, left behind them not their fear, but their glory.

From The funeral oration of Pericles, once read by generation upon generation of European and American schoolboys who went on to become leader of their nations. No longer. As one watches the two great nations of Athens and Sparta destroy themselves fighting each other, one wishes everyone still studied Thucydides before they voted on members of Congress, or voted as Congressmen about whether to engage in squabbles around the world. This is not to say the United States should retreat to 19th century isolationism, but that it should ask hard questions before deciding whether to act, and think ahead about how to follow up victories and defeats in foreign countries.

Thucydides covers so vast a theater of war, with so many players, over twenty-six years (plus prologue) that it’s impossible to summarize it. Suffice it to say that the train-wreck spectacle is riveting, and his prose magisterial. I really wish I had read this decades ago. It makes one consider subsequent history in a whole new light. The speeches are stupendous for both eloquence and rhetoric, as you watch various populations be manipulated or ignore wise advice.

Also, I need to note that I read the Landmark Thucydides edited by Robert B. Strassler. Accept no substitutes. The notes and maps are fabulous. Strassler understands that a reader is most likely going to tackle this over several weeks, and won’t retain all the details from day to day. So he inserts very repetitive maps on almost every page so that the information you need is right in front of your face. You don’t have to flip wildly back twenty or thirty pages trying to figure out where Miletus or Abydos is. The side margins are full of helpful paragraph numbering and dates, along with a summary of every paragraph’s content/action. A running banner across the top of each page gives date, location and topic. Notes at the bottom of each page link text names to map locations and remind the reader with references to past events. Several appendices in the back describe ground and naval military procedures, governments, religious beliefs, monetary values, dates, etc.

Not a light undertaking, but well well worth the effort.

This was a great one. The entire book is very lengthy as a historical work, but it's worth it. This was a book on the conflict of the Hellenic war following the victory of Pelopponesus and Attica/Athens over Persia. Obviously the Persian king Xerxes was followed by Artaxerxes, but once Darius ursurped the throne (away from Astyages), Darius instilled a new order. The persian empire, therefore, with Therophenes, were crucial in helping the Spartans overthrow the tyrannical Athenian empire.

Book 7 is by far the best. It shows the struggle of Syracuse and the native Sicilians against the similarly democratic Sicilian empire. Later on, we see that Syracuse actually breaks off from Hellas anyway so that this struggle was integral to their freedom and emancipation. Book 7 reminds me of some of the earlier chapters in the Bible, which show Moses' army marching to the east of the Holy Land and conquering foes, but unfortunately, this was more of a tragedy, consisting in Nicias' army eventually being overcome by the very large army of the Syracusans/Sicels.

This is a must read if you are a fan of history. If you aren't good at reading history or remembering details though, I would not suggest it. It is a rather involved work and there are so many different factions and sides involved. You have to pick up what you can, and connect the dots often. This is the only surviving historical work chronicling the period between the Persian war and the Hellenic war.

Finally finished the whole thing. It's quite a piece, and I highly recommend the Landmark edition which comes with maps and tables that greatly aid in the enormous task of parsing all of these old places and names into a coherent military campaign. While I do admire Thucydides direct, strictly empirical style, there's so much less of the kooky local flavor here which made Herodotus so rich, as a result it can be slow and ponderous at times. That being said, the speeches and dialogues Thucydides imagines between historical figures are beautiful examples of classical rhetoric, Pericles' funeral oration being the exemplar. You can see how so much of the rhythm and style of political speakers even today traces back to ideas first expressed from this era. Heck, if you go through the funeral oration and replace the word Athens with America, you actually get a fairly accurate summation of our national ideals and foreign policy ambitions from the last 60 years. I'm normally quite dubious about drawing parallels between the ancient past and the present, especially after reading Vico, but I've go to say, some parts of this book made me almost queasy with how they mirror events within the past few decades in terms of our national priorities and ideas about our place in the world. If you want to see how politics and power can utterly debase a nation from a safe distance, this is your rag.