An introduction to the thought and background of the Greek historian Thucydides, this book examines his account of the great war between Athens and Sparta in the context both of the international situation in the classical Greek world and of the intellectual traditions of the fifth century BCE.

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).

• 1: The world of Thucydides


• 2: The Peloponnesian war


• 3: Thucydides the historian


• 4: Epic, tragedy, history


• 5: Thucydides the narrator


• 6: Speeches in Thucydides


• 7: Thucydides the political scientist


• 8: Thucydides' legacy


• References


• Suggested readings


• Index