THUCYDIDES

born 460 BC, or earlier? died after 404, BC? Thucydides manuscript, 3rd century BC (Hamburg, Staats- und Universittsbibliothek, P. greatest of ancient Greek historians and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the struggle between Athens and Sparta in the 5th century BC. His work was the first recorded political and moral analysis of a nation's war policies. Additional reading Introductions to the writer and his History include Simon Hornblower, Thucydides (1987); W. Robert Connor, Thucydides (1984), a close sequential reading; Frank E. Adcock, Thucydides and His History (1963, reissued 1973), brief but contains some novel theories; and John H. Finley, Jr., Thucydides (1942, reissued 1963), a suave, bland account by probably the most eminent American student of Thucydides. Studies of special aspects are Jacqueline de Romilly, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism (1963, reprinted 1988), a profound and searching analysis not narrowly concerned with imperialism; A. Geoffrey Woodhead, Thucydides on the Nature of Power (1970); Charles Norris Cochrane, Thucydides and the Science of History (1929, reissued 1965), which detects a profound influence on Thucydides by the Hippocratic school of scientific medicine of his timeparticularly in regard to such things as cause and symptom; Peter R. Pouncey, The Necessities of War: A Study of Thucydides' Pessimism (1980); Dennis Proctor, The Experience of Thucydides (1980); and Hunter R. Rawlings III, The Structure of Thucydides' History (1981).