Ἱστορίαι
History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides Θουκυδίδης · c. 460 – c. 400 BCE
Librarian’s score9.6Claude · AI
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An Athenian general who lost a command wrote the history of the war he lived through, counting it by summers and winters and testing every report. The speeches, which he admits are reconstructed, lay bare how cities argue themselves into ruin: the Melian dialogue, the plague, the Sicilian disaster. It breaks off mid-sentence in 411 BCE. Few books since have matched its severity of judgment.