Thucydides

thu-sid'i-deez (about 471-396 B. C.), a Greek historian. Little is known of his early life save that he was born of a good Athenian family and had opportunity for study and travel. His chief work is a History of the Peloponnesian War, still an authority on the subject. He depicts with clearness the progress of public events, showing how each grew out of what preceded. In this respect he is unsurpassed. It is much to be regretted that he did not describe the arts, social life, and institutions of his day. There is a tradition that he was killed by robbers. At all events the history breaks off in the middle of a sentence at the end of eight books. Grote, the English historian of Greece, depended on Thucydides. When he reached 411 B. C., the point at which Thucydides' narrative ceases, he says with regret, "To pass from Thucydides to the Hellenism of Xenophon is a descent truly mournful. . . . The historical propositions and conceptions of Thucydides are exalted and philosophical to a degree altogether wonderful when we consider that he had no preexisting models before him from which to derive them." Thucydides is beyond doubt the greatest historian of antiquity.