Concerning Sparta, Xenophon leads his readers to believe that in spite of- not because of- the interference of Persia in the Peloponnesian War the moral and military qualities of Lysander and Callicratidas were what turned the course of the war either in favor of or against Sparta in each phase of the war. Regarding Athens, Xenophon wants to show that despite Persia’s support of Sparta, Athens lost the war because of its troubled relationship with Alcibiades the moral disintegration of the Athenians who condemned illegally the Arginousai generals and the appointment of generals who were greatly inferior. This book aims to show that Xenophon has crafted his narrative in such a way as to reinforce the opinion of Thucydides, whose work he continued, that the development of the Peloponnesian War depended to a great extent on Persian money, but the factors that ultimately determined its outcome were the moral virtues and the skills of the military leaders of Athens and Sparta. Yet in brilliance of description and depth of insight this history has no superior.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is in four volumes.The advances in Xenophontic studies of the last generation have still not resulted in a definitive literary treatment of the Hellenica 1-2, so Xenophon’s description of the Peloponnesian War deserves closer examination. So his work was left unfinished and as a whole unrevised. A first-hand account of the war between Sparta and Athens from a man dubbed the father of scientific history, Thucydides History of The Peloponnesian War. His story of the final conflict of 413-404 breaks off (in the middle of a sentence) when dealing with the year 411. His history of the first conflict, 431-421, was nearly complete Thucydides was still at work on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict (415-413) likewise complete in his awful and brilliant record, though not fitted into the whole. He had been composing his famous history, with its hopes and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in full detail from first-hand knowledge of his own and others.The war was really three conflicts with one uncertain peace after the first and Thucydides had not unified them into one account when death came sometime before 396. He then lived probably on his property in Thrace, but was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war, and returned to Athens after her defeat in 404. He tells about this, not in volumes of self-justification, but in one sentence of his history of the war-that it befell him to be an exile for twenty years. Later, as general in 423 he failed to save Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced.

In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague which he described so graphically. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. Thucydides of Athens, one of the greatest of historians, was born about 471 BCE.

Peloponnesian war author