The initial 10 years of the conflict saw annual Spartan land raids countered by Athenian sea attacks. He wrote of his exile: вЂњIt wasвЂ¦my fate to be an exile from my country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis and being present with both parties, and more especially with the Peloponnesians by reason of my exile, I had leisure to observe affairs more closely.вЂќ In 424, he was given command of a fleet, but was then exiled for failing to reach the city of Amphipolis in time to prevent its capture by the Spartans. He was born in the Athenian suburb of Halimos and was in Athens during the plague of c.430 B.C., a year after the war began. His fatherвЂ™s name was Olorus, and his family was from Thrace in northeastern Greece, where Thucydides owned gold mines that likely financed his historical work. Little is known about ThucydidesвЂ™ life apart from the few biographical references in his masterwork. Though specific in detail, the questions he addressed were timeless: What makes nations go to war? How can politics elevate or poison a society? What is the measure of a great leader or a great democracy? Thucydides' Life He relied on the testimony of eyewitnesses and his own experiences as a general during the war.

Unlike his near-contemporary Herodotus (author of the other great ancient Greek history), ThucydidesвЂ™ topic was his own time. His вЂњHistory of the Peloponnesian WarвЂќ set a standard for scope, concision and accuracy that makes it a defining text of the historical genre. One of the greatest ancient historians, Thucydides (c.460 B.C.вЂ“c.400 B.C.) chronicled nearly 30 years of war and tension between Athens and Sparta. Thucydides and the History of the Peloponnesian War.

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