Thucydides and the Shaping of History

Thucydides' work was one of the most exciting creations in the cultural history of Greece in the fifth century BC - one of only two monumental prose works to have survived - and it still poses fresh and challenging questions about the writing of history. In the twenty-first century, it still challenges the reader: there is a marked tension in Thucydides' History between his aim to write about contemporary events and his desire that his work should outlast the period in which he composed it....