Major Works

• The Peloponnesian War

  - Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. S. Lattimore. New York: Hackett Publishing Co., 1998.
  Review: Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War mixes tragedy and intellection, profound emotion and painstaking analysis. Steven Lattimore has met the most daunting challenge to a translator of Thucydides, which is to provide a sense of this combination.… More

Commentary

• Man in His Pride

  - Grene, David, Man in His Pride, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1950.

• “Thukydides und Machiavelli.”

  - Reinhardt, Karl. "Thukydides und Machiavelli." In Reinhardt, Vermächtnis der Antike: Gesammelte Essays zur Philosophie und Geschichtsschreibung. Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1966.

• Histoire et raison chez Thucydide

  - De Romilly, Jacqueline. Histoire et raison chez Thucydide. 2d ed. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1967.    
  Overview: La lecture de l’œuvre de Thucydide révèle immédiatement des particularités de forme assez remarquables. Non seulement les discours, avec leur entrelacs de formules et leur brève densité, mais le récit lui-même, avec sa fermeté… More

• Thucydides on the Nature of Power

  - Woodhead, A. G. Thucydides on the Nature of Power. Martin Classical Lectures, 24. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.

• Chance and Intelligence in Thucydides

  - Edmunds, Lowell. Chance and Intelligence in Thucydides. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.

• The City and Man by Leo Strauss

  - Strauss, Leo. “On Thucydides' War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians.” In The City and Man, 50–85. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Originally published 1964 by the University Press of Virginia.
  From the publisher: The City and Man consists of provocative essays by the late Leo Strauss on Aristotle’s Politics, Plato’s Republic, and Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars. Together, the essays constitute a brilliant attempt to use… More

• The Human Thing: The Speeches and Principles of Thucydides’ History

  - Cogan, Marc.  The Human Thing: The Speeches and Principles of Thucydides' History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
  Introduces speeches of Thucydides’ History, including Pericles Funeral Oration.

• Thucydides

  - Connor, W. Robert. Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
  From the Publisher: This full-scale sequential reading of Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War will be invaluable to the specialist and also to those in search of an introduction and companion to the “Histories.” Moving beyond other… More

• Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy

  - Strauss, Leo, “Preliminary Observations on the Gods in Thucydides’ Work,” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1985.
  One of the outstanding thinkers of our time offers in this book his final words to posterity. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy was well underway at the time of Leo Strauss’s death in 1973. Having chosen the title for the book, he selected the… More

• Thucydides

  - Hornblower, Simon. Thucydides. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

• Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism

  - De Romilly, Jacqueline . Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism. Translated by Philip Thody. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprint. Salem, NH: Ayer, 1988.

• Anagke in Thucydides

  - Ostwald, Martin. Anagke in Thucydides. American Classical Studies, 18. Atlanta, GA: Scholar's Press, 1988.

• Power and Preparedness in Thucydides

  - Allison, J. W. Power and Preparedness in Thucydides. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

• The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism

  - Strauss, Leo, “The Meaning of Political History,” The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. T. Pangle Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1989.
  Review: This concise and accessible introduction to Strauss’s thought provides, for wider audience, a bridge to his more complex theoretical work. Editor Pangle has gathered five of Strauss’s previously unpublished lectures and five hard-to-find… More

• “Thucydides’ Contest: Thucydidean “Methodology in Context”

  - Orwin, Clifford, “Thucydides’ Contest: Thucydidean “Methodology in Context”, The Review of Politics, vol. 51, no. 3, 345-364, 1989.

• The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (A New History of the Peloponnesian War)

  - Kagan, Donald. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (A New History of the Peloponnesian War) Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1989.
  From the publisher: The first volume of Donald Kagan’s acclaimed four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War offers a new evaluation of the origins and causes of the conflict, based on evidence produced by modern scholarship and on a careful… More

• The Archidamean War

  - Kagan, Donald, The Archidamean War (A New History of the Peloponnesian War), Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1990.
  This book, the second volume in Donald Kagan’s tetralogy about the Peloponnesian War, is a provocative and tightly argued history of the first ten years of the war. Taking a chronological approach that allows him to present at each stage the choices… More

• “Varieties of Realism: Thucydides and Machiavelli”

  - Forde, Stephen, “Varieties of Realism: Thucydides and Machiavelli,” Journal of Politics, vol. 54, no. 02, , 372-393, 1992.
  Review: Realists have dominated the postwar study of international politics, but they have not always taken seriously the problems of realism as a moral theory. One such problem is the difficulty of reconciling realism with devotion to ethics in any sphere,… More

• Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Interpretation of Realism

  - Johnson, Laurie. Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Interpretation of Realism, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993.
  Table of Contents: List of Abbreviations Introduction Ch. 1 Human Nature 3 Hobbes 4 Thucydides 27 A Comparison of Hobbes and Thucydides on Human Nature 63 Ch. 2 Justice 72 Hobbes 73 Thucydides 98 A Comparison of Hobbes and Thucydides on Justice 140 Ch. 3… More

• The Humanity of Thucydides by Clifford Orwin

  - Orwin, Clifford. The Humanity of Thucydides. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
  From the Publisher: Thucydides has long been celebrated for the unflinching realism of his presentation of political life. And yet, as some scholars have asserted, his work also displays a profound humanity. In the first thorough exploration of the relation… More

• Thucydides’ Pentekontaetia and Other Essays

  - Pritchett, W. K. Thucydides' Pentekontaetia and Other Essays, Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1995.
  From the publisher: In this book Professor Pritchett offers five original essays under the titles: Thucydides’ Pentekontaetia; Thucydides 1.61.3-5; Diodoros’ Pentekontaetia; The Solar Year of Thucydides; Aetiology sans Topography. The initial lengthy… More

• Polis and Polemos: Essays on Politics, War,and History in Ancient Greece in Honor of Donald Kagan

  - Hamilton, Charles D., and Peter Krentz, eds. Polis and Polemos: Essays on Politics, War,and History in Ancient Greece in Honor of Donald Kagan, Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1997.

• Ethics in Thucydides

  - Williams, Mary Frances. Ethics in Thucydides, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998.
  Overview: Ethics in Thucydides uses the historian’s account of the resolution at Corcyra as the basis for determining a moral or ethical perspective in Thucydides’ History. Various scenes, speeches, and narrative descriptions are analyzed in… More

• Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy

  - Kagan, Donald. Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy, New York: Free Press, 1998.
  Kagan is well known for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War ( The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War , LJ 1/5/70; The Archidamian War , 1974; The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, 1981; The Fall of the Athenian Empire, 1987, all Cornell… More

• Narrative and Explanation

  - Rood, Tim.  Thucydides:  Narrative and Explanation,  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  From the publisher: `War is a harsh teacher’ wrote Thucydides in the fifth-century BC. Rood analyses the techniques through which Thucydides’ narrative explains the origin and course of the Peloponnesian War and exposes harsh truths about how… More

• Justice Among the Nations: on the moral basis of power and peace

  - Ahrensdorf, Peter and Pangle, Thomas.  Justice Among the Nations: on the moral basis of power and peace, Kansas: The University of Kansas, 1999.
  From the publisher: In the post-Cold War era, we have lost the clarity that once characterized our vision of international conflict. Foreign affairs are no longer defined solely by the ideological battles fought between capitalism and communism or by the… More

• Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides: The Sicilian Expedition and its Aftermath

  - Kallet, Lisa.  Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides: The Sicilian Expedition and its Aftermath.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
  From the publisher: Wealth and power are themes that preoccupy much of Greek literature from Homer on, and this book unravels the significance of these subjects in one of the most famous pieces of narrative writing from classical antiquity. Lisa Kallet… More

• The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan

  - Kagan, Donald. The Peloponnesian War. New York: Penguin Books, 2004.
  From the Publisher: For three decades in the fifth century B.C. the ancient world was torn apart by a conflict that was as dramatic, divisive, and destructive as the world wars of the twentieth century: the Peloponnesian War. Donald Kagan, one of the… More

• Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa

  - Sahlins, Marshall.  Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
  From the publisher: Thucydides’ classic work on the history of the Peloponnesian War is the root of Western conceptions of history—including the idea that Western history is the foundation of everyone else’s. Here, Marshall Sahlins takes on… More

• Thucydides’ War Narrative: A Structural Study

  - Dewald, Carolyn.  Thucydides’ War Narrative: A Structural Study.  Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2005.
  Overview: As a sustained analysis of the connections between narrative structure and meaning in the “History of the Peloponnesian War, “Carolyn Dewald’s study revolves around a curious aspect of Thucydides’ work: the first ten years of… More

• Thucydides and the Shaping of History

  - Greenwodd, Emily.  Thucydides and the Shaping of History.  London: Duckworth, 2005.
  From the publisher: Thucydides’ work was one of the most exciting creations in the cultural history of Greece in the fifth century BC and it still poses fresh and challenging questions about the writing of history. There is a marked tension in… More

• Thucydides and the Philosophical Origins of History

  - Shanske, Darien.  Thucydides and the Philosophical Origins of History.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,  2007.
  Overview: This book addresses the question of how and why history begins with the work of Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War is distinctive in that it is a prose narrative, meant to be read rather than performed. It focuses on the unfolding of… More

• Thucydides: The Reinvention of History

  - Kagan, Donald. Thucydides: The Reinvention of History, New York: Penguin Books, 2010.
  From the publisher: Yale professor of classics Kagan thoroughly examines Thucydides’ life and work to successfully demonstrate that the Athenian historian was the first to utilize a truly professional (i.e., realistic and methodical) approach in recounting… More

• Commentary on Thucydides: Book 1

  - Charles D. Morris, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 1
  Introduction THOUGH we have several ancient biographies of Thucydides,1 our trustworthy knowledge of the circumstances of his life rests almost exclusively on a few notices casually imparted by himself. Everything else that we are told of him either by his… More