The Landmark Thucydides

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by Thucydides

Thucydides' chronicle of two decades of battle between Athens and Sparta was dubbed "a possession for all time" by Thucydides, and it remains the first and most famous book in the Western historical tradition.

For more than 2,000 years, The Peloponnesian War has been considered necessary reading for generals, politicians, and liberally educated people. It is a gold mine of military, moral, political, and philosophical insight.

This great work, on the other hand, has long been a barrier to the uninformed reader. Thucydides' narrative is not continuous or linear, and it was written centuries before the birth of modern historiography. His authoritative account of what he considered the greatest war in history is meticulous and thorough, but it lacks many of the aids to comprehension that modern readers expect, such as brief biographies of the story's main characters, maps and other visual aids, and background on ancient Greece's military, cultural, and political traditions.

Robert Strassler's revised version corrects these gaps, not only giving the storey a fresh sense of coherence, but also re-creating the cultural milieu Thucydides shared with his original audience. The Landmark Thucydides includes a vast array of superbly designed and presented maps, brief informative appendices by outstanding classical scholars on subjects of special relevance to the text, explanatory marginal notes on each page, an index of unprecedented subtlety and depth, and numerous other useful features, all based on the venerable Richard Crawley translation, updated and revised for modern readers.

With this version, readers will be able to delve into the text at any moment and be quickly oriented to the conflict's geography, season, date, and stage.

The Peloponnesian War ranks towards the top of any ranking of Western Civilization's Great Books. This new version is attractive, elegant, and authoritative, ensuring that future generations will appreciate its grandeur.