{"product_id":"history-of-the-peloponnesian-war-volume-iv","title":"History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume IV","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eClassic political realism.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThucydides  of Athens was born about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness  under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of  the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague that  he described so graphically. Later, as general in 423 he failed to save  Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced. He tells us 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. 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 had been composing his famous history, with its hopes  and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in full detail from first-hand  knowledge, along with the accounts of others. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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. 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. His story  of the final conflict of 413–404 breaks off (in the middle of a  sentence) when dealing with the year 411. So his work was left  unfinished and as a whole unrevised. Yet in brilliance of description  and depth of insight this history has no superior. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is in four volumes.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54248622457176,"sku":"9780674991873","price":31.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780674991873_8ebceca3-f290-4fb6-81d3-8419bb6f5078.jpg?v=1780404346","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war-volume-iv","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}