Thucydides

c. 460–400 BCE

Thucydides of Athens served as a general in the Peloponnesian War, was exiled after the loss of Amphipolis in 424, and spent twenty years writing the history of the war between Athens and Sparta, which breaks off in 411. He set aside the marvellous for an exact account of events and their causes, with speeches that lay bare the reasoning of states — Pericles' funeral oration, the plague, the Melian dialogue, the Sicilian expedition — and meant the work to be a possession for all time.