Definition: Greek historian, son of Olorus, born between 471-450 B.C., Thucydides is said to have been the student of the rhetoricians Antiphon and Gorgias, and the philosopher Anaxagoras.
Thucydides had first hand information about the Peloponnesian War from his pre-exile days as an Athenian commander. In 421 he headed an Athenian fleet at Thasos. For his delay in helping out the beseiged city of Amphipolis, he was banished for twenty years. During his exile he interviewed people on both sides and recorded their speeches in his History of the Peloponnesian War. Unlike his predecessor, Herodotus, he didn't delve into the background but laid out the facts as he saw them, chronologically or annalistically.
See John Porter's Class Notes on Thucydides (Accessed 6/15/2006)
Francis M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus
See John Porter's Class Notes on Thucydides (Accessed 6/15/2006)
Francis M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus
