# History of the Peloponnesian War *An Athenian general, exiled for losing a city, writes the war between Athens and Sparta as it happens: why it started, how plague, faction and ambition hollowed out the combatants, and how the greatest fleet ever sent from a Greek city died in Sicily. It stops in mid-sentence in 411 BC, seven years before the end. It is also the book that gave modern strategists "the strong do what they can" and, at second hand, the "Thucydides Trap".* > **What I read.** Richard Crawley's public-domain translation (1874), as posted by Project Gutenberg (#7142), searched throughout and skimmed book by book. The passages quoted below were read in full and are quoted from Crawley unless marked. References use the standard book.chapter numbering (so 5.89 is Book 5, chapter 89). The standard numbers for each episode come from the outline in [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War), checked against Crawley's text where I quote. Crawley divides the work into 26 chapters of his own, which I give in the outline as "Crawley ch." I did not see any of the modern translations. Related in this vault: - [[Book Summaries/Aristotle/Politics - Aristotle|Politics]], [[Book Summaries/Origen/Contra Celsum - Origen|Contra Celsum]] and [[Book Summaries/Holland, Tom/Dominion - Tom Holland|Dominion]], cited in the same Nils Glenn video. Glenn uses the Melian Dialogue as his first exhibit of the pagan "strong rule" order. - [[Book Summaries/Hanson, Victor Davis/The Counterrevolution - Victor Davis Hanson|The Counterrevolution]]. Hanson, a historian of this war (*A War Like No Other*, 2005), also wrote the introduction to *The Landmark Thucydides*. - Graham Allison's *Destined for War* (named in the Jack Chapple video) is the source of the "Thucydides Trap". No dossier yet. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | No title from the author. He calls the work a *xyngraphē* ("written account") of "the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians" (1.1). *History of the Peloponnesian War* is the conventional English title; Mynott (Cambridge 2013) uses *The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians* | | Author | Thucydides son of Olorus, of the Athenian deme Halimous (c. 460–c. 400 BC) | | Written | Begun "at the moment that it broke out" (1.1), in 431 BC, and still being revised after the war ended in 404 (it refers to the end of the war; [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides)) | | Coverage | The background from earliest Greece (the "Archaeology", 1.1–19) and the fifty years after the Persian Wars (the "Pentecontaetia", 1.89–117); the war itself from 431 to autumn 411 BC. Breaks off mid-narrative at 8.109 | | Structure | Eight books, a division made after his death, probably by Alexandrian scholars ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides)). Narrated year by year, each year split into summer and winter | | Speeches | Long formal speeches and paired debates run through the work. Thucydides says plainly that he wrote what the speakers would have had to say, "adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said" (1.22) | | Public-domain English | **Thomas Hobbes** (1628, the first English translation made directly from the Greek, per [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides)). **Richard Crawley** (1874; Everyman, Dent 1910). **Benjamin Jowett** (Clarendon Press 1881). **C. F. Smith**, Loeb Classical Library, 4 vols. (1919–1923) | | Modern English | **The Landmark Thucydides**, ed. Robert B. Strassler, introduction by Victor Davis Hanson (Crawley's translation revised, with maps, notes and appendices): Free Press 1996, hc ISBN 0-684-82790-5, pb Touchstone/Free Press ISBN 0-684-82815-4, 711 pp. **Rex Warner**, Penguin Classics 1954, ISBN 0-14-044039-9, 648 pp. **Steven Lattimore**, Hackett 1998, ISBN 0-87220-394-8, 508 pp. **Martin Hammond**, intro and notes P. J. Rhodes, Oxford World's Classics 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-282191-1, 784 pp. **Jeremy Mynott**, Cambridge 2013, ISBN 978-0-521-84774-2, 762 pp. Also Walter Blanco (Norton 1998), per Wikipedia | | Cover | [Open Library cover](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/5641196-L.jpg) | **Where it came up.** - Video: Nils Glenn, ["Our Understanding of Jesus Just Changed"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3WGPomiOJs). At [10:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3WGPomiOJs&t=620s) to 10:40 Glenn recalls Athens' attack on neutral Melos in 416 BC and quotes the Melian Dialogue: "the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must"; the men were killed, the women and children enslaved, and 500 colonists sent. Vault note: [[Video Summaries/Nils Glenn/Our Understanding of Jesus Just Changed]]. - Video: Jack Chapple, ["WARNING: The World Just Started The Next Big Cycle..."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyyxQcZdADs). At [56:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyyxQcZdADs&t=3380s) Chapple gives Thucydides' verdict that the real cause of the war was the growth of Athens and the fear it caused in Sparta, as "Bout 1" of Graham Allison's Thucydides Trap (16 cases, 12 wars; [56:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyyxQcZdADs&t=3362s)). When Video Summaries sent this book, the queue logged Chapple's reference as inferred, not named; the delivered vault note does list the book at 56:40. Vault note: [[Video Summaries/Jack Chapple/WARNING The World Just Started The Next Big Cycle]]. - Requested by Video Summaries on 2026-11-07. ## 2. Book resources **Reference and catalog pages** - Open Library: work [OL16200353W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16200353W) (173 editions listed); *The Landmark Thucydides*, work [OL16200330W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16200330W), pb [OL7721438M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7721438M), hc [OL20766478M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL20766478M); Warner, Penguin [OL35652314M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL35652314M); Lattimore, Hackett [OL698489M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL698489M); Hammond, Oxford [OL22680007M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22680007M); Mynott, Cambridge [OL25404583M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25404583M); Smith, Loeb vol. 1 [OL7693906M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7693906M). - Google Books: [search](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=Thucydides+History+of+the+Peloponnesian+War). - WorldCat: [search](https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3Apeloponnesian+war+au%3Athucydides). - Publisher pages: not checked one by one; search [Simon & Schuster](https://www.simonandschuster.com/search/books/_/N-/Ntt-landmark%20thucydides) for the Landmark edition, or [Hackett](https://www.hackettpublishing.com/), [Oxford World's Classics](https://global.oup.com/academic/) and [Cambridge](https://www.cambridge.org/) for "Thucydides". - [Wikipedia, *History of the Peloponnesian War*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War); [Wikipedia, *Thucydides*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides). **Free (legal; the work and the older translations are in the public domain)** - Project Gutenberg: [#7142](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7142), Crawley translation, complete. The text used here. - Perseus Digital Library: [Crawley translation (Dent 1910)](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0200); [Hobbes translation (Bohn 1843)](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0247); [Greek text (Oxford, Jones and Powell)](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0199). - Internet Archive, free to read: Crawley (Dent 1914) [pelocrawleyr00thucuoft](https://archive.org/details/pelocrawleyr00thucuoft); Hobbes, *Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre* (1634 printing) [eightbookesofpel00thucuoft](https://archive.org/details/eightbookesofpel00thucuoft); Jowett (Clarendon 1881) [vol. 1](https://archive.org/details/a609583001thucuoft) and [vol. 2](https://archive.org/details/a609583002thucuoft); C. F. Smith, Loeb vol. 1 (1919) [thucydideswithen01thucuoft](https://archive.org/details/thucydideswithen01thucuoft). - Internet Archive / Open Library lending (free account): [Lattimore, Hackett 1998](https://archive.org/details/peloponnesianwar0000thuc_h4g9) (borrowing status shown on the page; not checked). The IA scan of *The Landmark Thucydides* ([landmarkthucydid0000thuc](https://archive.org/details/landmarkthucydid0000thuc)) is restricted to print-disabled readers. Two user uploads of modern copyrighted translations on IA are not linked. - LibriVox, free audio (Crawley translation): [version 1](https://librivox.org/the-history-of-the-peloponnesian-war-by-thucydides/) (26 sections, 20 h 57 min) and [version 2](https://librivox.org/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war2-thucydides/) (26 sections, 19 h 35 min). - Libby/OverDrive (checked at Los Angeles Public Library): *The Landmark Thucydides* ebook ([312183](https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/312183)); Crawley ebook, Duke Classics ([784964](https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/784964)); Blackstone audiobook, Crawley translation read by Pat Bottino ([239276](https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/239276)). Availability depends on your library. - Hoopla: not checked; [search Hoopla](https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?q=thucydides). **Paid** - Amazon print: [Landmark Thucydides (pb)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684828154); [Penguin Classics (Warner)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140440399); [Hackett (Lattimore)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0872203948); [Oxford World's Classics (Hammond)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0192821911); [Cambridge (Mynott)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521847745); [Loeb vol. 1](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674991206). - Kindle: many free or cheap Crawley and Jowett reprints plus some modern translations; [Kindle search](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=thucydides+peloponnesian+war&i=digital-text). Which modern translations are on Kindle was not checked. - Audible: [*The History of the Peloponnesian War*, Crawley translation, read by Pat Bottino](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-History-of-the-Peloponnesian-War-Audiobook/B002V5B8NA) (Blackstone, unabridged, 22 h 5 min); [*The Peloponnesian War*, Jowett translation, read by Charlton Griffin](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Peloponnesian-War-Audiobook/B009DJMB7Y) (Audio Connoisseur 2012, 26 h 19 min with added essays, per Apple Books). Audible also sells a reading "done primarily by AI" (RAM Studios); not recommended. I found no audiobook of a modern translation (not checked exhaustively). ## 3. Author biography Almost everything reliable about Thucydides comes from his own book. He calls himself an Athenian, son of Olorus; Wikipedia places him in the deme Halimous. He was born around 460 BC. His father's name is Thracian and royal, and the family seems to have been related to Miltiades and Cimon, the old aristocratic leaders of Athens. He says he had rights to work gold mines at Scapte Hyle in Thrace, opposite Thasos, and influence among the leading men there. He caught the plague of 430 and survived it ("I had the disease myself", 2.48). In 424 he was one of the generals (*stratēgoi*) and commanded a squadron at Thasos. The Spartan Brasidas offered generous terms to Amphipolis, and the city surrendered before Thucydides could arrive; he reached Eion, at the mouth of the Strymon, in time to save it (4.104–107). Athens exiled him, and he says the exile lasted twenty years, giving him access to the Peloponnesian side (5.26). He presumably returned after 404. Later traditions, collected by Pausanias, Plutarch and the late *Life* by Marcellinus, disagree about whether he died violently and where he is buried. He seems to have died around 400 BC, perhaps a little after, with the eighth book unfinished. Xenophon's *Hellenica* begins where he stops. Sources: [Wikipedia, *Thucydides*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides); the *History* 1.1, 2.48, 4.104–107, 5.26 (Crawley); [BBC *In Our Time*, "Thucydides"](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050bcf1) (programme page). ## 4. Author interviews and talks Thucydides gave no interviews that survive. His own statements of method do the job: 1.1 (why this war), 1.20–22 (how he handled speeches and evidence, and the "possession for all time"), 1.23 (the real cause) and 5.26 (his exile and the "second preface"). The best talks about the book that I could find: - **[BBC Radio 4, *In Our Time*, "Thucydides"](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050bcf1)** (29 January 2015, 43 min). Melvyn Bragg with Paul Cartledge (Cambridge), Katherine Harloe (Reading) and Neville Morley (Bristol) on the book as the first attempt at objective history and its later use in military colleges and international relations. - **[Open Yale Courses, CLCV 205, Donald Kagan](https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205)**, four lectures on the war (video, audio and transcript). [Lecture 17](https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205/lecture-17) and [Lecture 18](https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205/lecture-18): the run-up, the Thirty Years' Peace and its arbitration clause, Corcyra and Epidamnus. [Lecture 19](https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205/lecture-19): Kagan argues the war was not inevitable and reads Thucydides as a "revisionist" with a case to make. [Lecture 20](https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205/lecture-20): Pericles' defensive strategy. Kagan was the leading modern historian of the war; his four-volume history is listed below. - **Graham Allison, ["The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?"](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united-states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/)**, *The Atlantic*, 24 September 2015 (also on the [Belfer Center site](https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/thucydides-trap-are-us-and-china-headed-war)). The essay that launched the 16-cases, 12-wars claim the Chapple video uses. About Thucydides' sentence, not the book as a whole. - **[LibriVox readings](https://librivox.org/the-history-of-the-peloponnesian-war-by-thucydides/)** of Crawley's translation. Readings, not commentary. - **The source videos.** Nils Glenn (10:20–10:40) uses the Melian Dialogue as the ancient world's creed of power; Jack Chapple (56:20) uses 1.23 as the template for rising-power wars. ## 5. Summary ### Thesis Thucydides makes two claims and builds the book to prove both. First, this was "the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large part of the barbarian world—I had almost said of mankind" (1.1), and greater in suffering than the Persian Wars (1.23). Second, its true cause was not the quarrels both sides talked about but a shift of power: "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable" (1.23). Behind the narrative is a view of human nature as constant. The book is written for "those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it", and so "not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time" (1.22). The gods play no part. Events are explained by fear, honour and interest (1.75), by the judgement or folly of leaders, and by chance. Its moral centre, where it has one, is what war does to people: it is "a rough master" that brings most men's characters down to the level of their fortunes (3.82), the phrase Wikipedia renders "a violent teacher". ### Outline **Book 1 (Crawley ch. I–V): background and causes, to 432 BC.** - 1.1–19, the "Archaeology": early Greece was poor, unsettled and weak. Sea power, walls and money made later power possible; even Agamemnon's Trojan expedition was small and badly supplied. - 1.20–23, method: people accept stories uncritically; speeches are given in substance, not verbatim; facts were checked "by the most severe and detailed tests possible"; the work is "a possession for all time" (1.22). The real cause was Athens' growth and Sparta's alarm (1.23). - 1.24–66, the grievances: Corcyra and Corinth quarrel over Epidamnus; Athens makes a defensive alliance with Corcyra; Potidaea revolts from Athens. - 1.67–88, the congress at Sparta: the Corinthians contrast restless Athenians with slow Spartans (1.68–71); Athenian envoys defend the empire as won by fear, honour and interest (1.73–78); King Archidamus counsels delay (1.80–85); the ephor Sthenelaidas carries the vote for war (1.86). - 1.89–117, the "Pentecontaetia": how Athens moved "from supremacy to empire" in the fifty years after 479. - 1.118–146: second congress; diplomatic demands, with digressions on Cylon, Pausanias and Themistocles (1.126–138); the Spartan ultimatum cites the Megara decree (1.139); Pericles' first speech: no concessions, fight at sea, abandon the countryside (1.140–145). **Book 2 (Crawley ch. VI–VIII): 431–429 BC.** - 2.1–33: Thebes attacks Plataea; mobilization; the first invasion of Attica; the countryside moves inside the walls. - 2.34–46, the Funeral Oration of Pericles: Athens' constitution "does not copy the laws of neighbouring states" (2.37); the city is "the school of Hellas" (2.41). - 2.47–54, the plague: arrival from Ethiopia via Egypt, symptoms, the collapse of law and custom. Thucydides writes as a survivor. - 2.59–65: Pericles defends his policy; his death; Thucydides' verdict that Athens under him was "nominally a democracy" but "government by the first citizen", while his successors played to the crowd and lost the war, the Sicilian expedition first of all (2.65). - 2.70–103: Potidaea falls; Plataea besieged; Phormio's naval victories; the Thracian king Sitalces invades Macedonia. **Book 3 (Crawley ch. IX–XI): 428–426 BC.** - 3.2–50, the revolt of Mytilene. The Athenians vote to kill all the men, then repent. The Mytilenian Debate (3.37–48): Cleon for severity and consistency, Diodotus for mercy on grounds of interest. A second trireme arrives just in time. - 3.52–68: Plataea surrenders; the Spartans kill the defenders after a sham trial. - 3.70–85, the revolution at Corcyra and the anatomy of civil strife: "Words had to change their ordinary meaning" (3.82). - 3.86–116: first Athenian ventures in Sicily; the tsunami of 426 and its cause (3.89); the plague returns (4,400 hoplites and 300 cavalry dead, 3.87); Demosthenes' campaigns in western Greece and the ruin of Ambracia (Crawley ch. XI; the Gutenberg heading drops the word "Sixth"). **Book 4 (Crawley ch. XII–XIV): 425–423 BC.** - 4.2–41: Demosthenes fortifies Pylos; Spartans are cut off on Sphacteria; Sparta offers peace and Cleon talks Athens out of it; Cleon and Demosthenes take the island and about 120 Spartiates surrender, shocking Greece. - 4.46–74: the end of the Corcyraean revolution; the Sicilian cities make peace at Gela on Hermocrates' appeal to keep outsiders out (4.59–64); Athens fails to take Megara but captures Nisaea. - 4.76–135: defeat at Delium; Brasidas marches north and detaches Athens' allies in Thrace; Amphipolis falls (4.102–108), the episode that exiled Thucydides; a one-year armistice (4.117–118). **Book 5 (Crawley ch. XV–XVII): 422–416 BC.** - 5.1–24: Cleon and Brasidas both die at Amphipolis (5.10); the Peace of Nicias (421). - 5.25–26, the "second preface": the war was one war of twenty-seven years, peace included, and Thucydides lived through it all, twenty years in exile. - 5.27–83: a new league of Argos, Mantinea, Elis and Athens, encouraged by Alcibiades; Sparta wins the Battle of Mantinea (418). - 5.84–116, the Melian Dialogue: Athenian envoys tell the neutral Melians that "right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" (5.89). The Melians appeal to justice, the gods and Sparta. The city falls; the Athenians "put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists" (5.116). **Book 6 (Crawley ch. XVIII–XX): 415–414 BC, the Sicilian expedition.** - 6.1–7: early history of Sicily. - 6.8–32: Nicias argues against the expedition and Alcibiades for it; Nicias' attempt to deter by inflating the cost backfires; the Herms are mutilated; the armada sails. - 6.33–52: debate at Syracuse (Hermocrates, Athenagoras); the Athenians arrive and dither. - 6.53–61: digression on the tyrant-slayers Harmodius and Aristogiton; Alcibiades is recalled and defects. - 6.62–105: Athenian successes at Syracuse; the Camarina debate; Alcibiades at Sparta advises sending Gylippus and fortifying Decelea; the siege walls go up. **Book 7 (Crawley ch. XXI–XXIII): 414–413 BC.** - 7.1–41: Gylippus arrives and turns the siege; Sparta fortifies Decelea in Attica; the Syracusans win at sea. - 7.42–49: Demosthenes arrives with reinforcements and loses the night battle on Epipolae; Nicias refuses to withdraw. - 7.50: an eclipse of the moon; Nicias, "somewhat over-addicted to divination", waits "thrice nine days". - 7.51–87: defeats in the Great Harbour, the retreat, the slaughter at the Assinarus, the quarries; Nicias and Demosthenes executed. "Few out of many returned home" (7.87). **Book 8 (Crawley ch. XXIV–XXVI): 413–411 BC.** - 8.1–44: despair at Athens; the Ionian allies revolt; Persia's satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus bid to fund Sparta; Spartan–Persian treaties. - 8.45–88: Alcibiades, now with Tissaphernes, advises letting the Greeks wear each other out and schemes for his own return; oligarchs led by Pisander, Antiphon, Phrynichus and Theramenes set up the Four Hundred at Athens (8.63–70); the fleet at Samos stays democratic and recalls Alcibiades. - 8.89–109: the Four Hundred split and fall; the government of the Five Thousand, which Thucydides calls the best Athens had in his time (8.97); Euboea revolts, and "the Lacedaemonians proved the most convenient people in the world for the Athenians to be at war with" (8.96); Athenian naval victory at Cynossema; Tissaphernes sets off to Ephesus and sacrifices to Artemis. The text stops there. ### Key ideas - **Truest cause versus stated grievances.** Distinguishing underlying causes from occasions (1.23) is the book's most copied idea. - **Fear, honour and interest.** The Athenians' own account of empire (1.75–76), and the core of later "realist" readings. - **Power and justice.** Justice is argued only between equals; the Melian Dialogue (5.84–116) states this, and the book lets the reader judge the speakers. - **Human nature is constant,** so an exact history is useful for the future (1.22, 3.82). - **War corrupts language and morals.** The Corcyra passage (3.82–84) on how faction redefines virtues and vices. - **Leadership and democracy.** Pericles' restraint against his successors' ambition (2.65); the Mytilenian Debate as democracy deliberating well, Sicily as democracy deliberating badly. - **Sea power and money.** Walls, fleets and revenue as the bases of power (1.1–19, 1.140–144). - **Reconstructed speeches.** Speeches as analysis, set in pairs to expose the arguments on each side (1.22). - **No gods.** Oracles, eclipses and portents matter because people believe in them (7.50), not as causes. ## 6. Fact-check Thucydides is very often the only source for what he reports, so many claims can only be checked against inscriptions, archaeology or later writers. The table covers the claims the source videos make, his own headline claims, and a few checkable details. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must" (Glenn video, 10:40) | **Supported, with a nuance** | Crawley 5.89, word for word. It is what Thucydides has the Athenian envoys say in a closed meeting he did not attend, written up as a dialogue under his stated method for speeches (1.22). It is not his own maxim | | Melos, 416 BC: men killed, women and children enslaved, 500 colonists (Glenn) | **Supported** | 5.116, winter 416/15. Thucydides is the main source; the Video Summaries note gives the same verdict | | The real cause of the war was the growth of Athens and the fear it caused in Sparta (Chapple, 56:20; Thucydides 1.23) | **Supported as Thucydides' claim; disputed as history** | Crawley 1.23. Kagan argues the war was avoidable and reads Thucydides as a revisionist ([Yale lecture 19](https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205/lecture-19)); Nye and Waldron, drawing on Kagan and Badian, reject the rising-power reading ([Wikipedia, Thucydides Trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap)) | | In 12 of 16 cases of a rising power confronting a ruling one, the result was war (Allison, via Chapple, 56:02) | **Disputed** | The figure comes from Allison's [2015 essay](https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/thucydides-trap-are-us-and-china-headed-war). Critics, among them Nye, Waldron and Freedman, say cases are miscoded (e.g. 1914, Russo-Japanese War) and the sample is small ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap)). Chapple flags the small sample himself | | The Megarian decree was the "fuse" of the war (Chapple) | **Disputed** | Thucydides records the decree in the Spartan ultimatum (1.139) but treats it as a pretext beside the "real cause". Whether it mattered more is the subject of a long debate, e.g. de Ste. Croix 1972 (not read here) and Kagan's lectures | | The plague killed perhaps a quarter of Athenians (Chapple) | **Supported as a modern estimate** | Thucydides gives only 4,400 hoplites and 300 cavalry dead, "besides a number of the multitude that was never ascertained" (3.87). Wikipedia gives an estimated 75,000–100,000, about 25% ([Plague of Athens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Athens)) | | The plague was typhoid fever | **Disputed** | Papagrigorakis et al. 2006 found *Salmonella enterica*-like DNA in Kerameikos dental pulp; Shapiro et al. replied that the result "is not typhoid" and raised contamination concerns. About 30 pathogens have been proposed ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Athens); [Papagrigorakis 2006](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2005.09.001)) | | Thucydides had the plague himself | **Supported (self-report)** | 2.48: "I had the disease myself". No independent source | | The war lasted twenty-seven years, peace included | **Supported** | 5.26 ("thrice nine years"); 431–404 BC by the usual dating | | Thucydides was exiled for twenty years after Amphipolis | **Supported (self-report)** | 5.26; 4.104–107 for the loss of Amphipolis in winter 424/3 | | Speeches report what was said | **Not claimed by Thucydides** | 1.22: he gave what the occasion demanded, keeping to the general sense. How freely he composed is debated ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War)) | | This was the greatest war yet (1.1) | **Disputed (a judgement)** | He argues it against the Persian Wars (1.23). Kitto suggested he meant greatest in suffering, not significance (via Wikipedia) | | An eclipse of the moon delayed the Athenian retreat from Syracuse (7.50) | **Supported** | The lunar eclipse of 27 August 413 BC fits (standard eclipse tables; general knowledge, not checked here) | | The Malian Gulf tsunami of 426 was caused by an earthquake (3.89) | **Supported** | Thucydides links the sea's withdrawal and return to the earthquake, often called the first recorded cause-and-effect explanation of a tsunami ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War)) | | The narrative ends in 411 BC, mid-sentence | **Supported** | Gutenberg #7142 ends at 8.109 with Tissaphernes' sacrifice at Ephesus, followed by a later note on the twenty-first year | | Thucydides is impartial | **Disputed** | Generally praised as even-handed, even about his own failure at Amphipolis; but Badian argued for a pro-Athenian bias and Popper for an oligarchic one, and his hostility to Cleon is plain ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War)) | | Delian League treasury moved to Athens in 454 BC, partly funding the Parthenon (Chapple) | **Unverified here** | Not in Thucydides. The usual date comes from the Athenian tribute lists and Plutarch's *Pericles*; I did not check a source for it | ## 7. Citations and references **Works and figures the book engages** (with passages) - Homer: the Catalogue of Ships and the size of the Trojan expedition (1.9–11), always cited with a caution about poets' exaggeration. - Herodotus, never named, is generally taken to be the target of the remarks on prize compositions and "romance" (1.20–22, via Wikipedia). - Hellanicus, named and faulted for treating the Pentecontaetia briefly and with inexact dates (1.97). - Treaty texts quoted in full, among them the one-year armistice (4.117–118), the Peace of Nicias (within 5.13–24) and the Spartan–Persian treaties (8.18, 8.37, 8.58), section numbers per Wikipedia's outline. - Oracles and sayings: "A Dorian war shall come and with it death" (plague or famine, 2.54); the "thrice nine years" prophecy (5.26). - Harmodius and Aristogiton, corrected against popular tradition (1.20, 6.54–59). **Secondary sources** - Donald Kagan, *The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War* (1969), *The Archidamian War* (1974), *The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition* (1981), *The Fall of the Athenian Empire* (1987); one-volume *The Peloponnesian War* (Viking 2003). Not read; the four-volume titles and dates are from general knowledge, the 2003 volume from Wikipedia. - G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, *The Origins of the Peloponnesian War* (Duckworth 1972). Not read. - Simon Hornblower, *A Commentary on Thucydides* (Oxford, vols. 1–2 1991–1996); W. Robert Connor, *Thucydides* (Princeton 1984); Jacqueline de Romilly, *Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism* (1963); Clifford Orwin, *The Humanity of Thucydides* (Princeton 1994). Listed in Wikipedia's bibliography; not read. - Victor Davis Hanson, *A War Like No Other* (Random House 2005). Not read. - Graham Allison, *Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?* (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2017), and the 2015 *Atlantic* essay. - M. J. Papagrigorakis et al., "DNA examination of ancient dental pulp incriminates typhoid fever as a probable cause of the Plague of Athens", *International Journal of Infectious Diseases* 10.3 (2006): 206–14, and the reply by Shapiro et al. **Links used in this note** - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7142 - https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0200 ; https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0247 ; https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0199 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Athens - https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16200353W ; https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16200330W ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7721438M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL20766478M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL35652314M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL698489M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22680007M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25404583M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7693906M - https://archive.org/details/pelocrawleyr00thucuoft ; https://archive.org/details/eightbookesofpel00thucuoft ; https://archive.org/details/a609583001thucuoft ; https://archive.org/details/a609583002thucuoft ; https://archive.org/details/thucydideswithen01thucuoft ; https://archive.org/details/peloponnesianwar0000thuc_h4g9 ; https://archive.org/details/landmarkthucydid0000thuc - https://librivox.org/the-history-of-the-peloponnesian-war-by-thucydides/ ; https://librivox.org/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war2-thucydides/ - https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/312183 ; https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/784964 ; https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/239276 - https://www.audible.com/pd/The-History-of-the-Peloponnesian-War-Audiobook/B002V5B8NA ; https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Peloponnesian-War-Audiobook/B009DJMB7Y ; https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Peloponnesian-War-Audiobook/B0CYMBY2C5 ; https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/the-peloponnesian-war-unabridged/id564117185 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050bcf1 - https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205 ; https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205/lecture-17 ; https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205/lecture-18 ; https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205/lecture-19 ; https://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205/lecture-20 - https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united-states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/ ; https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/thucydides-trap-are-us-and-china-headed-war - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2005.09.001 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3WGPomiOJs ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyyxQcZdADs