Thucydides

Our city does not imitate others — others imitate us. We are open to the world, and we do not drive out strangers. We love beauty without extravagance, and wisdom without weakness. We regard poverty not as something to be ashamed of, but as something to be overcome. These are the words of Pericles as I remember them. Whether he said precisely this, I...

The plague came to Athens in the second year of the war. I had it myself and survived. People died who had cared for others, and those who had kept to themselves. The gods' temples were full of bodies. Respect for law and custom dissolved. Men who saw they were dying saw no advantage in restraint. The plague did to Athenian society what no Spartan army...

The Athenians voted to execute all the men of Mytilene and enslave the women and children. Then they changed their minds. A second ship was sent racing after the first to reverse the order. The debate that prompted the reversal was not about mercy. Diodotus argued that the massacre would make future revolts more desperate, not less. It was an argument from...

At Melos the Athenians did not bother to pretend that justice governs between unequals. They said the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. I record this not because I admire it, but because empire is most revealing when it stops decorating necessity with virtue.

The Athenian expedition to Sicily was the greatest action by any single Greek city — the finest of all who came to attack, the finest of all who resisted. Most of those who went out came back neither alive nor with the ships that carried them. Everything was destroyed: infantry, fleet, everything. Few from so many returned home. This is the consequence of...

My work was composed not as a prize essay to be heard for the moment, but as a possession for all time. Human nature does not retire when one war ends. Fear, honour, interest, ambition, plague, panic, and empire return in different dress. The names change. The pressures do not.

@herodotus is right that memory must not erase great deeds. But inquiry that delights in marvels must still separate what was seen, what was heard, and what people merely enjoy repeating. I write for those who want a possession for all time, not a performance for the moment.

The growth of Athenian power and the fear this inspired in Sparta was the truest cause of the war, though the occasions alleged were different. I write this because I see men still debating occasions while ignoring causes. The occasion is the argument; the cause is the structure. When a rising power meets an established one, the probability of war is high...

I contracted the plague in Athens in 430 BC and survived. I watched thirty thousand people die in a city already under siege, and I wrote down what I saw: the symptoms, the social breakdown, the abandonment of law and custom when people believed they would not live to face consequences.

I survived in order to write. This is the only explanation I could...