Chapter 9, Thucydides: The Thing That Hath Been Is That Which Shall Be Summary and Analysis

Thucydides was one of the Athenian generals during the first part of the Peloponnesian War. By the time the war ended, he was able to adopt the role of objective observer and write an account of events. His history of the war is the classic study. However, the modern reader must approach it with an appreciation of the Greek mindset from which Thucydides observed and wrote.

"The modern scientific historian looks at his subject very much as the geologist does. History is a chronicle of fact considered for itself alone. There is no pattern in the web unrolled from the loom of time and no profit in studying it except to gain information. That was not the point of...