Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War : Books VI - VII

A Companion to the Penguin Translation of Books VI and VII of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War with Introduction and Commentary by N. K. Rutter.

Thucydides thought that the war he chose to write about, the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, was the greatest in Greek history in length and geographical extent, in the scale of the armaments employed and in the amount of suffering and destruction caused.

Books VI and VII describe the disastrous Athenian expedition to Sicily, and their powerful narrative reinforces Thucydides' own view of the immense scale on which the war was fought and of the terrible suffering it caused.

This commentary elucidates for non-Greek speakers the historical and literary aspects of an account that has always been regarded as a supreme example of historical writing.