Thucydides (c.460 – 400 bc) was a member of the aristocratic Athenian family which provided the opponents of the democratic leader Pericles, but himself became an admirer of Pericles, though not of democracy except when guided by Pericles. His subject is the Peloponnesian War. This was fought between Athens and Sparta, the two leading powers of fifth-century Greece, and eventually won by Sparta. Thucydides started work at the outset of the war in 431, expecting it to be ‘more momentous than any previous conflict’. He served as a general in the war, but was exiled after failing to keep the city of Amphipolis out of Spartan hands in 424/3. He returned to Athens at the end of the war, but although a few sentences refer tolater events his surviving narrative breaks off in the autumn of 411.He is more narrowly focused on the war than his predecessorHerodotus (c.485 – 425) had been on the Persian Wars at the begin-ning of the fifth century, and his work has great intellectual power:he was energetic and intelligent in establishing the facts and pene-trating in his judgement of general issues; he explains events whollyin human terms; the work is skilfully composed, with a blend ofplain and vivid narrative passages, and with speeches which oftenexplore the nature of power. Thucydides’ history is indeed the‘permanent legacy’ which he intended it to be.Martin Hammond was born in 1944 and educated at WinchesterCollege and Balliol College, Oxford. He has taught at St Paul’s School,Harrow School, and Eton College, where he was Head of Classicsfrom 1974 to 1980, and Master in College from 1980 to 1984. He wasHeadmaster of the City of London School from 1984 to 1990, andof Tonbridge School from 1990 to his retirement in 2005. He hasalso translated the Iliad (Penguin, 1987), the Odyssey (Duckworth,2000), and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (Penguin, 2006). Heis married, with two children