History of the Peloponnesian War
Ἱστορίαι
EditionTranslated from the original Greek
An Athenian general who lost a battle and was exiled wrote the history of the war that broke his city, and wrote it for all time.
Also in the library: the complete Korean translation.
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About the book
In 431 BC Athens and Sparta went to war, and Thucydides, an Athenian, began to record it at once, believing it would be the greatest war yet. He served as a general, was exiled after losing Amphipolis, and spent twenty years gathering evidence from both sides. His history runs from the causes of the war through Pericles’ funeral speech, the plague, civil war in Corcyra, the Melian dialogue, and the destruction of the Athenian expedition to Sicily, and breaks off unfinished in 411 BC.
This complete English translation is made directly from the Greek of the Oxford text. It keeps the eight books and sets each of the 917 traditional chapters as one paragraph with its number, and adds short notes on dates, people, and places.
Highlights
- It has been composed as a possession for all time, not as a prize piece to be heard for the moment.
- For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men.
Contents
Anyone can read up to the first chapter. Chapters with a lock are open to free members.
Colophon
Translated from the original Greek. Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.Full colophon
History of the Peloponnesian War
Original title · Ἱστορίαι
Author · Thucydides of Athens (c. 460–c. 400 BC)
Translator · Ether Library
Composition · Written in Greek in the last decades of the fifth century BC; unfinished.
Source text · A public-domain digital transcription of H. Stuart Jones, Thucydidis Historiae, Oxford Classical Texts (1900–1902; revised by J. E. Powell, 1942), published by the Perseus Digital Library. Translated directly from the Greek.
Extent · Complete and unabridged · eight books · 917 chapters, each one paragraph, as in the source · 96 short translator’s notes
Copyright · The original work is in the public domain.
This translation · Translated from the Greek by Ether Library. The English text is © Ether Library and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0): you may copy and share it for noncommercial purposes, with attribution.
Edition · English edition 1.0 · October 2026
Typography · Set in Lora (SIL Open Font License 1.1). Cover painting and design by Ether Library.
Original in the public domain · English translation CC BY-NC 4.0
Ether Library · No. 0002