How, then, should one tell such a complex story? The contemporary historian Thucydides, who sought to provide a military and political framework for the war, chose to narrate events in the annalistic tradition. He recorded the fighting year by year from 431 to 411. But at that point his incomplete history breaks off nearly in midsentence. The last seven and a half years are continued by his successor Xenophon, down to the end of the hostilities in 404–403.
