In 1629 Thomas Hobbes published a translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Born in Athens in 460 BCE, the year that the first Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta broke out, Thucydides had spent much of his life contemplating the nature of war and the role of human nature in war. His account of the conflict between Athens and Sparta is of ten seen as the first ‘scientific history’ and the first work of political realism.
