If Thucydides’ historical material is less rich and enchanting than The Persian Wars of Herodotus, his carefully chosen military episodes and political speeches by themselves explicitly reveal cause and effect (1.97.2), follow a discernible chronology (5.20.2–3), and often lead to more profound and general truths about human experience (3.82–84; 5.85–116). And perhaps most importantly, Thucydides suffered through a war (5.26.5) far more lengthy, brutal, and horrific than the allied Greeks’ noble defense of their country a half century earlier, an experience that must in some part account for
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The two historians contrasted.
