Thucydides lost a city, got exiled, and used the exile to write history
In the winter of 424 BC the Athenian general Thucydides arrived too late to save Amphipolis from Sparta. Athens banished him for twenty years. He turned the punishment into an advantage, travelling among both sides of the Peloponnesian War and writing an account he hoped would be a possession for all time.
Almost everything reliable about him comes from a few lines in his own book: an Athenian from the district of Halimous, son of Olorus, a man who caught the plague and survived it. That epidemic killed Pericles, and his description includes an early observation that survivors seemed protected from catching it again. His family probably held a Thracian estate with gold mines, which would explain the Thracian royal name Olorus and the wealth that let him research full time after his fall.
Sent to Thasos as a general because of his standing in Thrace, he received a plea for help from Amphipolis. The Spartan commander Brasidas, knowing Thucydides was near, offered generous terms quickly, and the city surrendered before the Athenian ships came. Thucydides denied blame, yet he does not play down his own failure. Later tales, such as the young Thucydides weeping with joy at a lecture by Herodotus, are probably invented.
He began writing when the war broke out in 431 BC, convinced it would outstrip every earlier Greek conflict. The narrative stops abruptly in 411 BC, perhaps because he died mid-work, and later scholars, probably at the Library of Alexandria, divided it into eight books. He admired Pericles and scorned the demagogues who followed, especially Cleon. Ancient reports of his death conflict, with some placing it after 397 BC.
Unlike Herodotus, he left the gods out of his explanations, relying on eyewitnesses, documents and cause and effect, which is why some call him the father of scientific history. He is also claimed as a founder of political realism, which sees fear and self-interest driving states; the Melian dialogue and Pericles's Funeral Oration remain staples at universities and military colleges. He noted wryly that people reshape memories to fit present suffering, recalling an old prophecy of plague rather than one of famine.
Source: Thucydides
