The Risks and Rewards of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War

S. N. Jaffe at War on the Rocks.

"Yet the History is more about unsettling the reader’s pieties than it is about confirming them. In my view, the book is intended to bring about a kind of political chastening, for it throws the multitude of errors that forever bedevil politics into vivid relief. In other words, part of its goal is to shape the reader’s vision of the possibilities but also the limits of political life. This is one of the reasons the work is of interest to political theorists. I also believe the History is intended as a vicarious political education for citizens, soldiers, and statesmen, communicated through the medium of the case study of a single, cataclysmic war — for war itself, as Thucydides says, is a violent teacher."

See Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volume 6, and (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 5.