Thucydides

Thucydides was an Athenian historian and general who lived from about 460 to about 400 BC. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth century BC war between Sparta and Athens, carrying the story down to the year 411 BC. He is often called the father of scientific history by those who accept his claim to have applied strict standards of impartiality, evidence gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to the intervention of the gods. He is also named as a father of political realism, the school that sees relations between states as shaped by fear and self-interest. His text is still studied at universities and military colleges, the Melian dialogue is treated as a seminal text of international relations theory, and his version of Pericles's Funeral Oration is widely read by political theorists, historians and classicists.