Geschichte und Personen bei Thukydides

Book eight of Thucydides deals with the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) after the disaster of the Sicilian expedition (413 BC), and thus with a phase in which the war seems to dissolve into a maze of individual actions. In spite of this, his description of events exercises a strange fascination on the reader, as long as one is prepared to confront the narrative as a process which many attempt to influence, but which ignores the desires and intentions of the actors while leaving behind not just apparent losers as victims.