A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume II: Books IV-V. 24

This is the second volume of a three-volume historical and literary commentary of the eight books of Thucydides, the great fifth-century BC historian of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.Books IV-V. 24 cover the years 425-421 BC and contain the Pylos-Spakteria narrative, the Delion Campaign, and Brasidas' operations in the north of Greece.This volume ends with the Peace of Nikias and the alliance between Athens and Sparta. A valuable feature of this volume is the full thematic introduction which discusses such topics as Thucydides and Herodotus, Thucydides' presentation of Brasidas, Thucydides and kinship, speech - direct and indirect - in IV-V. 24, Thucydides and epigraphy (including personal names), IV-V. 24 as a work of art: innovative or merely incomplete?Thucydides intended his work to be `an everlasting possession' and the continuing importance of his work is undisputed.Simon Hornblower's commentary, by translating every passage of Greek commented on, for thefirst t