SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL HELLENIC PRIZEA HISTORY TODAY BOOK OF THE YEARAn authoritative translation of Thucydides's masterpiece. Thucydides has been essential reading for centuries. A sweeping narrative of the war between Athens and Sparta that began in 431 BCE and would continue until 404. The only existing contemporary narrative of this conflict, Thucydides's words brim with military, moral and political reflections on challenges that still dominate our world today, from the strife of civil war, to the devastation of widespread plague to the nature of political power. In this dazzling new translation of one of the great masterworks of classical Greece, Robin Waterfield's version of The History of the Peloponnesian War offers an incisive and timely window onto the nature and causes of warfare.