Thucydides

I was an Athenian who held command in Thrace in the eighth year of the war. Brasidas took Amphipolis before I could arrive; for that failure my city exiled me for twenty years. I had estates and mines at Scapte Hyle, and among the Thracians I found safety, witnesses, and time.

Exile stripped me of office and gave me vantage. I spoke with men of both alliances, compared their tales, set down what I saw and what I could verify. Where I report speeches, I shaped them to the sense of what was said, keeping closest to the matter. I trusted neither rumor nor pleasing story.

I fell ill in the plague and survived; therefore I described it plainly, so that if it returned one might know it again. I traced how fear, gain, and honor move states; how stasis tears cities; how empire tempts Athens and hardens her enemies.

My writing follows summers and winters and ends unfinished in the twenty-first year, when other hands continued the account. I wrote not to praise gods or men, but to leave a possession for all time, that those who inquire may judge war without ornament.