ABSTRACT
For Thucydides, the Peloponnesian War provided an opportunity to glean insights into human nature and the morality of power. Thucydides wrote not about the distant past, but about current events, selecting and presenting particulars in a way that made them universally relevant. Although Thucydides acknowledges the role of luck and chance in human events, he thought that it was likely that many events of the future would resemble those of the past. To Thucydides, it seemed that honour and even fear and the desire for security came second to the powerful motive of self-interest. Thucydides was a man whose despair at the ruin brought by war was tempered by an acceptance of the nature of things and an optimism that some excesses may be avoided or diminished by a commitment to careful, rational, and scientific analysis of events and human nature.
