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Which war did Thucydides describe in his History of the Peloponnesian War?
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Thucydides
Thucydides manuscript, 3rd century bc (Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, P. Hamburg 163).
Thucydides described the Peloponnesian War, a major conflict that took place in the 5th century BCE.1
This war was a struggle for supremacy between Athens and Sparta, along with their respective allies, the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League. Lasting from 431 to 404 BCE, the conflict engulfed nearly the entire ancient Greek world. Thucydides' work, the History of the Peloponnesian War, is recognized as the first recorded political and moral analysis of a nation's war policies.12