Polly Low (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides

Excerpt

Thucydides—his name in Greek has a “k”, but that became a “c” in Latin, and the established English pronunciation has long been something like “Thoo-siddy-dees” rather than “Thoo-kiddy-dees”—was an Athenian aristocrat born some time in the middle of the fifth century BCE. We know little about his private life. He must have been married, and ancient sources mention a son and daughter; his family had connections to Thrace, the region to the north of the Aegean Sea, including involvement in gold mining there. We know little more about his public career. Certainly it involved substantial military service, especially in the war that broke out in 431 between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies and subjects: during the winter of 424-3, he held a military command in the northern Aegean as one of the Athenians’ ten elected strategoi, generals, which implies both experience and competence on his part. This command also proved to be the end of his public career, as he failed—despite his best endeavors, he insisted—to reach the Athenian colony of Amphipolis in time to stop it falling to a Spartan army. As a result, he was exiled from Athens, and spent the next twenty or so years travelling around Greece, presumably living off his family wealth. He died shortly after the defeat of Athens in 404. Ancient accounts disagree as to whether he had returned to the city by then, and whether he died of illness or was murdered for reasons unknown. …