'My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever,' Thucydides

Ancient Greek historian Thucydides' masterful first-hand account chronicles the devastating wars between Athens and Sparta during the 5th century BC. It was a life-and-death struggle that reshaped the face of ancient Greece and pitted Athenian democracy against Spartan militarism.

Thucydides himself was an Athenian aristocrat and general who went on to record what he saw as the greatest war of all time, applying a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth admired by historians today. And as father of modern Realpolitik, his influence fed into the works of Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbs and the politics of the Cold War and beyond.

Today: the shocking defeat of the Spartans on the island of Pylos.
Abridger: Tom Holland
Reader: David Horovitch
Producer: Justine Willett. Show less