The Peloponnesian War (Thucydides)

I added this to my reading list when I first decided to make this a universal human knowledge project, and not simply a human literature project.  Philosophy selections will be thrown in for the same reason.

It's also important for me to read this because I want to better understand Picture This by Joseph Heller when I finally get back to it.  That book was amazing, and it would probably be even more amazing if I knew exactly what went on between the Athenians and the Spartans.

Thucydides was also prominently mentioned in the discussions of Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order by Charles Hill, interviewed on several of my favorite podcasts last year.  It seemed a worthwhile commentary on the things I've been reading, and the Peloponnesian War is the basis of the rest of the historical comparisons in that book.

I purchased my copy at the same time I purchased Hill's book in early 2011-- at the time, I thought it was a pressing purchase.  I chose the translation by Steven Lattimore, son of Richmond Lattimore, who I used for Homer.

But I was so impressed with the Landmark Herodotus, that I've also borrowed the Landmark Thucydides from the Mount Prospect Library.  If nothing else, it's maps should be helpful as I orient my mental space toward the battle action.  And I started by reading its appendices, which give a nice background to the political and cultural, and military life in which Thucidydes lived and wrote and in which the war was fought.

I don't know if I'll be keeping detailed notes or if it will follow the patterns of the Herodotus.  I've got a little more time to finish this, so we shall see.