Thucydides

Thucydides was born in Athens about 460 BC into a wealthy family that owned gold mines in Thrace. As soon as the Peloponnesian War broke out he began to record it, convinced it would be greater than any war before. In 424 BC, as an Athenian general, he failed to save Amphipolis and was exiled for twenty years, which let him gather information from both sides. His history, rigorous, sceptical of myth and penetrating in its analysis of power and human nature, is regarded as the founding work of scientific history and of political realism.