# History of the Peloponnesian War

- id: peloponnesian-war
- original title: Ἱστορίαι / Historiai
- author: Thucydides
- language: Greek
- composed: c. 410 BCE–400 BCE
- field: history

The war that broke the Greek world, written to be useful forever. Its English chain begins with Thomas Hobbes, who translated it as a warning.

## The chain

- **c. 1448–1452** Greek -> Latin, translation [attested]
  Lorenzo Valla (translator), Pope Nicholas V (commissioner), Rome
  Commissioned for the papal library project. For a century Europe's Thucydides was Valla's Latin; the first English (1550) was made from a French version of it, at third hand from the Greek.
  Evidence: N. G. Wilson 1992
- **1629** Greek -> English, translation [attested]
  Thomas Hobbes (translator), London
  The first English made directly from the Greek. Hobbes said he translated 'the most politic historiographer that ever writ' so his countrymen could see what democracies do in long wars; Leviathan was the sequel.
  Evidence: Thomas Hobbes 1629
- **1848–1849** Greek -> English, translation [attested]
  Henry Dale (translator), London
  The literal Bohn's Library version of the Rev. Henry Dale, 1848-49; the text carried in this library through the Perseus First1KGreek encoding of the 1851-52 printing.
  Evidence: Henry Dale 1848; Thothica 2026

## Worth knowing

The medieval West did not read Thucydides; he returned through papal Rome, where Valla turned him into Latin for Nicholas V around 1452. The first English (Nicolls, 1550) was made from a French version of Valla's Latin, at third hand. Hobbes went back to the Greek in 1629 because, he said, Thucydides best showed how democracies fare in war. The Victorian crib of Henry Dale is the English this library carries.

## Sources

- N. G. Wilson (1992). From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Duckworth.
- Thomas Hobbes (1629). Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre. London.

Confidence grades: attested (named in the medieval record or settled in scholarship), probable (standard view with real uncertainty), disputed (scholars disagree).