Head of Thucydides

This is a marble head-portrait of Thucydides (460-395), an Athenian military general and historian. Thucydides both fought in and wrote about the Peloponnesian War, a bitter conflict between the Greek city-states Athens and Sparta from 431-404 BC. His failure to defend the city of Amphipolis (in northern Greece) against the Spartans led to his twenty-year exile from Athens and political life. Thucydides was one of the first historians to attribute the causes of war to human affair rather than to an intervention of the gods, consulting eyewitnesses and written documents in his research. He seems to have died before completing his history as the last years of fighting are not included此为修昔底德（Thucydides，公元前460年—前395年）的大理石头像，其身份为雅典军事将领与历史学家。修昔底德亲身参与了公元前431年至前404年间希腊城邦雅典与斯巴达之间的伯罗奔尼撒战争（Peloponnesian War）——一场惨烈的武装冲突，并将这场战争的相关内容写入著作。他因未能驻守希腊北部的安菲波利斯（Amphipolis）抵御斯巴达军队，被逐出雅典并脱离政坛，流亡时长达二十年。修昔底德是首批将战争起因归结于人类社会活动而非神意干涉的历史学家之一，其研究过程中会援引亲历者证词与书面文献史料。由于著作未收录战事最后数年的战况，修昔底德似乎在完成整部史学著作前便已离世。