The earliest of historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, provided Greek and Western thinkers with the first efforts to record, examine, and analyze human events. As the latter explicitly stated at the beginning of his history of the Peloponnesian War, “It will be enough for me…if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future.” Herodotus and Thucydides were indeed the “fathers of history” and, like so many who have followed in their footsteps, their histories focused on war – specifically, the origins and course of the two great wars that buffeted the world of fifth-century B.C. Greece. The first involved the epic struggle of the Greek city-states against the Persian Empire (490–479 B.C.); the second, the terrible, debilitating Peloponnesian War between the alliances of Greek city-states led by Athens and Sparta (431–404 B.C.).

Yet, neither historian involved himself much in discussing the peace making that came afterwards, for reasons which in retrospect are understandable: Herodotus, perhaps because the struggle against the Persians continued well after the defeat of the Persian Army at Plataea in 479 B.C.; Thucydides, because death robbed him of the opportunity to complete his history of the Peloponnesian War.