This book explains in detail Thucydides' abstract model of internal war, and then shows how, by the terms of the model itself, Thucydides perceived and narrated the Peloponnesian War not as a conventional war but as an internal conflict. Viewing the great war as a destructive internal conflict had profound consequences for Thucydides' understanding of this particular war and all wars in general, and of Greece as a whole.

This book explains in detail Thucydides' abstract model of internal war, and then shows how, by the terms of the model itself, Thucydides perceived and narrated the Peloponnesian War not as a conventional war but as an internal conflict. Viewing the great war as a destructive internal conflict had profound consequences for Thucydides' understanding of this particular war and all wars in general, and of Greece as a whole.