Pericles, famed general and foremost political leader of Athens during her glory days of the 5th century, brought about the downfall of the Athenian empire almost single-handedly. This truth, obvious to contemporary Greeks, is today not generally understood, and we have Thucydides and his History of the Peloponnesian War to thank for the confusion. That Thucydides, a fierce partisan of Pericles and a soldier exiled for his own military misadventures, should wish to reinvent the history of that famous war to show himself and Pericles in a more favorable light is understandable. But how could...