Status Updates From La Guerre du Péloponnèse

Book I lays out the start of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta and explains why it mattered so much. Thucydides doesn’t jump straight into the fighting—instead, he takes time to set up the historical and political background. While specific disputes triggered the conflict, the deeper cause of the Peloponnesian War was Athens’ growing power and the fear it inspired in Sparta.

So much of world history can be seen as an attempt to transcend the brutal terms of Athens as they prepared to crush Melos:

“…since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

International law, much of religion, philosophy, and diplomacy all seek to escape this ‘law of nature’