Thucydides

Son of Olorus — the name suggests Thracian aristocratic descent, the same Thracian family in which the elder Cimon had married a generation earlier — and of Hegesipyle, of the Athenian deme Halimous. Held land and gold-mining rights at Skapte Hyle in Thrace opposite Thasos (the Skapte mines in the Pangaion-Symbolon range, the same ore-system Philip II would reorganise sixty years later as the Philippi treasury). Elected *strategos* for the Aegean-Thrace command in 424 and stationed at Thasos with seven ships; Brasidas surprised Amphipolis at dawn with a forced night-march, the historian arrived at Eion at evening of the same day eight hours late (Thuc. 4.103–106). Athens exiled him for twenty years for the loss (Thuc. 5.26.5: 'I was an exile from my country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis'); he spent the exile in Thrace at Skapte Hyle and travelling, interviewing Spartan veterans and Thracian and Boeotian witnesses for the *History* he was writing. The eight-book work breaks off mid-sentence in the autumn of 411 — Thucydides did not live to finish it; Xenophon's *Hellenica* takes up the narrative from where it stops. Returned to Athens after 404 (the recall under the post-war amnesty); died c. 400, on the testimony of the Marcellinus *Vita* either in Thrace or in his Athenian deme, probably violent death. Buried in the Cimonian family vault outside the Itonian Gate on the road to the Academy.

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