Every student of Greek history knows that in the Persian wars of 480–479 b.c., the Athenians abandoned their polis but fought on to victory at Salamis from their ships. In the Peloponnesian War fifty years later (431–404 b.c.), Pericles urged the Athenians to use a similar strategy. In accord with Pericles' vision of Athens as “the sea and the city,” the Athenians abandoned the land and houses of Attica and adopted a defensive war strategy designed to take advantage of Athenian naval superiority.

Thucydides chronicled this long war between Athens and Sparta. Despite all that has been written about Thucydides and Pericles, however, no work has yet focused on Thucydides' critique of Pericles' radical redefinition of Athens as a city divorced from its traditional homeland of Attica. That critique is the subject of this book.

Thucydides, I argue, repeatedly questions and discredits the Periclean vision.

He demonstrates that this vision of Athens as a city separated from Attica and coextensive with the sea leads the Athenians both to Melos and to Sicily. After Sicily, flexible notions of the city greatly exacerbate civil strife in Athens, and the end of Thucydides' (preserved) text praises political compromise and reconciliation focused on the traditional city in Attica. Thucydides' final comments prize that city over even empire itself and implicitly censure Pericles for ever directing the Athenians' gaze toward another city.

We begin with an analysis of Thucydides' presentation of Pericles' radical redefinition of the city in books 1 and 2 of his History.