Reply #52: I read Thucydides's "History of the Peloponnesian War" recently, wonderful read!

[Odin2005]

Thucydides himself was an Athenian aristocrat and sided with the aristocrats and that biases him somewhat, but in general his work is excellent and brilliant. Unfortunately the aristocratic bias has survived down into history, making Athens's foreign policy thought of as "imperialist", which is misleading, the accusation of "Imperialism" was part of the spin churned out by the aristocrats. The Peloponnesian War was just as much a class war, or even more so, then it was an actual military conflict. with democrats across Greece siding with Athens and the aristocrats siding with Sparta.

The ideology of the aristocrats was formalized by Plato in his Republic. Plato betrayed his teacher, Socrates (who was an ardent supporter of the democracy, though he got in trouble criticizing politicians and trying to turn young aristocrats to the democratic side, which lead to his death), by torturing Socrates's gentle Humanism into a sick, twisted Totalitarianin ideology that would of "liquidated" anyone like Socrates.

Plato's political ideology was used by the Fascists, and was adored by Leo Strauss, the granddaddy of the Neocons.