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Thucydides was probably born about around the year 400 BBCE.C Ironically, the exact year information about his own life is not known. The sources on the life of the great historian are fragmentary and often unreliable. His Thucydides was born in the city of Athens, and his father , Olorus, was Olorus who said to have been likely a member of the Athenian elite and Thucydides was born in the city of Athens. It is possible, based Based on his father’s name that , he was may have been descended from Thracian royalty and, indeed . This view is likely because when he got older he was later to own owned both a gold mine and many lands quite a bit of land in the region.<ref> Connor, W. Robert, Thucydides (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984), p. 117</ref>.  Thucydides was a skeptic and adopted a relativist approach to justice and morality, in his work and it appears that he was apparently greatly influenced by the philosophers known as the Sophists. His philosophical position is that human beings are motivated by power and needs’ and they are largely conditioned by society and their environmentneeds. In 431 BC, the Peloponnesian War broke out between Sparta and Athens, which . The Peloponnesian was a brutal conflict for dominance in of the Greek world (431-404 BC). Apparently, in In 421 BC, Thucydides was elected a strategos or general by the Athenian popular Assembly. This would indicate appointment suggests that he was already an experienced military commander and was a well-known public figure. It is clear based on the reading of his later work that he was an admirer of the Athenian politician Pericles and was possibly associated with the popular party in the city.  He was sent to Thrace possibly because of his connections with the region and he did have had considerable influence with the Thracians. In the winter of 423 BC, the Spartans attacked the strategic city of Amphipolis, which was not far from where Thucydides and an Athenian force were based. The Athenian commander at Amphipolis sends sent a message for help. The Spartan commander, Brasidas was aware that Thucydides was nearby, and he offered the citizens of Amphipolis, generous terms. This clever strategy meant the Spartans were able to take the city before Thucydides arrived.  When news arrived in Athens that Amphipolis was captured by the enemy there was an outcry. The Athenian Assembly voted to exile Thucydides for his perceived failure to save the city. All his life, he maintained that he simply arrived too late to save the city and it does seem that he was unfairly treated. It appears that the historian was to spend most of the rest of his life, unable to return to Athens. He was a very resourceful man and he used his status as an exile to travel throughout the Greek world and he was able to collect the eyewitness accounts of both sides in the Peloponnesian War. Moreover, he was an independently wealthy man, and this meant in his own words ‘I had leisure to observe affairs somewhat particularly’ <ref>Thucydides, 2, 5</ref>.  After his exile from Athens, the sources on his life becoming even more fragmentary and unreliable. In one account it is claimed that he was permitted to return to the city of his birth and once again entered into public life. In another work, it is reported that Thucydides was murdered in Thrace. What we do know is that his great history of the Peloponnesian War ended in 411 BC. It is widely believed that this was possibly the year of his death. His work of recording the war between Athens and Sparta was continued by others. Thucydides only wrote one work and he devoted his life to it.  His History history of the Peloponnesian War is regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of histography of all time and it has also been praised for its literary style. The work of Thucydides was admired by the Romans. However, after the Fall of Rome, the works of Thucydides were little read and it was only with in the Renaissance that interest was revived in the great historyhis work. His work history was enormously influential, and it was even translated by the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Thucydides' history was widely regarded as the model work for all historians until the emergence of new ideas about histography, in the 19th century, popularized by among others Von Ranke.