Book I
Thucydides
Thucydides wrote amidst the Peloponnesian War's chaos, aiming to offer a clear-eyed record immune to the allure of myth and bias. His assertion challenges the comfortable belief in human progress as linear or transformative. Instead, he presents history as a cycle, where patterns of human behavior—driven by ambition, fear, and self-interest—inevitably recur. This view stands in contrast to the more optimistic belief in history as a march towards enlightenment and improvement.