Two thousand years ago the Greek historian Thucydides chronicled what he saw as history's greatest conflict: the 27-year war between Athens and Sparta. He touted his History of the Peloponnesian War as a possession for all time. No humility there. But he was right to boast. We still study—and still learn—from a book about rowboats and spears in fifth-century B.C. Greece.
War pits people against people. And human nature remains largely constant. So no matter what weapons we carry, similar dynamics pervade human strife from age to age. Rowboats and spears in the age of Thucydides, smart bombs and nuclear-powered submarines in ours; conflict is conflict.
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