The History of the Peloponnesian War is a landmark of classical scholarship that historians and strategists have studied for about 2400 years, each of them keen to reveal what Thucydides really meant. This précis argues there are three faces of Thucydides: his own, stylistic warts and all; next, historiographical critiques of the original; and then, what neoconservative pundits have latterly affixed on him.