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The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War. Edited by Robert B. Strassler. New York: Free Press, 1996. ISBN 0-684-82815-4. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Glossary. Appendixes. Pp. xxxiii, 711. $45.00.
Strassler presents, lightly edited, the venerable Crawley translation together with notes, an introduction by Victor Hanson, appendixes on topics relevant to Thucydides by Hanson, Strassler, and others, maps, tables, and other aids to the nonspecialist reader. Strassler is the first to offer a complete one-volume translation with commentary in English. Thucydides's work, with its terse style, more than 1,500 different proper names, and rapid shifts in scene, surely calls for the kind of treatment Strassler and his editors at the Free Press have given it.
Particularly remarkable are the maps, which identify, often on a facing page, many of the towns, cities, and land features to which Thucydides sometimes confusingly alludes. Military historians especially will welcome the table...