Along with using Robert Strassler's, The Landmark Thucydides, while reading the original text in translation, Donald Kagan's, The Peloponnesian War, is a masterpiece of elucidation. The text is clear and well-written while expounding on the War mostly covered by Thucydides. Kagan also is supplemented by maps not available in Strassler that I found extremely helpful to understand Thucydides while imagining the personalities involved, such as Alcibiades, the terrain, and battle conditions. This is a masterful one-volume work for general readers of the period which is much more than a simple summary of his four-volume corpus for specialists published by Cornell University Press.
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