Thucydides, or Plato?

Statue of Thucydides in Vienna
A statue of Thucydides in Vienna. Photo: ChrisJL/flickr

The first important contributor to ‘international’ thought is usually considered to be Thucydides.   Though Herodotus is the “father of history” and it was Socrates that first brought philosophy ‘down from the heavens’ and into the agora, Thucydides was the first to deal with the relations among and between political communities in a theoretical manner.