Throughout antiquity, Thucydides was considered the greatest historian and the one most worthy of emulation. In the opinion of the ancients he had managed to compose a work that for technical virtuosity, moral point, and emotional impact rivalled the greatest monuments of poetry and prose: what Homer was to epic, Demosthenes to oratory, Plato to philosophy, Thucydides was to history. Such was the power of his spell that when Dionysius of Halicarnassus comes to treat Thucydides’ work as a literary effort, he has to apologize even for suggesting that certain elements in the work could be improved.