Excerpt from Political Parties in Athens During the Peloponnesian War But if the study of Athenian politics in this period has special importance, it has also special difficulties. The original authorities for political events are very inadequate, and this deficiency of original materials has led to the multiplication of modern works, since the absence of certain informa tion leaves a wide field to be filled up according to the views of individual writers. Hence the most widely divergent and even contradictory theories find supporters, and between these theories it is some times Impossible to decide. Our investigations often fail to attain to any positive result, and many ques tions remain in the realm of complete uncertainty or at best of mere probability. Besides the deficiency of available materials there is another general characteristic of the original authorities which must not be left out of view. The bias, which must have influenced them in writing on political events, is variously estimated, and this is largely responsible for the differences of modern writers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.