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In his archaeology, the important Greek historian and strategist Thucydides reviews the history of Greece to show that the Peloponnesian War was the largest military undertaking of all time. To prove this, he uses figures from ship catalogues on the one hand, and on the other hand he relies on Homer's Iliad - but at the same time critically questions his figures. Jonas Grethlein uses Thucydides' work to discuss the use of literature as an important historical source and argues that literary works should not only be viewed as artistic creations, but also as documents of their time that offer insights into past cultures, societies and ways of thinking. Jonas Grethlein is Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Heidelberg. After his cancer diagnosis, he has studied Homer and the fundamental questions of human existence in depth. In the series History Telling