It’s in Thucydides that what we call ‘technology’ receives its first thematic treatment for the life of man. In order to fully recognize this, I begin here with an introduction to Thucydides by way of Hobbes and what we mean by our concept of history. At issue is how our contemporary understanding of history poses problems for understanding that Thucydides is providing us with something very different – something much richer and far more encompassing – than our own understanding of history as a field of inquiry. I then carefully examine the opening paragraph of Thucydides to show how so very much of our theme in this series unfolds from what he provides in that first paragraph.