Written by Thucydides around 400 AD, The History of the Peloponnesian War is a meticulous account by the Athenian general of the extended struggle that raged between Athens and Sparta for the better part of twenty years. Thucydides eschews the romance of heroics and dramatics and his precise and thorough account of the ill-fated conflict is one of the first surviving scholarly works of history. Analyses of the History generally fall into one of two camps. On the one hand are those who view the work as an objective and scientific piece of history. The judgement of J. B. Bury reflects this traditional interpretation of the work: "[The History is] severe in its detachment, written from a purely intellectual point of view, unencumbered with platitudes and moral judgements, cold and critical." A more recent interpretation, associated with reader-response criticism, argues that the History is better understood as a piece of literature than an objective record of the past. This view is embodied in the words of W. R. Connor, who describes Thucydides as "an artist who responds to, selects and skillfully arranges his material, and develops its symbolic and emotional potential."