Seconding this - I would add that the entire debate at Lacedaemon (book 1 67-88) and Pericles' Funeral Oration (book 2 34-46) are especially illuminating. The funeral oration is one of the surviving accounts of Athenian democracy from an indirect viewpoint, and Thucydides presents an interesting comparison between death by battle vs. death by plague (timely perhaps?).