Ships, sea battles, and naval policy are key features in Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides—who served as a general and commanded a squadron of triremes himself (4.104.4-5; 4.106.3)—clearly viewed naval power as the key to supremacy in the Aegean (1.15); Athens' rise to empire and fall from glory was inextricably bound with her fortunes at sea. [par 1]