It is mainly because of Winckelmann’s appreciation of Diodorus’ proem to Book XII in his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), rather than because of the teachings of Thucydides’ Book I, that the fifty-years period also known as Pentecontaetia did often appear in the periodization of the fifth century B.C. in the modern histories of Greek antiquity. The author also emphasizes the need to avoid stereotypes drawn from art history, in order to (re)formulate the periodization of the fifth-century Greek history.
