For three decades in the fifth century b.c. the ancient world was torn apart bya conflict that was as dramatic, divisive, and destructive as the world wars of the twentieth century: The Peloponnesian War. Donald Kagan, one of the worldrsquo;s most respected classical, political, and military historians, here presents a new account of this vicious war of Greek against Greek, Athenian against Spartan. The Peloponnesian War is a magisterial work of history written for general readers, offering a fresh examination of a pivotal moment in Western civilization. With a lively, readable narrative that conveys a richly detailed portrait of a vanished world while honoring its timeless relevance. The Peloponnesian War is a chronicle of the rise and fall of a great empire and of a dark time whose lessons still resonate today. One of the world's foremost historians presents a fresh look at the greatest war of ancient Greece and a pivotal moment in Western civilization that still resonates today.
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A Distant Mirror
The Pelopnnesian War by Donald Kagan.
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Previously, I've read Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War in the Landmark edition, which has the best maps of any other book on the series. I listened to this book as an audiobook and I should have kept some maps handy. Nonetheless, Kagan takes the reader through the very long war and makes a greater sense of the players and the war than I got from Thucydides. When I next read Thucydides, I suspect my grasp of events will be much heightened.
What struck me in listening to the book this time - the Fall of 2021 - was how events in Athens mirror our own age. Certainly, the war broke out because of Spartan fear that Athenian imperialism might undermine its leadership of Greece, and by Athenian fear that the loss of Corcyra's fleet might end their empire. The war began in a holding action by Athens on the mainland and an effort to maintain its empire so as to wear down Sparta. This Periclean plan failed and Athens changed its policies to become more aggressive everywhere.
The fortunes of the war ebbed and flowed. There were moments when it seemed like Sparta was down for the count, and then it was Athen's turn to face disaster. Much of the war was at the periphery in Thrace, Sicily, and western Asia Minor. Kagan's book explains the reason for the Sicilian expedition. I had always wondered why so much of Athen's military resources was lost so far away from Greece. The answer was that it was originally intended as a minor expedition that simply grew and grew. Likewise, I knew Alcibiades as a character from The Symposium, and as having a bad odor, but he repeatedly shows up in the latter stages of the war as a politician, scoundrel. exiled in Sparta, exiled in Persia, returned to Athens, and exiled finally.
Socrates shows up also in the only time he acted as a magistrate to be the only man to vote against the unjust execution of a military leader. Interestingly, this book gave me a deeper insight into Plato's Apologia, namely, many generals took off for former enemies when they thought that the return to Athens would mean execution or fines. It doesn't say a lot for Athenian democracy that it executed losing generals, giving them the encouragement to flee to enemies, taking their knowledge of Athenian strategies and secrets with them, but it certainly shows the limits of Athenian loyalty. Compare that to Socrates who is said to have explained that he would not flee Athens, although given the chance, because it had given him everything even if his loyalty and steadfastness meant an unjust execution. It seems the target of the Apologia may have been more political.
Other poets and playwrights show up in Kagan's narration. The amazing thing to understand is that just outside of Athens, which was creating a brilliant epoch of literature and philosophy, there was a war going on.
The end stage of democracy in Athens when there was a coup to install an oligarchy (“the 500”) and change the constitution should be a lesson to Americans about how easy it can be to lose democracy. (Of course, there was a counter-coup that brought back the democracy.) One feature that Kagan didn't really explore was the ideological dimension of democracy and oligarchy. Athens installed democracies to secure its position; Sparta installed oligarchies. Was there an overall political debate that one was superior to the other? I suspect that if there was, oligarchy would have been normative.
Ultimately, Athens lost one naval battle too many against the forces of Sparta and Persia. Sparta, which had started the war proclaiming that it was fighting for Greek autonomy, ended up ceding the Greek cities of western Asia Minor to the Persians. Within 50 years, Sparta would lose its hegemony to Thebes.
This war was the Ur-war, the prototype. It is worth studying.
