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The Peloponnesian War

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The reader bent on getting through the classic history books always starts with Herodotus, who may often be gullible but is always entertaining. The next on the list is _The History of the Peloponnesian War_ by Thucydides, which is completely different. His classic history of the war between Sparta and Athens has been an object of respect and close study ever since it was written, but is tough reading. Translators agree that Thucydides's style is difficult and subject to varying interpretations, and the different battles and overall strategies of the war can get lost. If you plow through Thucydides, you don't even get to find out how it all turns out; his account ends almost seven years before the war did. If this is daunting, help is at hand. A new volume titled _The Peloponnesian War_ (Viking) has been written by Donald Kagan. He has previously written a four volume history of the war for scholars, but has here distilled the narrative into one (admittedly large) volume. His goal was "... a readable narrative... to be read by the general reader for pleasure and to gain the wisdom that so many have sought in studying this war." He has certainly succeeded. The complexities of the conflict all across the Mediterranean make clear that this was a true "world war," but Kagan has made it as clear for non-specialists as we have any right to expect.

Of course one expects detailed descriptions of the basis of the conflict, the nature of battles, and the personalities of the leaders involved, and these expectations are certainly met, throughout all the arenas of the war. Kagan has deliberately not drawn parallels between this, the first well-documented war effort, and all the others that came after it. Nonetheless, the reader will find much that is familiar, with the either comforting or dismaying realization that things do not change much, even over millennia. Here one will read about mutual nonaggression pacts and how they tangle nations into war. The Olympics are shown to be tools of nationalism (or, at this time, city state-ism). Candidates for office put on religiosity and spectacles; one by Alcibiades's opponent Nicias was an opulent parade for the sake of Apollo. Kagan writes that most Athenians "...believed that the gods must favor so pious a man and smile on the city he led." Here also are worries about the military-industrial complex; a contemporary writer said on one occasion that Athenians had rejected a truce because of deceptions by "practiced warmongers who made private profit from public troubles."

The maps in this volume deserve special mention. They are numerous and clear, and generally are within the text near where the geography needs description. Kagan finishes with an essay about sources. Thucydides is, of course, cited many times, but Kagan does not entirely accept his much-praised impartiality. Among the other sources are Xenophon, an Athenian general who was a disciple of Socrates. The comedies of Aristophanes are frequently cited, for the light they show on certain warriors and politicians, as well as the time's free-ranging nature of satire and public ridicule. It is a pleasant surprise to find that Kagan has found special value in Plutarch; although he lived five centuries after the war and was a biographer rather than a historian, Kagan thinks that Plutarch's own citations of previous historians show admirable scholarship. Kagan's own history of the war falls squarely in that tradition.

Donald Kagan is the foremost authority on the Peloponnesian War, having authored an comprehensive four-volume history on the subject. But perhaps more importantly, Professor Kagan is also a wonderful storyteller. Do not be intimidated by the length of the book, or it's topic. The subject matter is extremely rich and interesting - just because something happened 2,500 years ago doesn't mean it's boring. On the contrary, one of Prof. Kagan's strengths, both as a teacher and a writer, is his ability to make relevant the events of the past, not through strained parallels and comparisons, but through a deep understanding of human nature.

The Peloponnesian War reminds many of the major conflicts of the 20th century, and some of those comparisons are quite illuminating. For example, the showdown between the two "superpowers" of the era, Athens and Sparta, reminds many of the Cold War, and there are indeed many intriguing similarities. Professor Kagan, who has written about such comparisons at length (see "On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace"), understands these parallels as clearly as anyone. But focusing on these parallels to make distant events appear "relevant" is, to him, unnecessary. His view, which I share, is that the Peloponnesian War does not need to be "made relevant:" it IS relevant, because of the unchanging character of human nature and human problems. If you expect this book to be filled with statements like "President Bush is just like Pericles because..." you will be disappointed. What you will get, however, is much more valuable.

Observing how people have dealt with the crises of the past makes us more intelligent observers of the present, not because all situations are exactly the same in their details, but because human hopes, fears, and needs are fairly constant across history. It is this insight that Prof. Kagan brings to bear so effectively in his work. One of Prof. Kagan's favorite quotes from Thucydides states that nations (or city-states, as the case may be) are motivated by three things: "fear, honor, interest." It is Prof. Kagan's view that this assertion is as true today as it was in 431 B.C. Nations have always sought to protect themselves from those they fear, maintain their national pride, and further their interests. In the process, of course, they must contend with internal and external forces - internal dissent, military rivalries, reluctant allies - forcing the leadership to make crucial choices about which path to pursue as they seek the optimal outcome for their nation. To any observer of recent events, this process would seem very familiar. And that is as it should be, for it is from this process that history unfolds.

Understanding how nations and their leaders pursue their goals, make their decisions, and perceive the world around them is what makes reading history interesting. By choosing the Peloponnesian War as your case-study, and Donald Kagan as your guide, you will have one of the most interesting reading experiences you are ever likely to have.

I have read Donald Kagan's previous four volume book set on the Peloponnesian War which set the standard of that war for many years to come. So when I read his one volume book on the subject, I did wondered what more can I get.

This one book treatment of the Peloponnesian War proves to be superbly well written for almost any reader. Unlike his four volume series which was academically rich and complex, this one book treatment scaled down the narrative into an easy to read, easy to understand and yet complete enough to make any reader understand what, how and why of the Peloponnesian War. Added by nice maps, almost anyone can tackle this book and come out wiser on the subject. The author's ability to reduced the complex nature of this conflict into an easier format is a clear example of his knowledge and total command of the subject matter.

This book come highly recommended for anyone who have an initial interest on the matter and even for experienced readers as well.

Kagan, a leading expert on ancient Greece, wrote this book to introduce the non-academic to the events of Greece's own "World War". From Pericles to Aegospotami, the Peloponnesian War matched the Spartan and Athenian empires in twenty-seven years of unrelenting struggle in the fifth century BC. Kagan does a good job of recounting the events, but the book is far from an unqualified success. Among the high points are the excellent maps --two dozen of them sprinkled liberally through the text showing key battlefields from Sicily to Asia Minor. Kagan does not make the typical scholar's mistake of forgetting maps. The prose is simple and clear, with periodic references to source material (mostly Thucydides), but without cryptic footnotes or other academic fetishes. The narrative smoothly makes sense of complicated events, referring to alternative theories, and offering sensible explanations for controversial decisions by generals and rulers. Descriptions of leading Athenians like Alcibiades and Pericles (who noted the four characteristics necessary to a statesman: "To know what must be done and to be able to explain it; to love one's country; and to be incorruptible.") are nuanced and interesting.

On the other hand, there are two related downsides to the book. First, in a text aimed at an audience unfamiliar with ancient Greece, it does a surprisingly poor job of describing anything BUT the war. In addition to the maps, Kagan could usefully have sprinkled short "box texts" throughout to describe items of interest such as the culture and architecture of the Greeks, their lifestyles, food, population, and economy. Further, in a 500-page book about a war --predominantly a naval war-- it is disappointing to find no description of the weapons used, tactics employed, and especially the workings of the trireme ship with which Athens ruled the seas. Further, nine-tenths of the work is based on Athenian sources and is heavily Athens-centric. Presumably this is because there are simply fewer good sources about Sparta and the other cities, but a reader never has any idea about how life and society in those cities functioned.

Ultimately, these failures make the book a tough slog. Halfway through, it becomes little more than a tedious chronological march to war's end. Dates and names and battles pile up until, abruptly, the Battle of Aegospotami brings the text to a quick end. But long before, this reader was struggling with the decision of whether to plod forward. The author could usefully have trimmed about a hundred pages (though no doubt he felt he edited mercilessly to bring the book in at 500 pages), and added about fifty pages of background material on Greek society. Finally, the book needs a "big picture" conclusion. Readers are periodically assured that the war had a huge impact on the ancient world, and presumably on the course of history. Yet these ideas are not drawn out in the six-page conclusion, but only hinted at. Thus, readers are left with little more understanding of the historical consequences of the war than they started with.

Kagan has written a four-volume work on this subject for professional historians; this volume is written for the general reader. I'm delighted to have it and read it, because he sheds light on many aspects of this important war that had puzzled me. But I also have two criticisms.

First, Kagan places more reliance on the "objectivity and accuracy" of Thucydides than I think wise. Thucydides certainly tried to be objective and accurate, but he was writing not only to record events but to try to provide a comprehensible explanation, and the format he chose is that of Greek tragic drama. This naturally led Thucydides to focus on some events while barely mentioning others equally important. More significantly, he felt it imperative, given his choice of format, to include long speeches and descriptions that he could not have known in detail and must have recreated almost from whole cloth. I could cite many examples of this, but one will suffice: the debate between Nicias and Alcibiades about the second expedition to Syracuse in the 17th year of the war, which Thucidides reports "verbatim", occupying about eight pages of fine print in translation. Thucydides had been banished from Athens for almost ten years at that time, and was not allowed to return for about another ten. In the nature of Athenian assembly debates, the exchange between Niciasand Alcibiades would not have been transcribed, so Thucidides' seemingly verbatim account must have been created from extremely sketchy accounts by those who were there. Kagan doesn't seem to recognize how much of Thucidides' text has this degree of invention.

My other criticism is that although Kagan's theme is largely the distortion of human actions and motives that occurs in war, he fails to convey a vivid sense of that to the reader who has not experienced it. That task is extremely difficult but not impossible; John Keegan in "The Face of Battle" did a marvelous job of it. Kagan comes across as dry, not passionate, but war is always an affair of extreme passion. His style is appropriate when writing for other military historians, who know all about the quasi-insanity that overtakes everyone faced with the possibility of being killed by the enemy, but Kagan's style is not compelling to those general readers who have never experienced that terror, recklessness, exaltation and almost inexplicable cruelty and ferocity, the dehumanization of attitudes and actions in wartime. It is necessary to have a feel for this to understand, for example, why during a Civil War battle Stonewall Jackson, when one of his aides remarked on the bravery of an attacking Union force, replied: "I don't want them brave; I want them dead." Kagan's book does not convey that feel.

Despite these criticisms, Kagan's book is a "must" for anyone concerned about the conflicts and possible conflicts of the 21st Century. I recommend it.

Donald Kagan is an acknowledged master-historian of the Peloponnesian War, the great struggle between Athens on one side and Lacedaemon (led by Sparta) and Boeotia (led by Thebes) on the other. The war lasted 27 years (counting only the direct involvement of Athens) and in many ways has the same status for classical Greece that WW2 has for modern history - the world (meaning the Eastern Mediterranean, for the earlier conflict) was never the same afterwards. Kagan has written the currently definitive four-volume scholarly history; this is the lightweight version for general readers - the main text is a mere 490 pages. I bought it hoping to get a fresh slant on a subject I first touched about 45 years ago. That was perhaps optimistic; this is a field that has been ploughed over by historians for over 2,400 years, starting even before the dust had settled on the battlefields. In short, I was disappointed; there is little here that one could not have got from Grote a hundred and fifty years ago (he was a little before my time, but we had him in the school library). To be fair, the material is comprehensive (at that length it ought to be) and lucidly presented; anyone simply wanting a narrative in one volume and modern English could hardly do better.

What it does not do is challenge in any way the long-standing presupposition that, overall, the Athenians were the White Hats and the Lacedaemonians and Boeotians were the Baddies. This bias goes all the way back to the time of the War itself, and stems fundamentally from the fact that Athens had all the best writers - indeed, nearly all the writers, full stop. Above all, Athens had Thucydides, an only moderately successful general but a historian of genius and a participant in the events, on whom all subsequent generations (Kagan included) have drawn greedily. It is in some ways a satisfactory irony that, even once, history was written by the defeated, but that is not necessarily preferable to having it written by the victors, as the ongoing controversy over Japanese history of WW2 demonstrates. What is surprising, though, is that even at this late date western historians should buy wholesale into the Athenian version. We graduates of the 20th century should have learned a little scepticism by now, for the claim of Athens to be the fount of freedom really does look a little thin on dispassionate examination. There's the matter of democracy, for example. To be sure, Athens was one of the most democratic states in Greece, which means probably in the world - but the claim rests on an enfranchised percentage that was about the same as apartheid South Africa's, and with not much more benevolence towards the under-classes. That probably looked excitingly radical to many 18th- and even 19th-century westerners (the ones who really fell in love with the Athens thing), but I believe we can set the bar a little higher these days. That was Athens at home; Athens abroad looks a lot worse. The USA has been much vilified since 1945, often with justice, but it never tried to convert NATO into a tribute-paying empire, nor did it nuke, say, Finland for refusing to sign up. The Athenians did the exact parallel of both these things when they turned the Delian League into a hegemony (using their former allies' taxes to aggrandise and beautify their own city) and massacred and enslaved the Melians when they declined to contribute. Alongside that, the Athenians' catastrophic adventurism in Sicily and their judicial murder of their own (victorious) generals after Arginusae are almost peccadillos.

Kagan does not pull any punches when describing Athenian actions, but he still resolutely refuses to draw any new conclusions (in this book, at least) about the nature of the Athenian state or the Athenians' view of, and actions towards, their fellow Greeks. I guess it's too late (by a couple of millennia) to hope for the discovery of writings from Sparta or Thebes that would tell the story from the other side, far less from any of the smaller states that were trampled as the elephants fought. I believe, though, that the time is over-ripe to critically review the notion that the Athenians were the Greeks par excellence, and that their downfall merits a furtive (or any) tear. They had it coming.

I have long wanted to read Thucydides but decided to read Kagan's work on the subject first in order to familarize myself with the historical terrain. For this purpose, the book is well suited since it both sums up some of the period covered by Thucydides and includes events that occurred after his death (before the end of the war). It also provides enough of the social, philosophical, and literary background to whet one's appetite to read more. Many of the most famous figures from Greek history were alive during or near the time of the war and were influenced by it. Plato, for instance, formed his political views in response to what he viewed as the failings of democracy. Euripides wrote his tragedies during a time when the common people of Athens were suffering tragedy on a daily basis caused by the siege of Athens by Spartan troops and the gradual disintegration of its empire.

Although I am sure that Mr. Kagan struggled with what to exclude from this scaled-down version of his longer work on the Peloponnesian War, I sometimes felt that he was rushing through certain sections, as if he were tired of expounding on the details of certain battles or the principals who took part in them. He is at his best when describing the dramatic defeat of Athens in the Sicilian campaign or when following the changing allegiances of Alcibiades or when explicating the political and strategic nuances of the war from all points of view. But, the drama of the story-telling starts to drag right at the moment it should build - the Fall of Athens. The last chapters of the book are anti-climactic in my opinion. Though, perhaps one could argue that that is the way with wars, especially wars of attrition, and both the Athenians and the Spartans had pretty much had enough of the whole thing. It is too bad that reality doesn't always make for good reading: maybe on this score Mr. Kagan and Thucydides both could learn a lesson from Herodotus.

This most excellent book provides a readable and concise history of the complex events surrounding the Peloponnesian War. The author has taken the confusing and often contradictory epiosdes associated with this conflict and broken them down into readable segments. Those who have waded their war through Thucycidides should find this book an essential companion to that work. While reading Thucycidides provides the fascination of a primary source, a lot of his writing is often difficult to follow as the narrative often goes on and on. Kagan provides a lot of recent scholarship to help compare the views of Thuycidides and place them in historical context. He also provides some background information on the strengths and weaknesses of Athens and Sparta as well as much needed historical background on events leading up to war in 431 BC.

His explanation of why these two leading city states in Greece deicded to go to war at this time provides much valuable insight to understanding the reasons for this conflict. Kagan also provides numerous excellent maps which enable the reader to follow the often complicated action as the war shifts from Attica, to the Pelopannese and then to the Aegean, Sicily and Ioanian Islands. Most editions of Thuycidides do not provide mapes which also makes Kagan's book esstenial in understanding this war. Kagan also provides much interesting biographical information on the numerous famous leaders associated with this conflict. Pericles, Cleon, Brassidas, Lysander and others come to full light as we gain insights to why they made certain key strategic decisions. Kagan also questions why certain decisions were made, taking the reader into the mind-set of the time which provides much needed analysis.

Anyone who has read Thuycicdes must read this book. I can not recommend highly enough this fine work to help the reader understand this distant, yet vitally important war. The Peloponnesian War was truly a Greek Tragedy. We learn how this conflict would forever change the Greek world. The barbarism and attrocities committed by both sides would have far reaching influence in future Greco-Roman wars. The versatility of this conflcit should provide fascinating reading to the true military historian. Here lies the origins of combined land and naval operations that were used extensively by both sides. Again, essential reading for any interested in this fascinating period of Classical history.

I knew nothing of the wars of the Peloponnesian War prior to reading this, but was intrigued after seeing this one-volume history on the shelf. After checking up on Kagan's credentials, I went back and bought the book, and boy am I glad that I did.

Pros:
Being unfamiliar with Greek history, in general, Kagan writes and arranges his maps of the region in such a way that it is easy to keep up with the different areas being discussed. Very infrequently was I not sure about the area that was being discussed, which is paramount to understanding the strategic importance of what was going on. He does not speak in overly-simplistic terms, so this should not seem too simple of a history for those already familiar, I suspect.

Kagan's history reads almost like a novel, and is not dry in the least.

Kagan provokes much thought regarding the actions of all parties involved and does not rely too heavily on one source.

Kagan does a superb job of piecing together the issues that went into the decision-making and what the motives were of the generals and politicians.

Cons:
The only negative that I can say about the book is that there are a few editing errors that left a couple of indiscernible fragments.

Despite this, this book is a superb place to start if you are interested in Greek history and the power struggles between the city-states. A superb history for those who have no background int he subject so far.

This is an amazing book. I was shaken up, disturbed, excited, and mostly deep in thought. The book can be enjoyed at so many different levels. For lovers of historic fictional adventure stories, this book has more ancient maps, kingdoms, and exotic names and places than "Lord of the Rings" does. For lovers of military tactics and history, the book is loaded with detailed maps of the battlefields and blow by blow action. For lovers of game theory, how Athens and Sparta were drawn into a war, which they both wanted to avoid, is great study material. (Many similarities to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam that started in an advisory role.) For people who are interested in politics, there are excellent debates on democracy (while the democrats had their own slaves and ruled an empire by brute force!). For CEOs, the book shows how to take credit for anything good that happens, while how to avoid blame for anything that went wrong. (Humanity didn't change that much after all!).

But the main interest of this book is not just its relevance to current events or lessons to be learned. Instead, the book is fascinating because of the events covered, the interesting people and culture.

I wished that Prof. Kagan analyzed things a little more and gave background information. For example King Sitalces of Thrace had an army of 150,000 men including 50,000 cavalry. How is it possible that such an unimportant area as Thrace can field so many soldiers when Athens and Sparta had only a few thousand soldiers in most battles? Why was it so hard to capture walled cities that were defended by a few hundred soldiers? After all, Alexander the Great and the Romans captured these cities so easily. I wish there was a map showing ALL Greek colonies in the Mediterranean and Black Sea including Sicily, Spain, etc. and showing where the grain is coming from the north. Maybe an appendix would have been nice.

This book should be required reading for all high schools and colleges. No man can call himself educated, if he/she hasn't studied the events of this book. Stop listening to news, reading newspapers, and get really educated.

Ozdal Barkan.