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Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins

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What? Another book on the history of the Peloponnesian War? Yes, but I recommend that you consider this one, and delve once more into the story by Thucydides of this epic war.

The "Song of Wrath" provides an additional illumination of the original work of Thucydides and provides a distinct point of view for the casus belli and the manner in which it was initially executed.

Professor Lendon asserts that the cause of the war as told by Thucydides was the common practice of Ancient Greek city-states, specifically Sparta and Athens in this case, to continually assess their relative worth and rank amongst themselves. (Athens started the war to demonstrate its equality of rank with Sparta.) Further he states that assessment was a key component of its genesis and its initial conduct. Through Professor Lendon's analytical lens we are able to see that before and at the onset of the war in matters of relationships amongst the city-states that the values of worth (and its opposite, shame), honor, rank and reciprocity (i.e., honor values) appear to rank higher than those more common human values of economic gain, wealth, influence and power (i.e., power values) to the Ancient Greeks.

Throughout the three hundred and eighty five pages of this book he makes his case that these factors and the focus on humiliating the enemy rather than conquering him per se are the driving forces behind the story of the war's beginning and its execution in the first ten years.

The author's clear writing style, occasional wit, and frequent insight make for a comfortable and an educated reading. Adequate antique-style (not my favorite style) maps, glossaries and a comprehensive chronology of events of the first ten years of the war are also included.

A first order question for a prospective reader would probably be on why the coverage is limited to only the first ten years of a twenty seven year war? In a somewhat obscure explanation at the Inroduction (which only comes clearer in the Epilogue), Professor Lendon states that the primary reason is that this period is, "the best place...to study the relationship between foreign affairs and military strategy." (p. 15)

My view is that these initial years more aptly support Lendon's perspective of the importance of the honor values as stated by Thucydides. The subsequent seventeen years marshall to the forefront the more familiar human values and vices of personal advancement, economic wealth, deceit and bare power. Perhaps the arrival of the Sophists sparked this transition from one of a tradition based on myth and belief to rational relativism, exploited by opportunists such as Alcibiades. Those years include the disastrous invasion of Sicily by Athens (power), the opportunistic (deceit) and inscrutable (dishonorable) behavior of Alcibiades, the drawing of Persia (money) into the conflict, the revolt of the Athenian allies ("colonies"), and the final victory by Sparta and her allies over a humiliated and devastated Athens. I suspect that the values of honor, respect, shame and reciprocity took a back seat in the last two-thirds of the war; this would obviously muddy Lendon's perspective and story. After the initial ten years, the Athenians apparently won the war of rank; after seventeen more years, it lay devastated in a heap. So much for the advocates of starting a war for rank and honor.

Post script recommendations: If you are unfamiliar with the Thucydides account, I recommend that you first read a definitive translation and editing of the original work. For this purpose, I recommend that you read the "Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to The Peloponnesian War" edited by Robert B. Strassler. It is simply the best there is. It provides a complete and comprehensive guide to the entire war.

With that as your base, then read Lendon for his singular insights on the role of cultural values at the beginning of the war. From both of these you may come away with a richer understanding of the Ancient Greeks, their culture, and this "honorable" war.

I also recommend the works of Donald Kagan ("The Peloponnesian War") and Victor Hanson ("A War Like No Other"). Both are excellent in their own way. You cannot go wrong with any of these four. With the "Landmark Thucydides" as your base, Lendon, Kagan and Hanson will make you an Ancient Greek. I will leave it up to you to decide whether you are a Spartan or an Athenian. You may surprise yourself (as I surprised myself) on which side you choose.

Once in a while you encounter an extraordinary book that truly affects the way you look at the world. J.E. Lendon's "Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins" is such a book.

Before reading "Song of Wrath" I thought I knew a fair amount about the Peloponnesian War. Kagan's tremendous four-volume history, Hanson's "A War Like No Other", and "The Landmark Thucydides" all have permanent places on my too-crowded bookshelves. But Lendon's new volume has revolutionized my understanding of events. He argues strongly and persuasively that the war had its origins in a very Greek competition for status, the perceived ranking of city-states against one another. And that most of the campaigns of that war, particularly those of the "Archidamian War" - the first ten years of the Peloponnesian War - were primarily dictated by the desire to impact status rather than directly erode the enemy's power to wage war effectively. Suddenly, events are illuminated in an intensely revealing light, a light not without relevance to world events long after the age of the hoplites.

Moreover, Lendon presents his detailed analysis in a witty narrative, not infrequently with a wryly cocked eyebrow. And he has a gift for vivid imagery to really drive home his points. "Song of Wrath" is far from the stereotypical dry academic study one might expect from a Professor of History. Kudos both to Dr. Lendon and to his editor who understood the value of such writing.

If anyone has any interest at all in the Peloponnesian War, then "Song of Wrath" must be read. Whether or not the reader comes away wholly convinced of Lendon's arguments, understanding of what happened back in the fifth century BC cannot help being enhanced.

I've read the author's other books, and if anything this one is more interesting and engrossing than the previous two. Lendon's thesis is that psycho-social -- for lack of a better expression -- factors like "worth", ranking, honour, status, "face" and esteem, etc., played a more central role in motivating agents to act in the classical Greek (and Roman) world than we typically acknowledge. Moreover, he holds that even today, these factors motivate agents and states, as well as "aggrieved" non-state actors, more than we frequently care to realize. Thucydides' treatment of the opening chapter of the great Athenian-Spartan wars is tackled well by Lendon who argues that Thucydides' infamous argument that the Spartans went to war because they feared the dynamic Athenians' power is wrong or at least incomplete. Rather, to understand the origins of the conflict, we must look at such "simple" -- and, incidentally, favoured in antiquity -- explanations as revenge, competition for honour-based esteem, martial primacy, and jockeying over rank. In the course of treating this material, Lendon gives the reader a terrific tour of ancient Greek culture and cultural practices, as well as an exciting overview of the 5th century.

He writes exceptionally clearly and deftly, explaining nicely along the way such key Greek concepts as hubris, tim' (honour) and metis, The book is most entertaining to amateur/armchair historians like myself. Whole swatches of Greek history become clearer, now that some of the motivations of Greek agents are explained. Greek history -- particularly warfare and military history -- comes to resemble Greek tragedy, in that "bloody" and "bloody-minded" motives are central, rather than just calculative or bloodless ones. Very highly recommended.

Okay you ancient Greeks freaks, we have a new star! J.E. Lendon's Song of Wrath is simply excellent! I've read 'em all: Kagan, Hanson, Cartledge, Holland, ancient, old and new authors; anything and everything about ancient Greece, I've read it! I can say, without reservation, that Lendon is one of our top historians on things ancient in the Roman and Greek worlds. He is as thoughtful as any author, doesn't drag on with some topics (think Hanson here), isn't over the top with his story telling (wink, wink, Mr. Holland), but combines beautiful story-telling with a deep understanding of his topic. You may not fully agree with his arguments (I personally think that he places way too much emphasis on the the idea of "rank" as to why the war of Spartan aggression dragged on for so long), but his arguments are well worth serious consideration. Read this book!!!!

In Song of Wrath J.E. Lendon takes an anthropological approach to the first ten years of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, the war's great chronicler, is often read as a guide to the kind of thinking we call "realist," in which relations between states are entirely determined by power and the fear of power. But such an account leaves many things that happened in the war without explanation. Lendon shows that considering the war as an expression of ancient Greek culture explains most of them, and I found his interpretation completely convincing. Only by seeing the war as the ancient Greeks saw it can we understand why they did what they did. Song of Wrath is also beautifully written, in a strong and original style. Lendon is a superb storyteller and he makes us feel the excitement of the war's dramatic events - saboteurs waiting tensely in the dark for the signal to strike, hoplites watching nervously as opposing armies approach, sailors struggling to control their sleek triremes in seas as dangerous as the rams of enemy ships. In Lendon's hands the lulls between the battles are equally exciting, since he fills them with marvelous details of Greek history, religion, and historical geography. Song of Wrath is both entertaining and enlightening at a very high level.

Even if you think you know Thucydides and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War well enough, don't miss this wonderful treatment. Lendon's main argument is a provocative yet coherent one; his narration is vivid and he has an uncanny eye for the unexpected and revealing detail; his prose is colorful and makes the book a delight to read. Although immense scholarship and erudition lie behind this substantial tome, it could, nevertheless, almost be described as a rollicking good time.

Our understanding of the Peloponnesian War is being remade, and Professor Lendon is in the forefront of this new scholarship. For anyone with an interest in ancient Greek warfare, this book is simply a must read. It is also an easy read, as Lendon is one of the few academics who knows how to keep up a brisk narrative pace, even as he informs and challenges the reader on every page.

The beauty of Song of Wrath lies not in the retelling and reinterpreting of the ancient Greek wars (which Lendon does fascinating well). For me, it lies in the parallels drawn to the way modern states interact. Lendon alludes to this early on but, in the main leaves it to the reader to see the parallels as the story is told. And there are parallels aplenty.

When a Greek "city state" longs for direct confrontation or direct negotiations with an adversary of much higher rank, honor, prestige and power they are rebuffed. Rebuffed because to "treat" with the lesser power "one on one" would be to acknowledge them as an equal, not only in the eyes of the more powerful state but in the eyes of all of Greece (and for their purposes...the world).

Does North Korea's demand that the United States meet with them "one to one" to negotiate differences sound familiar; does the US's rebuff and insistence that North Korea participate in a Six Country conference as simply "one small part of the region" sound familiar.

Allies of Sparta attack allies of Athens and neither Sparta nor Athens sends in their military forces to address the situation or reinforce their side. Both the Spartans and the Athenians regard the dispute as "between the two parties only." Often these are shown as ongoing disputes not requiring or instigating a greater conflict. Only when Sparta and or Athens gets involved at the outset, does the conflict involve the prestige, honor and rank of the greater powers.

Does this sound a little like Hamas and Israel, or Israel's incursion into Lebanon?

Sparta has allies so distant that it begs belief that they ever thought they could safeguard them if attacked in earnest by Athens..... Athens has allies so distant that only their naval prowess can be brought to bear; if the Spartans made a concerted land army attack, the remoteness of Athens would mean the ally would likely fall.

Distant alliances are shown to be a diplomatic, logistical and military nightmare for both Sparta and Athens. Vietnam? The Falklands? Taiwan?

Lendon's book is a great "read" if you're only interested in the Peloponnesian Wars...but I think it's a better read if you're willing to see the modern day parallels he exposes. I believe it was his intended subtext. Perhaps this is why current military commanders are putting it on the "reading list" for the men and women in their commands.

The Greeks present an unequalled temptation to cheap ventriloquism, so tantalizing the apparent similarities between their world and ours. How easy to slither into the back of a Demosthenes or Epitadas and wave his long-dead hand to our modern tune. The ancients then wheeze and stammer our own thoughts back at us, and we nod and guffaw in turn. In stark contrast, the historian's art is to amplify the tenuous voice of antiquity without distorting it, so that ancient voices make themselves heard above the modern din. Song of Wrath demonstrates that J.E. Lendon is a historian of rare and exceptional craft.

Set against the canvas of the Peloponnesian War, Song of Wrath examines the Greeks as men motivated by competitive honor. Much as Herodotus sought the font of the Persian wars, Lendon aims to unravel the Gordian knot of the causes of Peloponnesian war. Acknowledging the tapestry of Greek motivation, Lendon plucks out a seemingly curious strand: a cycle of hubris, wrath, and revenge--quite alien to the modern mind--that goaded Greek men to war. That this was as true of cities as their citizens is equally foreign to our sensibility. Lendon convincingly argues that this cyclical corporate passion undergirds the war between Athens and Sparta. In particular, he narrates the carefully reciprocal series of pillage, raids, battles, and negotiations, through which Athens and Sparta sought to establish hegemony in the eyes of their fellow Greeks. The cruel calculus that ranked the Greeks makes sense of a plethora of odd details of the war: why did culpable Boetia escape the depradations of Athens so long? why did the Athenians ignore Platea in their demands after their victory at Navarino?

If its argument makes Song of Wrath an important book, the élan with which Lendon delivers it makes Song of Wrath a delightful book. Its opening passage evoking an night-time Athenian assault on Megara, its paean to the eels of Copaïs, and its account of quirky, fatal augury of the Thracians deftly season the meat of the argument. His writing marries the calm study of the historian, "in the company of his friendly circle of abstract nouns," as Lendon describes Thucydides, with an eye for image and and ear for cadence that suit the epic scope of the war as well as Homer could ask.

Near the end of his lament in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians, Lendon imagines "Tacitus, a Roman wielding a Roman pen in a Roman room, poring over and comparing the works of his Roman predecessors, here re-writing, here combining, here adding something that he has found out, here thrilling when he can finish a story he got from a predecessor with one of the brilliant sententiae his Roman audience loved." (J. E. Lendon, Historians without History: Against Roman Historiography.) Reading Song of Wrath, we must understand that Lendon's description of Tacitus applies curiously well to Lendon himself. Born out of time, he is a Greek, writing with a Greek pen, here combining, there analyzing, and all throughout delighting in his eels.

Professor Lendon's book on the first ten years of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta is beautifully written and carefully and convincingly argued. I recommend it without reservation.

His hypothesis, that the war was fought not, as Thucydides would have it, because of Sparta's fear of Athens' growing power, but rather over rank, i.e. how the Greeks at large were to perceive the relative standing of the combatants, seems to have great explanatory power, but I'm unqualified to judge its merits. What I can say is that, taken only as a work of narrative history for the general reader, the book is a great success. That it is also a treatise dealing with issues of interest to scholars, and that those parts of the book were at least as interesting to this non-scholar as the narrative of the war, is greatly to Prof. Lendon's credit. One need not be a classicist to follow and appreciate the argument.

I found the style delightful. It is a bit formal, rich with ironies and vivid descriptions, always clear and compelling. An almost random sample gives the flavor. Speaking of an Athenian general who lost his life in Ionia, Prof. Lendon says: "Lysicles' sojourn in Hades under the reproachful glare of Pericles (he had taken up with Pericles' mistress after the latter's death) may have been lightened by better news from other felled Athenians who would stagger off Charon's boat in years to come ...."

The author and the publisher deserve great praise for the form of the book. The accompanying apparatus--glossaries of people, places, and things, chronologies, discussion of sources, suggestions for further readings, etc.--is exemplary.

Maps are profuse. Almost every account of an event is within a few pages, at most, of a relevant map. Often the maps overlap, but only to reflect a shift in the theatre of operations of the combatants. This is the most user-friendly approach I've seen, far better than in those books where maps are segregated far from the accompanying text, and/or limited in quantity to the bare minimum. (It's true, as another reviewer points out, that some of the maps are in an old-fashioned style that may be a little harder to read than those in a more contemporary style. On the other hand, these older maps show topography more clearly than many of the minimalist modern exemplars.)

Frequent illustrations are also placed in close proximity to the relevant text. The endnotes are keyed to paragraphs rather than sentences, eliminating a great deal of flipping back and forth, for those who care. (But what ever happened to footnotes?) The type size is friendly for those like me with aging eyes.

In sum, this book is a complete success in both form and content, deserving the highest recommendation: I would have given it six stars if that were allowed.