Customer Reviews

A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War

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Dr. Hanson has taken this well studied war and approached it from a a very interesting perspective. Rather than the standard chronologic retelling (done recently and well by Donald Kagan), Hanson delves into the facets of the conflict such as ships, seiges, horses etc. to craft a readable and stimulating exegesis of the twenty-seven year bloodbath. I say readable because his writing is fluid and almost conversational. You almost feel as though your in a lecture hall. My only criticism (which doesn't cost the book a star) refers to the quality of the maps ...they don't seem to add very much to the text other than simply showing where the various cities or islands are located. Personally, I prefer the tactical maps and would have liked to see more of them, especially for episode such as Mantinea , Delium, and the late naval battles. That aside, this was a wonderful experience. I hope Dr. Hanson will someday do the same for the Punic or other Roman wars.

I have a graduate degree in studies relating to this period, I have read Thucydides, and I have studied ancient Greek, so the subject matter of Hanson's book is not unfamiliar to me. I found it engaging, thoughtful, and absolutely brilliant. I especially liked his skill in relating events of the times to concepts and concerns the modern reader can relate to, as well as his ability to flesh out the personalities of the participants. He personally tested some of his theories and attempts to define ancient Greek expressions, e.g., how hard is it to "lay waste" to an orchard and what might this phrase actually have meant, and he describes first hand the terrain on which some battles were fought. He also offers interesting discoveries relating to numbers of things--I had no idea that so few of the battles fought were hoplite engagements, nor did I know that all of the generals suffered in some way for their efforts. I've always found that counting things can be very useful, and Hanson used arithmetic very effectively to make interesting points. I thought that all of his insights were fresh and went a long way to bring reality and common sense to the text. I liked the inclusion of the Greek words he is translating. I also liked the organization of the book into different ways of examining the war rather than a simple chronological exegesis or the sort of timeline that is always to me rather boring. In addition, Hanson writes in an engaging, clear manner. I learned a great deal from this book and think it is simply brilliant.

Victor David Hanson is the famous classicist who has soared to the top of the best seller non-fiction charts with outstanding
historical works! I have never read a Hanson work without being informed about the way war in all its nefarious aspects has influenced the course of Western civilization from the Greeks to the present day of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In this new seminal work Dr. Hanson provides a modern examination of the Peloponessian war (the first major Civil War in World History) between democratic and empire expanding Athens in Attica and the militaristic oligarchic society of Sparta in
southern Greece. Throughout these pages the author quotes the classical writer Thucydides whose book on the Peloponessian War
fought in the 5th ca. B.C. is told from the perspective of an Athenian general officer. Thucydides was skeptical of human nature and critical of warfare so he is still pertinent today!
Instead of a blow by blow account of the horrific lengthy war the author focuses on the major factors in the conflict with
chapters devoted to such subjects as:
Walls-the importance of siege warfare
Horses-how mounted Syracuse calvary forces destroyed the Athenian invaders on Sicily.
Plague-a brilliant discussion of how plague ravaged Athens during the war.
Ships-the crucial importance of sea power chronicling how landlocked Sparta developed a powerful naval force which defeated the vaunted Athenian navy and won the war.
Land-how crop destruction and fire destroyed the lives of many
bucolic farmers.
Throughout his writing Hanson wants us to see how devasting is warfare to the common soldier/civilian drawn into the horrific
maelstrom of war. Hanson does not glorify war but like General William Sherman manifestly makes evident the fact that war is
hell.
In these pages you will meet such men as Pericles; explore the
building, manning and fighting done on Greek warships called
triremes; understand ancient economies and witness brutality in
the several slaughters of this ancient war.
Any educated reader will find insights and parallels to modern warfare in these many pages.
This book like all of Dr. Hanson's outstanding historical
works is highly recommended!

Hanson is one of the most readable military- political writers.. He is able to see the whole picture and thus to relate what he sees with a special kind of clarity. In an interview he gave to FrontPageCom. he spoke about a certain parallel between Athens of that time, and the United States of today. In both places it is severe domestic criticism that undermines seriously the war effort. It seems to me that Hanson is very much concerned about the precedent of Democracy losing. He believes that a democratic nation must have a strategy for winning the war, and not for simply carrying it on indefinitely.
I suspect however that the great enjoyment of this book does not relate to the parallels between past and present, but rather to the dramatic, tragic story of the Pelopennesian War as analyzed in this work.

Because of his depth of knowledge, enthusiasm for his subject the parallels and implications he draws from the Athens-Sparta war to other wars, are by and large convincing.
It seems to me that if there is one book President Bush should be reading these days. It is this one.

I purchased Hanson's book to find out what ever happened to "The glory that was Greece ..." But his book also appealed to my engineering interests. Back in high-school sixty years ago I vaguely remember our ancient history teacher enthusing over classic Greek culture and warfare but in college I went into engineering so wasn't taught any more about them. Then some years ago I picked up Kagan's book about Pericles. Since retiring I've read a few other books on ancient Greece.

Instead of describing the Peloponnesian War in a strict chronology, Hanson explains it by focuses on key aspects of that complex war -- such as the use of hoplites, horses, triremes and fortifications -- which I found well suited to my interest in the development of their technology. However he doesn't neglect the personalities and their strategic and tactical decisions, sometimes inspired but often insipid. He blames Athens' raw democracy for punishing decisive leaders which resulted in missed opportunities, horrendous failures and ultimately the loss of the war and Athens' preeminence.

This book is a must read for anyone with even a passing interest in the Peloponnesian War. Familiarity with Thucydides' original history of this event is recommended, but not essential. Hanson helps in this regard with appropriate insights and quotes from Thucydides' work. Hanson's passion for his work comes through in a highly-readable and energetic overview of this important world/civil war. His ability to bring BC events into the present context is remarkable and adds so much to our understanding of something that happened over two thousand years ago.

The above quote is the thesis of Hanson's book. His message,like Thucydides's classic, is meant to be for the ages.
Most of us limit our study to the Pelopponesian War (what Hanson calls the "first civil war in a western civilization")to the great classic, which Hanson points out, sells 10,000 copies a year! This book is as necessary a companion as the comments in the famous "Landmak Thucydides". There is so much in Hanson's book that is thoughtful, from the comparison of Agis and Pericles with Sherman, Kitchener and LeMay, to the key conundrum that Athens could not solve: how to dissolve the alliance of Sparta, Thebes and Corinth. Unlike many others, Hanson does not feel the the Sicilian campaign was in itself decisive in Athens' defeat; rather it was the influence of Persia.
Hanson pretty much repeats his excellent earlier work when he discusses land warfare, and his discussion of naval warfare seems heavily influenced by Barry Strauss. Particularly interesting was how the traditional "social" qualifications for serving as a hoplite, cavalryman, psiloi or rower broke down under the pressure of "total war". He raises but cannot solve the problem of the inability of classical Greeks to storm even small cities.

If like me you have read previous books on Greek history by Victor Davis Hanson you will know what to expect. This has all the usual Hanson fingerprints - lively but prolix, at times repetitive, with one or two stylistic quirks (in this book Hanson seems to be fixated on the word "calculus"), and a somewhat irritating tendency to draw parallels with more modern events. Yet he can be a compelling writer and this after all is a compelling story.
For a detailed chronicle of the Peloponnesian War go to Donald Kagan's authoritative three-volume work which I recommend highly. For an interesting and very evocative discussion of key themes in the war, Hanson's "A War Like No Other" is well worth your attention.

Ever since I had the pleasure of hearing distinguished classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson deliver a spellbinding lecture at New York City's Onassis Cultural Center a few years ago, I have been a great admirer of his splendid writing, which appears frequently here in New York City in the pages of The New York Post. His writing, replete with fine prose, is often pregnant with brilliant insights, offering succinct commentaries on America's ongoing War on (Islamofascist) Terror. So I am not surprised that Hanson has offered in "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War" a splendid history which succinctly explains how and why both great Greek city states waged a horrific twenty seven year-old conflict, which Hanson observes was Western civilization's first great civil war. There have been many great histories devoted to the Peloponnesian War, beginning with Thucydides' and concluding with the excellent works by Yale University classicist and historian Donald Kagan, but here Hanson offers a vivid, yet surprisingly terse, account which should appeal to a wide readership. Unlike both Thucydides and Kagan, whose histories are chronological in nature, Hanson instead presents a historical overview of this war devoted to themes which are the titles of individual chapters: fear, fire, disease, terror, armor, walls, horses, and ships.

In the opening chapter, "Fear", Hanson observes how Sparta, alarmed by Athen's imperialist ambitions, stumbled into war, unsure as to how to defeat its wealthier, predominantly maritime rival. One of its two kings, the elderly Archidamus, warned on the eve of battle against going to war, observing that "War is not so much a matter of men as of monetary expense" (Ironically he would lead his Spartan warriors on two consecutive annual invasions of Attica, ravaging the countryside, before retiring, which Hanson chronicles in the next chapter "Fire".). Indeed, Hanson notes that Archidamus was quite correct, though the king himself did not live long enough to see his city state emerge victorious, due in no small measure to generous financial assistance from the Persians.

In "Disease" Hanson suggests that the outbreak of a mysterious plague in 430 B. C. would cast a long, dark shadow on Athens' prosecution of the war, leaving as its bitter legacy, Athens' reckless conduct near its end, most notably the disastrous Sicilian campaign from 415 to 413 B. C. against the larger, democratic city state Syracuse, and the bloody Ionian war from 411 to 405 B. C. which led to Athens' capitulation to Lysander's victorious fleet in the spring of 404 B. C. The plague of 430 to 429 B. C. (which would return in a less virulent form in 426 B. C.) not only killed Pericles, Athens' visionary statesman who had ruled the city for nearly thirty years, but also many influential citizens who could have steered Athens from pursuing reckless campaigns against Syracuse and Sparta near the end of the Peloponnesian War.

Hanson stresses the importance of asymmetric warfare waged by Sparta and Athens against each other and their respective city state allies in succeeding chapters entitled "Terror", "Armor" and "Walls". Contrary to popular belief, most of the land-based battles of the Peloponnesian war were not classical Greek battles between opposing phalanxes of armored hoplite heavy infantry (Only two major battles were decided between opposing hoplite phalanxes.). Instead, Hanson notes the growing importance of lightly armored troops and cavalry at both major battles and daring raids, marked by savage behavior which was hitherto unknown to Greek military elites and ordinary citizens and slaves. Both of these forces were often responsible for committing atrocities against men, women and children, adopting scorched-earth policies reminiscent of modern campaigns like Union general William T. Sherman's infamous 1864 march to the sea. Although secure, almost impregnable, walls were to become important defenses of many Greek city states during the Peloponnesian War, Hanson observes in the chapter "Walls" that they were often far from successful in protecting cities from determined besieging armies, due to starvation and treachery.

In "Horses" Hanson argues that Athenian campaign against Syracuse failed due to inept generalship and an insufficiently small force of cavalry; it was a poorly led, poorly organized, overseas military adventure against the Greek world's second largest democratic city state, which was contrary to Athens' claim that it was waging war to spread democracy throughout the Greek world. He also strongly questions the judgement of Athens's leading politicians, who missed more than once, excellent opportunities to forment rebellion amongst Sparta's vast, often restless, population of Messinian helots (Agrarian serfs conquered and enslaved by Sparta.). Not only did Athens lose tens of thousands of its best soldiers killed in battle, executed or enslaved by the victorious Syracusans and their Spartan allies, but it also lost its veteran, battle-tested fleet of over one hundred triremes and its distinguished admiral Eurymedon.

So why did Sparta win the Peloponnesian War? Hanson attributes Sparta's success in part to its excellent military leadership, which would yield a maverick, brilliant commander in Lysander, the victorious Spartan admiral who accepted Athens' surrender in the spring of 404 B. C. He praises both the quality of Sparta's military leadership and its willingness to retain capable, decisive leaders as generals and admirals, even if they failed in battle. In stark contrast, nearly every distinguished Athenian general and admiral, from Demosthenes to Alcibiades, was executed or exiled for his failure(s) often under orders by the Athenian assembly, finally yielding a timid, inept military leadership unable to defeat brilliant Spartan commanders like Lysander. But Hanson also observes that Spartan king Archidamus's astute, prescient remarks, at the eve of the war, were ultimately correct; Sparta could not have won without substantial financial aid rendered by Persian satraps (governors) of western Asia Minor (in what is now modern Turkey). And yet, did the Pelopennesian War truly settle the intense rivalry between Athens and Sparta? Hanson offers no compelling answer, but instead, he does emphasize the war's horrific cost to ordinary citizens, as well as the elites, of Sparta, Athens and their respective allies, as if he was echoing William T. Sherman's astute remark that "war is hell".

This is not a typical narrative history that starts at the beginning and systematically presents a chronology of events. Instead, it makes repeated passages over the history from different topical standpoints. So it helps to already have a basic understanding of the chronology. For that reason, the later chapters were easier going for me than the earlier because I didn't have this background. As I gradually formed a picture of what happened over the entire period, each chapter got more fascinating for me.

This is actually a pretty depressing book to read. The author has a very negative view of warfare and the ability of the human species to learn from his mistakes. Throughout the book he illustrates over and over how throughout history mankind has made the same mistakes it did in this war, almost as if we cannot learn from our mistakes and there is very little hope that we'll be able to in the future. Unlike at least one other reviewer up here, I found his analogies to current events for example pretty much on the mark.

The author has a depressing and pessimistic view of human nature, which seems to lose all sense of proportion and reason the longer a war proceeds. Sound familiar? I think his assessment of human nature is pretty much on the mark.