The Peloponnesian War

Rating:
Summary: Read the Greeks
Review: Given the sources for this material I see no reason to let Kagan filter the original material to the reader. In my opinion, he makes the traditional error of supposing the ancient Greeks were just older versions of ourselves. Herodotus may have pulled our legs sometimes but he did show that they were in reality very different from ourselves. I see this problem everywhere in Greek scholarship. Especially in the works targeted to the general public. It is hard to beat reading Thucydides and Xenophon and the others for ourselves.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and thorough history of the Peloponnesian War
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Not a fun read
Review: I picked up this book after hearing an interview with the author on NPR. My interest in this era of Greek history is a recent one, sparked by an excellent documentary on The rise and fall of Sparta on the History Channel. So I'm a true layman. Kagan fails to make the story of the war fun to read. The narrative is dry, the descriptions too factual. I'm not sure what the audience for the book is. For instance, Kagan doesnt bother describing daily life in Athens or Sparta. So as a casual reader I have no idea what this war did to ordinary people, what was the effect on lives, how did people cope with the upheaval. I recently read books on the making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes and evolution by Jonathan Weiner and both managed to take a difficult and dry subject and make reading about it a joy (both won the Pulitzer Prize). I wish someone would do the same for this subject.

Rating:
Summary: Good enough account
Review: I understand this is a sort of summary/abridgment of Kagan's 4-volume work on this subject. But I'm still a little bothered by the fact that in 500 pages of narrative there is not a single source note anywhere.

Also, the "Sources" chapter at the end, only 3-and-a-half pages long, contains a bibliographic essay with very few monographs titles, and none in original Greek - not even Thucydides's. Based on my limited impression, Kagan can hardly be called a classical scholar, only a specialist in ancient military history - the sort one might find in one or two professors at West Point (and indeed Kagan has a son who happens to be just that).

It doesn't bother me that Kagan has a tendency to draw parallels between current events and ancient ones. He does so elsewhere, and not in this book. (I should add by the way that his knowledge of any kind of history is strictly limited to that of the West, except for the 20th century). What bothers me is that Kagan is touted as a great classicist whose work on the Peloponnesian War is the final word for the time being, a claim absurd enough to make an Oxford undergrad in Lit. Hum. wince.

Still, this book reads fast and will do for the general reader.

Rating:
Summary: Great Overview
Review: It is hard for a lot of people to read about the Peloponnesian War. One of the reasons for this difficulty is the tragedy of the whole fiasco. We, in modern times, especially in America and Europe, have glorified the ancient Greek city-states, primarily Athens. To modern supporters of democracy, Athens stands as the shining example of representative government in ancient times, a lighthouse of freedom surrounded by oligarchy and totalitarianism. Even more romantic was Athens involvement in the Persian Wars earlier in the century, where the outnumbered Greeks fought off the backward hordes of imperial Persia. This beautiful, if somewhat imaginary history of Greek democracy is what makes its downfall so hard to swallow, especially under the circumstances under which it did so. For the educated layman, Kagan's book is a very good overview of the conflict and its repercussions.

The war and conflict itself, however, were nothing less than earthshaking. Greece, and the world, would never be the same. Two great powers would face off in a war that would soon parallel the great bi-polar total wars that we have experienced in our own century. On one side is Athens, the home of democracy and the center of Greek cultural life. Its empire stretched far and wide, and its economy was extremely robust. Athens traded with numerous nations all around the Mediterranean, the routes protected by its immensely powerful navy. Opposing Athens in the battle for Greek hegemony was mighty Sparta, a culture so unique that it is hard for us to really fathom the inner dynamics of it. Sparta really was the opposite of Athens, with its harsh militaristic society and its massive amounts of slaves. There was no time for learning or exploring, only war. It was an oligarchy, the enemy of democracy in Greece. When these two powers commenced hostilities in the 4th century BC, no city state would be untouched.

The war stretched on for over 20 years, with battles fought in the mainland, Italy, Asia Minor, and, most importantly, Sicily. Antiquated ways of war, which involved simple up front battles were tossed aside as both alliances committed horrendous atrocities against each other. Cities were sacked, populations decimated, all over who would be the power in Greece. Engaging personalities would emerge that are studied and remembered still, such as Pericles of Athens, Brasidas of Sparta, and, of course, the storied Alcibiades. As years past, the damage done to both sides grew to such an extent that it was clear to all involved that the glory days of Greek society were over. The dreams of a rational confederation of Greeks was drowned in the blood of plague stricken Athens and embattled Sparta. When the war finally came to an end, Sparta emerged victorious, although their triumph was most certainly Pyrric. Never again would either city wield such dominant power, and they had no to blame but themselves.

This sweeping story laid out so amateurishly by me is described brilliantly by Donald Kagan, whose earlier multi-volume history of the war is one of the best modern works on the subject. In this work, he presents a simpler analysis of the war that all modern readers can grasp. He does this very well, as he narrates the progression of the conflict with a subdued intellectualism. His analysis of Thucydides is wonderful, as he looks at the famed historians writing under a very powerful contextual microscope. Some of his writing style was a little tedious, as he could use a better editor at points. Overall though, Professor Kagan has provided the modern public an accessible history of one of history's greatest conflicts and its wide-ranging repercussions.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Just finished reading this book. Wow! Excellent---across the board. Covers just about every aspect of this monumental struggle between Athens and Sparta and gives it historical context that is applicable to today.
Moreover, Kagan's writing is lucid and engaging. I couldn't put this book down, and I am not a history buff!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but with flaws
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Peloponnesian War
Review: Kagan spent decades crafting his four-volume History of the Peloponnesian War, and while it is imbued with scholarship, it is nevertheless a daunting work. With that in mind, he has written a much shorter version that nevertheless hardly suffers from comparison. In a style at once readable and pithy, Kagan (classics & history, Yale) makes fifth-century B.C.E. Greece comprehensible to all readers. Focusing on the leaders of Athens and Sparta, which contributes mightily to the flow of the text, he composes a noteworthy history of these two cities and their 30-year struggle. The division of the work's seven parts into 37 chapters and further into nearly 200 subheadings gives it a chronological and subject orientation that makes it eminently usable. Further, Kagan's sumptuous style will enthrall readers who had not imagined that they would find the topic so absorbing. This work will surely be welcomed by any library where the four-volume set seemed to be more than users demanded. Recommended for all public and academic libraries

Rating:
Summary: Read with Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy
Review: Kagan's book is a thoughtful, accessible, recounting of Thucydides' work for readers of all ages. Few have the intellectual insight and elegance of thought as Kagan does, and this ought to be a must for all school and college texts on classics, history, military history, as well as the study of civilizations. I also found the recent Alexander the Great's Art of Startegy to be a book that takes off where Kagan leaves off and weaves together a compelling, insightful, and timely story about the way Greek history since the Peloponnessian Wars affected the way Alexander the Great approached his conquests, and, which, in turn, changed the way we approach issues related to conquests, invasions, and co-existence of cultures. I would not have thought about the implications of the Peloponessian Wars had I not read Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy. I am thankful to the Tokyo bookshop which had prominently displayed these books side by side.

Rating:
Summary: A Tough Slog
Review: 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.