Reviews for The Peloponnesian War : Athens and Sparta in Savage Conflict, 431-404 BC

The average rating for The Peloponnesian War : Athens and Sparta in Savage Conflict, 431-404 BC based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-04-09 00:00:00 Antonio Morales This book is rightly considered an historical masterpiece, but a few flaws kept me from thoroughly enjoying it. Kagan's scholarship is tremendous, as is his breadth of knowledge on the subject. His style is generally entertaining, with a very British style of dry humor that tend to make history books much more readable to a wide audience. My main fault with the book is his ideological biases which are extremely transparent. For example, he is pro-democracy to the point of forgiving the assembly voting for heinous murders because they were "relatively" fair and forgiving for the time period. From reading his other works, I understand his love of modern democracy, however it is quite anachronistic to apply our modern notions of democracy to ancient Athens. Athens should not be given a moral carte blanche because they were a democracy and, coincidently, we are today governed by democratic principles. At times, Kagan comes disturbingly close to rationalizing gross abuses by the Athenian democrats. A modern person should not praise the Athenians for being a democracy, they should condemn them for being imperialists. Kagan takes pains to make the Spartans into incompetent villians. Their victories are accidental and their losses require little explanation. Their leaders are faulted for being overwhelmingly conservative and not taking advantage of moments of Athenian weakness, yet, when a dynamic Spartan leader emerges-like Brasidas or Lysander- he is faulted as being a sinister imperialist. The message is fairly clear: Imperialism is fine if it is used to install a puppet government which happens to be a democracy; Imperialism is a great evil if you use it to install oligarchic government. This ideology is very familiar to modern neo-conservatives schooled in the "democracy is always right" mindset. Whether or not this idea is valid today, imposing it on Greek society of 2400 years ago is, as I said above, anachronistic and totally wrong.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-04-14 00:00:00 Michael Holzwarth This book is wonderful because it takes Thucydides classic text--itself a wonder--and fills in the gaps, or corrects the ancient text where necessary. Thucydides is cited throughout in a manner reminiscent of the notation used to cite Biblical chapter and verse. In addition, Kagan refers to the writings of Plutarch, Xenophon, Diodorus, Socrates, Aristophanes, and others, especially for the last seven years of the war, a period Thucydides does not cover. Like any scholar worth his salt, Kagan is conversant with the scholarly consensus, with which he is for the most part in step, though he occasionally offers alternative scenarios. Much of the book is simply riveting. Like when the Spartan general Brasidas retakes Amphipolis, or the naval battle fought late in the war for control of the Hellespont. Woven throughout is the longer story of the Athenian turncoat, Alcibiades. Professor Kagan preceded this one-volume history with a four-volume history of the war that took him around 20 years to write. That 4-volume series is a much more detailed consideration of political motives and military strategy. But with this single volume, Kagan was able to produce a fast-moving tale, full of incident and colorful description. I am not a great reader of military histories; most, in my experience, are a boring slog. But because of Kagan's previous in-depth consideration of the same events, and the need to get the story told in a mere 485 pages, the result is a taut, compressed narrative that moves briskly and bears the reader delightedly along.