In dense prose, Bagnall captures the Greeks' self-destructive madness. Sparta and her allies finally prevailed by severing Athens' supply lines and starving the city-state into submission. A seminal event in ancient history, the Peloponnesian War pitted the two great Greek rivals, democratic Athens and authoritarian Sparta, in what Bagnall calls "a fearful, self-destructive war." The conflict, precipitated by Athens' lust for Greek hegemony, quickly settled into a stalemate-"an elephant versus a whale"-because neither Sparta, a land power, nor Athens, a naval power, had a clear strategy for victory. , 2005), a former British army chief of the general staff, completed this rigorous study of ancient Greece's 27-year civil war just before his death in 2002.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |