Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Kagan Donald
Title : The Archidamian war
Year : 1974

Link download : Kagan_Donald_-_The_Archidamian_war.zip

Preface. This book is a sequel to The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War and is part of a general history of that war which will require another volume or two to complete. The subject has not been treated on a large scale since the turn of the century; the important scholarship that has intervened and the continued interest in the war amply justify an attempt at a new history. The present volume deals with the first ten years, the Archidamian War. That struggle, beginning in 431, deserves a volume of its own, for to contemporaries it appeared to be a war complete in itself. Only hindsight and nhe special perception of Thucydides placed it, together with the diplomatic maneuverings of the Peace of Nicias in 421 and with the events from the resumption of hostility after the Sicilian expedition to the surrender of Athens in 404, as a single war of twenty-seven years and separated it from the war between the Peloponnesians and Athenians of 461-445. The Archidamian War, moreover, was the war planned by the Peloponnesian and Athenian strategists, and so the one that tested their skill and prescience. Because the conditions and character of the war could be foreseen, as far as such things are ever predictable, it is possible to make some judgment of the wisdom of each policy and the effectiveness of its execution. The main purpose of this volume, however, is to attempt a general history of the Greek states in their conduct of the war that does justice to military, political, diplomatic, and economic developments and shows how closely they were related. ...