Thucydides, the chronicler of the Peloponnesian War, tells the same woeful story as Aristophanes. He blames the catastrophic Athenian campaign in Sicily during 413-415 B.C.E., and his city’s ultimate humiliation, on the Athenians’ desire for imperial booty. Athenian democracy voted to attack a fellow democracy, the Sicilian city of Syracuse, “on a slight pretext, which looked reasonable, [but] was in fact aiming at conquering the whole of Sicily.... The general masses and the average soldier himself saw the prospect of getting pay for the time being and of adding to the empire so as to secure
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