A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War

by Victor Davis Hanson

A central theme is the use and abuse of power, and how it lurks behind men’s professions of idealism and purported ideology.

Thucydides teaches us to embrace skepticism, expecting us to look to national self-interest, not publicized grievances, when wars of our own age inevitably break out.

Perhaps never has the Peloponnesian War been more relevant to Americans than to us of the present age. We, like the Athenians, are all-powerful, but insecure, professedly pacifist yet nearly always in some sort of conflict, often more desirous of being liked than being respected, and proud of our arts and letters even as we are more adept at war.

“Athenianism” was the Western world’s first example of globalization.

Spartans were oligarchic fundamentalists par excellence, hating “people power” and the danger it represented.

The conflict between the principal rivals officially started when the Spartans violated the sworn thirty-year peace treaty and invaded Attica in spring 431.

Thousands were to die on both sides because their leaders took them to war without a real plan of how to defeat the enemy on the battlefield and destroy its power.