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

by Victor Davis Hanson

At the very heart of the disaster was the flawed nature of the tripartite command. It was not just that battle responsibility was divided among three generals, rather than the more normal two. The suspicious Athenians, after all, were notorious for sometimes having too many squabbling commanders in the field at once. The problem was that the three were temperamentally so different, and in addition brought considerable political baggage along on the voyage. The senior officer in charge, the naturally cautious Nicias, was in poor health and had been against the expedition from the beginning. Thus for the next two years he fought only haphazardly and always in fear of being charged back home with dereliction. Such was the peculiar nature of Athenian command that sometimes generals who did not approve of expeditions were put in charge of them, on the dubious logic that they would provide a critical accountability both in the field and, later, at home. Alcibiades was shortly recalled on allegations of sacrilege. On the eve of sailing, dozens of young right-wing firebrands, in a fit of drunkenness and politically inspired audacity, had been accused of public sacrilege that cast ill omens over the expedition’s impending departure. Perhaps their real intention was to spook the superstitious voting poor into rescinding the expedition altogether. Only that way might Athens ensure that an oligarchic Sparta remained neutral and its army thus kept away from the Attic heartland. While A...