Isocrates, On the Peace, 4, 88, mourned the loss of prominent Athenians over the three-decade course of the war, aristocrats who would have done far better to use their talents against the common Hellenic enemy, imperial Persia. Isocrates’ argument is similar to that of those who now regret the First World War, which is seen as a tragic European suicide that wrecked the imperial mission of a civilizing Britain. See, in general, N. Ferguson, The Pity of War (New York, 2000), 457–62.
