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

by Victor Davis Hanson

Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Peace, and Lysistrata, as well as Euripides’ Andromache, Helen, Hecuba, and Trojan Women, while they betray no love for the Spartans, seem to offer a new wrinkle in Greek attitudes toward war: such conflicts themselves are awful human experiences that transcend the reasons for hostilities. The farmers and women of Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Peace, and Lysistrata, like the captured and suffering civilians of Euripides’ Hecuba, Trojan Women, and Andromache, reveal that everyday Greeks found shared experiences across the battle line. Thus the playwrights offer the idea that there is something wrong with war per se—not just with the Spartans.