He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. Thucydides of Athens, one of the greatest of historians, was born about 471 BCE. A readable and clear survey, this text offers a balanced discussion of controversial themes, and will appeal to ancient historians, classicists and all those who are interested in military history. Not afraid to challenge accepted views, he assesses the war as a military rather than a political endeavour, evaluating issues such as the advantages and limitations of sea power. Within a narrative framework, Lazenby concentrates on the fighting itself, and examining the way in which both strategy and tactics developed as the conflict spread. Lazenby avoids the tendency of allowing historiography to obscure the analysis, and while paying due attention to detail, also looks at the fundamental questions of warfare raised by the conflict. This authoritative work is the first single-volume study of the entire war to be published in over seventy-five years. Since Thucydides described the war as 'the greatest disturbance to befall the Greeks' numerous studies have been made of individual episodes and topics. With the struggle between Athens and Sparta at its core, the twenty-seven-year conflict drew in states from all points of the compass from Byzantion in the north, Crete in the south, Asia Minor in the east and Sicily in the west. The range and extent of the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century BC has led to it being described as a 'world war' in miniature. He further examines the evidence to see what decisions were made that led to war, at each point asking whether a different decision would have been possible. Asserting instead that the origin of the war 'cannot, without serious distortion, be treated in isolation from the internal history of the states involved,' Kagan traces the connections between domestic politics, constitutional organization, and foreign affairs. He focuses his study on the question: Was the war inevitable, or could it have been avoided? Kagan takes issue with Thucydides' view that the war was inevitable, that the rise of the Athenian Empire in a world with an existing rival power made a clash between the two a certainty. The first volume of Donald Kagan's acclaimed four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War offers a new evaluation of the origins and causes of the conflict, based on evidence produced by modern scholarship and on a careful reconsideration of the ancient texts.

Results of the peloponnesian war