The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Cornell paperbacks)

New
Paperback
1989
$54.62

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. 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. 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 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.

Synopsis

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. 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. 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 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.

$54.62

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 16 Jan 1989
ISBN 10: 0801495563
ISBN 13: 9780801495564

Media Reviews

Kagan's book is based on complete control of both the ancient evidence and modern scholarship. -Choice

Kagan's book is a contribution of considerable distinction, scrupulously fair, carefully argued, and lucidly written. And, what is more, it is persuasive. . . . Kagan sets out the story in detail and with acumen. The case has been adumbrated before-but never presented with such thoroughness. -Journal of Interdisciplinary History

A profound analysis of the relation of strategy to politics, a sympathetic but searching critique of Thucydides' masterpiece, and a trenchant assessment of the voluminous modern literature on the war. -Bernard Knox, The Atlantic Monthly (reviewing the four-volume series)

The temptation to acclaim Kagan's four volumes as the foremost work of history produced in North America in the twentieth century is vivid. . . . Here is an achievement that not only honors the criteria of dispassion and of unstinting scruple which mark the best of modern historicism but honors its readers. To read Kagan's 'History of the Peloponnesian War' at the present hour is to be almost unbearably tested. -George Steiner, The New Yorker (reviewing the four-volume series)

Author Bio

Donald Kagan is Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University.