Brad Delong's excellent weblog pointed me to this review of Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War in The New Yorker. That book is next, or next to next on my reading list (if I ever finish Peter Green's book--non-fiction and a 20-month old just do not mix) I'm disappointed that the review was not favorable.
The desire to rehabilitate Cleon inevitably results in a corresponding denigration of the peace party (with its [base "]apparently limitless forbearance[per thou]) and of the cautious policies recommended first by Pericles and then by Nicias, a figure for whom Kagan has particular disdain. Here Kagan[base ']s revisionism borders on being misleading. Nicias had tried to bluff the Athenian Assembly into abandoning the invasion of Sicily, declaring that it would require far greater expense than people realized; but they simply approved the additional ships and troops. This leads Kagan, bizarrely, to characterize the Sicilian Expedition as [base "]the failed stratagem of Nicias.[per thou] As for the Athenians[base '] massacre of the Melians, Kagan dismisses it as [base "]the outlet they needed for their energy and frustration.[per thou]
Kagan[base ']s perspective on events and personalities at first suggests an admirable desire to see the war with fresh and unsentimental eyes. But after a while it becomes hard not to ascribe his revisionism to plain hawkishness, a distaste for compromise and negotiation when armed conflict is possible. His book represents the Ollie North take on the Peloponnesian War: [base "]If we[base ']d only gone in there with more triremes,[per thou] he seems to be saying, [base "]we would have won that sucker.[per thou]
The article also takes a pretty good swipe at Victor Davis Hanson, which is great good fun to read--I find Hanson to be endlessly annoying for missing the intent of the classical authors in his hawkish zeal.
Interesting that the weakness of Kagan's book is its distance from Thuc, when the great strength of Peter Green's The Greco-Persian Wars is that he has more faith in Herodotus than most modern historians. Green is well aware of the pitfalls of relying on Herodotus--he relied on biased sources, he was a propagandist, and he is too quick to pass on a improbable story--but he is careful not to discard too quickly, and because of that, Green offers a fresh look at a war that has been written about so much.
DeLong's post also has some good insights into the war, and he expresses the strength of Athens from a perspective I hadn't considered before:
Actually, we do know one important, big thing about the Classical Greek world that Thucydides did not know (and that, strangely, Kagan appears not to know). There is a deep, powerful sense in which time was on the side of Athens and its empire. Each decade that the war between Sparta and Athens remained cold rather than hot was a decade for metics and immigrants to the Geek world to think whether they wanted to live in Spartan-allied oligarchies dominated by a closed guild of landowners, or in Athenian-allied places where the (male, citizen) demos ruled and where there was much more growth, commerce, trade, and opportunity.
Greece has always had one of the most entertaining political dramas in the world. Facing collapsing popularity, the Socialist party was called for early elections, and brought a familiar name out to prevent what was looking like an inevitable defeat.
Premier Costas Simitis, who announced the early elections, also spoke of ``renewal'' for the party that has led Greece for all but three years since 1981. He is expected to formally nominate Papandreou to succeed him as party leader on Thursday.
Papandreou would become the third member of his family to lead Greece if the Socialists can overcome the conservative New Democracy party, which is far ahead in opinion polls.
Papandreou's father, the late Andreas Papandreou, founded the Socialist party in the 1970s and served three times as premier. The foreign minister's grandfather, George, also served as premier in the 1960s.
The younger Papandreou was born in St. Paul, Minn., while his father was teaching economics. His education included high school in Elmhurst, Ill. -- his mother's hometown -- and a bachelor's degree in sociology from Amherst College in Massachusetts. He also studied in Sweden, Britain and Canada.
Yet his popularity in Greece appears solid. Opinion polls show him to be among the most respected political figures.
