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 schola
The cause of great power war is a perennial issue for the student of politics. Some 2,400 years ago, in his monumental History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote that it was the growth of Ath
Ever since Thucydides pondered reasons for the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, writers, philosophers, and social scientists have tried to identify factors that promote conflict escalation: for exam
The German archaeologist Ernst Curtius (1814–1896) published this seminal work in three volumes between 1857 and 1867. It quickly became a bestseller and was republished in numerous German editions. The work was translated into English by the eminent British historian Adolphus William Ward (1837–1924) who divided it into five volumes, published between 1868 and 1873. Volume 2 focuses on the themes of conflict and unity, with the second part of Book 2, and Book 3 which covers the Ionian revolt and the events that led to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Curtius' History was a pioneering work of nineteenth-century classical scholarship. For many generations it provided an indispensable guide through the complex history of the ancient Greek world, and it continues to inspire researchers today.
Widely acknowledged as the most authoritative study of ancient Greece, George Grote's twelve-volume work, begun in 1846, established the shape of Greek history which still prevails in textbooks and popular accounts of the ancient world today. Grote employs direct and clear language to take the reader from the earliest times of legendary Greece to the death of Alexander and his generation, drawing upon epic poetry and legend, and examining the growth and decline of the Athenian democracy. The work provides explanations of Greek political constitutions and philosophy, and interwoven throughout are the important but outlying adventures of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. Volume 6 offers the history of Greece from the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE to the Peace of Nikias.
