A War Like No Other
How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War
An intimate and thorough account of one of the most far-reaching conflicts of the Ancient World
One of today's most provocative military historians, Victor Davis Hanson is acclaimed for his brilliantly researched, groundbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date: A War Like No Other. Over the course of a generation, the Hellenic city-states of Athens and Sparta fought a bloody conflict that resulted in the collapse of Athens and the end of its golden age. Thucydides wrote the standard history of the Peloponnesian War, which has given readers throughout the ages a vivid and authoritative narrative. But Hanson offers readers something new: a complete chronological account that reflects the political background of the time, the strategic thinking of the combatants, the misery of battle in multifaceted theatres, and an important insight into how these events echo in the present day. In compelling detail, Hanson portrays how Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, using tactics that ranged from conventional sieges to targeted assassinations, torture and terror. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors like Pericles and Lysander, dramatists such as Aristophanes, and philosophers including Sophocles and Plato. Hanson's perceptive analysis of events and personalities raises many thought-provoking questions. Were Athens and Sparta like America and the USSR, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the drawn-out conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland and the current Middle East? Was it more of a civil war, a brutal rift that rent the fabric of a glorious society; or a violent schism between liberals and conservatives, a cultural war of the kind that even today determines military policies? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life and unearths the often surprising ways in which the past informs the present. 'The age of Pericles was also a time of famine, pestilence and atrocity: a "Thirty Year Slaughter." In order to understand the lesson this offers for civilisation, one must try to feel it as the Greeks felt it, and reflect it as they did. In this dual task, Victor Davis Hanson once again demonstrates that his qualifications are unrivalled.' Christopher Hitchens, author of Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays 'This book will immediately become the standard companion volume in English to Thucydides' Peloponnesian Wars. Its own battle narratives are unexcelled; but its singular merit is its comprehensive and detailed description of how the actual fighting was done, how generals led, and why each side – Sparta and Athens – went to war. The author is ... the premier classical historian and military commentator of our day.' Josiah Bunting III, author of Ulysses S. Grant 'The Peloponnesian War was grand and tragic but the sheer misery of those who experienced it has often been overlooked – until now. From death by trampling to cannibalism, from pre-teen-sized knights on ponies to deformed and ghostly plague survivors, from elegant galleys to bloodbaths in waterlogged death traps, the dark corners of classical combat are all brought to light by Hanson. This is a groundbreaking book by a great historian.' Barry Strauss, author of Salamis: The Greatest Naval Battle of the Ancient World, 480BC 'Victor Davis Hanson charts in fine detail this "horrific" guerrilla war ... Hanson sails through his narrative with the grace of an Athenian trireme at Salamis, rendering the horror of death expertly, yet without undue purience. Alongside Thucydides himself, his volume will surely become the definitive work.' Scotsman 'In warfare, as in so much else, the Greeks set the pattern for the West's future – a notion that Hanson has explored with great brilliance ... a work of great compassion and human sympathy.' Daily Telegraph
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About Victor Davis Hanson is the author of The Western Way of War and The Wars of the Ancient Greeks. He has written military histories of the American Civil War and World War II, The Soul of Battle and Ripples of Battle, as well as two best-selling collections of essays: An Autumn of War and Between War and Peace. He is a professor of Classics emeritus at the California State University and lives and works with his wife and three children in California.
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