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Article: A war without heroes.(A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- November 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Victor Davis Hanson may just be our best military historian of the ancient world. He has traced the hard hand of war on Greek grain fields and olive groves, analyzed the agony of the ancient Greek infantryman, explicated specific battles, and put forth an ambitious theory of a western way of war that began in early Greece. It is only natural that he would turn now to the Peloponnesian War. (1) Not that anyone would approach the subject without a measure of trepidation.
The Peloponnesian War is the Everest of ancient military history, big and frightening, and not just because it lasted the twenty-seven years from 431 to 404 B.C. and involved the major powers of the ...