From the Greek victory over Persian forces on the field of Plataea to the Athenian blockade of the rebel city of Potidaea - key events in the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, respectively - the half-century of Greek history known as the Pentecontaetia is an era for which sources are few and interpretation is controversial. Now, eminent historian E. Badian brings together six essays - one new and five revised for this volume - that shed new light on one of the key periods in the history of the ancient world. How was the Persian War finally settled, and what was the nature of the relationship that emerged between the two great powers of the Aegean, Athens and Persia? Is it possible to determine the sequence of events of the half-century between Xerxes' retreat and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War? Should the general picture of Thucydides as the objective and "scientific" historian be revised, at least as far as this period is concerned? In addressing these and other questions, E. Badian provides the penetrating insights and rigorous scholarly argument, to which his readers have become accustomed.

Chronicles two decades of war between Athens and Sparta.

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 Athenian power and the fear that this power inspired in Sparta which rendered the Peloponnesian War somehow necessary, inevitable, or compulsory. In this new political psychological study of Thucydides' first book, S.N. Jaffe shows how the History's account of the outbreak of the war ultimately points toward the opposing characters of the Athenian and Spartan regimes, disclosing a Thucydidean preoccupation with the interplay between nature and convention. Jaffe explores how the character of the contest between Athens and Sparta, or how the outbreak of a particular war, can reveal Thucydides' account of the recurring human causes of war and peace. The political thought of Thucydides proves bound up with his distinctive understanding of the interrelationship of particular events and more universal themes.

This full-scale sequential reading of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War will be invaluable to the specialist and also to those in search of an introduction and companion to the Histories. Moving beyond other studies by its focus on the reader's role in giving meaning to the text, it reveals Thucydides' use of objectivity not so much as a standard for the proper presentation of his subject matter as a method for communicating with his readers and involving them in the complexity and suffering of the Peloponnesian War. W. Robert Connor shows that as Thucydides' themes and ideas are reintroduced and developed, the initial reactions of the reader are challenged, subverted, and eventually made to contribute to a deeper understanding of the war.

In a continuation of his multivolume series on ancient Sparta, Paul Rahe narrates the second stage in the six-decades-long, epic struggle between Sparta and Athens that first erupted some seventeen years after their joint victory in the Persian Wars. Rahe explores how and why open warfare between these two erstwhile allies broke out a second time, after they had negotiated an extended truce. He traces the course of the war that then took place, he examines and assesses the strategy each community pursued and the tactics adopted, and he explains how and why mutual exhaustion forced on these two powers yet another truce doomed to fail. At stake for each of the two peoples caught up in this enduring strategic rivalry, as Rahe shows, was nothing less than the survival of its political regime and of the peculiar way of life to which that regime gave rise.

This collection of studies on ancient poetry and historiography pays tribute to the distinguished classicist Tony Woodman. It focuses on the impact of rhetoric on both genres, and on the importance of the literature on illuminating the historical Roman context, and the historical context to illuminate the literature.