The History of Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian War took place in the 5th Century BC. This war was fought between Athens and Sparta – at the time the two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece. The Peloponnesian War reshaped the ancient Greek world, made a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favoring Sparta. It caused the total regional decline and marked the dramatic end to the fifth century BC and the golden age of Greece. Ancient Greek warfare, originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, was transformed into an all-out struggle between city-states, complete with atrocities on a large scale. Shattering religious and cultural taboos, devastating vast swathes of countryside, and destroying whole cities, the Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the fifth century BC and the golden age of Greece. This book provides a thorough insight into this period of the history of ancient Greece and this devastating conflict through the work of the prominent modern historian J. B. Bury, as well as the most important contemporary sources – History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides and Hellenica by Xenophon. Content: Introduction The History of the Peloponnesian War (by J.B. Bury) Primary Sources The Peloponnesian War (by Thucydides) Hellenica: The Final Years of the War Its Aftermath (by Xenophon) The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides is widely considered to be a classic and regarded as one of the earliest scholarly works of history. Hellenica by Xenophon is direct continuation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. There is virtually no transition between the two works, to the extent that the opening words of Hellenica are translated as «After this», or sometimes «Following these events». The Hellenica recounts the last seven years of the Peloponnesian war, as well as its aftermath.