Modern accounts of the great war between the Athenians and the Spartans in the late fifth century BC have simply reanalysed the gripping analysis of military and political events given by Thucydides. But a great deal of other evidence survives from this best-known of all periods of Athenian history. This book exploits that evidence and our rich knowledge of ancient Greek society to reveal the Peloponnesian War as not just an event but an experience that reshaped Athenian society as it was happening. It looks again not merely at the causes of the war and its military and political narratives, but at how the war reshaped the world, for men, for women, and even for the gods. This book not only re-illuminates the most dramatic years of classical Athenian history, it reshapes what it is to write history.
Thucydides left us a rich account of the causes and events of the Peloponnesian War, and his analysis of that narrative has gripped readers ever since. But this book exploits the mass evidence besides Thucydides, to give, for the first time, a rich account of what the war meant.
