New Peloponnesian War Book by Victor Davis Hanson

**Malrubius** · 11-09-2005, 08:42

Excerpts of this new book, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, are posted at National Review Online:

Was Athens — or Greece itself — destroyed by the war? An entire industry of classical scholarship once argued for postwar Hellenic "decline," and the subsequent tide of fourth-century poverty, social unrest, and class struggle as arising after the Peloponnesian War. Victorians, in turn, felt the loss was more a "what might have been," a conflict that had ended not just the idea of Athens but "the glory that was Greece" itself and the Hellenic civilizing influence in the wider Mediterranean.

Part One continued

Clearly something had been lost in the twenty-seven years of fighting of what was, in fact, the first great civil war in Western history. But precisely what was this damage that might explain why Athens, which had once spearheaded a Pan-hellenic coalition to trounce a Persian invasion of some 250,000 combatants, could not by the mid-fourth century protect itself from another northern invasion of a mere 40,000 Macedonian combatants? Between the brilliant victories over the Persians at Marathon and Salamis (490 and 480) and the traumatic rout by Philip and Alexander at Chaeronea (338) looms the Peloponnesian War, whose steep costs were as much psychological as material trauma.

Part Two continued

We think of the Peloponnesian War as bringing about the decline of Athens, and Greece, but was that really the case? Was there a revitalization afterwards?

Excerpt Three

Over three decades of fighting unleashed the creative talents of thousands of Greeks in the singular effort to kill one another without ethical restraint or much ostensible deference to past protocols. Just as the horror of World War II even today still prefigures all current military strategy and practice — from strategic bombing and atomic weapons to massed tank assaults and carrier war — so too innovations over thirty years of fighting ended old concepts and for the next three centuries, until the coming of Rome, unleashed the Greek creative talent for killing.

**Rosacrux redux** · 11-09-2005, 13:41

When V.D. Hanson stays strictly with military history, he's a good writer as good can be. When he ventures into less rigid concepts, he is just a fascist prick, with little regard to historical accuracy and a tendancy to create "facts" while on it, and draw unfounded conclusions and silly assertions out of the blue.

For more on my rant, read his "Carnage and Culture"... methinks V.D. should've stayed with the Carnage and forget all about the Culture...

This effort of his seems to weight in the "historian" side again, with the "military" side in a secondary role. So this looks like another anthology of "crap a-la V.D."

Having said that, I am going on Amazon to buy it - I hate the guys guts, but I read his books

**conon394** · 11-09-2005, 15:51

Rosacrux redux

You are perhaps a bit to hard Hanson. True of late he has tended to preferred polemics, but some of earlier books (Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece and The Other Greeks) were solid classical history covering more than just warfare.

Malrubius

I think Hanson being rather sophistic in that second quote. 40,000 Macedonians under Philip were a quite a bit more dangerous than Xerxes: The same force cut thought the Persian Empire like butter; therefore it seems unfair to suggest Athens (or Greece) failed at a lesser challenge. The Persian wars were hardly a cake walk, but for Xerxes bad decision at Salamis, the Greeks looked to be loosing. Had the Xerxes simply refused battle, it seems likely the Greek fleet would have broken up and Themistocles would have had to make good on his plan B and move the Athenians to Italy, leaving the rest of Greece to almost certain defeat.

Athens (or the Greeks) made as big an effort in 338 and the Lamian War as It did in the 5th century, all three wars were close, and realistically Athens was just not quite as lucky in the 4th century as in the 5th.

**Rosacrux redux** · 11-09-2005, 16:41

Conon, I think you got me wrong: I am suggesting that ole V.D. is rather good when he stays at the purely military side of the facts and incidents, but fails miserably to present anything coherent and serious when he ventures outside the narrow confinements of military history. Plus, he is an ultra-right-wing loonie :)

**conon394** · 11-09-2005, 17:34

Hmm, I don't know I still argue that in his early stuff, he made some good contributions when looking at argiculture and small farmers in Classical Greece.

**Red Harvest** · 11-09-2005, 18:06

Originally Posted by Rosacrux redux

When V.D. Hanson stays strictly with military history, he's a good writer as good can be. When he ventures into less rigid concepts, he is just a fascist prick, with little regard to historical accuracy and a tendancy to create "facts" while on it, and draw unfounded conclusions and silly assertions out of the blue.

Fascist prick is a good description of VDH--one might substitute "fascist hack" to be more PC in terminology. His writing just wreaks of that. It is cheerleading trying to support his theories about the present. If I want to read modern political hacks, I don't pick up a history book.

I've got one of his books, I don't think I will be buying another.

I don't trust his "facts" either. I still have yet to find corroboration of his statement that Philip II was struck by a slinger's bullet. It made sense to me...until I tried to find the basis. Instead, what I've been able to find all suggests it was an arrow.

I agree with something I read in a review of VDH's work: one gets the feeling that he starts his research already knowing what his conclusions will be, then he selectively uses and assembles the information available to reach his pre-ordained conclusion.

VDH comes across like a modern day Livy.

**conon394** · 11-09-2005, 18:27

I don't trust his "facts" either. I still have yet to find corroboration of his statement that Philip II was struck by a slinger's bullet. It made sense to me...until I tried to find the basis. Instead, what I've been able to find all suggests it was an arrow.

Where did you find that reference? I'm just curious, what purpose did it serve. I usually find the things that bug me about Hanson's work (wearing his classical historian hat, not right wing commentator one) are examples like the fact he always cites the upper end of weight estimates for a Hoplite armor (and without say comparisons to what legionary amour might have weighed) in the service of buttressing his arguments about the length and nature of hoplite battles.

**Red Harvest** · 11-09-2005, 22:56

Originally Posted by conon394

Where did you find that reference? I'm just curious, what purpose did it serve. I usually find the things that bug me about Hanson's work (wearing his classical historian hat, not right wing commentator one) are examples like the fact he always cites the upper end of weight estimates for a Hoplite armor (and without say comparisons to what legionary amour might have weighed) in the service of buttressing his arguments about the length and nature of hoplite battles.

I believe you e-mailed it to me in response to a questions I posed about it some months earlier (Thanks again!) LOL. Alice Swift Riginos' 1994 article "The Wounding of Philip II of Macedon: Fact and Fabrication" with a list of period authors' comments on the topic, and variants.

As I said back then when I originally questioned VDH's sling assertion, it bothered me because it was at odds with everything else I had seen at the time. He could be right, but it would be nice if he gave us the basis for this departure...rather than just hanging it out there as if it were fact and common knowledge. I was about to use the sling comments from his book in another thread, but I sought some confirmation first. I'm glad I did so.