Athens After The Peloponnesian War Routledge Revivals

Historians are used to studying the origins of war. The rebuilding in the aftermath of war is a subject that – at least in the case of Athens – has received far less attention. Along with the problems of reconstructing the economy and replenishing the population, the problem of renegotiating political consensus was equally acute. Athens after the Peloponnesian War, first published in 1986, undertakes a radically new investigation into the nature of Athenian political groups. The general model of ‘faction’ provided by political anthropology provides an indispensable paradigm for the Athenian case. More widely, Professor Strauss argues for the importance of the economic, social and ideological changes resulting from the Peloponnesian War in the development of political nexus. Athens after the Peloponnesian War offers a detailed demographic analysis, astute insight into political discourse, and is altogether one of the most thorough treatments of this important period in the Athenian democracy.

Athens has, at different times and from different points of view, been cited as a model of moderate democracy and triumphant humanism, or, on the contrary, as an illustration of the disorders due to demagoguery and misguided imperialism. Professor Mossé looks beyond these judgments to discuss the exceptional destiny of Athens – a city which for two centuries dominated the Eastern Mediterranean world, but then faded from the political scene when Rome extended its control over the whole Mediterranean. The history of Athenian democracy does not end in 404 BC, as is sometimes thought, when the city capitulated to Sparta at the end of its Golden Age. Athens in Decline, first published in 1973, demonstrates how the city experienced another seventy-five years of greatness, and survived, more or less curtailed, under Macedonian domination. She examines the reasons for the final collapse and follows the stages of a decline which was not wholly without grandeur.

Historians are used to studying the origins of war. The rebuilding in the aftermath of war is a subject that – at least in the case of Athens – has received far less attention. Along with the problems of reconstructing the economy and replenishing the population, the problem of renegotiating political consensus was equally acute. Athens after the Peloponnesian War, first published in 1986, undertakes a radically new investigation into the nature of Athenian political groups. The general model of ‘faction’ provided by political anthropology provides an indispensable paradigm for the Athenian case. More widely, Professor Strauss argues for the importance of the economic, social and ideological changes resulting from the Peloponnesian War in the development of political nexus. Athens after the Peloponnesian War offers a detailed demographic analysis, astute insight into political discourse, and is altogether one of the most thorough treatments of this important period in the Athenian democracy.

Understanding the history of Athens in the all important years of the second half of the fifth century B.C. is largely dependent on the work of the historian Thucydides. Previous scholarship has tended to view Thucydides' account as infallible. This book challenges that received wisdom, advancing original and controversial views of Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War; his misrepresentation of Alcibiades and Demosthenes; his relationship with Pericles; and his views on the Athenian Empire. Cawkwell's comprehensive analysis of Thucydides and his historical writings is persuasive, erudite and an immensely valuable addition to the scholarship and criticism of a rich and popular period of Greek history.

In Alcibiades, first published in 1989, one of the most colourful and controversial figures of fifth-century Athens is presented in a sympathetic light. The author sets out to demonstrate how, in his manipulation of the Spartan representatives in 420 BC, in his successful formation of an Athenian-Argive alliance, and in his plan for the conquest of Syracuse, Alcibiades developed a style of leadership that was characterised by audacity, ingenuity and skilful diplomacy. Further, his outstanding generalship during the Hellespontine War prompts speculation on how the Sicilian expedition might have ended had he also been in command. In many respects the story of Alcibiades is the history of Athens in the twilight of its power; Alcibiades succeeds in constructing a continuous narrative of his political career without duplicating more conventional accounts, always focussing on his involvement in the course of the Peloponnesian War and his troubled relationship with his Athenian compatriots.

This collection, first published in 1989, investigates aspects of the Spartan polity which have often been overlooked or underestimated. Viewed at least until the Renaissance as the epitome of classical virtues, Sparta has in the last two centuries suffered a rapid decline in reputation among liberal-minded scholars, repelled by many of the repressive measures employed by this remarkably successful city-state, which for centuries dominated mainland Greece. Recent studies have emphasised permanent problems which beset Sparta: the small size of her citizen body, the tensions between noble Spartiates and commoners, the ambiguous role of women, and, of course, the helots. Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success seeks to present this intriguing polis by exploring how its perennial difficulties were, for so long, ingeniously overcome. Specifically, the essays in this volume address themselves to broadly ideological issues, demonstrating how skilful propaganda and deception contributed significantly to the longevity of the Spartan state.

At the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC, Sparta reigned supreme in Greece. Having vanquished their rival Athens and quickly dismantled the wealthy and powerful Athenian Empire, Sparta set its sights on dominating the Mediterranean world and had begun a successful invasion of the vast Persian Empire under their legendary king Agesilaus II. But with their victory over Athens came the inheritance of governing Athens’s empire - and Sparta desperately lacked both a cogent vision of empire and the essential economic and trade infrastructure to survive in the role of hegemon. Sparta’s overextension of empire compounded with internal political conflict to antagonize the rest of Greece with heavy-fisted and uneven interventionism. Soon the unlikely confederacy of Athens, Corinth, Thebes, Argos, and Persia united against Sparta in a war that, despite a Spartan victory, had devastating ramifications for their empire. The Corinthian War (395 - 387 BC) was a fascinating entanglement of clashing empires, complex diplomatic alliances and betrayals, and political fissures erupting after centuries of tension. Situated between the great Peloponnesian War and the Theban-Spartan War, the Corinthian War is often overlooked or understood as an aftershock of the civil war Greece had just endured. But the Corinthian War was instead a seminal conflict that reshaped the Greek world, illustrating the limits of Sparta’s newfound imperial experiment as they grappled with their own internal cultural conflicts and charted the rise - and fall - of their newfound hegemony and the future of Greece.