The Peloponnesian War Why Did The Sicilian Expedition Fail

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject History - World History - Early and Ancient History, grade: 1, , course: Thucydides, language: English, abstract: The Sicilian Expedition marked a crucial moment in the history of the Peloponnesian War and Thucydides' account thereof. Having recovered from the plague, a defeat at Delium, and the confusion surrounding the Peace of Nicias, the Athenians voted to dispatch an unprecedented armada to Sicily in order to take Syracuse and possibly expand their conquests to Italy and Carthage. After initial enthusiasm and military victories, the force under the command of Nicias deteriorated and eventually perished. Through hubris, a lack of adequate cavalry, and incompetence at home as well as abroad, the Athenians allowed the expedition to turn into a monumental failure, foreshadowing their ultimate defeat in the Ionian War a decade later.

Why did the Peace of Nicias fail to reconcile Athens and Sparta? In the third volume of his landmark four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War, Donald Kagan examines the years between the signing of the peace treaty and the destruction of the Athenian expedition to Sicily in 413 B.C. The principal figure in the narrative is the Athenian politician and general Nicias, whose policies shaped the treaty and whose military strategies played a major role in the attack against Sicily.

Wealth and power are themes that preoccupy much of Greek literature from Homer on, and this book unravels the significance of these subjects in one of the most famous pieces of narrative writing from classical antiquity. Lisa Kallet brilliantly reshapes our literary and historical understanding of Thucydides' account of the disastrous Sicilian expedition of 415–413 b.c., a pivotal event in the Peloponnesian War. She shows that the second half of Thucydides' History contains a damning critique of Athens and its leaders for becoming corrupted by money and for failing to appropriately use their financial strength on military power. Focusing especially on the narrative techniques Thucydides used to build his argument, Kallet gives a close examination of the subjects of wealth and power in this account of naval war and its aftermath and locates Thucydides' writings on these themes within a broad intellectual context. Among other topics, Kallet discusses Thucydides' use of metaphor, his numerous intertextual references to Herodotus and Homer, and thematic links he makes among the topics of money, emotion, and sight. Overall, she shows that the subject of money constitutes a continuous thematic thread in books six through eight of the History. In addition, this book takes a fresh look at familiar epigraphic evidence. Kallet's ability to combine sophisticated literary analysis with a firm grasp of Attic inscriptions sheds new light on an important work of antiquity and provides a model example of how to unravel a dense historical text to reveal its underlying literary principles of construction.

An overview of history in ancient Athens, beginning with the ill-fated Sicilian expedition of 413 B.C. and ends with the surrender of Athens to Sparta in 404 B.C.

A New History of the Peloponnesian War is an ebook-only omnibus edition that includes all four volumes of Donald Kagan's acclaimed account of the war between Athens and Sparta (431–404 B.C.): The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, The Archidamian War, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, and The Fall of the Athenian Empire. Reviewing the four-volume set in The New Yorker, George Steiner wrote, "The temptation to acclaim Kagan's four volumes as the foremost work of history produced in North America in the twentieth century is vivid. . . . Here is an achievement that not only honors the criteria of dispassion and of unstinting scruple which mark the best of modern historicism but honors its readers." All four volumes are also sold separately as both print books and ebooks.

This thrillingly vivid history recounts a pivotal battle of the Peloponnesian War, bringing the drama and personalities of the Sicilian Expedition to life. The Athenian expedition to conquer Sicily was one of the most significant military events of the classical period. At the time, Athens was locked in a decades-long struggle with Sparta for mastery of the Greek world. The expedition to Sicily was intended to win Athens the extra money and resources needed to crush the Spartans. With the aid of new archaeological discoveries, Expedition to Disaster reconstructs the mission, and the ensuing siege, in greater detail than ever before. The cast of characters includes Alcibiades, the flamboyant, charismatic young aristocrat; Nicias, the ageing, reluctant commander of the ill-fated expedition, and Gylippus, the grim Spartan general sent to command the defense of Syracuse. It was he who turned the tables on the Athenian invaders. They were surrounded, besieged, and forced to ask for mercy from a man who had none. Philip Matyszak's combination of thorough research and gripping narrative presents an episode of ancient history packed with colorful characters and dramatic tension.

"Thomas Hobbes's translation of Thucydides brings together the magisterial prose of one of the greatest writers of the English language and the depth of mind and experience of one of the greatest writers of history in any language. . . . For every reason, the current availability of this great work is a boon."—Joseph Cropsey, University of Chicago