The Archidamian War

Donald Kagan is Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University.

1. Plans and Resources 2. The First Year of the War 3. The Plague and Its Consequences 4. The Third Year of the War: Phormio 5. The Revolt at Lesbos 6. Sicily and Corcyra 7. Demosthenes 8. Pylos and Sphacteria 9. Megara and Delium 10. The Coming of Peace Conclusions Appendix A: Pericles and Athenian Income Appendix B: Pericles' Last Speech Bibliography General Index Index of Modem Authors Index of Ancient Authors and Inscriptions

"The Archidamian War remains sober, judicious, and comprehensive. There is nothing else like it available in English-certainly nothing that takes all the modern scholarship into account... But perhaps the most valuable achievement of the book is its carefully reasoned demolition of Thucydides's view-warmly embraced by too many scholars-that Pericles's war strategy was justifiable."-Peter Green, Times Literary Supplement "A profound analysis of the relation of strategy to politics, a sympathetic but searching critique of Thucydides' masterpiece, and a trenchant assessment of the voluminous modern literature on the war."-Bernard Knox, The Atlantic Monthly (reviewing the four-volume series) "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. To read Kagan's 'History of the Peloponnesian War' at the present hour is to be almost unbearably tested."-George Steiner, The New Yorker (reviewing the four-volume series)