When Greek met Greek

This book is an abridged version of one of the great works of modern classical scholarship, Donald Kagan’s four-volume history of the Peloponnesian war, which originally appeared between 1969 and 1987. This crisis in the affairs of the Greek world in the fifth century BC was seen, even at the time, as a turning point in human civilisation.

Nearly half a century before, the Greeks had united against the great continental power of Persia. Led by Athens and Sparta, the two principal Greek powers, they had driven the fleets and armies of Xerxes from Europe and recovered control of their colonies on the coast of Asia Minor. Now the Greeks turned against each other. The Persian war had been followed by a period of astonishing literary and artistic achievement. The Parthenon and the monuments of Olympia, the plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus, the teachings of Socrates all date from this time.