History of the Peloponnesian War

[Stephen Colbert]

So I have to have this entire work read by Monday and I'm no where near close. Anyone want to enlighten me as to what goes on in this book and what are important issues that I should discuss in class?

I spent the entirety of yesterday at various political rallies so naturally reading greek history was less of a priority haha.

[F9]

Is there a book on this shit?:lol: kidding
Let me remember my history class(i was most of the time talking with others, or playing around, so we have a problem here). Peloponnesian War, hmmm, the civil war one, Athens and Sparta.Spartans won(yeah i remember this, and even if i wasnt, everyone knows spartans were hell of fighters and athenians lazy philosophical idiots:lol:)
You could also add a more communist approach, and talk on the reasonnings behind this shit, and of course one of the big reasons was... money which "translates" to trade control, but of course and they wanted also political control.Spartans always loved war, and would never accept the possibility of athens to gather the centers in there, so they raised against Athens tries to become the trade center, even if spartans didnt care much about trade.
Also Persians had there hand also on this, they funded both sides on this war, obviously it was on their advantage for a civil war in greece.

Other than that, i dont remember much, not even the critical fights.Actually thats too much i remember tbh, i expected a lot less:lol:

[JacobVardy]

Thucydides?

From memory, it is an account of the war between Athens and Sparta, written as a sequel to Herodotus' The Persian Wars. It also details the decline of the Athenian aristocracy and the rise of the proletarian Democrats. Thucydides was a minor aristo, who served as a general and diplomat, and was exiled when his birth made him suspect to the democrats. The History of the Peloponnesian War is often called the first history, as it was the first attempt to write history as history, and not as poetry, religious or royal propaganda. That is, it sets out what people did and records why they say they did it. When accounts conflict Thucydides records both and says which one he thinks most likely. It was highly influential on the European republican movement, and i believe that Thucydides accounts of Athenian class war influence Marx.

[ComradeOm]

You're screwed. There are eight (IIRC) books to Thucydides' History and its not exactly an easy read. Wikipedia or Google might have summaries available

In short: the Peloponnesian War was a hegemonic struggle between Sparta and Athens (leading respective leagues) for control of the Greek world. Sparta won, promptly entered a period of terminal decline, and Philip II conquered Greece. The History is an account of that first conflict written by Thucydides who was, IIRC, an Athenian general


You could also add a more communist approach, and talk on the reasonnings behind this shit, and of course one of the big reasons was... money which "translates" to trade control, but of course and they wanted also political control.There's nothing "communist" about economic determinism

[Black Sheep]

let me google that for you.
wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War)

man archaic -> classical age wars are the shit.

[Dimentio]

It wasn't a civil war. Greece was divided into several hundred independent states, often centered around one town. It was a war between two alliances, the Peloponessian and the Delian alliance, where Sparta had an edge on land and Athens an edge in water.


Is there a book on this shit?:lol: kidding
Let me remember my history class(i was most of the time talking with others, or playing around, so we have a problem here). Peloponnesian War, hmmm, the civil war one, Athens and Sparta.Spartans won(yeah i remember this, and even if i wasnt, everyone knows spartans were hell of fighters and athenians lazy philosophical idiots:lol:)
You could also add a more communist approach, and talk on the reasonnings behind this shit, and of course one of the big reasons was... money which "translates" to trade control, but of course and they wanted also political control.Spartans always loved war, and would never accept the possibility of athens to gather the centers in there, so they raised against Athens tries to become the trade center, even if spartans didnt care much about trade.
Also Persians had there hand also on this, they funded both sides on this war, obviously it was on their advantage for a civil war in greece.

Other than that, i dont remember much, not even the critical fights.Actually thats too much i remember tbh, i expected a lot less:lol:

[F9]

There's nothing "communist" about economic determinism

I was talking about making the reasoning behind money, and take it one further ahead and compare it with capitalism, and how in this day it still causes wars.Of course it might be away from communism sense, but as communists, we get every chance to diss capitalism.


It wasn't a civil war. Greece was divided into several hundred independent states, often centered around one town. It was a war between two alliances, the Peloponessian and the Delian alliance, where Sparta had an edge on land and Athens an edge in water.

They had their independence as towns, but im not sure if they werent "united" as a country.And im pretty sure it was considered a civil war,

[mikelepore]

An interesting thing about the Peloponnesian War is that about forty years earlier numerous city-states formed a league to unite against the invading Persians. It was called the Delian League. All the Greek cities spoke the same language and had the same religion, but any degree of unity was still very difficult to achieve. But Athens, where the league's treasury was kept, misused the funds to enrich Athens, virtually forcing the other cities pay taxes to enrich Athens. Perhaps this was an early foreshadowing of the future world history marked by economic imperialism. Resentment against Athens contributed to the start of the war between Athens and Sparta, so the league failed to be a kind of "United Nations" to prevent such a war, but rather was one of the causes of the war.

[Green/Red]

The rowers on the Athenian battleships were an Athenian proletariat.