markk's review
informative
medium-paced
3.75
Beginning in 431 BCE, a group of Greek city states led by Sparta fought to end the growing hegemony of Athens in the Greek world. Known today as the Peloponnesian War, it was a conflict characterized for over fifteen years by strategic deadlock. In the face of invasion by the Spartan forces, the Athenians retreated behind their city's walls, thus blunting their enemy's superiority on land. When Athens pursued a more offensive strategy, however, the Spartan-led coalition known as the Peloponnesian League was able to thwart their efforts. With neither side able to counter the other's strengths, the war dragged on indecisively.
In 415, Athens sought to break this stalemate by launching an attack on the Greek colony of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. Ostensibly an effort to support their allies on the island, it was in reality an ambitious and thinly-veiled attempt to conquer the island, which would have deprived the Peloponnesians of a vital source of grain and given Athens the resources needed to force an end to the war. The expedition did indeed prove the turning point in the war, as their defeat in the two-year-long campaign drained the Athenian treasury and cost them the bulk of their fleet. Nic Fields summarizes it in this concise account, showing how Athens's hopes came to ruin, and how their loss determined the outcome of the war.
As a contribution to Osprey Publishing's "Campaign" series, Fields's book follows a set formula in which he identifies the opposing commanders, describes their forces, and explains their plans before going into the campaign itself. This helps to clarify the scope of the fighting, as he shows how the Greeks fought for dominance rather than destruction. On the battlefield this took the form of heavily-armed infantry known as hoplites, who fought in tightly-packed formations until one side broke. Warfare at sea was similar to land, with the goal being to immobilize and capture enemy ships rather than to destroy them. As a result, ultimate victory would depend on attrition n battle rather than a decisive clash in which one army or fleet would annihilate the other.
By gambling their forces on the Sicilian expedition Athens provided their opponents with an opportunity to do just that. What began as a limited naval operation turned into a massive investment of money and forces. Yet these forces were irresolutely led, as the foremost advocate for the invasion, the ostentatious aristocrat Alcibiades, was recalled soon after arriving on the island. With the death of the experienced soldier Lamachos in 414, command was in the hands of Nikitas, who suffered the fatal flaw of not believing that the expedition could succeed. While the Athenians fought well, their failure to pursue their siege of Syracuse aggressively allowed the Syracusans the upper hand, allowing their forces to win a series of battles that debilitated the overextended Athens to eventual defeat.
Defeat meant the loss of dozens of ships and thousands of experienced soldiers and crew. Though the war continued for nearly a decade longer, the Athenians were never able to recover from this setback, and eventually accepted a peace that meant an end to their empire. Fields demonstrates this effectively by situating the campaign within the overall war, with his description of the Athenian forces showing how their loss was so devastating politically as well as militarily. It's an effective if unspectacular introduction to the campaign, one that situates it within the overall history of the war and, in doing so, highlights the irony of the Athenians' failure. Because in the end, the expedition did indeed succeed in deciding the war, just not in the way the Athenians expected.
More...