La guerra del Peloponeso

For three decades, in the V century a. C., the world was devastated by a great war as dramatic, decisive and destructive as the world wars of the 20th century: the Peloponnesian War, a key episode to understand the subsequent development of the Western world and an endless succession of battles that inaugurated a time of brutality and destruction unprecedented in history. The account contemporary to the events of Thucydides is the main source for knowing these events, but not the only one, and Donald Kagan stands out in this: in the scrupulous and brilliant contextualization of historical sources and facts. Starting from his already classic and still unsurpassed History of the Peloponnesian War in four volumes, the author, with his characteristic agile and colorful style, synthesizes in this essay several years of wars between the Spartan alliance and the Athenian empire, the rise and fall of a world that continues to serve us even today as a point of reference to understand the present. And thanks to this research, study and summary work, he offers us one of the best works of historical essay on a war conflict; a splendid chronicle of the rise and fall of an empire and dark times whose lessons make perfect sense today. Without a doubt, a reference for all studies and lovers of the ancient world.