Classical World

Publishers are invited to submit new books to be reviewed to Professor Michael Arnush, Skidmore College, 53 Warren Street, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866; email: marnush@skidmore.edu.

On its surface, The Plague of War is a narrative of the Peloponnesian War, but such a simple description does not quite do its author’s achievement complete justice. By her own admission, Jennifer Roberts has slightly larger ambitions for her book; having observed that “(g)reat thinker that he was, it is time that Thucydides was uncoupled from the history of the Peloponnesian War” (xiv), Roberts proceeds to attempt this very thing. This is not, of course, to say that she wishes to dismiss Thucydides, whose work provides a substantial part of the scaffolding on which Roberts builds. Rather, she aims to go beyond him. This first and foremost means adopting a different ending for the war that is their shared subject: rather than concluding with Aegospotomi (where Thucydides suggests the war ended: 5.26.1), Roberts extends her narrative past that point and discusses its aftermath, including “the bloody Thirty, the persistent Conon, the inexorable Agesilaus, the shifting alliances of the Greek city-states, the brilliant Epaminondas, and the final blow dealt the Spartans on the field of Leuctra” (xiv). Indeed, she stretches further still to Mantineia in 362. Nor are these later years given cursory treatment restricted to a brief epilogue. Instead, close to a quarter of her book deals with these developments, seamlessly and fully integrating them into her overall account. But in addition to extending her analysis past 404, Roberts also adopts a broader field of vision, accomplished by looking—and in a fair amount of depth—at the art, architecture, and literature produced during this turbulent six decades. Including her discussion of the years following Salamis and the earlier war between Athens and Sparta, Roberts essentially brings over a century of Greek history under her gaze, and furnishes a comprehensive account of the Hellenic world during what is perhaps its most significant epoch.

At the heart of The Plague of War is a recounting of the military operations with which the Greek world was riven, and in this Roberts is singularly successful. Her descriptions of the actual combat on both land and sea are clear and vivid, enabling the reader to get a sharp understanding of the operations. Her use of maps, which are well executed (albeit occasionally slightly too small), is of definite aid in this endeavor. But whether elaborating on the conduct of battle, on the impact of the war on dramatic composition, or on deliberations in the Athenian Agora, Roberts is able to command a style that is truly admirable: wholly academic without ever approaching pedantic, she demonstrates all the engaging prose powers of a Barbara Tuchman, illustrating once again that authors need not sacrifice comprehensive annotation and engagement with scholarship in the interest of attaining readability and clarity. Roberts almost never resorts to academic jargon, although she will at appropriate moments employ technical terms (typically in transliterated Greek), as it would be nigh on impossible to handle [End Page 99] this period without them. Nevertheless, these terms are invariably defined and explained thoroughly but succinctly: readers unfamiliar with the subtleties of Greek political and military terminology will grasp them immediately, while those who do have such experience will not find her explications tiresome. There is, admittedly, little which is controversial or groundbreaking in her chronicle, though Roberts does not shrink from making use of interpretations that are conjectural or at slight variance with received historiographical wisdom. These departures are handled in the footnotes, which are frequent but never obtrusive.

In sum, The Plague of War definitely offers a valuable contribution to the scholarship of Greek history. It is a decidedly worthwhile read for all levels of expertise: classicists and professional historians will find what is familiar engagingly retold and enlivened...