Book Review: Peloponnesian War by Kenneth Harl (Great Courses)

Peloponnesian War by Kenneth W. Harl

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am reading The Landmark Thucydides and coordinating a reading through that for Scholé Sistership.

Ancients was never my favorite period of history to study and so I’ve never read Thucydides (or Herodotus). I wanted some help to give me some context and an overhead view of the Peloponnesian War. This Great Course did that work. It gave the timeline and the reasoning for different battles and alliances (although he says the word allies with the emphasis on the second syllable and it surprises me every time.)

I appreciated Harl’s explanations of the period from many dimensions – economic, military, politic, geographic, and more. He helped to see why different actions were taken and why this was a war like no other.

His explanation of the outcomes of the war and how they set up Persia and Macedon and the upcoming Greek expansion.

He definitely had a specific perspective – and expressed disagreement with analysis from Victor David Hanson and his “A War Like No Other.” Harl has a rosier view of Sparta than Hanson and argues that Sparta and Athens in principle aren’t really very different.



View all my reviews