Word: peloponnesian
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...like me are reaching for the classics and so are young guns; 300, the film about Thermopylae, is based on a graphic novel. Conservatives sup at the classic cup; Victor Davis Hanson, a scholar of ancient warfare, is Dick Cheney's favorite historian. (One of the lessons of the Peloponnesian War, Hanson writes, is that "resolute action" brings "lasting peace." Ah, yes.) And liberals seek succor from the ancient texts too; it is easy to read Harris' novel on political intrigue in Ciceronian Rome as a critique of the idea that external threats justify politicians taking extraordinary power...
...Iliad and The Odyssey a few years ago, so maybe I shouldn't have been gobsmacked by his Virgil. They're all quite popular too, part of a renewed passion for the classical world. The culture has lately offered up for mass consumption two new histories of the Peloponnesian War, a whacking great biography of Julius Caesar, a film on Alexander the Great (plus a book lauding his business strategy), the current bbc-hbo series on Rome, Robert Harris' recent novel Imperium and a book (with a film to come this year) on the battle of Thermopylae...
This is not venality. It is the natural way of nations--the primacy of interests and the pursuit of power, which from the Peloponnesian Wars until the 20th century invention of collective security were understood to be perfectly natural...
Lysistrata, which was first performed in 411 BCE, tells the story of the women of Athens who take control of the city and deny their husbands carnal pleasures in order to stop the Peloponnesian War. The women’s aim is to force their sex-deprived husbands to make peace...
...understand how the War Dead can be exploited, read the great funeral oration over them by Pericles, one of the most noted politicians of ancient Athens. Recorded in Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War, the speech brilliantly sets out reasons why Athenian democracy and openness made Athens superior to all other cities. We are righteous, Pericles argues; therefore, this war is right...