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adam_mcphee 's review for:
Expedition to Disaster: The Athenian Mission to Sicily 415 BC
by Philip Matyszak
To some extent the tragedy of the Athenian expedition is a morality play written in blood. An empire abandons the values that made it great, and indeed actively turns against those who still hold those values. Yet while the exploitation of the weak and defenceless appears to go unpunished, the blind pride and ambition of the empire eventually over-reaches itself and (with a few deft nudges from fate) collapses into ruin. This is a story that has enjoyed a few re-runs since the fifth century BC, and it is not hard to pick up the plot today.
Among the self-styled elites of today there has been hubris on a massive scale, perhaps best exemplified by the words ‘too big to fail’. As with the Athenians in Sicily, we see the naked self-interest of a group being given a sophisticated spin to convince the majority that being exploited is actually for the best. Politicians, financiers and large corporations appear to share a separate reality in which ordinary people matter only to the degree they can be gulled or coerced into making good for follies that make the Athenian expedition seem wise by comparison.
Many in today’s world have been carelessly damaged by the cynical use of power to satiate greed. Like the Athenians, the perpetrators have paid little attention to Nemesis. The question, perhaps, is whether Nemesis is paying attention to them.
Worth it for Athenian vs Syracusan triremes. Athenians better crewed, could "snap enemy oars like breadsticks" by riding alongside or would maneuver to hit perpendicular, but Syracusans had reinforced prows for head on battering and did better in the close quarters of a harbour. Insanely cool stuff. Like how they had guy just watching from the shore. It's really good, a lot of Thucidydes and Plutarch summed up and contextualized, but that's good because I've always avoided the one and had trouble with the other.
Alcibiades sucks, total psychopath. But I had a lot of sympathy for Nicias, the pessimist general who trouble committing to a plan. And there's something always intimidating about the way a Spartan general will show up in some ancient account and almost magically turn a bunch of nobodies into a competent fighting force (uh, Xenophon's Clearchus aside).