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(More customer reviews)A concise narrative of Athens.
This is a rather detailed history of Athens focusing on its navy. The author convincingly demonstrates a very close correlation between Naval power and both democracy and imperialism in ancient Athens. The writing style is clear, engaging, and very accessible. However, the book suffers from a narrative format that involves a lot a rehashing of topics and history.
The author's thesis is that because the class of men who manned the Athenian navy were lower in status than the hoplites or horsemen who formed the backbone of the army, as the navy increased in power so did the democratic element in relation to the "oligarchic" element in Athenian society. This was reinforced by the fact that maintaining a navy involved a great deal of expenditure flowing in large part into the pockets of the working glass artisans and laborers thus increasing their lot. However, these expenses forced Athens into a program of imperial expansion which could not be sustained. The author backs all of this up with ample evidence from a number of primary sources including some quite creative use of Athenian drama. There is very little to fault in his historical method save perhaps one or two factual errors -and even those are debatable (for example calling Athena's Aegis her breastplate when this probably refers to a cloak/shield like object she carried).
While this is an excellent book it has two flaws. The first is that its narrative format leads to a long series of admirals, battles, and dates. After a while, once it become apparent that the author has effectively proved his thesis, the whole thing becomes a little tedious, especially if you are even roughly familiar with the history. If you have not read Herodotus or Thucydides then you may ignore the following criticism: The other problem is that long stretches of the book are just retelling of one or two ancient sources. I cannot blame him for this because often that is all we have to go on. However, one might as well read the original sources at that point.
Despite these flaws, this is a closely reasoned and well supported piece of narrative history that I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who has not already studied the subject in great depth (those will find little new). I would also suggest Kagan's Peloponnesian War; any of the earlier works by Victor Davis Hansen; and of course the primary sources the Author relied on so much Herodotus and Thucydides.
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