‘Sparta’s Sicilian Proxy War’

A dense, informative, and smart study of an oft-ignored conflict in ancient Greece.

An illustration of the destruction of the Athenian army at Syracuse, Sicily, from John Steeple Davis’s “The Story of the Greatest Nations, From the Dawn of History to the Twentieth Century,” 1900. Public Domain

If the prologue was any indication, Paul Rahe’s latest work discussing ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War era was going to be dense, informative, and worthy of a slow and contemplative read. In fact, I recommend readers consider turning the prologue into a pamphlet, the information on fifth-century Greece is so wealthy and vast for its approximately 50 pages.

Mr. Rahe, a fellow in classics at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, professor of history at Hillsdale College, and a leading expert on ancient Greece, has drawn on a rarely discussed and possibly even more rarely examined war during the Peloponnesian War era. The definition of the term “war” in this instance can be scrutinized easily. It could be considered an Athenian expedition, a Sicilian defensive response, or, as Mr. Rahe notes it, a Spartan war by proxy. His book, “Sparta’s Sicilian Proxy War: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta 418-413 B.C.,” has very little to do with Sparta in the narrative leading up to and during the battle scenes, yet the resulting beneficial windfall was almost all Sparta’s.

The Athenian Backstory

Rather than launch the reader into the narrative with the arrival of Athenian triremes (ancient vessels) on the shores of Sicily, Mr. Rahe takes the reader through an extensive backstory of how and why the Athenians came to decide on the expedition. We are posited into Athens during a time of military aggression, despite Sparta and Athens signing a 30-year treaty; incessant political backbiting, especially between Nicias and Alcibiades; and, ironically, population recovery, due to Athens having recently been devastated by the plague. All of these elements play substantial parts in how the historical conflict plays out in the immediate and in its aftermath.