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MHQ Magazine
In The Plague of War, Jennifer T. Roberts gives us an up-to-date and vivid narrative of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath in ancient Greece. Where other retellings of this epic clash between conservative, soldierly Sparta and...
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MHQ Magazine
Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader Perez Zagorin, (Princeton University Press, 2005), 190 pages, $24.95. The Peloponnesian War was fought, with a brief intermission about a third of the way in, for twenty-seven years, the...
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MHQ Magazine
The hero of Homer’s Iliad may have been a remarkably accurate portrayal of a daring raider in 1200 B.C. He is the first warrior of the Western world. Swift-footed, lionhearted, terrible in his war cry, a sacker of cities, a charismatic...
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Military History Magazine
The Trojans got tricked, but did the Greeks need a wooden horse? He is the last Greek at Troy. Pale in the morning light, he looks like a weak, ragged runaway. But looks can deceive. Sinon, as he is called, claims to be a deserter— the...
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Military History Magazine
Some were found lying alive with their thighs and hams cut, laying bare their necks and throats, bid them drain the blood that remained in them. Some were found with their heads plunged into the earth…having suffocated themselves by...
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Military History Magazine
Cynoscephalae was the first battle in the campaign of Roman imperialism against Macedonia and the eastern Mediterranean. It was also the first clash of two rival military systems: the Greek spear phalanx and the Roman sword legion. For 300...
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Military History Magazine
Cambridge classicist Paul Cart- ledge has spent more than three decades studying the civilization of ancient Greece, lately focusing on the unique culture of Sparta. He considers the Spartans’ “last stand” at Thermopylae a pivotal...
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Military History Magazine
For the Greeks, victory would secure autonomy— defeat would mean Persian domination. Marathon and Miltiades, Salamis and Themistocles, Thermopylae and Leonidas—such names resonate in the annals of the 5th century BC Greco-Persian Wars....
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Military History Magazine
Great War Nations: The Spartans by Dreamcatcher Interactive, 2008, $39.99. Great War Nations: The Spartans draws on campaigns from two historic periods—Sparta’s decline as the dominant Greek city-state and the unification of Greece...
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MHQ Magazine
For the better part of a hundred years, Athens commanded an empire to be reckoned with. But the Parthenon and every other emblem of the polis's greatness rested on a watery foundation: the navy...
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MHQ Magazine
Athenian generals, elected to their positions, found that appeasing citizen overlords can spell disaster in the field. The Sicilian expedition of 415–413 BC proved disastrous for the Athenians. They had undertaken the venture during what...
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Military History Magazine
In 168 BC Roman legionaries and Macedonian phalangites fought to decide once and for all who would rule the ancient Mediterranean...
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Military History Magazine
Western warfare that united Greece and enabled his son Alexander to conquer the world. The full moon cast long shadows across the 3,000 dead and wounded sprawled in grotesque piles throughout the meadow. Moans disturbed the night’s...
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Military History Magazine
In the spring of 480 Xerxes led 180,000 soldiers over a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont BC, Persia’s King and invaded Greece. Accompanied by 1,207 warships and 3,000 transports, Xerxes intended to destroy Athens to avenge the defeat...
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Military History Magazine
“Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece” Through Jan. 3, 2010 Walters Art Museum 600 N. Charles St. Baltimore, Md., (410) 547-9000, www.thewalters.org Heroes—mortal and mythological— garnered godlike reverence in ancient...
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MHQ Magazine
A demagogue, a treacherous ally, and a brutal Roman general destroyed the city-state—and democracy—in the first century BC. Two scenes from Athens in the first century BC: Early summer, 88 BC A cheering crowd surrounds the envoy...
