Donald Kagan Quote

The Spartan attitude reflected an important fact about the condition of the Greek world from 479 to 461: Its stability was apparent only and not real. The alliance between Sparta and Athens was not an alliance of states but of factions. The faction of Cimon and the faction that would be headed by King Archidamus were prepared to accept limits to the hegemonal claims of their states, but in each state there were significant elements of the population who were not.

Donald Kagan

The Spartan attitude reflected an important fact about the condition of the Greek world from 479 to 461: Its stability was apparent only and not real. The alliance between Sparta and Athens was not an alliance of states but of factions. The faction of Cimon and the faction that would be headed by King Archidamus were prepared to accept limits to the hegemonal claims of their states, but in each state there were significant elements of the population who were not.

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About Donald Kagan

Donald Kagan (; May 1, 1932 – August 6, 2021) was a Lithuanian-born American historian and classicist at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece. He formerly taught in the Department of History at Cornell University. Kagan was considered among the foremost American scholars of Greek history and is notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War.