Pious Warriors

Pious Warriors offers a fresh and thorough interpretation of the "other side" in one of history's most studied conflicts. Attending closely to the narrative of the The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, Travis Hadley presents a comprehensive account of Thucydides' Sparta on its own terms, giving the Spartan perspective on the war its due. The Spartans emerge not just as foils to the Athenians, but as principled interlocutors who expose the limits of Athenian cynicism and the assumptions of contemporary realism. Whereas the Athenians hold that necessity absolves them from acting justly, the Spartans remain bound to justice through their piety. For Thucydides, Hadley argues, Sparta stands as the moral city in his history, a position that discloses unsettling truths about necessity, justice, the force of moral psychology in politics, and human nature itself.