This is a prize-winning classicist's thrilling account of the Ten Years War - the first stage of the Peloponnesian War. In the late fifth century BC, ancient Greece was rent by a series o f terrible wars. For ten years (431-21 BC), the Athenians and Spartans, and their respective allies, fought against each other without rest. The many invasions, sea-battles, raids, and defilements that took place over the decade were undertaken less with a design to defeat the enemy than to humiliate him. As prize-winning professor of ancient history and author J. E. Lendon demonstrates in Song of Wrath, the Ten Years' War was a battle over national honour, carried out via acts of revenge performed by one side or the other. In thrilling narrative, Lendon portrays a war of extraordinary importance in world history, which also offers a great opportunity to answer questions both contemporary and ancient: How do democracies conduct wars? How do the realities of war influence the goals and methods of war? And, finally, how do a war's causes and conduct both guide and hamper the search for peace? Presenting the diplomatic and military history of ancient Greece from 479 BC, the flight of the Persians, to 421 BC, the Peace of Nicias, which brought an end to the first ten-year season of the Peloponnesian War, "Song of Wrath" is a muscular historical narrative packed with battles on land and sea, desperate sieges, and acts of diplomatic guile and political futility. It is gripping military history and a terrifically readably recovery of the Peloponnesian war for our own very contemporary concerns.