From his dissertation, Politics and Policy at Corinth, 421-336 B.C. (Kagan. 1958), to his magisterial four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War (Kagan. 1969; 1974; 1981; 1987), to his final work, Thucydides: The Reinvention of History (Kagan. 2010), for over fifty years Donald Kagan, until his death in 2021, remained one of the premier ancient historians of his era. His work in ancient history, from coinage studies (Kagan. 1960; 1982) to articles championing the continuing importance of Greek history for the modern world (Kagan. 1989; 1995), ran the gamut from the granular to the global, and influenced generations of students in archaeology, numismatics, ancient history, and world affairs.

This panel seeks to build on Kagan’s work and legacy by presenting papers and encouraging wide-ranging discussion that both reflect Kagan’s interests but also move beyond his direct focus to study other aspects of ancient history, historiography, and political history. Paper #1 builds on Kagan’s study of the revisionist nature of Thucydides’ history to argue, in an analysis of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, that Thucydides viewed glory, kleos, as an inappropriate subject matter for history. Paper #2 identifies and attempts to reconstruct unreported speeches from Thucydides 2.55-65 to argue that Thucydides reported some speeches but repressed others in order to diminish the appearance of factional strife in Athenian politics and to present Pericles in the best possible light. Paper #3 argues that the assassination of Alcibiades in 404 BCE was the result of his collaboration with and subsequent betrayal of Athenian elites to overturn Athens’ century-old democracy and install the Four Hundred in Athens in 411 BCE. Paper #4 uses epigraphical, literary, and numismatic evidence to show that the later 5^th c. Peloponnesian navy of the Spartans was much more robust, competent, and resilient than biased historians such as Thucydides allow and that its victory in the Peloponnesian War was not a prelude to decline but rather a harbinger of thalassocracy. Together these papers will highlight ongoing issues in the study of Athenian and Spartan history and Greek historiography, and provide Greek historians, ancient historians in general, and political historians many areas of inquiry to generate a robust discussion of the nature of the Greek world in the 6^th and 5^th centuries B.C.E. and its ongoing influence today.

Bibliography

Kagan, D. 1958. Politics and Policy at Corinth, 421-336 B.C. Ohio State University.

_______. 1960. “Pheidon’s Aeginetan Coinage.” TAPA 41.121-136.

_______.1969. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca.

_______. 1974. The Archidamian War. Ithaca.

_______. 1981. The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition. Ithaca.

_______. 1982. “The Dates of the Earliest Coins.” AJA 86.343-360.

_______. 1987. The Fall of the Athenian Empire. Ithaca.

_______. 1989. “War: Ends and Means.” The Wall Street Journal. 9 June. A9, col. 4.

_______. 1995. “From Ancient to Modern America: Why Western History Matters.” Current.

March-April. 37-39.

_______. 2010. Thucydides: The Reinvention of History. Penguin.