The Greek State at War

Book excerpt: "Professor Prichett is an acknowledged authority in more than a few techniques of investigation, and readers can immediately see that they are in safe hands. What can be known is clearly presented. What is not known is identified. Erroneous explanations throughout the history of classical scholarship are cited and disassembled. . . . He takes into account the special conditions that control interpretation of epigraphical texts. He includes matters of topography, numismatics, and vase-painting. He asks questions a reader might never have thought to ask, e.g., Where is booty from a battle sold? His questions and surveys lead naturally and inevitably to topics as large as the Athenian economy in the fourth century B.C."—A. L. Boegehold, Brown University "Pritchett's Greek State at War is one of the monuments of classical scholarship in our time. . . . A work that every student of Greek history will consult whenever he is concerned with war in the Greek world. No ancient historian can possibly do without it. . . . The implications of [the work] extend in many directions—into Greek psychology, religion, political thinking—and students will be kept busy for a long time in considering them in detail."—Sir Moses Finley