Thucydides’ account of the twenty-seven-year war between Athens and Sparta is filled with timeless questions about human conflict: When are aggression and vengeance justified? Can peace ever truly be secured by war? How does war affect the integrity of language and character? What is the role of chance in war? Is war ever truly inevitable? Additionally, the participants in the Peloponnesian War examined basic philosophical questions about the concepts of justice, goodness, expediency, wisdom, and self-interest.
The following film, The War That Never Ends, was originally broadcast in 1991 and dramatizes some of the crucial debates among the participants in the Peloponnesian War. It features first-rate actors like Ben Kingsley and depicts such famous figures as Thucydides, Pericles, Socrates, Alcibiades, and Nicias. In shedding light on the issues involved in this past conflict, this dramatic film helps shed the light on present issues of world politics and the eternal problems presented by war itself.
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There are those who profit and rule and accomplish their goals of control by war. For them, war is a necessity. They have been at it for a long, long time. Others have bought into their scheme.
Why do I get the feeling the armchair NeoCon Warriors will immediately decry this as “wimpy”, “un-American”, or possibly “socialist”?
History and the Classics have a bad way of demolishing pretentious posturing from the Left or the Right (while supporting conservative principles.)