Fear -- and the Ukrainian War   Prologue   Thucydides says that fear sparked the Peloponnesian War. Fear was behind Sparta’s attack on Athens.    In the 50 years or so after the Persian wars, 479-431 BCE, Sparta watched the rise of Athenian power with grave concern – and fear. This was the main reason for the breakout of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE.   The united forces of Sparta and Athens, and their Greek allies, defeated the vast armies and navies of the Persian Empire in early fifth century BCE.   At the end of the Persian wars and the expelling of the Persians from Greece, Athens, and Sparta parted ways. Sparta remained the Greek superpower in Peloponnesos. It refused, however, to join Athens in protecting Hellas, Greek poleis (city-states) spread all over the Mediterranean, from the Persians.   Athens founded the Delian League in Apollo’s sacred island of Delos in the Aegean and close to the Ionian coast dotted by Greek poleis. The Persians resented those Greek states so cl

Astronomy and the Trojan War: Solar eclipse over Ithaca, October 30, 1207 BCE, Odysseus killing the suitors (right). Painting by Evi Sarantea. Courtesy Evi Sarantea.   I read Homer in High School. And slowly, in my college classes in ancient, medieval, and modern Greek history, I realized Homer’s epic poems were at the very core of Hellenic civilization.    The more I read the Greek tragic poets and historians of the fifth century BCE, the larger the icon of Homer became in my mind.   Homer in antiquity   According to the second century philosopher, Athenaios, Aischylos said that the stories of Homer became a banquet for the Greeks ( Deipnosophistai  8.347d), a source of wonderful stories, and a ceaseless fountain of inspiration and pride from which philosophers, scientists, dramatic poets, rhetoricians, military strategists, and men of ideas borrowed for the creation and enrichment of Greek literature and civilization.    The Greeks also sang the songs of Homer for centuries in order