Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- As the desperate remnants of the Athenian force struggled to reach the Assinarus river, enemy missiles rained down from above. Some were impaled on their own spears, others drowned, entangled in their own equipment, and any survivors were butchered.

The glorious military adventure was not supposed to end this way.

Confident they could extend their empire, the powerful Athenians had dispatched a force to Sicily in 415 B.C. When the first assault stalled, they sent a troop surge. As contemporary historian Thucydides noted, it was poor execution on the ground that created the Sicilian disaster.

The rout proved a turning point in the 27-year Peloponnesian War and led to the final defeat of the Athenian empire. Thucydides says he wrote his account of the war to help future generations avoid such calamities.

I spoke with Donald Kagan, author of “Thucydides: The Reinvention of History” (Viking), on the following topics:

1. No Supernatural Forces

2. Invention of Political History

3. Observation and Skeptical Analysis

4. The Pros and Cons of Alliance

5. Lessons for Iraq and Afghanistan

To buy this book in North America, click here.

(Lewis Lapham is the founder of Lapham’s Quarterly and the former editor of Harper’s Magazine. He hosts “The World in Time” interview series for Bloomberg News.)

To contact the writer on the story: Lewis Lapham in New York at lhl@laphamsquarterly.org.

Last Updated: November 7, 2009 00:01 EST