The Sicilian Expedition: Anatomy of the Collapse of an Extractive Order

How the hunger for plunder and public wages drove Athens beyond the sea, and how the most splendid fleet ever assembled became the tomb of the empire that had built it

Introduction

In the summer of 415 BCE the most magnificent expedition that any single Greek city had ever put to sea set sail from the Piraeus, and what drove it was not a calculation of se…