Xenophon records the history of the Peloponnesian War beginning in 411 with the final years of the struggle between Athens and Sparta for mastery of Greece. His tales are portraits of democracy in crisis; of military dominance; of fratricidal strife; of the beginning of the slow, inexorable decline of the culture-that of Homer, and the Greek philosophers and tragedians-whose legacy serves as a foundation for the democratic values of the West.