<p>In a recent review of Donald Kagan’s The Peloponnesian War, and my Autumn of War, ("Theatres of War: Why the battles over ancient Athens still rage” New Yorker Magazine, [January 12, 2004]), the classicist Daniel Mendelsohn says that I believe that it is immoral to suggest defeat can be seen as victory: "The play asks the very question that Victor Davis Hanson considers "immoral": whether abject defeat can yet somehow be a victory."</p>