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I tend to think the interesting thing is that it's one of the few occasions where the land power defeats the sea power.

Usually it's the ability to keep trading and controlling the trade routes that leads to the long term victor. 
If you can build a strong enough fleet to achieve parity or to meaningfully contest those routes - as Rome managed - then that's the other way.  But being gifted a fleet, that works too.
Neither is easy, or common, but one or the other is absolutely necessary

A very neat counterpoint

There is an interesting theory - plausible in the light of the very careful organisation of Thucydides' history - that he intended to end the history (but died before writing it) with the Spartan capture of Athens and decision not to destroy the Athenians as they had destroyed the Melians, contrasting the constraint of the the Spartans with the unbridled exertion of power by the Athenian democracy that Thucydides saw as having been corrupted after the death of Pericles.

It is thought provoking if not exactly new news

I thought so. Which reminds me I must dig out my copy of anabasis

An interesting read

I confess that I have always liked the fact that ancient authors seem to accept Realpolitik without too much hypocrisy. "The Strong Do What They Can and the Weak Suffer What They Must..." 

There is much in this that would set the teeth of the historian on edge, I think.  Alison's catchy "Thucydides Trap" is the product of a political scientist's imagination, not a careful reading of Thucydides and what else we know of the context of the war.  The interesting thing about the Athenian defeat at Aegospotami is that the Spartan fleet (paid for by the Persians) there destroyed an Athenian fleet that had been paid for by the Persians to beat up an earlier Spartan fleet - again paid for by the Persians - that had become threatening to Persian interests!  Thinking that the war is a simple struggle between Athens, Sparta and their respective allies and ignoring the influence of the major power in the region can lead to ideas about what was going on that don't add up.

Thanks Dave I have bookmarked that site. It look like a lot of other good articles available there.

https://greekreporter.com/2024/05/10/greek-philosopher-xenophon-economics-theory/

There are many strings to this bow apparently....