History of the Peloponnesian war

The basic cause of the Peloponnesian Wars was the growth of the Athenian Empire, and the development of Athenian control over the commercial and political life of the Aegean. Athens allowed free trade in the Aegean by her consent. Athenian agents decided the destination of every vessel that left the grain ports of the north. Athens defended this domination as a vital necessity as she was dependent upon imported food and was determined to guard the routes by which that food came.

The sums that the Ionian cities had contributed for defense against Persia were used for the adornment of Athens and periodically the assessment for Athenian services grew until it was some 460 talents (millions) per year.
Athens reserved to Athenian courts the right to try all cases, arising within the Confederacy, that involved Athenian citizens. If any city resisted it was reduced by force; so Pericles with efficient dispatch suppressed rebellions in Aegina (457), Euboea (446) and Samos (440).

Between 431 and 404 BC the Greek world was convulsed by the monumental confrontation of Athens and Sparta. Most of the Greek states were involved as allies of one or the other superpower, and the war produced suffering on a scale previously unknown to the Greeks. By the time the war ended. Athens had been defeated, her navy destroyed, and her empire dissolved..

Main Source: Thucydides (c. 460-400 B.C.), History of the Peloponnesian War

Participant

• Son of aristocratic Athenian
• Early discerned the importance of the Peloponneian War
• Commanded Athenian fleet off the Thracian coast but failed to prevent the capture of Amphipolis which was besieged by Spartan Brasidas — failure resulted in his exile until 404 when he was recalled
• History covers three phases of war

• • First Phase — 431-421 B.C. ending with Peace of Nicias
  • Sicilian expedition of Athenians — 415-413 B.C.
  • Last phase — 413-404 B.C. — history breaks off in 413 B.C.

History

• • • Straightforward, compact, dry prose
    • Avoided digressions
    • Chronological approach by campaigning season
    • Research based on own experience, eyewitness accounts (some conflicted and had to be weighed)
    • Lengthy speeches — composed by Thucydides to conform with what was probably said, based on his own recollections or those of others.
    • Didactic

• Background

“By the second half of the fifth century BC, Athens and Sparta had emerged as the two most powerful states in Greece. Although formerly allied against the Persians, the two superpowers of ancient Greece had followed very different courses in their development.” [Jeremy McInerney]

1. 1. Athens

• • Money should be deposited by Hellenic treasurers in Temple of Apollo at Delos
  • Annual congress of all deputies in which each state had an equal vote
  • Athenian delegate was chairman of annual congress and could procure votes of smaller states
  • Athens guaranteed the sovereign independence of each state (good excuse for interference
  • No state might withdraw from League without consent of all (Athens had excuse to forces to remain in)
  • Athens as leader was to assess the requisite money or ships each year and act as collector and executor of decrees of league
  • 460 talents per annum
  • Most allies found it more convenient to contribute money than to furnish ships or troops
  • By 445 only a few larger states such as Samos, Chios, and Lesbos built their own ships
  • By 445 B.C. — more than 200 cities in the League
  • Athenian popular court became the court of appeals for cases between the allied states or their citizens — some states had to refer all capital offenses to Athens
  • 469 Naxos and in 465 Thasos tried to withdraw from Confederacy — Athens sternly subjected them
  • Athens encouraged democracy
  • 454 Treasury transferred to Athens “for safekeeping”
  • Pericles appropriated funds of Delian League treasury to beautify Athens
  • In transforming the free confederacy into an empire Athens violated not only honor but the most fundamental principal of Hellenic political life: the sovereignty of the polis — Athens gain the reputation as the “Enslaver of Hellas”

“The next ten years were the hinge of the century…. Athens was ascendant, and between 463 and 454 she came close to supremacy.”

The Persians had been greatly weakened, and the Phoenicians had suffered in that process. Carthage confronted aggressive Greek cities in the West. “

The Athenians driven on by an amazing energy, were asserting a supremacy that no one city could sustain, and even though the sea was theirs, with its commerce, the mines and the green riches of the earth, they could no more finally dominate the eastern Mediterranean than the Spartans could: the Spartans were to the Athenians in the end what the Greeks were to the Persians.”

2. 1. Sparta

Τηε Peloponnesian League

Loose military alliance led by Sparta and formed c. 550 B.C. (Boeotia, Phocis and other states were allies of the league). Formed by Sparta after its victory over Argos, it included all Peloponnesian states except Argos and Achaea. It was a loose confederacy whose members committed themselves to supply military contingents in the common interest. Meetings were held at Sparta, and each member sent representatives. Corinth readily joined for Corinth was a natural enemy of Argos, while her commercial rival, Aegina, was a friend of Argos. Megara was also enrolled. Athens became a member for a brief period c. 510 B.C.

Spartan-dominated military alliance. Based on treaties between Sparta and other Peloponnesian States negotiated initially in the 6^th century B.C. and then fashioned into a permanent alliance just before 500. Sparta held command in war and summoned and presided over the assembly of allies. Only after the majority of the assembly where each ally cast one vote, had agreed to a proposal for war could Sparta demand the support of all parties.

Sparta itself may not have cast a vote in the Assembly but exercised considerable influence over its decisions by its power to refuse to call a meeting except to consider proposals that it approved. When no League war was in progress, the members could carry n separate wars even with each other. Thus the League could not support every allied State in war.

To secure defense against aggression from the League as such, it was necessary to first convince Sparta and next the Assembly. Athens, at the time of its surrender in 404, and subsequently other allies were forced to accept treaties pledging complete obedience on matters of war and peace. Gradually the League evolved toward an empire but the process was not concluded before the collapse of Spartan power and the League’s dissolution in 366 B.C.

3. 1. Preliminary events — major causes — growing tensions between Athens and Sparta in the years following the Persian Wars –“In 464 B.C. Sparta was bleeding; the Messenians had rebelled, a little force of Spartans had been cut down and the allies were summoned to besiege Ithome, the ancestral stronghold of Messenia …. Among others, Kimon of Athens went to help with 4,000 men, but he was insultingly sent home. In 461 Kimon was ostracized.

“Resistance to Athenian policy came from nearly every state in Greece. Boeotia fought off Athens in 447. Some subject cities and others that feared subjection, appealed to Sparta to check Athenian power. The Spartans were not eager for war; but the old racial antipathy between Dorian and Ionian inflamed them — and the Athenian habit of establishing democracies in their dependencies was a threat to Spartan aristocracy.”” [Nordland notes]

Kimon (Cimon) (died 450 B.C.) was related to one of the most powerful aristocratic families in Attica, the Philaids. From his father, Miltiades, he inherited an aggressively anti-Persian sentiment and from his mother, Hegesipyle, he possessed connections with Thrace and the Chersonese. The historical tradition depicts him as a “conservative” pro-Spartan leader from the hoplite class who opposed the more “radical” leaders of the “naval mob” such as Themistocles, Ephialtes, and Pericles. However, Cimon commanded the naval expeditions which helped create the Athenian empire.

After the departure of the Persians from Greece in 479 B.C., Cimon commanded the Greek expeditions to Cyprus and Byzantium, where he expelled the Spartan Pausanias who was suspected of seeking peace with Persia. He also expelled the Persian general Boges from Eion, thus preventing the Macedonian king Alexander I from establishing his authority over Thrace.

The colonization of Scyros and the transfer of the bones of Theseus to Athens in 476 enhanced his reputation. He also systematically attempted to depict his father’s victory at Marathon as much more glorious than the naval victory at Salamis. T

his helped him to eliminate Themistocles. Cimon also probably commanded the expedition against Naxos, which made an unsuccessful attempt to defect from the Delian League in 470/468 B.C. Subsequently under his leadership the Greeks inflicted a decisive defeat on Persian land and naval forces (destroyed or captured 200 ships) at the river Eurymedon (Kopru River in Turkey) (between 469 and 466) , expelled Persian garrisons from the Chersonese, and besieged Thasos for two years (465-463).

At Battle of Eurymedon in Pamphylia in 468, Cimon found the Persian army and fleet. He destroyed or captured 200 Phoenician ships. He sealed Caria to Pamphylia for Athenian federation. The loot taken here helped finance the south wall of the Long Walls linking Athens with the Piraeus.

In 462 Cimon persuaded the Athenians to permit him to lead an expedition to help Sparta suppress an uprising of Messenian helots, which began after an earthquake in 464 (had left 5 houses standing) and lasted for nine years. The rebel helots had annihilated in battle a company of 300 Spartans and took refuge on a steep hill in Messenia. Cimon asked “Will you stand by and see Greece lamed of a leg?” Cimon took 4000 Athenian hoplites to assist Sparta in suppressing the rebellion. The Spartans did not appreciate the Athenian presence in the Peloponnese, and soon ‘invited’ Cimon and his troops to depart. This proved to be a severe blow to Cimon’s prestige.

On his return to Athens he proved unable to revoke constitutional reforms proposed by his rival Ephialtes, and in 461 the conflict resulted in Cimon’s ostracism. The story that he helped Athens at the Battle of Tanagra in 458 is probably untrue. He was recalled after perhaps only five years of exile (probably a reaction to the Athenian disaster in Egypt in 454). In c. 450 he negotiated a five-year peace with Sparta and then commanded a final expedition against the Persians in Cyprus. There he died while laying siege to Citium. He was the father of Lacedaemonius. [Bowder, ed., Who Was Who in the Greek World, p. 78.]

A barbarian prince who had formerly supported the Persian cause abandoned his ally and came to Athens, seeking to place himself under Cimon’s protection. To ensure his welcome he brought two vessels, one filled with gold pieces and the other with silver, and placed them before Cimon’s door. Cimon looked at them and smiled. “Would you prefer to have me as your mercenary or as your friend?’ He asked.

“As my friend,” replied the man.

“Go,” said Cimon, “and take these things away with you. For if I am your friend, your money will be mine whenever I have need of it.”

“Surrounded by enemies abroad and at home, Pericles worked for peace and prepared for war. Nevertheless, he sent envoys to all the Greek states inviting them to an Hellenic Conference which would seek a peaceful solution. Sparta refused to attend, feeling her acceptance would be construed as an acknowledgment of Athenian hegemony, and at her secret suggestion so many other states rejected the invitation that the project fell through.” [Nordland notes]

“Thus the coming of war awaited some provocative incident. In 435 Corcyra, a Corinthian colony … joined the Athenian Confederacy. An indecisive naval battle took place between Corcyra and Athens against Megara and Corinth. Pericles then ordered all Megarian products excluded from the markets of Attica and the Empire. Megara and Corinth appealed to Sparta….” [Nordland notes] Sparta decided for war and issued an ultimatum, which Athens refused. War resulted.

“We have done nothing surprising, nothing contrary to human nature, if we accepted leadership when it was offered and are now unwilling to give it up. There are three very strong reasons why we should not do so, honor, fear, and self-interest. Nor are we the first people to be in this position: it has always been a law of human society that the weak are controlled by the strong.” [Thucy. I.76.]

Archidamus II: Eurypontid king of Sparta, 476-427 B.C. During the earthquake of 464 B.C. he saved Sparta by leading the army to face a potential helot attack. He played a major role in the suppression of the helots at Ithome. During the diplomatic activity preceding the Peloponnesian War (the first 10 years of which are named after him), Archidamus urged restraint; he was a xenos (guest-friend) of Pericles. In 431, 430 and 428 he led invasions of Attica, and in 429 directed operations against Plataea.

“It is unwise to go out of the city and fight a pitched battle. Instead, they should come inside the walls and guard them. The fleet, in which their strength lay, was to be thoroughly fitted out. The allies, too, should be kept under firm control, since Athens depended on the income from their contributions. It was, he argued intelligent planning and adequate finances which usually led to success in war.” [Thuy. II. 13]

“Nearly all Greece ranged itself on one side or the other. Every state in the Peloponnesus except Argos supported Sparta; Athens on the other hand had the half-hearted help of the Ionian and Euxine cities and the Aegean isles. The Athenian fleet laid waste the coastal towns of the Peloponnesus, while the Spartan army invaded Attica, seized the crops, and ruined the soil. Pericles called the population of Attica within the walls of Athens, refused to let his troops go out to battle, and advised the excited Athenians to bide their time and wait for their navy to win the war.” [Nordland notes]

“This policy seemed cowardly to some and it hard on the farmers to leave their homes, shrines, vineyards, fields to the torch of the Spartans.”

Pericles: (d. 429 B.C.), son of Xanthippus (commander of the victorious Geek forces at Mycale in 479 B.C.), was the most prominent Athenian leader in the 5^th century. At the peak of his power in the 440s and 430s he was effectively the ruler of Athens, so much so that the period of his pre-eminence became known as the Periclan Age. Throughout his life he displayed conspicuous dignity and aloofness, and his eloquence, sagacity, uprightness and patriotism won for him the admiration of his fellow citizens.

He was directly responsible for the rebuilding of the Parthenon and other temples on the acropolis after the end of the war with Persia and together with his second wife Aspasia, he was the focus of Athenian intellectual life. Among his many close friends he counted Sophocles, Herodotus, Phidias and Protagoras.

He helped extend the Athenian empire and bore some responsibility for provoking the Peloponnesian War.

Two teachers exercised great influence on Pericles. These were the Sophist and musician Damon and the Ionian philosopher Anaxagoras. He first appeared on the Athenian scene in 472 when he provided the chorus for Aeschylus’ trilogy which included The Persians. 

As a young man in 463 he attempted to prosecute Cimon for taking bribes from Alexander I not to invade Macedonia. His feud against the Comnids was hereditary for Pericles’s father, Xanthippus, had prosecuted Cimon’s father Miltiades in 489. Pericles’s antagonism to Cimon aligned him with Ephialtes and other opponents of the aristocratic Areopagus.

In 457 they managed a reform which gave all hoplites access to the archonship and other offices. Bur he was by no means the only prominent leader in this period. The generals Leocrates, Myronides and Tolmides (all Pericles’s seniors) also bore considerable responsibility for the costly expansion that took place in this period. One by one these rivals were discredited or died.

Although Pericles was present at Athenian defeats kike Tanagra (457), he was not associated with the disaster of the Egyptian expedition in support of Inarus dring 454. He appears to have commanded a flotilla in the Corinthian gulf in that year.

The crisis atmosphere following that disaster is probably the context of his personal proposal to recall Cimon. It is not clear what Pericles’s role was in the negotiations which led to the so-called Peace of Callias (son of Hipponicus) with Persia.

Some evidence suggests that in 449 he proposed a general peace congress for all the states which had fought against Persia. Peace called the reconstruction of Athenian shrines (largely at the expense of its allies) under Pericles’s supervision.

The following years witnessed the elimination of rivals: Tolmides, killed at Coronea in 447, and Thucydides, son of Melesias, ostracized in 443. In 446 Pericles distinguished himself by harshly suppressing a rebellion in Euboea, and by preventing the devastation of Attica by the Spartans through persuasion or bribery.

A thirty-year’s peace gave Athens a free hand to focus on suppressing additional revolts among its allies such as Samos, Melissus, and Byzantium, 441-439.

Pericles may have supported a consistent policy of westward expansion leaving the Greek mainland to Sparta. But Athenian alliances with Sicilian cities such as Segesta, and especially the aid given to Sybaris in 447, leading to the new establishment of Thurii in 444, and the Athenian-Corcyran alliance in 433, one of the proximate causes of the Peloponnesian War, need not be interpreted as part of such a strategy. 

Pericles has been charged with seeking war with Sparta, perhaps as a means of eliminating Corinth from western export markets or to restore the moral fiber of the Athenian citizenry. He may merely have recognized that Sparta would not tolerate Athenian imperialism indefinitely.

But it seems that in the late 430s there was increasing resentment among younger potential rivals such as Cleon that Pericles’s preeminence presented an obstacle to their own ambitions.

Prosecutions were brought against several of Pericles’s associates including his wife, Aspasia, and his close friend the sculptor, Pheidias. Alcibiades may have advised Pericles to seek war in order to avoid an investigation by his critics into his misuse of public funds.

Pericles believed that Athens would attain its objectives in a war with Sparta by simply avoiding defeat and demonstrating that Sparta lacked the power to destroy Athenian hegemony of the Aegean.

Consequently he assured that Athens possessed adequate funds to maintain its navy long before the outbreak of hostilities in 431 and he avoided any major confrontation with the Spartans on land.

This policy increased his unpopularity, and he was voted out of office when the plague struck in 430. Although re-elected in 429, he died of the plague soon after. [Bowder, ed., Who Was Who in the Greek World, pp. 156-157.]

During the Peloponnesian War an eclipse occurred when Pericles was about to set out to sea. As the pilot was too terrified to perform his duties, Pericles stepped forward and covered the man’s head with his cloak. “Does this frighten you?” he asked. “No,” said the pilot. “Then what difference is there between the two events,” inquired Pericles, “except that the sun is covered by a larger object than my cloak?”

Pericles

2. Course of the War

    —”During the subsequent Archidamian War, the Spartans invaded every year and laid waste the countryside of Athens. Each summer, the Athenians would pack their bags, collect their sheep, and come inside their walls, watching the Spartans destroying their crops and cutting down their trees and vines.”

1. 1. First Phase, 431-421 B.C.

At this occasion ‘the dead are placed in coffins of cypress wood, one coffin for each tribe. There is one empty litter decked with a pall for all whose bodies are missing. These chests are conveyed by hearses to the public cemetery outside the walls. When the remains of the dead have been placed in the earth, some man of high repute delivers an oration over them. Pericles was chosen in 431.” 

Pericles praised democracy for leaving each man free to behave as he chooses, for considering men equal and giving the poor man a chance to govern if it is considered he can help the city, for leaving their city free to foreigners and hiding nothing, for believing in the good things of life, in festivals, joy and refinement, for not training themselves for war as the Spartans did and yet fighting just as bravely when war came.

Pericles “calculations were strategically sound but they ignored a factor that almost decided the conflict. The crowding of the city led to a plague which killed a fourth of the soldiers and many civilians. Pericles lost his two legitimate sons, his sister, and a younger son. When he had to lay a wreath on the dead, he did something he had never done in public — he wept. The people, desperate with the combined sufferings of epidemic and war accused Pericles of responsibility for both. Cleon and other indicted him on the charge of misusing public funds (embezzlement). His accounts were examined for 15 years. He could not account for some 10 to 20 talents which he had probably used as bribes to the Spartan kings ; he was convicted and fine $600,000 . He was recalled back to office the next year but died within a few months” of the plague. [Nordland notes]

Assembly by special law granted citizenship to his son by Aspasia; he too was called Pericles

No political heir left capable of guiding and restraining Athens.

Aspasia: a hetaira (euphemistic term for ladies of easy virtue who were protected from being classed as mere prostitutes by their personal accomplishments and/or the social milieu in which the moved) mistress of Pericles and then his wife from 450 to 445 B.C. Born in Miletus, she married the widowed Pericles c. 450 B.C. She possessed philosophical interests and was highly regarded by Socrates and his circle. Her friendship with Socrates caused her to be remembered and written about by his followers, including Antisthenes, Aeschines, and Plato. As the wife of the leading citizen of Athens, she suffered unfounded abuse and ridicule by comic dramatists. Aristophanes parodied her political influence in the Acharmians. 

Eupolis in Demes called her a hetaira. Some attributed to her the responsibility for Athenian intervention on behalf of her native Miletus against Samos in 441-440. Some charged her with convincing Pericles to provoke the war with Sparta, more specifically the Megarian Decree discriminating against Megarian trade in 432 B.C. As resentment against Pericles increased n the 430s, Hermippus accused her of impiety and procuring but Pericles defended her passionately and successfully.

After Pericles’s death in 429 she associated with Lysicles, a popular leader who himself was killed in 428. The son of Aspasia and Pericles, also named Pericles could not participate in civic affairs for a long time because Pericles’s own law defined citizen as a person, both of whose parents were Athenian citizens. He eventually became a citizen by special enactment and subsequently a general at Arginusae in 406. He along with the other strategoi were executed by the Athenians after that battle.

“The assembly was increasingly dominated by the city masses, who cast their vote for the last speaker to gain their ear or for the demagogue who would offers them the biggest sop. Cleon, the leather merchant, fanned the growing hysteria. The farmers, both large and small, wanted peace. But the mercantile and artisan classes and the city masses had much to gain by empire and little to lose by war.” [Nordland notes]

Brasidas was a Spartan with a flair for diplomacy and an effective speaker. He promised in the name of Sparta that he would not interfere with the political constitution of any city she might help to free from Athenian domination. He liberated a number of cities. At last he reached Athens’ most valuable possession on the northern coast of the Aegean, Amphipolis, which commanded the timber and gold and silver resources of the area. He took Amphipolis before Thucydides, who was at Thasos could arrive with his fleet. Thucydides became an exile. In 422 Cleon persuaded the Athenian ecclesia to let him go to Thrace. He took 1,200 heavy infantry, 300 horse from Athens and more troops from allies. In his eagerness, Cleon led his troops too close to the city walls. Brasidas made a sudden sally; Cleon’s troops panicked and he was killed. But Brasidas was wounded and died soon thereafter. With Cleon and Brasidas dead, Athens and Sparta negotiated a peace “to be binding for fifty years.”

Peace of Nicias

In 421 B.C. arranged by Athenian statesman, Nicias, was a truce in the Peloponnesian War which was to be annually renewed. Pleistoanax was the other main negotiator. The term was for fifty years. Athens pledged to return all posts which it had occupied during the war: Pylos, Cythera, Methone, Atalanta, and Pteleon in Thessaly. Athens insisted upon retaining Sollion and Anactorion and the port of Nisaea.

The Spartans agreed to restore Amphilpolis and to relinquish Argilus, Stagira, Acanthus, Scolus, Olynthus, Spartolus, which ere to be independent but also pay tribute to Athens, according to the assessment of Aristides. Moreover, the fortress of Panacton on Mt. Cithaeron,, which the Boeotians had recently occupied, was to be restored to Athens.

Certain towns in Athenian possession, eg. Torone, were to be left to the discretion of Athens. All captives on both sides were to be liberated. The common temples of Greece were to be free to al. Delphi and its temple were to be autonomous. Controversies were to be settled legally. The inhabitants of any city handed over to the Athenians could become Athenian allies if they so desired. Meayberna, Sane, and Singe were to be independent.

2. 1. Second Phase, 421-404 B.C. — Hostilities resumed in 421 B.C.

The leaders of Melos faced a terrible choice: have their countrymen die as free men or live as slaves. The powerful Athenian generals and their fleet of thirty-eight ships carrying heavy infantry and archers waited at the shore of Melos ready for action as the Melians deliberated.

“The Peloponnesian War but for the last six years the two great feuding empires headed by Athens and Sparta had avoided open hostile action against each other. Ten years into the War they had signed a treaty of peace and friendship; however, this treaty did not dissipate the distrust that existed between them. Each feared the others’ hegemonic designs o the Peloponnese and sought to increase its power to thwart the others’ ambitions. Without openly attacking the other, each used persuasion, coercion, and subversion to strengthen itself and weaken its rival. This struggle for hegemony by Athens and Sparta was felt most acutely by small, hitherto ‘independent’ states who were now being forced to take sides in the bipolar Greek world of the fifth-century B.C. One such state was Melos.”

“Despite being one of the few island colonies of Sparta, Melos had remained neutral in the struggle between Sparta and Athens. Its neutrality, however, was unacceptable to the Athenians, who, accompanied by overwhelming military and naval power, arrived in Melos to pressure it into submission. After strategically positioning their powerful fleets, the Athenian generals sent envoys to Melos to negotiate the island’s surrender.”

“The commissioners of Melos agreed to meet the envoys in private. They were afraid the Athenians, known for their rhetorical skills, might sway the people if allowed a public forum. [It is not known “what constitution prevailed at Melos. Even in a close oligarchy, such as Melos appears to have been, questions of war and peace were usually referred to a popular assembly of some kind. The Melian leaders plainly did not trust the populace to support their stubborn and dangerous policy. Donald Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, Cornell University Press, 1981, p. 149.]

The envoys came with an offer that, if the Melians submitted and became part of the Athenian empire, their people and their possessions would not be harmed. The Melians argued that by law of nations they had the right to remain neutral, and no nation had the right to attack without provocation. Having been a free state for seven hundred years they were not ready to give up that freedom. Thucydides … captures the exchange between the Melian commissioners and the Athenian envoys:

The Melians pointed out that, on the contrary, it was to the interest of all states to respect the laws of nations: ‘you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right….’ They reminded the Athenians that a day might come when the Athenians themselves would need such protection.”

But the Athenians were not persuaded. To them Melos’ submission was in the interest of their empire and Melos.

“The envoys then left the conference giving the Melians the opportunity to deliberate on the Athenian offer and decide the best course for them to follow.”

“The Melians decided to stand by the position they had taken at the conference with the Athenian envoys. They refused to submit, placing their faith in the gods and the Lacedaemonians. Though they asked the Athenians to accept their neutrality and leave Melos, the Athenians started preparations for war.”

“In the war that ensued the Melians were soundly defeated. The Lacedaemonian help never materialized and there was no divine intervention. The victorious Athenians showed no mercy, killing all adult Melian males and selling women and children as slaves. Subsequently, Melos was settled by five hundred Athenians and it became an Athenian colony.”

“… startling is the manner and content of the Athenians’ argument. In language that is cruelly blunt, they point out that the disparity in power between Athens and Melos renders all discussion of justice or injustice irrelevant, for in the reality of human affairs discussions of this kind only arise when equality of power prevents one side from imposing its will on the other.

When asked to consider the possibility of divine retribution, the Athenians respond with a remarkable statement: ‘As to the divine favor we do not think we are at a disadvantage …. For of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessity of their nature they always rule wherever they have the power.’”

“The dialogue form, the abstractness of the discussion, and the frank immorality of the Athenian arguments have provoked questions about the authenticity of Thucydides’ account. Scholars have doubted that he had access to reliable sources, but he could easily have learned what was said from the Athenian participants and even from those Melians who escaped the mass execution that consumed their fellow citizens.

The problems of the dialogue’s style and structure are not difficult to resolve, but it is not easy to ascertain the motive for their selection. Although the Melian Dialogue is not a verbatim record of the proceedings, but a shortened, stylized, and dramatically heightened account, it can, nonetheless, be faithful to the general sense of what was actually said.

What has aroused the doubts of the skeptics is the content of the dialogue itself, the hard, merciless arguments put forth by the Athenians. Surely neither the Athenians nor any one else could have spoken so, without any attempt at self-justification or palliation. The skeptics maintain that the dialogue cannot have taken place as reported and conclude that it must be a Thucydidean invention.”

“Such skepticism is unjustified. We must remember that the discussion took place in private among small numbers of officials, not in a public forum. In such circumstances frankness is more common. Nor were frankness and toughness necessarily out of lace in the practical mission undertaken by the Athenian ambassadors. Their purpose was to convince the Melians to surrender without fighting, and they may have hoped to achieve this more readily by menace than by any other device.

Such an approach, at any rate, was perfectly in keeping with their recent harsh treatment of Scione; where the policy of mild treatment of fractious allies had been abandoned in favor of rule by terror. … the blunt, hard language of the Athenians is not unique to their dialogue with the Melians. Both Pericles and Cleon had been willing to term the Athenian Empire a tyranny in public speeches, and the Athenian spokesman in Sparta in 432 used language not unlike that found in the Melian Dialogue…”

“For all these reasons we need not doubt the authenticity of the dialogue in its essentials, but the question remains: why did Thucydides choose to report it in this unique way? …” Some claim Thucydides attributed such language to the Athenians as revenge against the polis that sent him into exile. “Some modern scholars suggest that Thucydides intended the Dialogue to show the moral decline of the Athenians in the course of the war. Others, on the contrary, think that he has taken the opportunity to illustrate an unpleasant, but important, side of human behavior. Another interesting interpretation is that Thucydides uses the Dialogue as an opportunity to wrestle with the problem of empire and morality, an issue which he never fully resolves.

“… Presumably he reports the discussion at Melos because some such debate took place, and its importance caught his attention. It is also possible that some of the ironies in the situation appealed to him. Melian resistance to the Athenian demands was based on the Melian conviction that since their cause was just, the gods would protect them, on their confidence that the Spartans would come to their aid, and on their hope that in some unaccountable way fortune would bring success to their efforts despite Athens’ superior power.”

The Athenians dismissed casually dismissed the argument that the gods protected the just. “In a similarly pragmatic way they also dismissed the prospect of Spartan intervention. The Athenians acknowledged that the Spartans practiced virtue at home, but added that ‘most blatantly of all men we know, they believe that what is agreeable is noble and what is expedient just. But this disposition does not favor your unreasonable expectation that they will save you.’

The Athenians asserted that the Spartans, more than anyone else, were moved to action only when convinced that they were superior in power, ‘so that it is not likely they will cross over to an island so long as we control the sea.’ The Melian expectations would all be proved false while the Athenian predictions would be borne out be events.

The Athenians expressed a similar contempt for the Melians’ reliance on hope, but these remarks have an ironical ring for us and for Thucydides. Less than a year after these events at Melos, the ill-fated Athenian expedition sailed for Sicily. Perhaps Thucydides wished to dramatize the condition of post-Periclean Athens, which could give such sound advice to other in one year and grossly ignore it in her own undertakings the next.” [Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, pp. 151-152.]

Alcibiades: c. 450-404 B.C. Athenian statesman. Leader n the struggle against Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, he was defeated at Mantinea (418 B.C.). He promoted the Sicilian campaign (415 B.C.), but was accused (probably falsely) of sacriledge and was called home for trial. Instead he fled to Sparta (where he counseled Agis I), then to Persia. Back in Athens after 411, he won a naval victory (410) but Athenian forces were defeated at Notium (406) by Lysander, who procured the murder of Alcibiades (then in exile).

“Ironically, because of a mysterious episode in Athens on the eve of the expedition, Alcibiades never made it to Sicily, and soon after he defected to Sparta.” [McInerney]

The fleet met a chilly reception from Greek cities in Italy. When the Athenians arrived at Segesta, they found the city, which had offered to pay for their services, did not have the money. Nicias suggested that they parade their power and go home. Lamachus suggested that they attack Syracuse at once, for she had not completed her preparations (he was right). Alcibiades wanted to try to raise allies before striking, and his plan was adopted, and thus the fleet lost about a year before it settled down to attack Syracuse.

“… in Sicily, nearly the whole island came to the aid of Syracuse. Then the Spartan fleet came up and bottled the Athenian ships in the harbor of Syracuse. The surrounded Greeks fought bravely but surrendered and were sent to die at hard labor in the quarries.” [Nordland notes]

“some Athenians were saved because of Euripides. For the Sicilians, it seems, were more fond of his poetry than all the rest of the Greeks who lived outside Greece itself. This is the reason, people say, why many of the survivors, when they got home, went to see Euripides to thank him. Some of them explained that they had been set free when they had taught their masters all they could remember of his poetry. Others said that they had been given food and water in their wanderings after the battle because they recited some of his lyrics.’ [Plutarch, Nikias, xxix]

“These disasters broke the spirit of Athens. Nearly half the population was now enslaved or dead. The funds that Pericles had accumulated were gone; the colonies, seeing Athens weakened, refused further tribute; her allies abandoned her. In 413 Sparta renewed the war, took the silver mines where 20,000 slaves revolted and joined the Spartans. Syracuse sent an army to join the attack; the Persian king, seeing an opportunity to avenge Marathon and Salamis, provided funds for the growing Spartan fleet, on the shameful understanding that Sparta would assist Persia in regaining mastery over the Greek cities of Ionia.” 

“But Athens stood off her enemies for 10 years more. The government was put on an economical footing; a new fleet was built. But just as recovery seemed assured, the oligarchic faction revolted, seized the government and set up a supreme Council of 400.

Once in power, the oligarchs sent envoys to make peace with Sparta, and secretly prepared to admit the Spartan army into Athens. The sailors in the navy were disinfranchised along with many others & these threatened a revolt; the new government took to its heels and the democrats restored the old constitution. Alcibiades had secretly supported the oligarchic revolt, but now the re-empowered democracy, perhaps ignorant of these intrigues, called him home with a promise of amnesty.

He took charge of the fleet at Samos and speeding through the Hellespont destroyed a Spartan fleet at Cyzicus, captured Byzantium and restored Athens’ control of the food supply from the Bosporus. Sailing back south he defeated another Spartan squadron.

But Athens, while celebrating his victories, neglected to send him money to pay his crews. Leaving the greater number of his ships near Ephesus in command of one Antiochus, with strict instructions to stay in port, he went to raise his own funds in Caria. Antiochus left his haven and challenged a Spartan fleet and most of the Athenian ships were captured. The Assembly censured and removed Alcibiades from command — and he now fearing both Athens and Sparta fled to Bithynia.”

“Led by second-rate men the Athenian fleet sailed north to meet the Spartans under Lysander in the Sea of Marmora. From his hiding place in the hills Alcibiades saw the Athenian ships take a strategically bad position; he risked his life to warn the Athenian admirals — but they wouldn’t take his advice and the next day all but 8 of the 208 Athenian ships were taken.”

“Alcibiades sought refuge in Phrygia with the Persian general Pharnabazus who assigned him a castle. But the Persian King, persuaded by Lysander, ordered Pharnabazus to kill his guest. Two assassins besieged Alcibiades in his castle and set fire to it; he came out naked and desperate where he was shot down by arrows and javelins. He died at the age of 46, the greatest genius and most tragic failure in the military history of Greece.” [Nordland notes]

Lysander: (d. 395 B.C.) was the most capable Spartan naval commander and statesman in the final years of the Peloponnesian War. He defeated the Athenian fleet off the coast of Asia Minor in 407 B.C. and two years later he brought a victorious conclusion to the conflict by defeating the Athenians in the Hellespont at the Battle of Aegospotami. In 404 B.C. he forced Athens to surrender and imposed an oligarchic government. The Spartan government disapproved of his arrogance and lack of scruples and then helped restore Athenian democracy. Desirous to enhance his influence in Sparta, he supported the succession of Agesilaus II as king hoping to make him a puppet. Agesilaus, however, proved to be independent and competent. In 395 with the outbreak of war with Boeotia (Corinth and Thebes), Lysander took command of a Spartan army but was killed in an assault on Haliartus. [Microsoft Encarta 96 Encyclopedia]

Lysander did not belong to either Spartan royal family but he claimed descent from the Heracleidae. In 408 BC he became the chief admiral of the Spartan Aegean fleet, which had suffered a disastrous defeat by Alcibiades at Cyzicus in 410. He secured the cooperation of Cyrus the Younger who had been sent by Darius II to take general command of Anatolia. With Persian aid, Lysander defeated the Athenians at Notium, which led to the downfall of Alcibiades.

Then his successor Callicratidas met defeat at Arginusae, and Lysander became adviser to Arcus, the Spartan admiral for 403-404. Lysander blockaded the Hellespont, then caught the Athenian fleet off guard at Aegospotami and annihilated it. During the winter of 405-404 he blockaded Athens and negotiated the city’s surrender with Theramenes. He then installed the pro-Spartan oligarchy known as the Thirty Tyrants under Critias.

Building on his reputation for bringing about the defeat of Athens, Lysander was able to install many of his friends as ‘harmosts’ who ruled the member states of the former Athenian empire through oligarchic committees of ten (decarchies). He also received semi-divine honors as a hero. Thus he provoked considerable opposition in the Spartan government.

By the end of 403 the Spartans allowed democracies to be re-instituted in Athens and elsewhere. Lysander attempted, but failed, to have the Spartan constitution amended so as to have an elective kingship. Subsequently in 399 he successfully managed to have Agesilaus installed as king instead of his brother Leotychidas. In 396 Lysander accompanied Agesilaus to Anatolia, but nevertheless he was losing political influence. When the Corinthian War broke out in 395, he commanded a Lacedaemonian force operating against Boeotia, but he was killed at Haliartus. [Bowder, Who Was Who in the Greek World, p. 136.]

C. Final Days

“Lysander now overthrew the democracies that Athens had set up and set up oligarchic governments subject to Sparta. After 3 months of siege, Athens surrendered to him. He said he would not destroy the city that had done so much for Greece but he demanded the leveling of the Long Walls, the recall of the oligarchy and the surrender of all but 8 of Athens’ ships. Supported by Lysander, an oligarchic Council of Thirty, led by Critias, ruled Athens. They plundered property, exiled 5,000 democrats and put 1,500 to death. As a result of their harsh rule, they were overthrown and the democracy was restored in 403.” [Nordland notes]

• Results of the Peloponnesian Wars

1. 1. 1. Severe punishment of Athens and permanent but gradual decline of the polis

1. 1. Political revision in Athens

3. 1. Period of Spartan hegemony in Greece

4. 1. Decline of Greek polis as a political organization

• Thucydides and the Lessons of History

1. 1. Thucydides attempted to analyze the Peloponnesian War in such a way that it would teach his audience about fundamental truths of history. For Thucydides, the war was both an event that needed explanation, and also itself an illustration of the laws of history
   2. Before Thucydides, Herodotus had articulated the idea of history as research into the causes of notable events but for Herodotus history still included heavenly intervention, cosmic justice, and divine retribution. His concern was to tell a good story
   3. For Thucydides history was the sober and scientific — no stories to entertain, only accounts of events to illustrate the way human affairs always follow the same patterns.

4. 1. Scientific History

5. 1. Conclusion