JACT Teachers’ Notes
AH 3.2 Greece in Conflict, 460-403 BC
Teachers’ notes by Peter Liddel
1.1 Books and Resources
There are many textbooks which cover this period in varying levels of detail. This list
lists them in order of difficulty (easiest first). Note that the more difficult they get, the
more closely they engage with the sources and interesting issues:
General books on Greek history that cover the period:
Buckley, T. (1996), Aspects of Greek History, 750-323 BC – much maligned by
many
Bury, J. B., & Meiggs, R. (1975), History of Greece (4th edn., MacMillan) –
many of its interpretations have been challenged by more recent scholars.
Orrieux, C. & Schmitt-Pantel, P. (1999), A History of Ancient Greece.
Pomeroy, S.B., et al. (1999), Ancient Greece – now also available in a shorter
version
Textbooks concentrated on classical period:
Todd, S. C. (1996), Athens and Sparta – short (and affordable), thematically
arranged (not a narrative history)
Davies, J. K. (2nd edn., 1993), Democracy and Classical Greece – especially
chapters 5 on the Athenian Empire and 7 on the Peloponnesian War
Osborne, R. (ed.) (2000), Classical Greece (Oxford Short History of Europe
Series). (Hans van Wees’ chapter 4 ‘The City at War’ covers the warfare theme
very well; chapter 7 by Lisa Kallet contains a lively fifth-century narrative)
The most detailed narrative accounts (Hornblower’s is the one most referred to in this
set of notes, and it should be regarded as essential for the teacher)
Rhodes, P. J. (2005), A History of the Classical Greek World, 478-323 BC.
London: Blackwells – the most complete narrative
Hornblower, S. (4th edn., 2002), The Greek World, 470-323 BC – good chapters
on cities other than Athens and Sparta.
Cambridge Ancient History – vol. 5 (2nd edn, 1992) covers the fifth century,
Other relevant collections:
Samons, L. (2007), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles. Note
especially chapter 4 on warfare and chapter 11 on the Peloponnesian War
Kinzl, K. (2006), A Companion to the Classical Greek World. Expensive but
excellent on overviews of sources and themes, but not a huge amount of detailed
narrative. Excellent for cultural, social and geographical context.
Maps:
Maps are vitally important for understanding Greek conflict.
Eveday, C. M., (1967) Penguin Ancient History Atlas.
Hammond, N. G. L. (1981) Atlas of the Greek and Roman world in antiquity.
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Levi, P., (1984), Atlas of the Greek World, Oxford.
Talbert, R. J. A., (1984) Atlas of classical history
The internet can be usefully deployed. It is possible, for instance, to get a better
understanding of the location of cities like Megara, Argos and Corinth via Google
It is also possible to get a good view of the plain upon which the battle of Mantinea
was fought (and one can clearly discern the walls of the polis of Mantinea) simply by
searching for ‘Mantinea’ through Google Maps.
Warfare:
One of the focuses of this unit is conflict, and so it is worth mentioning some texts for
those interested in this aspect of the subject. Note that some of the textbooks already
mentioned (those of Osborne, Kinzl, Samons) have sections dedicated to warfare:
Sage, M., (1996) Warfare in Ancient Greece. A Sourcebook
Van Wees, H. (2004), Greek Warfare. Myths and Realities
Low, P. (2007), Interstate Relations in Classical Greece – a landmark study of
interstate ethics and morality
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
1.2 Introduction to Sources
Thucydides and Xenophon – translations available in Penguin, but note also The
Landmark Thucydides, ed. By R. Strassler, with maps, notes, appendices and index.
Thucydides’ ‘history of the war fought between the Peloponnesians and Athenians’
(Thuc. 1.1) and Xenophon’s Hellenika (Greek History) are the primary sources for
this unit. Thucydides’ work is a history of what is now called the Peloponnesian War
(viz. the conflict of 431-04), but book 1 is spent explaining its origins. Thucydides’
explanation of the war (his alethestate prophasis – truest explanation) is that the
growth of Athenian power led to Spartan fear (Thuc. 1.23). This means that he has to
explain that growth of Athenian power, and what he gives as explanation (commonly
known as the Pentekontaetia (‘the fifty-year period’) is roughly an account of the
fluctuations in Athenian fortunes in her inter-state relations of the period 479-c. 435
BC). What this provides is a patchy and Athenocentric account of Greek conflicts of
this era, but one which is unparalleled in coverage (though, for a list of events that
Thucydides omits, see A. W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides,
volume 1, 365-70). Thucydides’ history ends abruptly shortly after an account of an
Athenian victory in 411 BC, and Xenophon’s Hellenika picks up the narrative with an
account of the war in the Hellespont.
Thucydides can be read usefully with a number of commentaries, but note that the
first two of these comment on the Greek text (Hornblower, however, at least translates
the passages on which he comments):
Gomme, A.W., Dover. K.J. & Andrewes, A. (1945-81), A Historical Commentary
on Thucydides, 5 vols. – this contains an introduction in vol. 1
Hornblower, S. (1991-2008), A Commentary on Thucydides, 3 vols. Note that the
best general introductions to Thuc. are in vol. 2
Cartwright, D. (1997), A Historical Commentary on Thucydides: a companion to
Rex Warner’s Penguin translation.
Bristol Classical Press companions to the Penguin translation by T. Wiedemann
(books 1-2.65), N. Rutter (books 3-5), and Rutter (books 6-7).
There are few commentaries on Xenophon’s Hellenika, but note:
Krentz, P. (1989-), Commentary on Xenophon’s Hellenika: 2 vols. so far
published, covering books 1.1.1-2.3.10 and 2.3.11-4.3.8. The first of these is
relevant to the period to 404 BC
As for general introductions to the works of these historians, note the following:
Cawkwell, G. (1997), Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War.
Dover, K. J. (1973), Thucydides (Greece & Rome, New Surveys in the Classics, no.
7)
Hornblower, S. (1987), Thucydides
Luce, T. J., (1997), The Greek Historians, chapters 4-5.
Cawkwell, G.,(1997), Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War – important for
analysis of Thucydides and for unravelling aspects of the Peloponnesian war.
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Pelling, C., (2000), Literary Texts and the Greek Historian – chapter 4 on the
siege of Plataia, chapter 5 on the causes of the war are extremely subtle readings
of Thucydides
Ste Croix, G. E. M. de (1972), The Origins of the Peloponnesian War
Zagorin, P. (2005), Thucydides: an introduction for the common reader. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Anderson, J.K. (1974), Xenophon
Plutarch:
Plutarch’s Lives are extremely useful for the history of this period (Plutarch’s Great
Men were often those who won fame by performing well in conflict) and the most
important ones are collected in the Penguin, The Rise and Fall of Athens. This
contains the Lives of late-fifth-century figures, such as the Athenians Pericles, Nicias,
Alcibiades, and the Spartan Lysander. For discussion of his accounts of Nicias and
Alcibiades, see chapter 3 of Pelling’s Literary Texts and the Greek Historian
Aristophanes:
The comic playwright of the fifth (and late-fourth) century BC is very useful for
Athenian political life and also the impact of warfare on it: note in particular
Acharnians, Knights, Wasps, Birds and Lysistrata. Translations are available in a
number of Penguin Classics, but note also the texts available on the Perseus website.
Summaries (often highlighting the historical perspectives offered by the plays can be
found in D. MacDowell, Aristophanes and Athens.
Inscriptional evidence and other sources:
Stone (often marble) and bronze inscriptions say to us a huge amount about inter-state
relations: they record treaties and (usually with formulaic, sometimes with particular,
details of the alliance), commemorate the war dead, and sometimes victories, mark
dedications of spoils to the gods, although the decision to go to war with another
community was rarely written down on a permanent medium. For their significance
for the ancient historian, see Claire Taylor in Omnibus 54. Inscriptions are collected
in the sourcebooks (see below; especially Fornara, translating Meiggs and Lewis’
Greek Historical Inscriptions (which will be replaced at some point in the next few
years by a new collection of fifth-century inscriptions (with translation and
commentary) by Rhodes and Osborne). Inscriptional and other ancient information on
the Athenian Empire is collected in LACTOR 1; on Athenian Radical Democracy in
LACTOR 5, and on the Culture of Athens in LACTOR 12. A LACTOR on ancient
Sparta, edited by Dr Maria Pretzler of Swansea University will appear at some point
in the next few years.
Sourcebooks:
Fornara, C. W. (1983), Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War –
focus on inscriptions and the more obscure texts
Crawford, M.H. & Whitehead, D. (1983), Archaic and Classical Greece.
Rhodes, P. (2008), The Greek City States (2nd edition) - wide ranging
Dillon, M. and Garland, L., (2000) Ancient Greece (2nd edition)
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
1.2 Background Information
A casualty list of the Erechtheid tribe of Athens dating to c. 459 BC reads as follows
(LACTOR 14 42=Fornara 79=ML 33): ‘Of Erechtheis these died in the war, in Cyprus,
in Egypt, in Phoenicia, at Haleis, on Aegina, at Megara, in the same year’. This
document surely was a deliberate statement, set up by a subdivision of the Athenian
polis of Athenian polypragmosune (many-sided activity). The Athenians were
fighting on at least two fronts at the same time in this period: in the short-term it was a
disastrous policy for the Athenians, but this kind of activity meant that to a significant
degree, the history of conflict in the Greek world in this period is a history of
Athenian conflicts and diplomacy with other states. (Of course this impression may,
on the other hand, be an upshot of the Athenocentricty of the literary and inscriptional
sources; just occasionally, on the other hand, we get sources which allow us a
snapshot view of a world of diplomacy and conflicts outside that of Athens: take for
instance the inscription pertaining to relations between Argos and some Cretan cities:
Fornara 89=ML 42); Argos is also involved in an alliance with the Persians in the
460s (Hdt. 7.151) which gave them protection against the other powers of Greece.
Indeed, Argos was an important player in Greek inter-state relations of the fifth
century BC: see Hornblower, The Greek World, chapter 7. For a little more on Crete,
see below, 2.1 section (g).
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
2 NOTES ON THE SPECIFICATION BULLET POINTS:
2.1 The range of conflicts in the Greek world, 460-403 BC
This set of notes attempts to outline, geographically, the kinds of conflict that were
going on in the Greek world in this period.
Note that the conflicts are of many sorts: conflicts between near-neighbours (Athens
and Megara), conflicts about expansionism and encroachment (Athens and Syracuse),
conflicts about control over resources (Athens and Thasos), conflicts about political
groups (Athens and Samos and Miletus), conflicts about influence over sanctuaries
(Athens, Sparta, Phocis and Delphi). But we should also note the existence of civil
wars between political factions within cities (the Thucydidean paradigm is that of
Corcyra: Thuc. 3.69-85 (a stunningly vivid passage)), although political factions in
Greek cities were often aligned according to pro- and anti-Athenian factions (as they
were in Megara: Thuc. 4.6. Relations between Athens, Sparta, and their respective
allies will be covered at 2.2. A brief survey of the means through which warfare was
pursued or halted will be given at 2.6.
(a) Greece and Persia
The biggest issues here were about the Athenian desire to rid Northern Greece (i.e.
Thrace), the islands, Cyprus, and the western coast of Asia Minor of Persian
occupation or influence. But there were other factors at play too: the Athenian
decision to support the Egyptian revolt against the Persians, and Persian intervention
in the Peloponnesian war on behalf of the Spartans. Moreoever, the Persian reluctance
to relinquish claims to Greek cities and islands is strongly suggested in the treaties
made between Sparta and the king of Persia from 411 BC: they agreed initially that
‘all the territory and all the cities held now by the king or held in the past by the
king’s ancestors shall be the king’s’ (Thuc. 8.18; cf. 8.37).
Despite the fact that the Persians were dealt a blow at Salamis in 480 BC, this did not
bring conflict between the Greeks and Persians to an end. After the defeat at Mykale,
many Ionian states of Asia Minor revolted to the Greeks and then went over to the
Athenians (Hdt. 9.106). It is certainly the case that Athenians later believed that the
Athenians had patriotically taken many cities from the Persians (Aristophanes, Wasps,
1097-8). The battle of Eurymdeon (perhaps in 467 BC; Thuc. 1.100, Plutarch Cimon
12) was certainly a culmination in the Delian confederacy’s blows against Persia; it
brought new members to the league especially from southern Asia Minor; the spoils
of the expedition made the Athenians wealthy (they dedicated a bronze date-palm, a
phoenix (a pun on the name ‘Phoenicians’: see Pausanias 10.15.3)); and formed the
basis for anti-Persian operations in the Thracian Chersonese (Pl. Cimon 14). The
famous ‘Eurymedon Vase’, in which a man in non-Greek clothes says ‘I am
Eurymedon. I stand bent over’ and is approached by a Greek figure who is holding his
penis’ was read by Dover as a Greek statement of ‘We’ve buggered the Persians’, but
this is not the only interpretation (see J. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes, 170-1,
180-2). It is highly likely that the cities of the west coast of Asia Minor continued in
the late 450s to be caught between the Athenian and the Persian spheres of interest:
this is the situation in the case of Erythrai -- see LACTOR 14 216 = Fornara 71 (an
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Athenian decree imposing regulations on the Erythraians, mentioning ‘tyrants’ and
‘those who fled to the Medes’; see also Liddel, ‘Athenian Imperialism in the Fifth
Century BC’ Omnibus 57).
There were theatres of Greek/Persian conflict beyond Asia Minor. In the 470s, the
Athenians launched an expedition against Persian-held Cyprus (Thuc. 1.94). Cyprus
was important as it was used by the Persian reserve fleet at the time of the battle of
Eurymedon. The Athenians lost the island before they launched another expedition in
the late 460s or early 450s (Thuc. 1.104), and the Athenian general Cimon died
fighting there is 451 (Thuc. 1.112).
At some point after 464, the Egyptians revolted from Persian administration. Tired of
the fact that much of the best land in Egypt was exploited by absentee Persian
landlords (Hornblower, Greek World, 64), they were led by Inaros a Libyan, who
appealed to the Athenians for support. The Athenians helped but the eventual
outcome was a disaster for Athens (Fornara 72; Hdt. 3.12; 7.7; Thuc. 1.104, 109-10)
with the loss of their fleet, the return of Persia to Persian control, and the crucifixion
of Inaros. Hornblower calls it the ‘Athenian Vietnam’ (Greek World, 64). It is quite
possible that the Athenians received support (or extracted support) from their allies in
this expedition: an inscribed marble block from Samos dated to c. 464-54 suggests
that Samians were fighting in Samos at this time, and that they took 15 ships from the
Phoenicians: see LACTOR 14 43 = Fornara no. 77.
There is much discussion on whether there really was a treaty called the Peace of
Kallias. According to some accounts, this treaty between the Athenians and the
Persians can be dated to 449; others prefer a date in the 460s. According to Plutarch,
Cimon, 13.4-5, the King promised ‘to keep away from the Hellenic sea by the
distance a horse will travel in a day and not to sail with a bronze-prowed warship
within the Kyaneai and Chelidonian islands’. Yet Callisthenes (a fourth-century
historian) says: ‘the barbarian did not sign an agreement to this effect, but acted in
this way because of his fear arising from the defeat and stayed so far away from
Hellas that Pericles with 50 vessels and Ephaltes with a mere 30 sailed beyond the
Chelidoniai without a fleet of the barbarians approaching them. But in the book
entitled A Collection of Decrees by Craterus, copies of the agreements are set down as
having been made’. Further sources are collected at LACTOR 14 50-56 and Fornara,
95, and discussion can be found (s.v. ‘Callias of Athens’) in Rhodes, A History. The
absence of any attested Greek (as opposed to Athenian) alliance with the Persians has
led Hornblower (The Greek World, 74) to suggest that the Spartans were ‘technically
at war’ with the Persians down to 412 BC. But, in the Greek world, one must pause to
consider whether there really was a ‘technical’ condition of being at war with another
power: was an actual peace-treaty required for one state to be at peace with another?
However, as Hornblower points out, there was a major difficulty: the Persians insisted
that the Spartans accept that Asia Minor was Persian property. We can envisage
communications and appeals going back and forth between the Greeks and Persians at
some points during the Persian wars (Thuc. 4.50; LACTOR 14 57-63), but after the
death of Cimon, there was no more open warfare between the Athenians against
Persia until 413 BC when Amorges, the bastard son of Pissuthnes the satrap of Sardis
(see LACTOR 14 153) who led a revolt against the Persian king, appears to have won
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Athenian support for his campaign against the king (Thuc. 8.5, 19, 28, 54). It is even
possible, as a fourth-century orator, Andocides (3.29), suggests, that Athenian support
for Amorges was what brought the Persians to make an alliance with Sparta (see
Appendix 4 in the Penguin edition).
The treaties between Sparta and Persia (see Thuc. 8.18, 36-7, 57-8, Xen. Hellenika
1.4.2) were vital in channelling Persian pay to the Peloponnesians (e.g. Thuc. 8.57),
which improved their performance in the war against Athens tremendously in the
period 411-07. However, Athenians and one renegade Athenian, Alcibiades,
periodically entered into negotiations with the Persian satraps: Alcibiades advised
Tissaphernes to wear both the Peloponnesians and Athenians down (Thuc. 8.46).
Indeed, Sparta’s support for the rebel Cyrus (who had been sent to conduct the war on
the Spartans’ behalf in 407) against King Darius II (king 424-04) threw the Persians’
support for Sparta into jeopardy, and the Athenians even made an approach to Cyrus
though Tissaphernes (Xen. Hell. 1.5.8-9).
(b) Thebes and Boiotia
A starting point for this area of the Greek world is Hornblower, The Greek World,
99-102 pp.83-7.
It is worth explaining the political organisation of Boiotia at the outset. Thebes
medised in 480, but Thespiai did not (i.e. there was not a united Boiotian stand,
despite the existence of some sort of Boiotian federation already by the late sixth
century). A good deal is known from a papyrus known as the Hellenika Oxyrhynchia
16-17.4 about the Boiotian Constitution: what is important is that Boiotia was a
federation, within which there were a number of communities jostling for supremacy;
undoubtedly, however, Thebes was the most important city:
‘at that time [395, but true from 446 on] affairs were organised throughout Boiotia as follows: councils
had been established at that time, four in each of the cities. To these councils not all the citizens could
belong, but only those who possessed a certain amount of property. Each of these councils by turn
presided and deliberated in advance on the state's business and introduced proposals to the other three,
and whatever they all agreed upon became their final decision. Their local affairs they continued to
manage in this way, but as for the government of Boiotia as a whole, it was organised in the following
manner: all the inhabitants of the area had been divided into eleven districts, and each of these districts
provided one Boiotarch: the Thebans contributed four, two on behalf of the city and two on behalf of
the Plataians and the people of Skolos, Erythrai and Skaphai and the other regions that earlier had
shared in the citizenship of Plataia, but were at that time dependent upon the state of Thebes; two
Boiotarchs were provided by the people of Orchomenos and Hysiai, two by the Thespians along with
Eutresis and Thisbai, one by the people of Tanagra, and yet another by the people of Haliartos and
Lebadeia and Coronea, who was sent by each of the cities in turn; in the same way one Boiotarch came
from Akraiphnion, Kopai and Chaironeia. This was the way in which the districts contributed the
magistrates. They provided councillors also, sixty for each Boiotarch, and they themselves [i.e. the
citizens of the districts] paid these men their daily expenses. There had also been imposed on each
district a military levy of about 1,000 infantry and 100 cavalry. Put quite simply, it was in proportion
to the number of magistrates they provided that they drew upon the federal treasury and paid their taxes
and sent judges, and they had their share of all aspects of the federation in like manner, both the
obligations and the privileges. Well then, that is the way the whole nation governed its affairs, and the
common assemblies of the Boiotians, when they met together, held their sessions on the Theban
Cadmea. [17] … At this time [395 BC], and a little before, power among the Thebans and in the
Council of the Boiotians lay with Ismenias’ group, but earlier those with Astias and Leontides had been
most prominent and had had a strong hold on the city. For when the Spartans were fighting the
Athenians and spending time at Decelea and kept with them a corps of allied soldiers, their group was
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
most powerful, both because they were closer to the Spartans and because the city benefitted greatly
from the Spartans. The Thebans came to a very happy position as soon as the war between the
Athenians and Spartans broke out. When the Athenians began to threaten Boiotia, the Thebans joined
to themselves those from Erythrai, Skaphai, Skolos, Aulis, Schoinos, Potniai and many other such
places because they did not have a wall, and this doubled the size of Thebes. Things prospered
particularly for them when they joined the Spartans in fortifying Decelea against the Athenians… ‘
As well as giving a snapshot of Boiotian political organisation from 446 onwards, the
passage also gives us an impression of (a) the way in which Theban politicians may
have championed the interests of Sparta when it suited them to do so; (b) the fact that
the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta suited Boiotian interests as it
weakened Athens, the city to her south.
One community that was stuck between Athens and Theban spheres of influence in
the fifth century was Plataia. Thebes attempted periodically to force the Plataians to
join the Boiotian Confederacy, but Plataia resisted, turning instead towards alliance
with Athens. Plataia had famously joined the Athenians at Marathon, and had
heroically contributed at the battle of Plataia in 479. After the Theban defeat of
Tolmides in 447 (see below), Plataia was forced to join the Boiotian alliance, but she
reverted to pro-Athenian policies before 432/1 BC, when the Theban attack on Plataia
took place, which Thucydides regards as the start of the Peloponnesian war proper
(Thuc. 2.2). The siege went on until 427, by which time most of the inhabitants had
fled to Athens (for the siege, see Thuc. 2.71-8; 3.51-68).
The series of battles often known by modern scholars as the First Peloponnesian War
brought Boiotia into the Athenian-Peloponnesian rivalry: Sparta’s decision to march
to the Boiotian city of Tanagra in 458 (Thuc. 1.108; LACTOR 14 is a dedication
marking the Spartan victory) implies Athenian plans to attack Boiotia. The Spartans
soon returned home, whereupon Athens’ subsequent victory at Oinophyta gave her
immediate control of all Boiotia and Phocis and implies that there were Boiotians who
welcomed Athenian presence (Thuc. 1.107-8). Athens seems not to have made the
cities of Boiotia tributary, and may have exercised a ‘light touch’ in other ways
(compare ‘Old Oligarch’ 3.11: ‘Whenever [the Athenians] have tried to support the
best people, it has not furthered their interests. It was not long before the people were
enslaved in Boiotia’; Aristotle Politics 1302b 25-30: ‘When one group comes to
despise the other this leads to civil strife and armed action… in democracies when
the rich have come to despise the disorder and lawlessness, as in Thebes after the
battle at Oinophyta the democracy was destroyed because the constitution worked
badly’). Seriously overstretched, the Athenians were soon defeated by the Boiotians,
and her land empire was lost (Thuc. 1.113-4) in 446 BC.
Internal disputes in Boiotia are a constant feature of the period: note the exile factor in
447-6 (Thucydides 1.113) and in 424 (Thucydides 4.76), and the internal dispute at
Plataia that leads to Thebans being invited into the city (Thucydides 2.2.2). Note that
the Theban force that enters Plataea in 431 is led by Thebes’ federal magistrates —
the Boiotarchs (Thuc. 2.2.1) and attempts to frame itself as a move on behalf of the
federation (2.2.4). For Theban attempts to turn the accusation against themselves of
‘medising’ into an accusation against others of ‘atticising’ see Thuc. 3.62.2 (of
Plataians) and 4.133.1 (of Thespiai). It is possible that the Theban destruction of
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Thespiai in 423 (Thuc. 4.133.1) was not just opportunism (the city being weakened by
losses at Delion (4.96.3)) but consequent on a new dominance of pro-Athenians at
Thespiai following the deaths of many hoplites who were more strongly in favour of
Boiotian federalism (compare subsequent events, 6.95.2).
The Theban factor continued to plague Athens throughout the Peloponnesian war:
note the battle at Delion and the Athenian defeat there: Thuc. 4.89-101.
For the Theban/Boiotian role in negotiating Peace of Nikias and reaction to it see
Thuc. 5.17.2, 31.6, 32.5-7, 35.5, 36-46; for Boiotian occupation of Heraclea in
Trachis 5.51-2.
The Theban/Boiotian reaction to Athens’ final defeat in 404: Corinthians and Thebans,
and others, want to see Athens razed (so as not to become Spartan puppet) Xenophon
Hellenica 2.2.19; Boiotians and Corinthians refuse to support Pausanias army sent to
support the Thirty, Xenophon Hell. 2.4.30; refusal to support Agis campaign against
Elis, Xenophon Hell. 3.2.25; Boiotians disrupt Agesilaus’ sacrifice at Aulis,
Xenophon Hell. 3.4.3-4. For Spartan anger at all of this see Xenophon Hell. 3.5.5.
(c) Delphi
Another area of contested interest in central Greece was the sanctuary at Delphi. At
some point in the early 440s, the Spartans championed Delphian control of the shrine;
the Athenians championed Phocian control (Thuc. 1.112). This conflict is often
known as the ‘Second Sacred War’ (the first being a legendary squabble over the
shrine the story of which was developed probably in the fourth century BC). It is a
clear reminder that, in the fifth century BC, access to and possibly influence over the
Delphic sanctuary mattered enough for lives to be lost over it. Hornblower’s line
(accepted by most) is that Thucydides did his best to exclude the religious element
from his history of the Peloponnesian war: see his article in Harvard Studies in
Classical Philology 1992, but also his Greek World, 21, 29-30, 34-7, 81, 158).
Among his suggestions are that the purpose of the Spartan foundation of Herakleia
Trachinia in central Greece in 426 was to secure a position of influence over the
Amphictyonic Council (the organisation that administered the sanctuary at Delphi: see
Thuc. 3.92. Certainly it is the case that other sources suggest that states were
interested in courting this organisation: see Pluarch, Themistocles 20, Cimon 8. The
membership of the council was dominated by delegates from Thessaly, another area
which fluctuated between Sparta and Athens in the fifth century: see Hornblower,
Greek World, 95-99 (for Athenian intervention see, for instance, Thuc. 1.111). It was
valuable, as it still is, for its agricultural land, featuring broad areas of plains not
known across much of southern Greece.
(d) Northern Greece
Athenian interest in northern Greece (in particular the area known as Thrace) is well
attested: the Athenians appear to have repeatedly attempted to set up a colony at
Ennea Hodoi (=Nine Ways) in Thrace in the period 476/5-437-6 BC, and they
eventually succeeded in 437/6 BC: see Fornara 62 and Thuc. 4.102. The Athenian
colony at Brea of c. 445 BC (LACTOR 14 232) may also have been located in Thrace.
Athenian interests in this area were closely linked to the expulsion of Persians (for a
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Thraco-Persian alliance, see Plutarch, Kimon, 14): the Athenian victory at Eion at the
mouth of the river Strymon in the mid-470s led the Athenians to dedicate a series of
Herms, which were quoted by Plutarch (Cimon 7) and with pride also by Aeschines in
the fourth century BC (Aeschin. 3.183). In the period of the Athenian empire, the
Thraceward region was an important area of tribute assessment.
The revolt of Thasos (Thuc. 1.100-1) of c. 465 BC was one of the big early threats to
Athenian supremacy in northern Greece. According to Thuc., the Thasians were upset
owing to the fact that the Athenians were intervening in the markets and mines of the
peraiai of Thasos in Thrace (a peraia is a costal strip upon which influence is exerted
by a nearby island).
Osborne (LACTOR 14 p. 94) suggests that the Athenians became more active in
Thrace and Northern Greece in the 430s, when some communities appear to have
jumped on board the Athenian bandwagon (possibly this was a consequence of the
Athenian foundation of Amphipolis). Athenian intervention in c. 432 at Potidaia, a
city of the Chalkidike, was one of the four causes of complaint (aitiai) that were
openly expressed before the Peloponnesian League in the run-up to the war (Thuc.
1.56-65), and it seems to have been the case that the Athenians invested a great deal
of money in that siege (Thuc. 2.13). Potidaia was backed by Macedonians, who
wanted to reduce Athenian influence in the area (on whom, see below).
During the Peloponnesian war, the Spartans supported anti-Athenian interests in
northern Greece: the upshot of this policy was Brasidas’ expedition in Thrace and
Chalkidike and Amphipolis and his capture of that city in 424/3 BC; the Athenian
attempt to re-exert influence over that area led to the battle of Amphipolis in 422, in
which the Athenian commander Cleon and Spartan commander Brasidas were both
killed (Thuc. 5.1-12), and led to the Peace of Nicias of 421 BC.
Macedonia was an area of growing political significance in the second half of the fifth
century BC (see Hornblower, Greek World, 89-95). Thucydides (2.100) tells is that
king Archelaus constructed strongholds and fortresses, straight roads, reorganised the
cavalry, armed the infantry and improved the equipment. ‘so as to put the country in a
stronger position for war than it had ever been under all the eight kings who had ruled
before him’. The resources that Macedonia offered (including timber – important for
the Athenian navy of the fifth century: see Andocides 2.11, Fornara 161 line 30 and R.
Meiggs, ‘Forests and Fleets’, Omnibus 4) meant that the Athenians were interested in
developments here. Athens’ inscription of privileges for the people of Methone, a
coastal city of Macedonia (LACTOR 14 121), written down by the Athenians in 424/3
BC recorded four decrees stretching back to 430/29, shortly after Methone was
brought into the Athenian empire: the Athenians offered to relax their extraction of
debts from them; the Athenians sent ambassadors to Perdiccas, king of Macedonia,
demanding that the people of Methone be allowed to use the sea, and that they should
be able to import goods as they liked, and that he should not lead an army through
their territory without their permission. Athens appears to be using Methone as a
buffer-zone against Macedonian encroachment: Methone received exceptional
treatment (including the right to import grain from Byzantion) and in return was a
11
JACT Teachers’ Notes
bulwark against Perdiccas. It is likely that the Athenians, after Perdiccas’ involvement
in the siege of Potidaia (see above), were keen to present a kinder face of imperialism.
(e) The West and Sicily
Athenian interest in the west stretches back long before the Sicilian expedition (an
excellent work on the relevant sections of Thucydides is ch. 5 of Cawkwell’s
Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War; note also Hornblower, Greek World chapter
4, with lots of background. See especially, pp. 41-3, with the subheading ‘The
problem of sources: Thucydides not enough’). When thinking about the fifth century,
one starting point could be the foundation, by Greeks from a number of different
communities (containing Athenians, Peloponnesians, Ionians and others) of Thourioi
in 444/3 (according to some traditions, Herodotus was ‘of Thourioi’) on the fertile site
of the former city of Sybaris in southern Italy (LACTOR 14 82-3). The attraction may
have been the timber and grain supplies to which this foundation may have enabled
access. But we must remember also that the relationship works the other way round:
there was a Greek worry that Sicily might be a threat to Greece. Thuc. 1.36.2
envisages a fleet coming from the west to the Peloponnese, presumably a Syracusan
force (such a fear is also put in Alcibiades’ mouth at Thuc. 6.18.1). Syracuse, of
course, was a great power in the Greek world: see Hdt. 7.157-163 for the Spartan
appeal to Syracuse for help against the Persians; the Syracusan reply offering massive
military support (including 200 triremes and 20,000 hoplites) was conditional on
Gelon (the tyrant of Syracuse 485-78) being handed the supreme command of the
Greek forces against the Persians. See also Hdt. 7.166 for the Sicilian claim that they
defeated the Carthaginians on the same day as the Greek victory at Salamis. The
Carthaginians were keen to raise their profile in Greece: an Etruscan bronze helmet,
discovered at Olympia and now at the British Museum commemorates the naval
victory of Hiero the tyrant of Syracuse 478-66 (he was the brother of Gelon) over the
Etruscans: see Meiggs and Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions, no. 29.
We should also count the first of the Thucydidean aitiai (openly expressed grounds of
complaint made by the Peloponnesians against the Athenians) as a consequence of
Greek interest in the West (e.g. the statement at Thuc. 1.36 saying that Corcyra was
important for the coastal route for the passage of warships between Greece and Sicily).
This episode, which is explained in detail at Thuc. 1.24-55 starts with Epidamnus (a
well-protected coastal trading city the site of which is occupied by the modern
Albanian city of Durrës), a joint colony of Corcyra (modern Corfu, itself just off the
coast of the southernmost tip of modern Albania) and Corinth. Tradition said that this
was founded in the last quarter of the seventh century. In 435, a struggle between the
people and the ruling oligarchs led to intervention by the Corinthians (on behalf of the
people) and the Corcyreans. The Athenians intervened on behalf of the Corcyreans,
which was a cause of Peloponnesian concern. It is a story which also has important
implications for Greek conceptions of their own past and the ways in which real or
imagined kinship connections between cities, often grounded in stories about
colonisation, could become significant factors in the provocation of conflict.
To the west of Greece, we should note that the areas of Acarnania and Aetolia were
areas open to attempts at Spartan and Athenian influence (Thuc. 3.79-103). For an
Athenian alliance with Akarnania of the 430s, see Thuc. 2.68 with Osborne’s note at
12
JACT Teachers’ Notes
LACTOR 14 p. 49: such actions may well have contributed to Corinthian fear of
Athenian activity. Note also the existence of a Spartan Treaty with the Erxadians of
Aetolia (late fifth century): Nomima I. 55, tr. by Cartledge, LCM 1 (1976), 88
(adapted):
Alliance with the Erxadians of Aitolia.
‘There is to be friendship and peace and reciprocal alliance as only with the Mantineans. They will
always follow the Spartans whithersoever they may lead by both land and sea, having the same friends
and enemies as the Spartans. They shall not effect any termination of war without permission of the
Spartans, sending envoys to the same opponent as to the Spartans. They shall not receive exiles who
have participated in illegalities. If anyone should lead an expedition with warlike intent against the land
of the Erxadians, the Spartans shall help them with all their strength according to their ability. If
anyone should lead an expedition with warlike intent against the land of the Spartans, the Erxadians
shall help them with all their strength according to their ability.’
It is quite possible that the Athenians were thinking about expansion to the west even
before the launching of the great Sicilian expedition in 416 BC: the Athenians made
alliances with Rhegion (Calabria, South Italy) and Leontini (Sicily) (see Meiggs and
Lewis, Greek Historical Inscriptions (=ML) nos. 63 and 64) at about the time of their
intervention in Corcyra in 433 BC (Thuc. 1.44). On these, ML write: ‘The approach to
Athens by Rhegion and Leontini in 433-2 is easy to understand. When Athens openly
decided to intervene in Corcyra in the summer of 433 it must have been clear to the
Greek world that war between Athens and the Peloponnesian League might be
imminent. Against this background the Ionian cities of Sicily might well fear that
Syracuse would take advantage of Athens’ preoccupation to try to swallow them. That
Sicily was closely watching the mainland is confirmed by Thucydides’ statement that
when war broke out Sparta sent for aid to Sicily ‘to those who had chosen the Spartan
side’, with a demand for ships (Thuc. 2.7.2)’. Thuc. says that an Athenian expedition
to Sicily was launched in 427-6 (with the Leontinians appealing to the Athenians on
the basis of an ‘ancient alliance and to their Ionian origin’ (Thuc. 3.86-8)), and sent
more in 426/5 (Thuc. 3.115-6); an embassy was sent in 422 BC (Thuc. 5.4-5) in
which the Athenians appear to have been rallying support against the Athenians. It is
quote possible that Athens saw Sicily as a stepping-stone to the domination of the
Western Mediterranean (Plutarch, Nicias 12 – but this view may be introduced
anachronistically by a biographer who knows the later history of the Western
Mediterranean; but for Athenian mania about Sicily, see Thuc. 6.24-32). Athens made
an alliance with Segesta in 418/7 (ML 37), and after an appeal made by the Segestans
to Athens (Thuc. 6.8), and in 415, the Athenians launched an expedition to Sicily. The
expedition takes up most of Thucydides’ account down to the end of book 7.
For more on the Sicilian Expedition and its background, see JACT Delian League to
Empire notes, section 3.2.4.
(f) Athens and the Aegean
The history of fifth-century Athenian conflict is dominated by her maintenance of her
empire in the face of revolts (see JACT Delian League to Empire notes, section 3.2).
Athens’ empire was primarily a sea-based empire, and many of her exertions in the
fifth century were geared towards dealing with rebellious islanders and states on the
west coast of Asia Minor: revolts were stimulated by a number of factors, but the
fluctuating fortunes of the Athenians must have counted among them (note especially
13
JACT Teachers’ Notes
the torrent of revolts after the Sicilian expedition). See LACTOR 14 73-81, 84-91,
119-20, 124-34, 140-4, 156-8, 164-81.
(g) Crete
Historians have noted that Crete seems to fall out of the political, social and economic
relations of the Greek world in the fifth century BC. Indeed, the evidence has been
held to suggest a lapse in contact between Crete and the Greek world in this era. For
one possible explanation of this, the idea that Athenian economic intervention shut
Crete off from a major Peloponnesian trade artery, see B. Erickson, ‘Archaeology of
Empire: Athens and Crete in the Fifth Century BC’, American Journal of
Archaeology 109 (2005).
(h) Athens’ interests in the Black Sea Area
See LACTOR 14 94-5.
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
2.2 The changing relationship between Athens and Sparta and their respective
allies
(a) Athens and Sparta, 470s-c. 460
Thucydides' account (1.90-115) needs to be supplemented from other sources:
Herodotus 9.35 (undatable Spartan battles against the Tegeans and Dipaees
against the Arcadians at some point after the Persian wars – demonstrating
Spartan weakness).
Diodorus 11.50 with Hdt. 8.3, [Aristotle], The Athenian Constitution 23 and
Plutarch, Aristides 23, on the possibility that the Spartans led the Athenians take
leadership of the Greek states from them.
Hdt. 6.72 Leotychidas is bribed in Thessaly.
Pl. Them. 20 – Sparta embarrassed at the Amphictyonic congress.
The key incidents for discussion are: (1) the circumstances in which Sparta ceased to
lead the continuing campaign against the Persians (note bribery conviction of
Leotychidas as well as behaviour of Pausanias, raising more general question of
behaviour of Spartans outside Laconia), and Sparta’s attitude to Athens in the 470s; (2)
the undatable battles of Tegea and Dipiaia.
(b) The ‘First Peloponnesian War’
LACTOR 14 42 is evidence for Athenian action in the Peloponnese in the 460/59 BC:
it commemorates the war-dead of the Athenian tribe Erechtheis in Cyprus, Egypt,
Phoenicia, at Haleis, on Aegina and Megara. The places mentioned correspond to
those mentioned at Thuc. 1.104-5.
The key incidents for discussion (based on Thuc. 103-115) are: (1) the helot revolt
and the rejection of Athenian assistance; (2) the Megarians joining the Athenian
alliance and construction of their own long walls – which led to Corinthian
resentment; (3) Athenian ambitions in the Argolid, suggested by the expedition to
Halieis (note also LACTOR 14 42, which may be contemporary with another
inscription, SEG 31.369 (from Olympia): ‘The Sikyonians dedicated to Zeus these
spoils taken from the Athenians at Halieis'); (4) absence of Spartan involvement from
earliest actions of ‘First Peloponnesian War’; compare, however, the motivation for
Spartan presence at Tanagra (note e.g. the mismatch between the size of the Spartan
force and the size of the cities of Boion and Kytenion that the force is sent to defend;
that Athens has her Argive allies to hand; that Athenian reaction to defeat at Tanagra
by marching into Boiotia again and annexing it suggests a plan for annexation to have
preceded the Tanagra campaign); (5) Second Sacred War (Thuc. 1.112); (6) Athens’
defeat Thuc. 1.113-4; (7) absence of Spartans from battle of Koroneia and from the
troops brought in by Megara to help her revolt from Athens; (8) the Athenian reaction:
ML 51 (=Fornara 101) suggests that 3 of the 10 Attic tribes were sent to Megarian
territory to stabilise the situation; (9) half-hearted invasion of Attica by Pleistoanax
(with Plutarch Pericles 22-3 and Thuc. 2.21); (10) A thirty years’ peace (Thuc. 1.115,
which may well have listed allies on both sides (Thuc. 1.35, 40); it appears to have
provided for arbitration in future disputes between Sparta and Athens: Thuc. 1.18).
Note that while this series of conflicts started out because of tension between Athens
15
JACT Teachers’ Notes
and Corinth (principally over Megara), the peace that was made was between the
Athenians and the Spartans and their allies (Thuc. 1.115).
(c) The causes of the Peloponnesian War
It is important to get across a clear understanding of the Corcyra and Potidaia affairs,
and to make clear the problems in interpreting the Megarian decree and the
complaints of Aigina. Students should be aware of the treatments of the Megarian
decree in Thucydides and Aristophanes (LACTOR 14 97-9); it is interesting that
Thucydides has so little to say about Megara. Students should know that Plutarch
(Pericles esp. 29-31) has a different account whose relevance to the fifth century has
been much debated. For an attempt to iron out the problem of the chronology of the
Megarian decrees of Plutarch Pericles, 30, see Cawkwell, Thucydides and the
Peloponnesian War, Appendix 2 (pp 111-4), suggesting that the order of decrees
given by Plutarch can be accepted as the right one. Discussion of Aristophanes’
Acharnians (512-39) and Peace (605-11, 615-8) inevitably involves some special
attention to comic evidence. The Megarian dispute must be thought of as part of a
long-running Athenian rivalry with her near neighbour. This flared up in the fourth
century, when the two sides disputed the use of the sacred land (hieras orgas) situated
to the west of Eleusis and to the east of Megara (see Rhodes and Osborne, Greek
Historical Inscriptions, no 58 of 352/1 BC). The nature of Megara’s exclusion from
Athenian trading-places has been disputed. Some, as de Ste Croix, think of it as a
religious exclusion, based on the possibility that Athens was punishing Megara for the
use of sacred land; others think of it as an economically-motivated exclusion,
designed to hurt the interest of Megarian traders (although this explanation collapses
if we believe that trade in antiquity was dominated by metics and noncitizens).Thucydides also has little to say about the aitia of Aegina. This too was
grounded in local rivalries, as the place was known by Pericles as ‘the eyesore of the
Piraeus’ .
The specific grievances can usefully be put into a wider context, both by linking back
to Athenian action in the north Aegean and by drawing attention to more general
Greek fears about Athenian control of the sea: note Thucydides 1.120.2 (LACTOR 14
107) and Athenian control of the grain trade through the Hellespont (LACTOR 14
121 lines 34ff.). For an accessible literary analysis of the explanations of the war, see
chapter 5 of C. Pelling, Literary Texts and the Greek Historian (London 2000).
Corinth was closely interested in what happened to Megara and Aigina as well as
directly involved in the Corcyra and Potidaia affairs (in discussing the role of Corinth
note Herodotus 6.108). But it is also worth drawing attention to the fact that although
Thucydides focuses his narrative on the Corcyra and Potidaia affairs, it was a vote of
the Spartan Assembly that opted for war first, before the Peloponnesian League allies
were consulted. That decision should be seen in a Spartan domestic context as well as
in the context of pressure from Corinth: Spartiates existed to fight and spent their time
training to fight, but they had not fought a major hoplite battle since Tanagra, 25 years
before 432, and so most of those who would be first called on to fight may never have
fought a hoplite battle before. Spartan desire for war had been whetted in 446, when
Attica was invaded only to have Pleistoanax turn back, and in 440, when the Spartans
had voted to invade Attica in support of Samos, Corinth had led the Peloponnesian
16
JACT Teachers’ Notes
allies to reject the Spartan call on their support (Thuc. 1.40). The fact that the senior
Spartan king, Archidamos, who had come to the throne in the 470s and apparently
distinguished himself in the suppression of the helot revolt, did not lead the Spartan
campaign that ended in victory at Tanagra or the 446 invasion of Attica suggests that
he consistently took the line which he takes in 432 (Thuc. 1.80-85), discouraging
aggression against Athens. To many Spartiates the debate in 432 will have seemed
just like a re-run of earlier debates, and even those inclined earlier to listen to
Archidamos’ caution may well have felt in 432 that he had played this card once too
often.
It is worth mentioning some modern interpretations of the causes of the war. De Ste
Croix (Origins of the Peloponnesian War) believes that Thucydides’ analysis is right,
but that he was misunderstood, arguing that Sparta was the aggressor, and that
Thucydides was right to downplay the significance of the Megarian decrees (which he
sees as a response to Megarian impiety. Kagan (The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War), on the other hand, believes that Thucydides is wrong. He argues that Athens’
power had stopped growing by the 430s, and therefore Thucydides’ proposed
prophasis (explanation) is wrong: Sparta had no right to fear Athens any more in 431
than she did when she made peace with her in 446. Kagan argues that the war took
place owing to a diplomatic incident which spun out of control: the Corinthian
intervention at Corcyra (which they did not think would lead to Athenian intervention)
and the Athenians’ unnecessarily harsh ultimatum on Potidaia. Another hypothesis,
proposed by Cornford (in Thucydides Mythistoricus of 1907) suggested that war was
forced on Pericles by Athenian merchants who wanted to break Corinth’s stranglehold
of trade between the Gulf of Corinth and Italy. But this explanation is now generally
discredited, for the interests of merchants (who were usually metics) were probably
not influential on Athenian policy.
(d) The Peloponnesian War
Note Athenian action against settlements in north-west Greece that had Corinthian
links: it is hard to understand the motivation for the expulsion of Euarchos, tyrant of
Astakos, except as a move to annoy the Corinthians (Thucydides 2.30) who reinstalled him (2.33). Athens similarly expels the Aiginetans (Thuc. 2.27), as if to
show what destroying their autonomy would really involve, and later (424)
demonstrates that Sparta is powerless to protect the Aiginetans even when they are
settled in Sparta's own territory in Thyrea (Thuc. 4.56-7).
After an exchange of embassies (Thuc. 1.126-146), the first hostilities related by
Thucydides are the Theban attack on Plataia (2.1-17). Generally, Thucydides pays
rather more attention to Athenian strategy in the Archidamian War than to Spartan.
This reinforces his presentation of Spartan character and each comes to seem
plausible in the light of the other. It is therefore worth stressing that Spartan invasions
of Attica look to try a number of different ways of stirring the Athenians into battle:
the first invasion chooses to sit on top of the largest of all Athenian villages, Acharnae,
within sight of Athens itself, and comes very close to succeeding in drawing the
Athenians out (Thuc. 2.19-22). The second invasion instead goes on the rampage
throughout Attica, even down into the mining region, in an in-your-face
demonstration that the Spartans could go anywhere they wanted, even in Attica (Thuc.
17
JACT Teachers’ Notes
2.47, 55). Given what Spartans could well have construed as Athenian readiness a) to
fight at Tanagra in 457 rather than risk invasion, and b) to conclude a peace treaty
involving significant concessions in 446 in the face of invasion, their expectation that,
notwithstanding her Long Walls, Athens would not be able to bear being invaded
must seem very reasonable.
This is a good point to discuss the resources needed for warfare in classical
Greece, and the quite different demands of naval warfare compared to hoplite warfare
(compare Thucydides 1.80-82, 141-3, 2.13). Inscriptions record that the Athenian
state borrowed money from the sacred treasuries in the period 426/5-423/2 BC
(Meiggs and Lewis, Greek Historical Inscriptions 72 = Fornara 134), and suggest that
the financial worries referred to in Thuc. 2.70.2, 3.19.1 are attested. Note also
LACTOR 14 138 (known sometimes as the Thoudippos decree, also as the
Reassessment Decree), which appears to see through an increase of the tribute to
between 1460 and 1500 Talents (cf. Plutarch Pericles 24).
Actions not directly involving Athens and her allies should be seen as part of
Spartan overall strategy. Prime here is the sending of the colony to Herakleia in
Trachis (Thuc. 3.92-3, but note also Diodorus’ claim at 12.59 that 10,000 settlers were
sent): this is in line with repeated Spartan interest and intervention in this area (cf.
Boion and Kytenion in 458/7; Second Sacred War). Arguably Athenian action from
the first year of the war off the coast of east Lokris (2.26, 30, 32) and in north west
Greece, culminating in Demosthenes' activity in Aetolia and then the complicated and
unsuccessful double invasion of Boiotia in 424 confirms the vital importance both
sides attached to central Greece.
Strategic understanding is more important than an ability to recite events yearby-year, but although it is more detailed than necessary, the time chart on pp. 558-571
of The Landmark Thucydides will be found extremely useful (it is a good idea to
highlight key events).
The following considerations may be useful:
•
Sparta relied on annual invasions of Attica, but broke them off temporarily
when Athens suffered plague, and permanently after Athens captured Spartans at
Pylos (4.41);
•
although in theory Sparta was keen to support Athenian allies who wished to
revolt, in practice she was not able to offer any effective support overseas;
•
the only Athenian ally against which successful action was taken in the early
years of the war was Plataia, subjected to a long siege, and this was occasioned by
Theban hostility to Plataia, not Plataian desire to secede from Athens;
•
Athens’ policy initially appears to have been to survive the Peloponnesian
incursions (Thuc. 1.144) and to avoid engaging the Spartans in battle and to evacuate
the population of the country to within walls connecting the city and the Piraeus
•
The Athenians planned to retaliate with naval expeditions for the
Peloponnesian devastation of Attica Thuc 1.142
•
Athens initially concentrated on Sparta’s allies, with a massive (see 6.31.2)
expedition against Epidaurus, periplous of the Peloponnese (but apart from an
unsuccessful landing at Methone no landing in Laconia or Messenia), action against
cities in north-west Greece with links to Corinth, action against the cities of eastern
Locris, and twice-annual invasion of Megara (Thuc. 4.66)
18
JACT Teachers’ Notes
•
Athens developed her strategy by intensifying action in north-west Greece
(Demosthenes in Aitolia) and forming plans to regain Boiotia; this ended in defeat at
Delium in 424;
•
Sparta also focused attention on central Greece, founding a settlement at
Heraclea in Trachis in 426;
•
Athens also accepted an invitation to become involved in Sicily, the most
important by-product of which was Athenian occupation of Pylos in Messenia and
capture of 292 of the Spartan force sent to evict them, including 120 Spartiates;
success at Pylos led to copy-cat occupation of Kythera and Methana by the Athenians;
•
invitation from the Chalcidians leads Sparta to send Brasidas, with 700 helots
and a force of mercenaries, to stir up revolt in the Greek cities of the Thraceward
region: he meets with widespread, but not universal success;
•
Brasidas’ successes and initial failure of Athenian generals to stem his
advance led to sudden willingness for peace at Athens, despite relatively high degree
of success of Cleon in reversing Brasidas’ success;
•
the Peace of Nikias of 421 ended up being a peace only Athens and Sparta
wanted: Sparta's other allies were not keen and the Boiotians never comply with the
peace terms and take over Spartan settlement of Heraclea in Trachis in 419;
•
expiry of Argive treaty with Sparta leads to diplomatic realignments; Athenian
actions are in part dictated by internal political rivalries; the new alignment of Athens,
Argos, Mantineia and Elis is defeated by Sparta at battle of Mantineia in 418;
•
Athens seeks to use peace to enlarge her powerbase, with expeditions to Melos
(416) and then to Sicily (415);
•
Athenian defeat in Sicily was a product of a) unclear aims; b) strategic failure;
c) lack of local support.
(e) How did Sparta finally defeat Athens?
Early Spartan contact with Persia: Thucydides 1.82.1, 2.7.1 (both proposals), 2.67,
4.50.1-3; in 412-11, Thucydides 8.17-18, 36-7, 57-8 (arguably only the last of these is
correct in detail, and that is an agreement with the satraps, not with the King); final
agreement Xenophon Hellenica 1.4.2-3 (‘Treaty of Boiotios’), and its effects 1.5.1-7;
1.6.6-12, 18; 2.1.6-15; 2.3.6-9 (cf. Thuc. 2.65.12).
Spartan strategies: occupation of Decelea led by King Agis: Thucydides 7.19. 7.27-8,
7.42, 8.3; Hellenica Oxyrhynchia (this is a papyrus source, one of the most valuable
discoveries of literary papyri from Egypt, dealing with the history of Athens and
Greece in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC): 17.5: It happened that Thebes fared
even better when, with the Spartans, they fortified Decelea against the Athenians. For they bought up
the slaves and the rest of the stuff captured in the war for a small price, and, since they lived in the
neighbouring areas, they carried home all the equipment from Attica, starting with the timber and the
tiles of the houses. At that time the Athenians' territory was the most lavishly equipped part of Greece,
for it had suffered only slight damage from the Spartans in the previous attacks and it had been adorned
and crafted so elegantly by the Athenians that… (text becomes fragmentary).
encouragement of revolt of Athenian allies in Ionia (initiative comes from
allies: Thucydides 8.5, 8.6.2-3)
naval campaigns in Ionia, under command of nauarchs (Kratesippidas (Xen.
Hell. 1.1.32) Lysander (sent out at Xen. Hell. 1.5.1, wins battle at Notion),
Kallikratidas (replacing Lysander at 1.6.1 with discussion of wisdom of annual
19
JACT Teachers’ Notes
changing of nauarch at 1.6.4; loses and dies at battle of Arginousai), Arakos (as front
for Lysander) (2.1.6-7, 2.1.27-8 victory at Aigospotami).
To defeat Athens required wresting from her control of the sea, and money was of
paramount importance in naval warfare. The combined tactic of undermining
Athenian resources by preventing activity in the silver mines and procuring resources
from Persia was the key to Spartan victory. That the plan took 8 years from formation
to success is partly a result of poor Spartan leadership and a less-than-wholehearted
Spartan commitment to the accommodation with Persia that the plan involved. The
story of Kallikratidas (Xen. Hellenica 1.6) is very revealing here.
(f) The formation and nature of the Spartan Empire.
Lysander's empire: Lysander and the surrender of Athens Xenophon Hell. 2.2.23;
installing Thirty at Athens [Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 34.3: When Lysander
added his support to those who backed oligarchy, the people were compelled to vote for oligarchy;
installing dekarchy on Samos Xenophon Hell. 2.3.7; champion of dekarchies
generally, Xenophon Hell. 3.4.7.
Agis and a firm grip on the Peloponnesian League: Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.23-3.3.1
campaign against Elis.
Pausanias and the light touch: Pausanias at Athens, Xenophon Hell. 2.4.29-39; tried at
Sparta for his actions at Athens and acquitted by support of ephors: Pausanias Guide
to Greece 3.5.1-3: ‘Leonidas’ son, Pleistarchos, died soon after inheriting the throne,
and Pleistoanax became king; he was the son of the Pausanias who commanded at
Plataia, and his own son was also called Pausanias. It was this Pausanias who went to
Attica as the supposed enemy of Thrasyboulos and of Athens, but really to establish
solidly the dictatorship of the government Lysander had appointed. He fought and
beat the Athenians who held Peiraieus, but as soon as the battle was over he preferred
to take his army home rather than bring the most abominable disgrace on Sparta by
any increase in the dictatorial power of those ungodly men. But because he had
retreated from Athens after an ineffective battle, his enemies brought him to trial. The
court to try a king of Laconia consisted of the Gerousia, which has twenty-eight
members, and the Ephors, and the king from the other family sitting with them.
Fourteen members of the Gerousia, and Agis who was the king from the other family,
found Pausanias guilty, but the rest of the court acquitted him.’ These are almost
certainly the ephors said at Xenophon Hellenica 3.4.2 to have been responsible for
throwing out the dekarchies and replacing them with ancestral constitutions.
Sparta's empire: Diodorus 14.10.2 reports that the Spartans annually collected more
than 1000 talents of tribute annually from ‘the people they had conquered in war’.
(g) Sparta and her allies
Whereas there exist ample sources on the transformation of Athens’ relations with her
allies, the development of the Peloponnesian League is less clear. Indeed, while there
was some indication that Sparta turned the League into some form of empire in the
aftermath of her defeat of Athens in 404, there is no indication of this in the fifth
century. The best modern account of the league is that in G. E. M. de Ste. Croix , The
20
JACT Teachers’ Notes
Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972), ch. 4, app. 5, xvii–xxi: allies swore to have
the same friends and enemies as Sparta, and to follow the Spartans in their
expeditions. The Spartans, on the other hand, promised to go to the aid of allies
attacked by another enemy. The assembly of the League was separate from that of the
Spartans. The Spartans presided over the assembly of the League, each member of
which had one vote. Thucydides (1.19) says that she did make her allies pay tribute,
but ensured they were governed by oligarchies (cf. Thuc. 1.144 – Pericles requested
that the Spartans reverse this policy). Thuc 1.67-86 provides some evidence on how
influential an ally like the Corinthians could be, but note that the Spartans had to
approve a policy supported by the majority of members of the League. Note that in
440 BC, the Spartans voted for war against Athens at the time of the revolt of Samos,
but the Corinthians voted for peace in the meeting of the Peloponnesian League, and
no action was taken (Thuc. 1.40).
An inscription from Sparta, which appears to list contributions to a war-fund, and may
be dated c. 427, suggests the kind of donations that Spartan allies were making to
Sparta: ‘To the Lacedaimonians --- hundred darics…. To the Lacedaimonians, for the
war, nine mnai and ten staters… -os of Olenos gave to the Lacedaimonians, for the
war, a trireme… the Aeginetans gave to the Laedaimonians four thousand … X gave
X amount of raisins … three thousand medimnoi of wheat…’ (Fornara 132).
The Megarians revolted from the League in the late 460s after falling out with the
Corinthians (Thuc. 1.103) but were returned by 446 (Thuc. 1.114). In 425, the
Spartans claimed that the other Peloponnesians would follow them in making peace
with Athens (Thuc. 4.20). However, there was a low-point in the aftermath of the
Peace of Nicias: Corinth, Megara and the Boiotians left the league in 421 in disgust at
the terms of the Peace of Nicias (Thuc. 5.25-62).
Spartan interests in the west of the Peloponnese were constantly plagued by the
independently-minded Argives. In the early 460s, the Argives were flexing their
muscles by destroying other communities in the Argolid (Diodorus Siculus 11.65),
and an Argive-Athenian alliance of 462/1 BC was important. Argos became important
again when she formed an anti-Spartan alliance with Mantinea and Elis in the
aftermath of the Peace of Nicias of 421 (Thuc. 5.25-62). This led to the battle of
Mantinea at which Spartan supremacy over the Peloponnese was re-asserted (Thuc.
5.63-83). For more on the role of Argos in the fifth century, see Hornblower, The
Greek World, 83-5.
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
2.3 The roles of individuals in Sparta and Athens
Ancient writers had a tendency to ascribe events and phenomena to the abilities and
activities of individuals. When we think of how events happened, individuals were
important: individuals led armies on battlefields, and the role of persuasion in Greek
decision-making (in assemblies, councils and other smaller bodies) meant that
individuals and charisma were important (see for instance, Finley’s famous ‘Athenian
Demagogues’ essay (available most recently in P. J. Rhodes, Athenian Democracy
(Edinburgh 2005)) or P. J. Rhodes, ‘Who Ran Democratic Athens’ in P. FlenstedJensen (et al, edd.), Polis and Politics (Copenhagen, 2000). Note that in the fifth
century it was usually the case that the leading politicians were leading generals or
military leaders too (in the fourth century, there was a much stronger division between
domestic and military leaders).
Herodotus’ account of the Persian wars makes a lot of room for the role of
Themistocles (he persuaded the Athenians to use the silver from Laurion to fund a
ship-building programme, and persuaded the Athenians to abandon the Akropolis: see
Hdt. 7.143-4, 173; 8.4-5, 19, 22-3, 57-63, 75, 79-80, 83, 85, 92, 108-112, 123-5; 9.98.
As one of our main sources, Plutarch, is a biographer, this tendency is pronounced for
this period (but is even more so for those periods of Graeco-Roman history for which
we are even more reliant on biography (e.g. that of the middle and late Republic)).
Aristophanes’ political comedy is reliant for its humour on lampooning individuals
and for that reason often lends focus to the role of individuals in Athenian politics.
Inscriptions recording Athenian decrees recorded the proposer of the particular
enactment that they recorded, and meant that they too bring out the role of the
individual. As for Thucydides, Simon Hornblower has important views: he suggests
that Thucydides moved from thinking about impersonals (e.g. arche, or empire) and
collectives (‘the Spartans’, ‘the Athenians’) to individuals as the key agents of history.
He suggests that Alcibiades’ charismatic leadership (which enabled him to achieve by
personality what Pericles achieved by policy) persuaded Thucydides of the role that
the power for good or damage of an effective or persuasive individual (see S.
Hornblower, Thucydides (1987), 61, 145-6; see also Westlake’s Individuals in
Thucydides). So, individuals play a limited (but not unimportant) role (see below) in
history for Thucydides for much of his history (see for instance, the impersonal events
like the Melian Dialogue (5.84-114), they play a much larger role after Alcibiades has
persuaded the Athenians to launch the Sicilian expedition (6.16 ff.). Thucydides is of
course reliant on speeches, and these are put in the mouth of many of the most
important individuals, but we should bear in mind his statements about his method of
writing speeches (Thuc. 1.22). His account of the oligarchic revolution contrary to
that of [Aristotle]’s Athenaion Politeia 29-33 makes a great deal of the role of
individual players, especially Alcibiades. This section goes on to suggest some
individuals who may have made a difference to the story of conflict in fifth-century
Greece. In each case, it is worth considering the degree to which their roles may have
been over-emphasised by the sources, and how far the roles played by individuals
may have fitted the authors’ preconceptions of various character types (Pericles the
statesman, Cleon the demagogue, Archidamus the slow and cautious Spartan,
Sthenlaidas the laconic speaker).
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Cimon: appears to have championed a pro-Sparta policy for much of his career
(probably the Athenian proxenos for Sparta) while pursuing the war against the
Persian rulers of Greek cities: see esp. Plutarch, Cimon, 6-117; Aristophanes
Lysistrata 1137-44; Thuc. 1.100. Returned after exile to negotiate a truce with Sparta
(Plut, Cimon, 17-18); he died fighting the Persians at Citium (Cyprus): Thuc. 1.112.
Pericles: he was continuously re-elected general by the Athenians (Plutarch, Pericles
15). He can be seen as Thucydides’ ideal statesman. Thucydides takes the view that
Pericles was a steady regulator of the people, and restrained them when they needed
to be held back; he also thinks of his policy for the war as sound (as opposed to the
policy of his successors). Thucydides’ most explicit comments on him can be found at
2.65 (but note the speeches attributed to him at 1.139-46, 2.34-46 and 2.59-64).
Plutarch’s biography of Pericles offers alternative insights, dividing his career into
two halves (an early career featured by populist policies and ridicule on the tragic
stage and opposition by Thucydides the son of Melesias (NOT the historian, the son
of Olorus); a later career in which he was the calm statesman who led the Athenians
in the first stages of the Peloponnesian war). Aristophanes and Plutarch (clearly
influenced by the comic sources) both amplify the role of Pericles in the outbreak of
war (Pl. Pericles 29-31; Aristophanes Acharnians 512-39, Peace 605-18). He was
closely connected with Athens’ war strategy in the Archidamian war (Thu. 1.140-1,
2.60-4) but also earlier with more aggressive policies: Plut. Pericles11, 19.
Cleon: probably the most important of Pericles’ successors; he was probably a critic
of his (Plutarch Pericles 33 and 35). There is no Plutarchian biography (and probably
never was). He was mocked as a Paphlagonian slave in Aristophanes’ Knights, was
said to be keeping the treasury full (773-5: he is often associated with Thoudippos the
proposer of the 425/4 reassessment decree LACTOR 14 138; he may also have
introduced the eisphora tax (Thuc. 3.19)); Thucydides describes him as violent and
persuasive (other sources such as Plutarch Nicias 8 and [Aristotle] Athenaion Politeia
28 also depict him as a vulgar speaker) and gave him an important role in the
Mytilenean debate (Thuc. 3.36-50); for this reason he is often connected by modern
scholars with an aggressive form of Athenian imperialism. He is also connected with
discouraging the Athenians from making peace with the Spartans after their success at
Pylos in 425 BC (Thuc. 4.21-2).and persuaded the Athenians to resume hostilities at
Pylos (Thuc. 4.24-41). The Spartans on the nearby island of Sphacteria surrendered
(Thuc. 4.38), an event which casued great surprise across the whole Greek world
(Thuc. 4.40); Aristophanes Knights 55-7 suggests that Cleon stole the credit from
Demosthenes. Cawkwell (Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War, chapter 4) takes
the view that Thucydides deprived the Athenian general Demosthenes of credit for the
success in this campaign, but at the same time he deprived Cleon of the credit for
backing Demosthenes. Cleon died in the Amphipolis campaign (note that Thucydides’
account of his death is at pains to emphasise that he died running away: Thuc. 5.10).
According to Thuc. 5.16, the death of Cleon opened the way to the making of peace.
Alcibiades: first appears in Thucydides at 5.43 as someone who, in 420, wanted to put
an end to the peace and, in part for personal reasons, advocated making a treaty with
the Argives (Thuc. 5.43 and following). He made a big splash as advocate of the
Sicilian expedition (Thuc. 6.15-18) but was recalled and then exiled for his alleged
23
JACT Teachers’ Notes
involvement in the mutilation of the Herms (6.60-1). He spent some time in Sparta
(Thuc. 6.88-93), damaging Athenian interests by encouraging the Spartans to send
help to the Syracusans and to establish a fortification inside Attica, at Decelea,
According to Thucydides, he played an important role in the suspension of democracy
in 411, claiming that this would make the Athenians more attractive to the Great King
but in fact selfishly seeking his own recall to his home city (Thuc. 8.45-90).
Alcibiades was recalled in 411 (Thuc. 8.97); he won some victories (Xen. Hell. 1.1),
returned to Athens in triumph in 407 (Xen. Hell, 1.4) and embarked on some
successful campaigns (Pl. Alcibiades 29-31).
Nicias – portrayed by Thucydides as a cautious counterpart to the tricky and
aggressive Alcibiades. He is introduced in the run-up to the Peace of Nicias as
someone who ‘had done better in his military commands than anyone else of his time’,
but at as a cautious man who wished to rest on his laurels (Thuc. 5.16). Note in
particular his speeches at 6.9-14 and 20-3, his letter at 7.11-16 in which he asked to be
relieved of his command (the Athenians ignored his request but sent out additional
help. Thucydides gives him a key role in the Athenian failure at Epipolai: note also
his disagreement with Demosthenes about how to attack Epipolai, the Syracusans
misleading him into thinking that they in dire straits and his superstitiousness delaying
Athenian withdrawal (Thuc. 7.47-50). Nicias looms large in Thucydides’ account of
the end of the expedition: his pre-battle speech at 7.61-4 (and 7.69) praised Athenian
values in a way that echoes Pericles’ funeral speech (Thuc. 2.34-46). Thucydides’ last
words on him (Thuc. 7.86) note his great wealth and his role in persuading the
Athenians to make peace in 421.
Xenophon’s account of the last seven years of the Peloponnesian war could be used
for a basis of the discussion of the continuing role of Alcibiades (see above)
Thrasyllus (who was executed, together with 5 others, for his failure to rescue the
shipwrecked or bring back the corpses of the dead to Athens after the battle of
Arginusae: see Xen. Hell. 1.6 and 1.7) and Conon (who survived the end of the
Peloponnesian war and important in the reconstruction of Athenian fortifications in
the early fourth century BC).
Spartans - It is worth drawing attention to the small number of Spartan leaders who
play a significant role in the Archidamian War. Sthenlaidas was the ephor vital in
persuading the Spartans to go to war (Thuc. 1.85-7). Apart from the aged Archidamos
(for his role in the assembly debate of 432 on the war, see Thuc. 1.79-87), it is only
Brasidas who (repeatedly) makes an impact as a commander; his death (Thuc. 5.16)
opened the way for the Peace of Nicias. It is a good idea to underline the evidence for
unwillingness to give whole-hearted support to Brasidas’ campaign in Thrace (e.g. the
nature of the force sent with him, the failure to send reinforcements). Indeed, it took
the advice of the Athenian Alcibiades (Thuc. 6.88-93) to impress upon the Spartans
the significance of fortifying a position in Attica and sending the general Gylippus to
Sicily (the latter appears to have been a very effective commander: Thucydides notes
his talents at 7.23; see also his speech at 7.61-4).
The weakness of the kings in this period (compare the discussion of Spartan kings’
privileges at Hdt. 6.56-9 and Xenophon Spartan Society (in Penguin, Plutarch on
24
JACT Teachers’ Notes
Sparta) 13-14, especially after the death of Archidamos, should be noted: see also
Pleistoanax (Thuc. 5.16-17); Agis (Thuc. 5.59-60 and 63).
Spartan commanders are depicted by Thucydides in a number of ways: they can be
cruel and liable to bribes: see Thuc. 2.93-5 on Cnemus; Thuc. 3.29-33 and 3.79 on
Alcidas; Thuc. 3.93 on the governors at Herakleia; note also Thucyddes’ general
statement on Spartan commanders at 8.96. Brasidas (Thuc. 2.25; 3.79; 4.81; 4.108;
5.11) was atypical.
Whereas Callicratidas’ falling out with the Persians almost undermined Sparta’s wareffort (Xen. Hellenika 1.6.4), Lysander was an important Spartan commander and he
was closely connected with Sparta’s victory in the Peloponnesian war: see Plutarch,
Lysander, 18-26 (available in Penguin, The Rise and Fall of Athens).
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
2.4 The social and economic context and the effects of conflict on the Greek
world
Hornblower, The Greek World, chapter 14, is entitled ‘The Effects of the
Peloponnesian War; note also B. Strauss, Athens after the Peloponnesian War, 42-69
On social change in the fourth century across Greece see chapter 9 of Davies,
Democracy and Classical Greece. In particular, it is difficulties to decide what is, and
what isn’t a direct consequence of the Peloponnesian war, and what is longer term
change. One consideration to bear in mind is the fact that Greek states were almost
continuously at war with one another; how far, then, should the Peloponnesian war be
seen as exerting an impact of its own? The fact that the war brought Athenian
hegemony to an end is surely reason enough to believe that the war can be thought of
as exerting its own impact.
Athens
Discussion of the impact of the war on the Athenian economy and on Athenian social
relations can be grounded in a reading of Aristophanes Acharnians; Peace; Lysistrata;
Thucydides 2.14-17, 7.27.3-28.4.
In 431, most Athenians lived in the countryside (Thuc. 2.16.1), and it is not likely that
the Peloponnesian war changed this. Indeed, the end of the Athenian empire would
have made Athenians more reliant on the agriculture of Attica. Some historians in the
second half of the twentieth century suggested that the fourth-century was a time
when land was grabbed by big landowners who forced out indebted peasants and
small holders, but it is now generally believed that fourth-century Attica was still a
land of small estates.
The annual invasions of Attica (in the end there were only 5 of them (431, 430, 428,
427, 425)) arguably did more psychological than material damage. Destroying olives
and vines takes greater time and effort than the invading troops had available; burning
grain demands that they are completely ripe and the invasions were mainly too early
for that (burning also less effective in a highly fragmented landscape). Grain can be
replanted easily; the hills of Attica would have made it difficult for destruction of
plantations to be comprehensive. See Thucydides 3.1 for role of Athenian cavalry in
preventing extensive damage by invading troops. Permanent occupation of Decelea
was another matter, effectively bringing silver production to a halt. Some of Attica
continued to be farmed even after 413, however: see the history of the plot of land at
issue in Lysias 7 On the olive stump (the speaker is a rich man with many olive trees).
The American historian V. D. Hanson has made a case against the idea that crop
ravaging was an effective way of damaging the agricultural economy of an opponent:
he shows how difficult it is to damage olive trees on a large scale (though, for damage
to vines, see Acharnians 229-31). If Hanson is right (and not all believe that he is),
why did Greeks persist with the policy? Lin Foxhall suggests that ‘the aim was to
crack the city’s unity. The threat perceived by individual households to their own
subsistence was the enemy’s most powerful weapon’ (in ‘Farming and Fighting’, in
Rich and Shipley (es), War and Society in the Greek World, 1993, at 143.
Nevertheless, there was doubtless disruption: many of Athens’ sheep and cattle had
been sent to Euboea during the war, but Euboia revolted in 411 (Thuc. 2.14, 8.96).
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Damage to the city of Athens was probably minimal, with the exception of the
destruction of the walls of the city and the Piraeus by the Spartans (Xen. Hell. 2.3.11;
they were rebuilt early in the fourth century with Persian money obtained by the
general Conon: see Rhodes and Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions 9).
An important result of invasion was the plague (Thuc. 2.48-56). Whatever the origins
of the plague and whatever the nature of the illness, there can be no doubt that the
epidemic was only possible because of the crowded conditions in which the Athenians
were forced to live because of the evacuation (probably not total) of the countryside.
Plague losses are uncertain: at 2.58 Thucydides reports that Hagnon lost 1,050 out of
4,000 hoplites at Potidaia from plague; at 3.87 Thucydides reports total plague losses
as at least 4,400 hoplites and three hundred cavalry. These figures, if accurate,
suggest between a quarter and a third of the citizen body died—perhaps 15-20,000
adult males. Thucydides’ claim in 6.26 that Athens had recovered from plague and
young men had grown up may mean that children were less affected by the plague
than adults.
Loss of the empire was important: individual Athenians would have lost property
overseas, Athenian trading routes would have been threatened, and Athens’ ability to
extract taxes from the other states of Greece was severely limited.. Interestingly,
however, the Athenians do not seem to have brought the payment of political offices
to an end; on the contrary, it was in the early fourth century that the Athenians for the
first time introduced ekklesiastikon (payment for attending the assembly).
Psychologically, the loss of colonies like Amphipolis was significant (the Athenian
desire to retake this settlement still lingered in 346 BC in the aftermath of a peacetreaty with Philip of Macedon).
What of the impact on individuals? There seem to have been up to 50,000 Athenian
citizens in 432 (Thuc 2.13 implies 43,000 adult citizen males consisting of 25,000
hoplites and 18,000 thetes); numbers of adult female Athenians will have been very
similar; numbers of children in pre-industrial societies more or less match numbers of
adults, so c. 50,000 boys and c. 50,000 girls; numbers of metics will have fluctuated,
but most scholars guess at around 20,000; numbers of slaves are much harder to guess:
Thucydides thought 'more than 20,000' a reasonable guess for the numbers who ran
away during the occupation of Decelea, and his phraseology suggests that he thought
of these as not domestic slaves; allowing for non-domestic slaves in the city (as
opposed to the mines) and for a domestic slave per household (not evenly distributed)
it is hard to imagine the total slave population to have been much less than around
100,000. The Peloponnesian War led to a steep drop: Lysias 20.13 mentions that there
were only 9,000 hoplites in the late fifth century, though this rose to 11,000 in the
390s (Xen Hell 4.2.17). It may well be the case, therefore, that the fourth-century
citizen population was around half that of the fifth.
Note the wide range of different experiences of war in Athens according to social
class and place of normal residence. Western Attica (on the borders of the
Peloponnese) and Northern Attica and the area around Decelea must have been
particularly hard-hit.
27
JACT Teachers’ Notes
Other potential socio-economic factors in the post-war period may have included:
•
the increasing importance of non-citizen labour as a consequence of the
numbers of citizens involved in military activity; there was certainly a tendency in the
late fifth century for a high proportion of craft and trade activity to be in the hands of
metics (and their slaves): compare the arms factory owned by the family of the metic
Lysias (see Lysias 12.19) with its 120 slaves, and note that metics and slaves worked
alongside citizens on the building of the Erechtheum;
•
the stimulating effect of war on the economy—increased demand for imported
food (particularly after occupation of Decelea); increased demand for arms; increased
scale of cash economy given the larger number of men receiving military pay—
partially counteracted by significant drop in population as a consequence of plague.
Some historians have suggested that there was a growth in entrepreneurial activity in
Attica, for instance in the Laurion silver mines
•
Politics: Athenian democracy was abolished by the Spartan-led Thirty Tyrants.
Democracy was restored in 403/2 BC, but in a rather different form. New limits were
introduced to the power of the assembly: it was no longer able to make laws: this
power was left to an annually-selected panel of citizens (known as nomothetai; they
were selected from the 6,0000 jurors. The assembly was, however, left with the power
of making decrees (which included treaties, honours, and declarations of war); there is
more evidence that shows the political significance of the lawcourts: politicians like
Demosthenes launched their careers on success in the courts; in fourth-century Athens
there was a starker difference between politicians and military leaders (Phocion being
an exceptional example of a military leader who had a political career).
•
the stimulating effect of war on cult activity: cultic innovations were a normal
part of the operation of polytheism, but it does seem that Athens was more than
normally innovative in this period. For innovations that looked towards the empire see
LACTOR 14 137, 205-10. Other innovations included official incorporation of cult of
Bendis, introduction of cult of Asklepios, and possibly the introduction of the cult of
Amphiaraus to Oropos while Oropos was under Athenian control. See R. Garland,
Introducing New Gods, and Parker, Athenian Religion: A History chapter 9;
Hornblower, Greek World, 207-9. Note that after the war, Athenian control of Delos
passed to Sparta: see Rhodes and Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 3.
•
Developments in warfare: Athenians had been heavily involved in military
activities continuously since the Persian Wars. The Peloponnesian War did, however,
result in larger expeditions (Epidaurus invasion, siege of Potidaia, 2nd expedition to
Sicily) and some very long campaigns (most obviously those to Sicily, but note also
Demosthenes in Aitolia). It also saw a major hoplite defeat at Delium, the first such
defeat since Coronea in 446. The level of casualties had sometimes been high in years
between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars (see LACTOR 14 42), but may have
been more consistently high in the war years. Aristophanes’ plays suggest that there
was some discontent over frequency of call-up (see e.g. Peace 1179-1186). For the
impact of the war on developments in warfare, see Hornblower, The Greek World
189-97.
Sparta
Sparta won the Peloponnesian war, and she was able to establish a short-lived empire
in Asia Minor (this was obliterated by the King’s Peace of 386). But Sparta faced
28
JACT Teachers’ Notes
serious domestic problems: a shortage of citizens who were able to pay their mess
dues and periodic unrest (expressed, for instance, in the conspiracy of Kinadon of
397). Ancient explanations for the military collapse of Spartan power (note her defeat
on the battlefield of Leuctra in 371) link it to a moral decline owing to an influx of
money, a direct result of the defeat of Athens (see Plutarch, Lycurgus 30; Agis 5;
Xenophon, Spartan Society, 15 (all of which are available in the Penguin Spartan
Society volume); modern historians have suggested that there are other factors such as
the concentration of wealth and landed property in the hands of a few, and external
factors, such as the military innovation of the Thebans,
Boiotia
The Oxyrhynchus Historian mentions that the Thebans in particular appear to have
profited from the occupation of Dekeleia: they were able to buy up slaves at a cheap
rate and probably looted the countryside of northern Attica and perhaps event took the
tiles from roves of Athenian country houses (Hornblower, Greek World, 204, citing
the Dema house). Theban prosperity was helped by the annexation of Plataia. With
the help of leaders like Epaminondas and Pelopidas and their military innovation, the
Thebans were able to establish a short-lived hegemony over the Greek world in the
period from their defeat of the Spartans at the battle of Leuktra (371) to the stalemate
at Mantinea (362 BC).
Previously important cities like Corinth and Megara never re-established their
importance; on the other hand, areas of northern Greece and Asia minor unaffected by
the war appear to have grown in stature: the communities of Thessaly appear to have
wielded more influence over other Greeks in the fourth century BC especially when
led by Jason the tyrant of Pherae who declared himself tagos (leader) of all the
Thessalians. The decline of Athenian influence in the north also opened the way for
the development of the power of Macedon. This was especially clear after Philip II
imposed unity on the Macedonians; there were devastating results for the rest of
Greece in the aftermath of the Peace of Philocrates (346 BC) and the defeats of the
Greeks at Chaironea (338) and in the Lamian War (323-2 BC).
What of non-combatant cities? It was acknowledged by Thucydides (5.28) that
neutrality brought the Argives material benefits; a speaker in Aristophanes’ Peace
(475 ff.) suggests that Argive soldiers were able to draw pay by acting as mercenaries
on both sides. But, as the Melians found out, not going over to one side was
sometimes not a viable option (Thuc. 5.116).
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2.4 Differing Political Ideologies and their role in conflict.
Athens, democracy and pragmatism
Athenian polis-patriotism could be closely linked to her political identity: Pericles’
funeral speech (Thuc. 2.37.1) says ‘Let me say that our system of government does
not copy the institutions of our neighbours. It is more the case of our being a model to
others’. This idealistic passage suggests that the Athenians saw themselves as
diffusing political institutions across the Greek world. It is no surprise, therefore, that
it is possible to read a political strand into the Peloponnesian War. There is one view
of the Athens which sees it as a partisan political missionary, introducing democracy
to the Greek world. It’s a view held by nineteenth-century liberal apologists of the
Athenian empire (such as George Grote’s history of Greece) and some twentiethcentury historians too. Indeed, Thucydides seems to take the view that the
Peloponnesian war could be viewed as an ideological conflict: in his passage on the
stasis at Corcyra, he wrote: ‘Practically the whole of Greece was in convulsion:
everywhere there was opposition between the democratic leaders who sought to bring
in Athens and the oligarchs who sought to bring in the Spartans’ (Thuc. 3.82). This
was a view echoes by the Old Oligarch (=[Xenophon] Constitution of the Athenians)
1.14 (see LACTOR 22 and, for these passages, LACTOR 14 212-3), that the
Athenians exploited tensions between rulers and the ruled in the city, and accordingly
they removed the rights of the upper classes in the cities, confiscated their property,
exiled them, and executed them, and promoted the poor. However, he goes on to say
that the best elements in Athens protected the interests of the best in the cities.
Moreoever, he pointed to Athenian experiments in supporting oligarchy (ibid., 3.10),
albeit an unsuccessful examples in Miletus and Boiotia. This suggests that there is
more to the situation than Aristotle’s claim ‘the Athenians everywhere destroyed
oligarchies, the Spartans democracies’ (Politics 1307b22) suggests. Indeed, when
Athens was oligarchic in 411 BC, she appears to have imposed oligarchs in allied
cities (Thasos, Carystos, Andros, Tenos: Thuc 8.64, 65, 69).
The language of the Erythrai decree LACTOR 14 216, in which the Athenians
establish a democratic form of government in a subject state and warn against
‘tyrants’ might be used to give an impression of fifth-century Athens as a champion of
democracy, liberating Greek cities from Persian tyrants. The Athenian regulations for
Kolophon LACTOR 14 219 forced them to promise not to subvert democracy. Stasis
between democratic and non-democratic elements at Megara seems to have been
closely affected by Athenian intervention (not surprising, given Athens’ proximity):
see Thuc. 4.66-74; but the situation was comparable further afield, at Samos (Thuc.
1.115; there is, however, nothing to prove that the Athenians imposed democracy on
Samos after it was overthrown for a second time).
It appears to have been the case that constitutional meddling was actually an
important part of Athens’ policy in the war, and that it was driven not by an
ideological commitment to democracy but by the pragmatism of war. This is
suggested by Thucydides 7.55, where he notes that the Athenians in Sicily, when they
came up against democracies like themselves ‘had been unable to make use of a fifth
column or to offer the prospect of a change in the form of government as a means for
gaining power over them’. Throughout the war, the Athenians were ready to deal with
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
monarchs and even to make them grants of citizenship (Thuc. 2.29) or to support
claims to a throne (Thuc. 1.111), and the Athenians made an alliance with the
probably-oligarchic Corcyreans in 433 (Thuc. 1.24, 1.32-6).
There must have been times when the Athenians found it difficult or impossible to
introduce democracy on their allies: in the peace of Nicias, the guarantee of autonomy
for Chalcidian states suggests that the Athenians would have allowed constitutional
diversity (Thuc. 5.18.5-6); towards the end of the war Athens’ stance must have
relaxed: they were ready to allow the Selymbrians autonomy and constitutional
freedom (LACTOR 14 182). The Athenians did not worry about the fact that Syracuse
was a democracy when they went to war with her in 415 BC.
For a survey of Athenian promotion of democracy, concluding, surely correctly, that
the Athenians did not promote democracy consistently, nor with a consistent
ideological commitment, see R. Brock, ‘Did the Athenian Empire Promote
Democracy’, 149-66 in J. Ma, N. Papazarkadas and R. Parkers (edd.), Interpreting the
Athenian Empire, London, 2009.
The relationship between Athens and democracy also led to democratic states
standing up for Athens: there are clear examples of the demos of particular states
standing up for the Athenian democracy: the inscription of the Athenian decree that
rewards the loyal Samians granted them Athenian citizenship: LACTOR 14 183.
Sparta and oligarchy
In the fifth and fourth century, some Athenians thought of Sparta as an oligarchic
state: in a speech of the 350s BC, Demosthenes (Against Leptines 105) regards Sparta
as a narrow oligarchy in which there was no freedom to praise other forms of
constitutions. Some Athenian anti-democrats appear to have admired the Spartan
constitution and thought it would protect the interests of Athenian aristocrats. Critias
is the best example of someone who did: Xen. Hell. 2.3.25: 'We have come to the
conclusion that for men like ourselves and like you, democracy is an oppressive form
of government, We realize that while the democracy could never become friends with
our preservers, the Spartans, the aristocrats would continue always to be loyal to them.
And therefore, with the full approval of Sparta, we are setting up the present system
of government'; 2.3.34: The best politeia, of course, seems to be that of the
Lacedaimonians. If one of the ephors there tried, instead of obeying the majority, to
censure the government and to oppose what was being done, don’t you think that both
the ephors themselves and all the rest of the polis would judge him worthy of the
greatest punishment?’
While Sparta may have appealed to some anti-democratic elements in the cities, one
of the reasons that the Spartans were so feared by democrats after the Peloponnesian
war was that they were famous for introducing the dekarchies, or ‘ten-man juntas’; in
Athens, of course, they imposed 30 Tyrants. Nevertheless, Spartan intervention
appears to have been popular with some oligarchies: on the island of Samos, after it
fell to the Spartans, for instance, Lysander was treated as a hero in the Lysandreia
festival, established in the early fourth century BC. It is possible that, before 404, the
Spartans installed oligarchies in cities: Pericles (Thuc. 1.144) demanded that the
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Spartans allow their allies to be independent and to have the kind of government that
they want rather than one which suits Spartan interests. On the other hand, there is no
reason to believe that states who went over to the Spartans (Acanthus or Amphipolis
in the 420s; Miletus in the 410s) at the same time changed their democratic
constitutions to ones more amenable to the Spartans. Indeed, in 424, when Brasidas
was trying to persuade the Acanthians of Thrace to hand over their city to him, he
presented himself as a liberator whose government swore to guarantee the autonomy
of other states, and he promised that he would not put power into the hands of a fifth
column, contrasting Spartan with Athenian policy: ‘I have not come here to take sides
in your internal affairs, and I do not think that I should be giving you real freedom if I
were to take no notice of your own constitutions and were to enslave either the many
to the few or the few to the many. That would be even worse than being governed by
foreigners, and we Spartans would earn no gratitude that way for our pains. Instead of
honour and glory, we should find reproach. We should show that we ourselves had
fallen a prey to those very vices of which we accuse the Athenians and because of
which we are fighting this long war’ (4.86). As Hornblower points out (Commentary
II, 282), there is a contradiction between Brasidas’ suggestion that domestic politics is
as important as freedom from external subjection and Phrynichus’ line at 8.48 that
freedom from external subjection is more important than domestic politics.
Thuc. 5.31 is evidence for diplomatic decisions made on the basis of ideological
persuasion: Thucydides says that the Boiotians and Megarians held back from
entering the alliance headed by the Argives as ‘they thought that the democratic
government at Argos would be less congenial to their own aristocratic governments
than was the constitution of Sparta’.
However, the relationship between political ideology and political supremacy is a
problematic one for several reasons (not least, as already mentioned, because the
Athenians did, on occasion, impose oligarchies). Moreover, in spite of the Athenian
rhetoric (cf. the language of the Erythrai decree), powers other than Athens were
capable of establishing democracies when it suited them: Herodotus 6.43 says that the
Persians established democratic governments in Greek cities, suppressing
(presumably Greek) tyrants. We should also take into consideration the Athenian
politician Phrynichus’ words in 411 (when the Athenians were about to abolish their
democracy) who suggested that states were more interested in freedom from external
domination than whether they were under a democracy or oligarchy (Thuc. 8.48). But
he still suggests that states had reservations about oligarchy: ‘they saw no reason to
suppose that they would be any better off under the so-called upper classes than under
the democracy, considering that when the democracy had committed crimes it had
been at the instigation, under the guidance, and, usually, for the profit of these upper
classes themselves. With these classes in control, people could be put to death by
violence and without a trail, whereas the democracy offered security to the ordinary
man and kept the upper classes in their place.’
There are some attempts by Athenian sources to juxtapose the differing political
ideologies of the two sides. These come across most clearly in Pericles’ funeral
speech: Thuc. 2.39: ‘there is a great difference between us and our opponents, in our
attitude towards military security. Here are some examples: our city is open to the
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world, and we have no periodical deportations in order to prevent people observing or
finding out secrets which might be of military advantage to the enemy. This is
because we rely, not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty.
There is a difference, too, in our educational systems. The Spartans, from their earliest
boyhood, are submitted to the most laborious training in courage; we pass our lives
without all these restrictions, and yet are just as ready to face the same dangers as they
are’. But this may be viewed, of course, as Athenian propaganda.
Under the ‘ideology’ heading, it is important to bear in mind that to the Greek
political way of thinking, the notion of liberty as freedom from an external oppressor
was as important as liberty as political (or democratic) freedom. Thus the Spartans
claimed to be liberators from Athens (Thuc. 2.8, 72; 4.85-7), and some Mytileneans
appealed to Sparta to free them from Athens (Thuc. 3.9-14).
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2.6 The importance of Thucydides and Xenophon for our view of conflict in
Greece in the fifth century BC
Thucydides was the historian who, more than any other, set the trend for the nature of
historiography. For Thucydides, history was history as warfare between powerful
states: this agenda was followed by Xenophon, but also later writers like Polybius and
Tacitus. He thereby rejected Herodotus’ interest in women, jokes, and anthropology.
Not only did Thucydides contribute significantly to the development of historiography,
but he also effectively invented the Peloponnesian War (431-404) as a unity (note that
he calls it ‘the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians’ at 1.1; note his
comments on the length of the war at 5.26 and his rather defensive statement at 5.25
that ‘it is true that for six years and ten months they refrained from invading each
other’s territory; abroad, however, the truce was never properly in force, and each side
did the other a great deal of harm, until finally they were forced to break the treaty
made after the ten years, and once more declare war openly upon each other’).
Without Thucydides’ conception of the unity of 27-year Peloponnesian war, it would
be tempting to view the Archidamian War and the Sicilian Expedition as very
separate entities. As it is, Thucydides’ conception of the war as a unity was so
convincing that it has endured the test of time. We should never view Thucydides as a
neutral reporter: he was perhaps motivated by a desire to out-do his predecessors (in a
sense Hellanicus, Homer and Herodotus) and to bolster his case that he had lived
through and is writing the history of the ‘greatest disturbance in the history of the
Hellenes, affecting also a large part of the non-Hellenic world, and indeed, I might
also say, the whole of mankind’ (Thuc. 1.1). For more on this, see S. Todd, ‘Why
Thucydides invented the Peloponnesian War’, Omnibus 31. On Thucydides’ influence
on the perception of the war, see chapter 5 of S. Todd, Athens and Sparta (1996).
Thucydides is following Homer and Herodotus in making his account the account of
war. He doesn’t like it: ‘war is a violent teacher’, he wrote at 3.82, suggesting that it
‘removes people’s ability to satisfy their daily needs and reduces their minds for the
most part to the level of immediate desires’ On another level, we might observe the
way in which Thucydides’ account of the Plataian’s role in the war suggests a story of
suffering for small cities: they were dragged into the war by the Athenians (2.71-2),
abandoned by them (3.78) and then destroyed. As Polly Low observes, ‘in
Thucydides’ world, the behaviour of states – particularly powerful and successful
states – can be explained purely by reference to motivations of power and self
interest’ (P. Low, Interstate Relations in Classical Greece, 2007, 232).
As well as the idea of conflict in fifth-century Greece, Xenophon and Thucydides also
give us a wide set of ideas about the means by which conflict was pursued (and halted)
in fifth-century Greece. Thucydides says that the war was fought by contestants at the
height of their preparations (1.1). Xenophon was a soldier with decades of military
experience; he also wrote technical treatises on horsemanship and cavalrycommanding. Thucydides, famously, was an Athenian general, elected at the
assembly but exiled for his failure to secure Amphipolis (Thuc. 4.105-9). Thucydides
gives us ideas about tactical arrangements and conditions, even though they don’t
seem to be his primary interest in writing history. Generally, however, he gives us
some idea of the development of Greek warfare, and gives the impression that there
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
was more to fifth-century warfare than the hoplite phalanx. [An excellent and
accessible introduction to classical warfare can be found in H. van Wees’ ‘The City at
War’ chapter 4 in R. Osborne (ed.), Classical Greece (Short Oxford History of Greece
series).
Hoplites
These were heavy armed infantrymen; the name derives from the word ‘hoplon’ (a
shield); they were probably made up of property-owing citizens (Old Oligarch, 2).
Thucydides gives us important details: Athens has 29,000 hoplites (Thuc. 2.13). Thuc.
5.71 -2, describing the battle of Mantinea between the Argives and the Spartans in
418-7 BC, is the most important surviving picture of fifth-century hoplite warfare,
with Agis attempting to address the tendency of hoplite phalanxes to get extended.
Light Armed Troops
Athens was said, at the beginning of the war, to possess 1600 archers (Thuc. 2.13).
Thucydides notes in an account of a battle at Spartolos in northern Greece, that the
cavalry and light armed of Chalcis defeated the Athenians (Thuc. 2.79). In one
campaign of 426, the Athenians were unable to respond to missile attacks launched by
light-armed troops on hoplites (Thuc. 3.94-8), but in 425 at Pylos, Demosthenes the
Athenian general was able to make use of Messenian archers and peltasts (soldiers
with light shields, named after the pelte, a rim-less shield); these were used in
combination with hoplites (Thuc. 4.32-5). However, the Athenians had no light armed
troops of their own as late as 424 (Thuc. 4.94), perhaps because the poor served in the
fleet. At Amphipolis in 424, the Athenians suffered when the Spartan general
Brasidas deployed peltasts to catch a hoplite phalanx: the peltasts routed the hoplites,
killing Kleon in the process (Thuc. 5.7-11). However, by the time of the Sicilian
expedition, changes in equipment meant that hoplites were more mobile, and lightarmed troops and cavalry played a role: this is demonstrated in Thucydides’ account
of the first encounter between the Syracusans and the invading Athenians (Thuc. 6.6971). The Athenians hired peltasts from Thrace, paying them each 1 drachma a day
(Thuc. 7.19). It is clear that Thucydides understood the potential that light-armed
troops offered.
Cavalry
Athens has 1200 cavalrymen (Thuc. 2.13). These were often used to prevent raiding
(Thuc. 1.111, 2.22, 3.1); they were often present in pitched battles to prevent
outflanking movements or to hinder pursuits (Thuc. 5.67, 73); they could be sent out
to taunt the enemy (Thuc. 6.63). For one of the few occasions on which the Athenian
cavalry defeated that of the Boiotians, see Thuc. 4.72; for the superiority of the
Syracusan cavalry (which played an important role in the Athenian defeat), see Thuc.
6.64
Sea Warfare
It is clear that Thucydides views the Athenians as the successors to a long line of
thalassocracies going back to archaic Corinth (Thuc. 1.13-17). Athens has 300 battleready ships at Thuc 2.13; at 3.17 she is said to have kept 100 ships on semi-permanent
guard-duty, and employed up to 250 ships at one point (meaning a complement of as
many as 50,000 men). The Athenians and others made use of mercenaries and slaves
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
(cf. Thuc. 1.55, 121, 143; 3.16, 18; 7.13, 63) – who rowed on the lowest level of the
Athenian trireme. Importance of control of seapower and the insular position of
Athens: Thuc. 1.143, 2.62. Reliance of Athens on the poor as rowers: Old Oligarch
1.2. Whatever their social status, what was important about the crew of a ship was that
it was rowed by expert rowers who were used to the kind of drills expected of them,
Emergency drafts led to the mobilisation of crews who were unable to perform battle
tactics: see Xen. Hell. 1.6.31.
Corinth and Corcyra fight an ‘old fashioned’ sea battle, fought more like a land than a
sea battle (Thuc. 1.149): to an Athenian, firing missiles and attempting to board an
enemy’s ship must have seemed old-fashioned. The Athenians preferred to rely on
ramming tactics and tried to break enemy ships by smashing them with the heavy
pointed ram at the prow of the trireme. Athens occasionally showed naval skill: take
for instance a battle in the Gulf of Corinth, where Phormio’s triremes sailed in circles
round a Peloponnesian fleet before they pounced (Thuc. 2.83-4; cf. 2.90-2, Xen. Hell.
1.6.31). Note however that the Athenians were vulnerable in the sea battles at
Syracuse’s Great Harbour: they found little space for their favoured tactics and were
attacked by archers, slingers, and javelin-throwers, and their ships were found to be
vulnerable to frontal collisions (Thuc. 7.34-7). However, in late on in the
Peloponnesian war, the Athens made use of armed sailors to launch assaults on land
(Xen. Hell. 1.2.1; cf. Thuc. 4.9, 32).
Triremes were designed for speed and mobility. They required sheltered harbours, and
would usually be hauled onto shore when out of service (Thuc. 6.44; 7.1). Therefore
harbours for triremes needed a slipway, other harbour facilities or a beach. The
Athenians managed to protect their harbours effectively in the Peloponnesian war:
though the Spartans ravaged the countryside of Attica, they never seriously threatened
Piraeus, protected as it was by its fortifications and connected by the Long Walls to
the city of Athens (Thuc. 1.107). The Athenians were never able to address one major
shortcoming of the trireme: their inability to hold significant amounts of provisions or
provide sleeping accommodation for their crew. Triremes had to take the coastal route,
as they did on the voyage to Sicily (Thuc. 6.42, 44), and they would camp on land
(Thuc. 3.6; 4.27). This meant that fleets were always vulnerable from attacks when
lying at anchor: this was the way that the Athenians lost their fleet at Aigospotami
(and consequently the whole war (Xen. Hell. 2.1.28)
Technological innovations
Sieges: the Athenians were the first to deploy battering rams at Samos in 440, but
their use of siege warfare was often unsuccessful: the Potidaians only surrendered
when their food ran out (Thuc. 2.67-70), and the Athenians spent a huge amount
(2000 talents) on the siege. The Thebans and Peloponnesians besieging Plataia were
unable to capture the city, and despite using rudimentary battering rams to collapse
parts of the Plataian wall, they too had to starve the defenders into submission (Thuc.
2.75-8). Ultimately, it was the Spartan siege of Athens (the Athens were at a loss
owing to the fact that they had neither ships nor money nor food (Xen. Hell. 2.2.1023).
Use of flame throwers: Thuc. 4.100, 4.115
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
Walls
Thucydides saw fortifications as a significant part of life in the polis (Thuc. 1.2, 5, 78). The Athenians were extremely reliant on their walls, as the walls that connected
Athens with the sea (completed in the 450s) were a vital node of communication;
other cities, like Megara and Patrai used walls to connect them to the sea to similar
effect (Thuc. 1.103; 5.52). In Athens, the original long walls connected Athens with
the ports of Piraeus and Phaleron (the latter of which appears to have become less
important as the fifth century went on), enclosing a wedge-shaped area to the north of
Phaleron bay; a later development led to the construction of a middle wall, parallel to
the already existing Northern Long Wall: this did not attempt to protect cultivable
land, but simply attached the city to its port. According to the early-fourth-century
orator Andocides (3.7) and the mid-fourth-century orator Aischines (2.174), work on
it started immediately after the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Peace with Sparta in
446/5: as Garland (The Piraeus, 1987, 25) suggests, it may have been inspired by
Pleistoanax’s invasion of Attica.
Practicalities
Thuc. does mention certain strategic factors: he mentions food supplies at 7.27-8; 2.6;
8.35; timber at 4.108l 7.25; 8.1. He mentions some military strategic moves,
commenting on the value of Herakleia Trachinia (3.92) or Amphipolis (4.108), but is
often silent on bigger strategic questions
Motivation
For Thucydides, war was provoked by Sparta’s fear of Athens’ power (Thuc. 1.23,
1.88); the Athenians themselves were motivated by desire for honour, respect and
profit, and were motivated by fear (Thuc. 1.75, 76). For Thucydides, the
Peloponnesian war was caused by grand themes; he is less interested in the idea that
they fought about small pieces of mediocre land (Hdt. 5.49).
Polis-patriotism dominated the thoughts of Thucydides on the motivation of
individuals in fighting on behalf of their city: see Pericles’ comments in his funeral
speech at Thuc. 2.42-43, talking of death as a proof of courage, emphasising
vengeance on enemies and the importance of reputation. Further snapshot of the kind
of battlefield exhortation that must have been commonplace may be found at 7.66-8,
69 and 77. Greek hoplites swore not to betray their city in the ephebic oath taken by
every citizen at the age of 18: see Rhodes and Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions,
no. 88. But we must also remember that Greek citizens fought simply to defend the
land which they owned and farmed: this explains the frustrations of the noncombatant Athenians at Thuc. 2.59 (cf. 2.65).
Pay was also a factor in motivation (and was a drain on resources): Thuc. 3.17; 6.8, 24;
7.13; 8.29, 45, 58. Pay was probably normally 3 obols (Thuc. 5.47) and sometimes a
drachma (Thuc. 7.27). It is likely that the Athenian use of mercenaries increased as
the war went on (Thuc. 4.28, 32); the Corinthians used mercenaries before the war
(Thuc. 1.60); for Athenian unease about the use of mercenaries, see Thuc. 7.13-14.
Customs
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JACT Teachers’ Notes
See 4.97 for the Athenian herald’s protests against the Boiotians’ preventing them
from taking up their war-dead; compare Xen. Hellenica 1.7 on the treatment of the
generals after Arginusae, Sophokles’ Antigone, on the family’s right to bury its dead,
and Euripides, Suppliant Women on the Athenians as champions of the right to bury
the dead. Other burial themes are found at 2.34 and following, the funeral speech,
with Thuc’s comment that the Athenians always brought their dead back to the city
and appoint a statesman to make a funeral speech (it may have in fact begun in the
460s: see Hornblower’s Commentary, I 292-3).
Religion
Even Thucydides, who normally does his best to exclude religious factors from his
history of the warfare, acknowledges that some cities avoided fighting on certain days:
Thuc. 5.53-6. He mentions sacrifice before battle (Thuc. 6.69).
One wonders whether it is possible in Thucydides to observe the brutalising effect of
warfare: the words of the Athenian envoys in the Melian dialogue suggest this. But
we are reminded of Thucydides’ human side at 3.98, where he comments that the
death of 120 Athenian men in the flower of their youth was that of ‘the finest men
whom Athens lost in the whole war’; compare Hdt. 1.87: ‘in peace, sons bury their
fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons’.
38