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Hazards of Empire: Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War Lecture 22

The Peloponnesian Wars take their name from the Peloponnesus, the southernmost portion of the Greek peninsula, which juts into the Aegean Sea.

Peloponnesus

The other giant of Greek historiography: Thucydides of Athens With his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides of Athens created a bold and highly influential style of history, which departed in significant ways from the work of his predecessor Herodotus. For Thucydides, “proper” history focused on politics and war and was grounded in the eye-witness accounts of reliable observers.

Delian League founded 478 B.C. Treasury moved from Delos to Athens in 454 B.C. Athens’ naval empire grew out of its control of the Delian League, a coalition of nearly 200 city-states established in 468 B.C., t wo years after the Athenian victory at Salamis. The islands of Lesbos, Chios, and Samos contributed ships, while most other cities sent cash. The growth of Athenian power posed a major threat to the interests of Corinth, Sparta, and other cities of the Peloponnesus.

The northern coast of the Aegean was dotted with Greek city-states; some were members of the Delian League under the control of Athens, while others were allied with Sparta or Corinth. In 431 B.C., Athenian ambassadors expelled Corinthian envoys from Potidaea, a tiny settlement on the Chalcidician peninsula, sparking the outbreak of a much broader conflict.

The superiority of the Spartan hoplites forced the Athenians to adopt a patient war strategy, in which each summer they hid behind their city walls as the Spartans burned their farms.

SPARTAN HOPLITES UNBEATABLE ON LAND

The “Long Walls” of Athens, built during the mid fifth century B.C., protected Athenian access to their ships at the port of Peiraieus. Though safe behind its walls, Athens was vulnerable to disease, and in 430 B.C., a terrible plague (possibly typhus or smallpox) struck the besieged city, killing ca. 1/3 of its citizens.

THE LONG WALLS LINK ATHENS TO PEIRAIEUS

PERICLES INVESTS IN THE ATHENIAN NAVY (TRIREMES) Pericles, who dominated Athenian politics for an entire generation, was still in charge at the outbreak of the war in 431 B.C. His plan for the city’s defense hinged on the strength of its navy.

The trireme was the key to the power of the Athenian state. Since no physical remains of the ships have ever been found, nautical historians have reconstructed their design from art and literary descriptions. Here, the Olympias, a modern reconstruction of an Athenian trireme, sails on the Aegean.

THE OLYMPIAS, A MODERN REPLICA

The typical Athenian trireme, ca. 40 meters long and 6 meters wide, carried a crew of nearly 200, including more than 170 rowers who were seated beneath its decks.

Trireme (three-oar) rowing system Each oar was pulled by a single rower. At a top speed, a trireme could make 6-8 knots and sustained speeds of ca. 4 knots. Rowers, although drawn from the lower classes, were full citizens of Athens and formed an important voting block in the city’s democratic

Athenian triremes regularly raided the coasts of the Peloponnesus. In a key victory in 425 B.C., Athenian ships penned a group of Spartan warriors on the island of Sphacteria in the southwestern Peloponnesus. When the remaining 292 Spartan warriors surrendered, they became pawns for Athenian diplomacy, forcing the Spartan to abandon their annual raids into Attica. This capitulation illustrates how the smallness of Sparta limited its options in warfare.

ATHENS TOLERATES NO DISSENT Thucydides’ account of the war includes memorable scenes on the islands of Lesbos and Melos, where local populations rejected Athenian dominance. Both attempts ended badly. The leaders of the revolt at Mytilene on the island of Lesbos were executed; the citizens of Melos were either slain or sold into slavery.

Peloponnesian Wars spreads into the Western Mediterranean

The wealth and fierce independence of the Greek cities of Magna Graecia is evident in their coinage. Note how each city’s coin carries a distinctive emblem.

AGRICULTURAL WEALTH OF SYRACUSE Syracuse, a colony of Corinth on the eastern coast of Sicily, enjoyed great wealth based on its fertile agricultural hinterland and international trade. Here, a stunning piece of Greek Classical gold work from Syracuse. Other city-states in Magna Graecia placed images of wheat on their coins (see the coin of Metapontum on the previous slide).

According to Thucydides, the Athenians were tricked into launching a major expedition against Sicily by the envoys from the tiny citystate of Segesta in northwestern Sicily.

SEGESTA APPEALS TO ATHENS FOR AID, 415 B.C.

The citizens of Segesta appealed to Athens in 415 B.C. and convinced the Athenian envoys of the wealth of their city. This Doric temple at Segesta dates to precisely this period.

The temple was never finished. It lacks a cella (a central cult room), a roof, and its columns remain unfluted. The Athenians discovered to their dismay that Segesta had no riches.

THE ATHENIAN INVASION OF SICILY In 415 B.C., the Athenians launched a major naval expedition led by the brash young aristocrat Alcibiades. But disagreement among the expedition’s generals hampered the operation.

The Athenian fleet delayed its attack on Syracuse for t wo years, allowing the Syracusans to prepare a robust defense. In 413 B.C., the Athenian forces were completely destroyed. The Athenians who sur vived the initial naval debacle fled overland; thousands were slain or captured by the army of Syracuse. Only those could recite Euripides were spared.

Although the war dragged on for another decade, the Athenians never fully recovered from the disaster of the Sicilian expedition. The treaty that ended the war in 404 B.C. placed Athens under the control of 30 pro-Spartan oligarchs. During their brief rule, the “30 tyrants” executed many of the leaders of the city’s democracy.

THE LEGACY OF THUCYDIDES AND HIS HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS The war was over, but the story of the war lived on through the work of Thucydides, which provided -- together with Herodotus -- an enormously influential model for how to write history. Later Greco-Roman and European historians often admired and sometimes imitated Thucydides’ historical methodology and complex prose. Translations of the Peloponnesian War into English and dozens of other languages have ensured a broad and enduring audience for the work of this brilliant Athenian writer.