Suspicious and fearful of Athenian power and wealth, the Spartans were not happy with the Thirty Year peace they had agreed to. The Athenians had become chauvinistic and power hungry, and seemed ready to begin to reassert their power on the mainland of Greece. In 431, a relatively trivial event in a distant part of the Greek mainland was the catalyst for an extended campaign between Sparta and Athens, now referred to as The Peloponnesian War.

The Spartans wished to capitalize on their ground superiority and fight a land war. They outnumbered the Athenians two to one--odds they believed the Athenians could stand up to only for a very short time. The Spartans had conquered the richer lands of the Southern Peloponnesus and had enslaved the far more numerous natives there. They were a sort of single-minded military academy and armed camp specializing in military conquest. At the outbreak of the war, they invaded Attica and began burning crops in order to starve the Athenians into submission. Sparta sought to curb Athenian influence with a strategy of preemption using military land power, sporadic military incursions, and a web of diplomatic alliances leading to full-scale occupation. Their chosen strategy was designed to deplete Athens' resources and break their morale. Because Sparta predicted Athens' withdrawal into their fortified city walls, they assumed little risk with this strategy. Sparta's strategy can be described as flexible and adaptable with a relatively consistent vision of their anticipated outcome (ends).

It's helpful here to think of the Athenians as the "Athenian Imperial Democracy." Athens was the principal town in the region known as Attica--a small triangular peninsula extending southeast fro central Greece. In the fifth century B.C., Athens emerged as the first democracy in the history of the world. All strategic decisions were proposed, discussed, debated in an open forum of thousands...every detail had to be voted and approved upon by a majority! The Athenians had a harbor and a powerful navy. With no peer naval power, Pericles knew that they could hold out against the Spartans for several years on the tribute money from the Empire. He also knew that he could take the war directly to Sparta's allies, by sailing troops along the coast of Greece and landing them far from Athenian lines. Although Pericles died in the second year of the war in a plague that devastated Athens, the Athenians, nevertheless, continued the Periclean strategy in prosecuting the war.

Source: www.loyno.edu

The most important offices in the Athenian state were filled by election...the ten generals--or "the strategoi." They commanded divisions of the Athenian Army and fleets of ships in battle. They were military men elected for a one year term and could be re-elected. These generals were not the government, but they could gain so much influence among the populace that they could end up leading the Athenians, such as Cimon did from 479 to 462.

Source: Donald Kagan, Athenian Strategy in the Peloponnesian War

Pericles: "The first citizen of Athens." Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire and led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. He led Athens from 461 BC to 429 BC. Sometimes known as the "Age of Pericles." Fostered the Athenian democracy.

Cleon: Athenian politician during the Peloponnesian War. The first prominent representative of the commercial class in Athenian politics. Headed the opposition to the Periclean régime. Pericles was accused by Cleon of maladministration of public money, with the result that he was actually found guilty. Soon, Pericles was reinstated.

Nicias: a soldier and statesman in ancient Athens. Following the death of Pericles, he led the aristocrats against Cleon. He made use of his wealth both to buy off enemies (especially informers) and to acquire popularity by the magnificent way in which he discharged various public services, especially those connected with the state religion, of which he was a strong supporter. In the field he displayed extreme caution, and prior to the great Sicilian expedition achieved a number of minor military successes. In 421 he took a prominent part in the arrangement of the "Peace of Nicias," which terminated the first decade of the Peloponnesian War.


Alcibiades: a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. The last famous member of an aristocratic family that fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War, he played a major role in the second half of that conflict as a strategic advisor, military commander and politician.

Both sides believed that their strategy would wear down the other side and force a surrender. However, this didn't happen. After ten years of fighting and some disastrous events among allied cities, the situation was no different than it was at the beginning of the war. Both sides had become worn down. Sparta and Athens signed a fifty year peace called the Peace of Nicias, after the Athenian politician and general who was leading Athens at the time. Essentially similar in view and ability to Pericles, Nicias brilliantly succeeded in hammering out a truce. Everyone was allowed to go home, and the territorial status as it stood at the time of the peace, was allowed to remain in place. Athens kept its continental territories and allies, and Sparta got to keep all the territories it had acquired.

431 (Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem. Rome completes conquest of Volscians.)
-Outbreak of Peloponnesian War
-Siege of Potides, Socrates, then aged 38, saves in battle the life of Alcibiades, aged 18, and gives up in his favour the prize for valor.
430 Spartans invade Attica. The plague of Athens. Xenophon born about this time.
429 Death of Pericles. Plague continues.
428 Spartans in Attica. Probable year of Plato's birth.
427 Fall of Mitylene. Reprieve of the Lesbians. Spartans in Attica.
426 Demosthenes' victory at Pylos. Spartans in Attica. Athens doubles tribute of the subject allies.
424 Battle of Delion. Athenians defeated by the Thebans, with their corps d'élite of friends afterwards known as the Sacred Band. -Alcibiades rescues Socrates during the retreat. -Thucydides exiled.
423 One year's truce. Aristophanes presents The Clouds in which Socrates is represented as an anarchic influence on young men.
422 Assault on Amphipolis. Kleon and the Spartan general Brasidas both killed. Autolykos, aged about 17, wins his first crown at the Panathenaic Games; the occasion of the party described in Xenophon's Symposium.
421 The Peace of Nicias.
420 Olympic Games held. Lavish displays by Alkibiades who enters seven chariots and wins 1st, 2nd and 4th prizes.
419 Alliance with Argos engineered by Alcibiades.

Sources: WSU.edu and WWU.edu

Nicias had rivals in the democratic assembly. Perhaps the most talented of these rivals was a young, brilliant follower of the philosopher Socrates named Alcibiades. With creativity, energy, and immense oratorical ability, Alicibiades in 415 BC, convinced the Athenians to attack the Greek city-states on the island of Sicily and bring them under the control of the Athenian Empire. Although the expedition was in part led by Nicias, it soon turned into a disaster. In 413 BC, the entire army was defeated and captured and a large part of the great, powerful fleet of the Athenians was destroyed in the harbor of Syracuse. Athenian power since the Persian Wars had rested solely on the power of the navy; the disastrous Sicilian expedition left Athens almost completely powerless.

418 Athens re-enters the war.
416 Melos reduced and captured by Athenians after siege. Adult males massacred and non-combatants enslaved, Phaedo probably among them.
Agathon awarded the prize for Tragedy; the occasion of the party described in Plato's Symposium.
415 First performance of Euripides' Trojan Women.
-Preparations for Sicilian Expedition.
-Breaking of the Hermes and accusation of Alcibiades.
-Expedition sets out in early summer.
-Alcibiades recalled for trial but escapes to Sparta.
413 Deceleia seized and fortified by the Spartans on advice of Alcibiades.
Mykalessos in Boeotia seized by Thracians under Athenian command, with barbarous massacre of non-combatants, including children in school.
-Timaea, wife of King Agis, seduced by Alcibiades.
-Reinforcements sent to Sicily under Demosthenes, whose night attack is repulsed with heavy loss. -Nicias agrees to leave but is delayed by eclipse of the moon (August 27th).
-Naval action in harbor and total defeat of Athenian fleet.
-Retreat of Athenian army followed by debacle.
412 Alcibiades campaigning in Ionian Island

Sources: WSU.edu and WWU.edu

The Spartans took advantage of the situation and attacked Athens. The Spartans were soon joined by the Persians who sought retribution
from the war Athens had vigorously prosecuted during the first half of the fifth century. The Athenians survived the onslaught, even enjoying significant victories--until the war shifed to the Aegean Sea. But in 405 BC, the rest of the Athenian navy was destroyed in a surprise attack, and by the next year the situation was hopeless. In 404 BC, the Athenians surrendered unconditionally to the Spartans. The Spartans tore down the walls of the city, barred them from ever having a navy, and installed their own oligarchic government--called "The Thirty." The Classical Age and the Athenian Empire had come to an end.

411 Subversion of democracy in Athens. Promise of electoral roll of 4,000 not implemented; political assassinations and reign of terror.
-Revolution in Samos crushed with help of Alcibiades, who has discarded the oligarchs (according to Thucydides, because he had promised them more than the Persians would give).
-Counter-revolution in Athens by moderate conservatives under Theramenes, in time to prevent capitulation to Sparta. The Four Hundred oligarchs overthrown; leaders in exile.
-Euboea captured by Spartans with crippling loss of food-producing land and private estates.
-The restored democracy recalls Alcibiades, who elects to remain in Samos in command of the fleet.
410 Alcibiades victorious in the Aegean.
Euripides' Electra performed.
409 Agathon, and possibly Euripides, leave Athens for Macedon.
408 Alcibiades recovers Byzantium and returns in triumph to Athens.
407 Lysander in command of Spartan fleet.
406 Antiochos defeated by Lysander in battle of Notium (Cape Rain). Alcibiades deposed.
Battle of Arginusae (the White Isles).

Sources: WSU.edu and WWU.edu

Athens surrendered unconditionally to the Spartans, effectively ending the Peloponnesian War. Sparta then dominated the Greek city-states. Stripped of its navy and its empire, Athens fell under Sparta's political control. Sparta exercised considerable influence over the domestic and foreign decisions of the Greek city states. Lysander, the Spartan general who defeated Athens, dismantled the democratic government there and replaced it with an oligarchy. Athenian democratic leaders fled the city and raised armies in Corinth and in Thebes. The oligarchy ruled with an iron fist, often ordering summary executions of its political opponents (as Socrates tells us in The Apology); for this, the thirty members of the oligarchy were called "the Thirty Tyrants," or simply, "the Thirty." Eventually the Athenians were allowed by Sparta to return to a democratic constitution. Sparta, meanwhile, vigorously went about establishing an empire of its own.

403 Kritias denounces Theramenes.
Thrasybulos and the Seventy seize Phyle. Judicial murder of Eleusians.
-Capture of Piraeus and Battle of Munychia. Kritias killed.
-King Pausanias of Sparta intervenes. Proclaims amnesty and withdraws garrison.
402 Lysander deposed.
401 Cyrus killed in war of succession against Artaxerxes. His mercenary army of -Ten Thousand Greeks left leaderless, their generals, including Proxenos the friend of Xenophon, being treacherously killed by Tissaphernes.
-Xen ophon rallies the despairing troops and with assistance of other junior officers marches them from Babylon to the Hellespont across wild and hostile country.

Sources: WSU.edu and WWU.edu

It was twenty-seven-and-a-half years long, the Peloponnesian War. It started in May of 431 [BCE] when Sparta preempted and crossed the border into Attica, which was the countryside of Athens. They said they did so because of various perceived grievances on the part of Athens, [that Athens] had encroached on their territory. But it was the judgment of the historian Thucydides that they did it for fear, generic fear. They wanted to stop this juggernaut before it took over the Greek world. Sparta was oligarchic, Athens was democratic; Sparta was a land power, Athens was a sea power; Sparta was parochial, Athens, cosmopolitan. They had these fault lines that were not to be bridged, and twenty-seven-and-a-half years later the war was over.

The fascinating thing about this was to win the war, Athens has to build an army to defeat the Spartan army, or Sparta had to build a fleet to defeat the Athenian fleet. You'd think that the conniving, quick-witted Athenians would have figured that out first, but that's not what happened. Sparta built a fleet, defeated the Athenian fleet, broke up its maritime empire, bankrupted its treasury, cut off its food, and won the war.

Their strategies evolved. Sparta started the war with a very outdated strategy that had worked in small border wars among its own allies. Basically, "I will cross into someone else's territory and I will attack their agriculture and that will make them so mad that they will come out and fight." But in the case of Athens, if you have imported food, then you don't really care what happens to the agriculture around you. So, the Athenians went into the walls.

By the same token, the Athenian strategy under Pericles was simply, "We will go into the walls, we will import food, we'll keep our empire and its tribute intact, we will circle the Peloponnese and harass the Spartans. We can weather a war of attrition rather than annihilation longer, and we will not win, but because we don't lose, the status before the war favored us, so all we have to do is tie."

The Spartans thought it was wise to devastate agriculture. That didn't work. The Athenians thought it was wise to go inside the walls, and a city designed for 100,000 people quickly was decimated by a terrible plague. Maybe it was smallpox, maybe it was typhoid, but they lost somewhere around 80,000 of their own. The idea that Sparta could ever build a fleet was considered preposterous, but they turned out to be quite adept at it.

The Peloponnesian War is the first large scale, long-duration war that was recorded comprehensively by a dedicated historian (Thucydides). The war reveals much about the nature of war and conflict, and contains many lessons that remain relevant today--showing how war can occur as the result of failed diplomacy and even by accident in a dynamic environment. Consider Thucydides' own words:

"In the belief that it would be great and noteworthy above all the wars that had gone before, inferring this from the fact that both powers were then at tehir best in preparedness for war in every way, and seeing the rest of the Hellenic people taking sides with one side or the other, some at once, others planning to do so. For this was the greatest upheaval that had ever shaken the Hellenes, extending also to some part of the barbarians, one might say even to a very large part of mankind."

1. Power without principle can have disastrous consequences. Likewise, weakness of character, vision, and national values will contribute decisively to national defeat.

2. Unconventional methods of warfare can dominate what originally may be viewed as a conventional war.

3. For Grand Strategy to be successful, it must be crafted thoughtfully, deliberately, and ultimately must be both flexible and adaptable.

The reason we can study with value (and that's a key word) and profit in a didactic fashion [from] Thucydides, the chronicler of, for example, the Peloponnesian Wars, [is] that the one requisite -- human nature -- doesn't change. Humans in that book, or the humans in the Seven Years War, the humans in the Civil War, are all basically hardwired the same way, they had the same emotions, they're subject to envy, pride. The Peloponnesian War, with the necessary changes being made (that is, technology), can tell us exactly why states go to war, how they feel, balance of power, deterrence, that we see in the present. If you don't believe that, you would have to believe that just in the 2500 years of Western civilization we've had an accelerated Darwinian evolution of the human mind; or maybe [that] using computer games or using a computer has changed our circuitry and made us into people who are not subject to those [emotions]; or maybe, as therapists believe, we're so affluent or so educated now that we don't have to go back and worry about those primordial emotions. But it's my view that Thucydides was right, that human nature hasn't changed, and will not change, and therefore each war is instructive about other wars to come.

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Many Thanks!

John

Acropolis: the top of a city, its highest point. Typically, it was the site of temples, shrines, and public buildings. Enclosed by its own set of defensive walls, it served as the ultimate place of retreat when a city's outer walls were breeched.

Agora: a Greek city's marketplace, its center for commercial, social, and political activity.

Archon: a magistrate at Athens, chosen by lot in the later fifth century. The nine archons were concerned with administering justice, overseeing foreign residents of Athens, adjudicating family property disputes, and carrying out a variety of other tasks.

Ceramicus: the district of Athens, both inside and outside the city wall, where the potters lived and worked. It was also the site of an important and famous cemetery.

Delphic Oracle: a shrine to Apollo at Delphi where petitioners consulted the god as prophet. It was the most important oracular shrine in the Greek world.

Demos: originally, those Greeks who lived in the villages of the land. In Athens and other ancient Greek states the term "demos" came to mean the common people, the most numerous body of citizens of the state. They were often a political force--The People or The Many--in contrast to nobles, oligarchs, or despots. In Democratic Athens, the word also stood for the citizen body as a whole.

Dorians: those Greeks who spoke the Doric dialect adn whose lives shared certain distinctive cultural, governmental, and religious features. They were located mainly in the southern areas of Greek settlement: Sicily, Peloponnesus, Crete, Libya, Rhodes and nearby islands.

Drachma: a unit of Greek currency: Six obols equaled one drachma; one hundred drachmas equaled a mina; six thousand drachmas (or sixty minas) equaled a talent.

Hellenes: men of Hellas, of Greek descent and Greek speaking, i.e, the Greeks.

Helots: Although Helot-tyope unfree laborers are known elsewhere, in Thucydides these are teh lowest class of the Spartan state who lived in oppressive, hereditary servitude, and who were for the most part egaged in agriculture. They lived throughout Laconia and also in adjacent Messenia, where the Helot system had been extended by Spartan conquest.