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HISTORY
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The Peloponnesian War
A war that raged for 27 years, the Peloponnesian War saw the Delian League battle it out against the Peloponnesian League.
By Will Street
Jul. 25, 2019, 11:30 AM
Introduction
The term “Peloponnesian” labels the area of the Peloponnese in southern Greece. Although the main source of information regarding the war that took place across Greece and surrounding islands between 431 and 404 BC, Thucydides, never used the term “Peloponnese” in his writing, the term “Peloponnesian” is used to describe the war between Sparta and Athens, largely because of modern historians’ Athenian-centric sympathies.
The war would see what was originally only limited conflict turn into all-out struggles between Greek city-states. The Greek world became engulfed by war, and accordingly came the destruction of whole cities, bloody atrocities and the shattering end of the golden age of Greece.
Lasting for 27 years, the war was fought between two groups, the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League. It is usually divided into three stages. These were the Archidamian War, the expeditionary force to Syracuse and the final Decelean War, which brought about Athens’ defeat. In the analysis below, I explore the Peloponnesian War in more detail.
Origins
The major literary source for our knowledge of the Peloponnesian War is Thucydides, who wrote the historical work, The History of the Peloponnesian War. The work was published in the early 4th century BC and Thucydides had served as an Athenian general during the conflict. The historian applied a strict method of impartiality to his history and adopted a scientific approach, looking for cause and effect, gathering evidence and discarding reference to divine intervention. Today, he is considered to be the father of “scientific history” and his attribution of history to the emotions of fear and self-interest has led many to also consider him the father of “political realism” today as well.
Thucydides, in The History of the Peloponnesian War, attributed the origins of the war accordingly: “The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.” (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.23). While Thucydides goes as far as to argue that the growth of Athens in part made war “inevitable”, Athens had certainly grown greatly as an empire in the fifty-year period preceding the outbreak of the war.
The Athenian Empire, or Delian League, had begun as a collection of city-states and was named after Delos, where they kept their treasury. The league ensured the Greco-Persian wars became truly over, defeating the Second Persian Invasion of Greece in 480 BC and launching later attacks on Persian territory in Ionia and the Aegean.
In the following period past 480 BC, a period which Thucydides calls Pentecontaetia, literally “the period of fifty years”, Athens developed into a manifested empire, dominating the city-states in Delian League and carrying out aggressive policies against Persia. It was a period in which Athens developed into the Athenian Empire, bringing in large parts of Greece under its control aside from Sparta and its allies.
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By the middle of the 5th century BC, the Athenian Empire had taken control of vast swathes of territory from the Persians and driven them away from the Aegean. At the same time, Athens turned what had previously been independent allies into tribute-paying members of the Delian League. The city-state used the tributes to support a powerful naval fleet and fund large-scale public works programmes in Athens in the second half of the century. This caused resentment among members of the tribute-paying city-states.
There had been minor conflict between Sparta and Athens during the Pentecontaetia. This involved conflict in the area of the Isthmus of Corinth, where a war between Megara and Corinth had enabled Athens to form an alliance with Megara, giving the state a foothold in lands close to Sparta. What ensued was the First Peloponnesian War, where, for fifteen years, Athens engaged in minor warfare between Sparta, Corinth, Aegina and a collection of other states.
The conflict ended when a peace treaty was signed in the winter of 446/5 BC after Athens, who had controlled Boeotia and Megara during the conflict, faced a large-scale invasion into Attica by the Spartans. Athens was forced to concede the land it had taken over and the treaty recognised both Sparta’s and Athens’ right to control their respective alliance systems. However, it would be five years later, in 440 BC, when conflict began to emerge once again.
Breakdown of Peace
What had been the seeds of resentment among members of the Delian League, fermenting quietly during during Pentecontaetia as a result of the tribute payments and other factors, emerged lucidly in 440 BC when Athens’ powerful ally, Samos, rebelled from the alliance. The rebels secured the support of the Persian satrap and Athens was facing the prospect of widespread revolt across its empire. Sparta held a congress to decide whether to declare war, however, with their powerful ally, Corinth, against the motion, they decided otherwise. The result was Athens was able to crush the rebellion and peace between Athens and Sparta was maintained.
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The development of conflict that lead to the outbreak of war involved most prominently Athens and Corinth. In the mid-430s BC, the Corinthian colony, Corcyra, had rebelled against their parent nation and won over independence. Corinth proceeded to create a naval force which forced Corcyra, alarmed, to sign an alliance with Athens.
In 433 BC, the battle of Sybota ensued, which saw a small number of Athenian ships play a critical role in preventing the Corinthian fleet from capturing Corcyra. Under the terms of the treaty signed between Athens and Sparta in 444/5 BC, the Athenians were not permitted to intervene unless it was clear Corinth intended to go on to invade Corcyra. Nonetheless, Athens did not hesitate from intervening and winning a victory over the Corinthians. It was the start of the outbreak of patent strife.
More instances occurred of Athenian conflict with Corinth. In 432 BC, Athens instructed the city of Potidaea, in the peninsula of Chalkidiki, that had been a former colony of Corinth but a tributary ally of Athens, to dismiss its Corinthian magistrates and refuse the magistrates sent there by Corinth in the future. The Corinthians, outraged, encouraged Potidaea to revolt and unofficially snuck troops into the city in the ensuing battle of Potidaea. It was an occasion of yet further isolated conflict between the Athens and the Peloponnesian League.
The strife between the two leagues was only made worse by trade sanctions Athens imposed on Megara, which was an ally of Sparta since the conclusion of the First Peloponnesian War. These were enacted in 433/32 BC after Megara was said to have desecrated the Hiera Orgas. These trade sanctions were largely ignored by Thucydides, however some modern historians have noted the breach of trade between Megara and the Athenian Empire would have been disastrous for Megara and, therefore, particularly those arguing Athens was to blame for the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War proper, have cited the trade sanctions as a major cause of the outbreak of war.
Whatever one concludes as the major causes of the Peloponnesian War, the outbreak of war was confirmed after the Peloponnesian League held a congressional session in Sparta in 432 BC at the bequest of Corinth. All nations part of the Peloponnesian League, especially those with particular grievances against Athens, were invited to the Spartan assembly. They were also joined by a delegation from Athens.
As reported by Thucydides, the Corinthians condemned Sparta’s inactivity and argued if Sparta continued to sit back idle, they would soon be outflanked by Athens and lose all their allies. Conversely, Thucydides recorded that the Athenians warned the Spartans against starting a war with such a powerful state as Athens and directed them to raise their grievances through bureaucracy of the Thirty Years Peace treaty signed after the First Peloponnesian War. However, the end result was that the Spartan assembly, undeterred by the Athenians’ warnings, voted by a majority that Athens had broken the peace and effectively declared war.
The Archidamian War
Waged between 431 and 421 BC, the first stage of the Peloponnesian War, the Archidamian War, would see Sparta invade the land surrounding Athens but Athens maintain its naval supremacy. Sparta and its allies, with the exception of Corinth, was almost totally a land-based power and consequently could call upon a large land army that was also highly capable as the famous Spartan forces. On the other hand, Athens drew its enormous wealth from the tribute payments, which it used to maintain a strong navy that controlled its empire.
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However, it was Sparta who seized the ascendancy in the early stages of the Archidamian War. Although the different nature of each empires made it difficult for either league to achieve a decisive victory, Sparta’s king, Archidamus II, invaded the land surrounding Athens in 431 BC. However, what resulted was that many of the citizens of Attica abandoned their farms and moved inside the long walls that connected Athens to its port of Piraeus. Thus, while Athens lost some of the productive land around the city, they maintained access to the sea and, as a result, did not suffer preponderantly.
War would continue between the two empires. However, Spartan campaigns rarely lasted for more than three weeks. The longest Spartan invasion in 430 BC lasted forty days. This was because hoplite soldiers were expected to go home for the harvest and Spartan slaves, known as helots, required close supervision which couldn’t be maintained for long periods.
On the other hand, Athenian strategy was guided by the general, Pericles, who advised against facing Spartan hoplites in open battle owing to their larger numbers and better training. Rather, he directed his pursuits through the Athenian fleet, which went on the offensive, winning a victory at Naupactus.
Yet, while the beginnings of all-out warfare were beginning to manifest themselves clearly, Attica was struck by a plague that ravaged through its populace. The plague, that emerged in 430 BC, wiped out 30,000 citizens, sailors and soldiers, including Pericles and his sons. The numbers equated to roughly one-third to two-thirds of the Athenian population dying. The Athenian manpower was consequently drastically reduced, and mercenaries were not keen to join a city-state so infected. The plague would not even just put off the Athenians. The Spartans abandoned the offensive around Athens for fear of contamination.
However, the bloody battles would intensify following Pericles’ death in 429 BC. With a more hawkish politician in charge, Cleon, and a similar minded general, Demosthenes, the Athenians moved away from the defensive strategies of Pericles and opted to take the war to the Spartans. Accompanied with this, the Athenians’ naval pursuits continued, conducting raids around the Peloponnese.
The Athenian newfound offensive strategy in Attica brought some victories, including coming out victorious in the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and the Battle of Sphacteria in the same year. However, what ensued was that Spartan general, Brasidas, raised an army of allies and helots and marched the length of Greece towards the Athenian colony of Amphipolis in Thrace. There, they were several silver mines that had funded the Athenian war campaign.
The writer of The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, was dispatched with army yet arrived too late to prevent the city from being captured. The general was consequently exiled, which had allowed him to meet members of both sides of the war and prompted him to write his history. Nonetheless, in the efforts of the Athenians to retake Amphipolis in the Battle of Amphipolis in 422 BC (where the Athenians came out successful), both Cleon and Brasidas were killed. Following the conflict over Amphipolis, both sides agreed to exchange hostages and signed a truce in 421 BC, marking the end of the Archidamian War.
Peace of Nicias and Sicilian Expedition
With the more hawkish generals on both sides, Cleon and Brasidas, both deceased, peace was able to subsist for six years (421 - 415 BC). That said, that only amounted to the formal peace between Sparta and Athens. Conversely, the Peloponnese was rife with skirmishing attacks between members of the smaller city-states. The aggressors were exempt from the Spartans, who refrained from any action, but, while their parent nation remained idle, the participants in the minor conflict began to rebel.
The rebellion was supported by a powerful city-state that had remained independent of Lacedaemon, Argos. Supported by the Athenians, the Argives would form an alliance between various democratic city-states within the Peloponnese, including the powerful states of Mantinea and Elis. An assault to the Spartans, they attempted to break the coalition up however to no avail, questioning the leadership of the Spartan king Agis in the process. Thus, the emboldened rebels, supported further by an Athenian force headed by Alcibiades, were left to move to take control of Tegea, near Sparta.
In 418 BC, the Battle of Mantinea ensued. This was the largest land battle fought within Greece throughout the whole Peloponnesian War. Making up the numbers, the Lacedaemonians, accompanied with their neighbours, the Tegeans, faced the combined armies of the Argives, Athenians, Mantineans and the Arcadians. Despite early victories for the coalition, they were unable to capitalize, leaving time for the elite forces of the Spartans to come through. The battle proved to be decisive victory for the Spartans and they were able to break up the democratic alliance and ensure hegemony in the Peloponnese once again. The strength of the Peloponnese League was maintained for the time being.
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In 415 BC, reports came to Athens that one of their remote allies in Sicily was under attack from Syracuse. The conflict had an ethnic dimension, for the Syracusans were Dorian in the same way as the Spartans, whereas the Athenians’ allies in Sicily were Ionian. This brought an impetus for the Athenians to defend their allies.
There was more than limited altruism involved as well. The Athenian general, Alcibiades, had visions of conquering the whole of Sicily, including Syracuse, which would have brought the Athenians great resources in their war campaign. Yet, in Athens, following the desecration of some religious statues in Athens, Alcibiades was charged with religious crimes. However, the Athenians nonetheless permitted Alcibiades to continue onwards towards Sicily with the Athenian forces.
Once there, the Athenians’ minds would change. The Athenians send word that Alcibiades be recalled to Athens to face a trial. The general, whatever his reasons may have been and guilty or not, chose to defect to the Spartan side. Once defected, Alcibiades claimed to the Spartan contingency that the Athenians intended to invade all of Sicily and from there the whole of Italy, Carthage and then on to the Peloponnese.
Emotions were thus running high. An Athenian taskforce, led now by Nicias, consisted of some 100 ships, 5,000 infantry and lightly armoured troops accompanied with a smaller number 30 cavalry. Like the cry of a wolf, they were sent on their way towards the warzone.
Upon landing in Sicily, several city-states defected onto the Athenians side. Yet Nicias would choose to hold back initially, enacting little difference in 415 BC, which would prove to be a year in which Syracuse was scarcely damaged. With the emergence of winter, the Athenian forces were forced to withdraw to their quarters and sit and plan for the oncoming assault of Syracuse.
Matching their forces and proving to overcome them, the delay gave time for the Syracusans to send for help from Sparta. The nation, much eager to defend their allies, sent the general, Gylippus, with reinforcements. Garnering an alliance from a variety of city-states in Sicily, Gylippus took command of the Syracusan forces, defeated the Athenians in a number of battles and ensured the city of Syracuse was not captured.
Sending for reinforcements, the Athenian general, Demosthenes, entered the melee, arriving at Sicily with a second fleet. Thus ensued more battles, before the Athenians suffered a disastrous defeat in the Great Harbour of Syracuse after Nicias and Demosthenes had quarrelled over retreating over Athens, only to remain in the warzone after the bad omen of a lunar eclipse. Nicias and Demosthenes were forced to retreat inland in search of allies, before they were mercilessly round up and enslaved or killed by the Syracusan cavalry. A shattering defeat for the Athenian fleet and it marked also the end of the second stage of the war.
The Decelean War
What had been a war taking place in Sicily, entrenched in an Italian battleground, returned to Attica once again. This time the Spartans would go on the offensive and take the fight closer towards Athens. The defector, Alcibiades, proved to be useful informer and, on his advice, the Spartans fortified Decelea, close to Athens, which prevented the Athenians from making use of their land.
The result was the Athenians were prevented from transporting goods overland, instead required to use overseas routes at a greater expense. Compounding the damage, the nearby silver mines to Decelea were disrupted and roughly 20,000 slaves had been freed by Spartan hoplites at Decelea. As a consequence, while the treasury and emergency fund of 1,000 talents were dwindling away, Athens was forced to demand an even greater tribute from the Delian League, accentuating yet further the divisions amongst their alliance.
The battleground in Sicily had taken an enormous toll on the Athenian fleet. The Spartans, Corinthians and other members of the Peloponnesian League continued to send further reinforcements to Syracuse. Yet despite facing a seemingly insurmountable enemy, the Athenians decided to send a force of 5,000 troops to the Italian front. Whatever the folly of hawk-eyed statesmen, the result was the Spartans were able to achieve a decisive victory over the Athenians on land, decimating the numbers of the Athenian army.
Defeat for the Athenian Empire looked close at hand. The fleet was destroyed and virtually the entire army had been sold off into slavery. Thus the coming years for Athens would be a dogfight for its very survival.
The Spartans began encouraging large parts of the Delian League to rise up against Athens. As a result, large parts of Ionia did exactly that, rising in revolt of their parent nation. At the same time, the Persians decided to join the war, supplying the Spartans with money and ships. Making the Athenians’ difficulties worse yet further, their own internal politics was emerging into one overcome with faction and revolt.
Yet despite this seeming demise, Athens was able to survive for a number of reasons. For one, both the forces in Sicily and lying ready in Sparta were slow in making their way to the Aegean. What had been the expectation of protection for many Ionian states proved not to arrive in time and consequently many returned to the Athenian side. The Persians were equally slow in providing their capital and ships.
Enter the one hundred ships that the Athenians had as a final reserve. These were a collection of ships that the Athenians had set aside at the beginning of the conflict to be used as a last resort. These ships released and acted as the core of the Athenian fleet for the remainder of the war.
And who would come back? Alcibiades returned to the Athenian side at the same time as an oligarchic revolution was taking place in Athens. The coup involved the seizure of power by 400 statesmen and the end of Athenian democracy. While a peace treaty with Sparta may have been achievable, the Athenian fleet, that was now based in Samos, refused to accept an agreement.
The Athenian fleet would now be headed by Alcibiades. In 411 BC, this Athenian fleet met the Spartans in battle at the Battle of Syme, which proved to be indecisive for both sides. The survival of the Athenian fleet would ensure democracy was restored in Athens within two years.
For Alcibiades, although condemned as a traitor, he would still play an important role in Athenian politics and the war campaign. On the one hand he prevented the Athenian fleet from attacking Athens and, equally encouraged democracy to return by subtle means, whether it be restoring the Athenian empire or maintaining morale through a string of victories against the Spartans.
Indeed, at the Battle of Cyzicus, the Athenians obliterated the Spartan fleet, succeeding in establishing the financial basis for the Athenian Empire in the process. In the period between 410 and 406 BC, the Athenians were able to win a string of victories against the Spartans and, as a result, recover large regions of its empire once again.
Yet by 406 BC, the tide had turned on Alcibiades’ career. A minor Spartan victory at the Battle of Notium in 406 BC ensured the faction hostile to Alcibiades triumphed in Athens. Consequently, Alcibiades was not re-elected strategos and would go on to exile himself from the city. Following this, after the Battle of Arginusae in which the Athenians won a naval victory but, owing to bad weather, were unable to rescue their stranded crew nor rout up the flailing Spartans, a controversial trial was held over the matter, which resulted in the execution of six top naval officers.
Facing the absence of her previously leading naval commanders, Athens would fail to prove so successful in naval warfare. Conversely, the new Spartan general, Lysander, who was not a member of the Spartan royal family, was particularly formidable and had demonstrated himself as such in battles in the recent past. The general opted to sail Sparta’s forces to the Dardanelles – the source of the Athenian grain supply.
And here lies the decisive moment of the entire war. Faced with starvation, the Athenians had no option other than to send their fleet to meet Lysander in battle at the Dardanelles. How bitter their defeat would prove to be. In the ensuing Battle of Aegospotami, the Athenians lost 168 ships and between 4,000 and 5,000 of their sailors were captured. With only twelve ships remaining and their general fleeing absently to Cyprus, it was the bitter defeat of a close to 27-year campaign.
By 404 BC, with the threat of disease and starvation from a prolonged siege, Athens was forced to surrender. The city-states’ allies followed suit and surrendered while the democrats at Samos held on slightly longer and were able to flee alive. Stripped of its walls, fleet and all of its overseas possessions, despite calls from some of Sparta’s allies that the Athenians be enslaved and the city destroyed, drawing gratitude from Athens’ endeavours in the Persian Wars, Sparta opted to incorporate the empire within its own system. Athens was now a vassal of the Peloponnesian League.
Aftermath and Conclusion
In the ensuing political ecology, Athens and its empire were incorporated into Sparta’s command, with its tributary payments and vassal states transferred accordingly. Despite in some cases bearing the brunt far more heavily than Sparta, members of the Peloponnesian League nonetheless received nothing. As for Athenian internal politics, for a short period the city-state was ruled by the “Thirty Tyrants” as democracy was suspended. This political system had been established by Sparta, however, by 403 BC, the oligarchs had been upended and democracy returned largely by the efforts of the statesman, Thrasybulus. The Corinthian War (395-387 BC), which pitted Sparta against a coalition of Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos that was backed by the Persians, would see a re-emergence of Athens into Greek politics. However, the rivalry between the two nations would cease when Phillip II of Macedon conquered all of Greece except Sparta in the mid 4thcentury BC and his son, Alexander the Great, Sparta as well in 331 BC.
Plagued not long beforehand with the Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War would cause the Greeks to suffer the terrors of all-out war once again. With the many disparate city-states across Greece formed into two leagues, the variety and breadth of the battleground would bear testament to the intricacies of the Greek imperial map. Taking 27 years and commonly divided into three sections by historians today, the delicacy of the tactics, albeit amongst the brutal battleground, and the intricacy of the diplomacy may well be reflected in the symbolic peace treaty signed by the mayors of Athens and Sparta on the 12th March 1996, 2,400 years after the ancient war came to a close.