As soon as war was declared, no communications, outside of heralds and the screams of war would be had between Athens and their Delian League allies, and Sparta and their Peloponnesian League allies. There would be very little time to breathe; even in declared peace, the war would rage on. Plague would ravage the cities, military technologies would advance and burn the lands of Greece, strategic blunders would cost the lives of tens of thousands, and vast navies would keep the seas ever restless.
This was the start of twenty-seven years of what would come to be known as the Peloponnesian War.
Check out my previous post on the Battle of Potidaea, 432 BC
[ABOVE: The Delian League (orange) and the Peloponnesian League (green) at the offset of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC]
THE FIRST SIEGE OF PLATAEA, 431 BC
Six months had passed since the battle of Potidaea, the catalyst of the war. It was now the spring of 431 BC; an armed force of over three-hundred Thebans made the first move by marching into Plataea, one of Athens’s allies. The two states had long been at odds, thus Thebes was keen to make the first move even before war had officially been declared. Their march to the city was welcomed with opened gates; several conspirators in Plataea, keen to acquire some personal prestige and align with Thebes, betrayed the citizens to the invading army. The Plataeans considered their city and its land a holy site ever since the great victory against the Persians on their very lands forty-eight years prior.
[ABOVE: A 5th century depiction of a Greek hoplite]
The soldiers made their way to the market centre in Plataea by nightfall, keen to make their case of friendly agreements between the two states. However, the shroud of darkness made their numbers look far more numerous, and the citizens, out of fear, agreed to Thebes’s terms. Come morning however, the Theban numbers became clear, and the Plataeans, keen to stay on the side of Athens, overpowered the Theban soldiers the following night. Overpowered, the Thebans attempted to retreat, but the citizens, familiar with their own city’s layout, funnelled the soldiers where they wanted them, and forced them to surrender. Several Thebans escaped after a Plataean woman handed a soldier an axe to break down one of the town’s gates. Many more tried jumping off the town walls, but fell to their deaths. The larger Theban army, yet to reach Plataea, abandoned their march to reinforce the three-hundred after Plataea promised the prisoners back in exchange. Thebes agreed, and the captives inside Plataea, some 180 in total, were put to death anyway. Their bodies were sent back to Thebes under truce.
[ABOVE: The locations of Plataea and Thebes]
News of this reached Athens too late; After arresting all Boeotians in Attica, Athens sent heralds to Plataea ordering them not to execute the prisoners, and when it was discovered that the deed had been done, Athens sent soldiers and supplies to reinforce Plataea, and evacuated the city’s old men, the women and the children.
ATHENS AND SPARTA PREPARE
With war officially underway, Athens and Sparta both sent heralds across the nearby world to attempt to gain support, even from the King of Persia. Sparta, not a great naval power, sent heralds to their allies in Italy and Sicily asking for ships and gold in aid. Soon, Sparta would be able to call upon five-hundred warships. They also sent heralds across the Peloponnese to prepare for a foreign campaign to Attica. Athens, meanwhile, ordered their allies close to the Peloponnesian landmass to consolidate and reduce the peninsula via encirclement.
Nothing was being held back; both states and their allies were full of young men with little experience of war, and these types of men are typically keen for such an enterprise when it starts. Oracles and prophecies across Greece gave their advice and predictions, which was furthered by a small earthquake on the island of Delos. Thucydides claims that most across Greece favoured Sparta to win this war, since they claimed they were liberating Greece from Athens, who had already harshly put down several revolts across the Aegean with harsh measures.
[ABOVE: A wood painting of King Archidamus II of Sparta, 1629]
Sparta made the next move; their Peloponnesian allies each supplied two-thirds of their forces to Sparta, and under their king Archidamus II (who would give his name to the first ten-year phase of this war, “The Archidamian War”) gathered the eminent generals and commanders of their combined army and addressed them:
We have never set out in greater force than this: this campaign is against a very powerful city, and our army is at its largest and best. We must not, then, show ourselves inferior to our fathers or fall short of our own reputation.
Archidamus’s first order of business was to send a messenger, Melesippus, straight to Athens in case they wished to surrender sooner than expected, but he was refused entry to the city; Pericles had passed a motion declaring that no Spartan should be allowed to enter Athens once their armies had been mobilised;
if the Spartans wished to make any representations in future, they should return to their own country before sending their embassies.
Archidamus set off with his troops, as did their Boeotian allies to ravage the Plataean lands. As it happened, Archidamus was a guest-friend of Pericles, making Pericles think that Archidamus might spare his estate from pillage and devastation. Pericles therefore addressed the people of Athens, declaring that if his own property were spared, he would share in the suffering of the people and his own property to state ownership. He also ordered the Athenian people to come from the countryside and withdraw inside the walls of Athens and Piraeus. Piraeus was Athens’s port city, located on the coast a few kilometres south-west of the city, and both were connected by the Long Walls constructed by Themistocles shortly after the Persian Wars. These walls would now provide a great advantage in the war; where Archidamus was hoping to ravage the countryside and starve the Athenians out, Athens could now rely on its ship imports from Piraeus, connected to various trade routes across the Aegean Sea, all protected by the walls of Athens, Piraeus and the Long Walls. While some could reside in their friends and family’s homes, many of the people coming in from the countryside had to set up home on the streets of Athens.
[ABOVE: A model of a Greek trireme]
Pericles reported that together, Athens could muster 13,000 hoplites, a further 17,000 hoplites in garrisoned and fortified positions, 1,200 cavalry including mounted archers, 1,600 foot archers, and three-hundred seaworthy triremes. A further one-hundred triremes were set to be readied for an expedition to the Peloponnese.
THE INVASION OF ATTICA
The Spartan force marched to Attica, first reaching and encamping outside the Athenian deme of Oenoe where they intended to launch their invasion from. Oenoe lay on the border between Attica and Boeotia, and was thus already a well fortified position, being on the Athenian border. Siege engines were prepared, keeping the Spartan army in place for some time. This hold-up, combined with the slow march up to Attica and his supposed friendliness to Athens, caused Archidamus's army to hold these points against him, suggesting that had he been quicker the Spartans could have caught the rural Athenian population before they reached the safety of the Long Walls.
When all attacks on Oenoe failed, Archidamus and his army marched into Attica, routing the Athenian cavalry force and settling in the deme of Acharnae, Athens’s largest deme. Archidamus set up camp and his army begun ravaging the countryside; he considered the wide open plains a suitable area to encamp and fight should the pillaging lure the Athenians out. Many in Athens remembered, however, how the walls stopped another invading Spartan army during the First Peloponnesian War, and thus remained confident in their protection and utility.
The younger and less war-experienced people of Athens, however, thought they should be more proactive in their response to the Spartan attackers, and turned their anger on Pericles, calling him a coward for standing idle in war. He did not call for an assembly in response, fearing that a speech made as an emotional reaction would be a poor one. He did, however, send out cavalry forces to meet advance parties of Spartan raiders, which were met with many small-scale successes, and reinforcements from Thessaly and Macedonia. With no full-scale Athenian army coming to meet them, the Spartan army withdrew to further Athenian demes.
Meanwhile, the one-hundred Athenian triremes were ready to launch, armed with one-thousand hollies and four-hundred archers. With winter drawing near, the Spartans withdrew from Attica, ravaging more land and cities as they went and enslaving Athenian subjects.
ATHENIAN COUNTER-MEASURES
With Sparta withdrawn, Athens passed decrees to increase their garrisons and reserve a hundred triremes annually, and a thousand talents of silver inside the acropolis, backed by the death penalty to anyone who suggested this reserve should be used for anything other than the war. Athens’ one-hundred triremes sent to the Peloponnese landed at Methone, and the troops onboard attacked the un-garrisoned walls. A nearby Spartan commander, Brasidas, sent his own detachment of one-hundred hoplites, who formed into formation and attacked the dispersed Athenian army as it ravaged the countryside. Setting off round the Peloponnesian coast again, the Athenian fleet landed at Pheia in Elis, and defeated a band of three-hundred Elean hoplites. The city was captured and the Athenian fleet once again set sail around the coast, landing at and capturing Pheia. Thirty more ships were sent from Athens to Locris to loot and capture cities in the region.
It’s at this time that Athens ordered the expulsion of the men, women and children from Aegina from Athens, blaming them for brining the war to Athens; they were traditional enemies of the Athenians, and had sided with Sparta during the First Peloponnesian War. The Spartans welcomed several of these deposed people into their territory.
Meanwhile, the Athenian attacks on the Peloponnese resulted in the captures of the Corinthian city of Sollium, giving the city over to their allies, and the city of Astacus, driving out the tyrant Evarchus and bringing the city into the League. They also claimed the Ionian island of Cephallenia without a fight, before the navy returned to port. Come autumn, Athens assembled their largest fleet so far, commanded by Pericles himself and manned by ten-thousand Athenian and three-thousand Potidaean hoplites and several thousand light infantry, to raid Megara. Successful, raids by land would continue through the war in the region.
CORINTH’S NORTH-WEST CAMPAIGN
Come the winter of 431 BC, the exiled Evarchus, intent on reinstating himself in Astacus, called upon Corinth to sail forty ships and fifteen-hundred hoplites. Successful in the attempt, the expedition turned to Cephallenia, where a broken agreement lead to many Corinthian hoplites being lost before the rest of the army scrambled back to their ships to return to Corinth.
PUBLIC FUNERAL
Meanwhile in Athens, a state funeral was held for those who had thus far been lost during the first year of the war. The ceremony involved laying the bones of the deceased in a public tent two days prior to the funeral, and on the day, ten wooden wagons, one for each Athenian tribe, were wheeled around the city. The procession was open to all - man, woman, child and slave - and the remains made their way to the public cemetery in the suburbs. After the earth covered them, a eulogy was given by a chosen man of recognised intellect. In this case, it was, of course, Pericles.
[ABOVE: "Pericles's Funeral Oration", by Philipp Foltz, 1852]
Recorded by the historian - and veteran of this very war - Thucydides, it is likely that some of the speech is either taken from Pericles’s funeral speech after the Samian War, or simply embellished. Either way, the speech has gone down as one of the finest in world history, praising not only the dead but Athens and her democracy itself…
Most of those who have spoken here on previous occasions have commended the man who added this oration to the ceremony: it is right and proper, they have said, that there should be this address at the burial of those who died in our wars. To me it would seem enough that men who showed their courage in actions should have their tribute too expressed in actions, as you can see we have done in the arrangements for this state funeral; but the valour of these many should not depend for credence on the chance of one man’s speech, who may speak well or badly. It is not easy to find the right measure of words when one cannot quite rely on a common perception of the truth. Those in the audience who are aware of the facts and are friends of the dead may well think that the speaker’s account falls short of what they know and wish to hear; and the inexperienced may be jealous, and think there must be exaggeration, if told of anything beyond their own capacity. Eulogies of others are tolerated up to the point where each man still thinks himself capable of doing something of what he has heard praised: beyond that lies jealousy and therefore disbelief. But since this institution was sanctioned and approved by our predecessors, I too must follow the custom and attempt as far as possible to satisfy the individual wishes and expectations of each of you.
I shall begin with our ancestors first of all. It is right, and also appropriate on such an occasion, that this tribute should be paid to their memory. The same race has always occupied this land, passing it on from generation to generation until the present day, and it is to these brave men that we owe our inheritance of a land that is free. They deserve our praise. Yet more deserving are our own fathers, who added to what they themselves had received and by their pains left to us, the present generation, the further legacy of the great empire which we now possess. We ourselves, those of us still alive and now mainly in the settled age of life, have strengthened this empire yet further in most areas and furnished the city with every possible resource for self-sufficiency in war and peace. I shall not mention our achievements in war, the campaigns which won us each addition to the empire, our own or our fathers’ spirited resistance to the attacks of Greek or barbarian enemies — I have no wish to delay you with a long story which you know already. But before I pass on the praise of the dead, I shall describe first the principles of public life which set us on our way, and the political institutions and national character which took us on to greatness. I think this a suitable subject for the present occasion, and it could be of benefit for this whole gathering, foreigners as well as citizens, to hear this account.
We have a form of government which does not emulate the practice of our neighbours: we are more an example to others than an imitation of them. Our constitution is called a democracy because we govern in the interests of the majority, not just the few. Our laws give equal rights to all in private disputes, but public preferment depends on individual distinction and is determined largely by merit rather than rotation: and poverty is no barrier to office, if a man despite his humble condition has the ability to do some good to the city. We are open and free in the conduct of our public affairs and in the uncensorious way we observe the habits of each other’s daily lives: we are not angry with our neighbour if he indulges his own pleasure, nor do we put on the disapproving look which falls short of punishment but can still hurt. We are tolerant in our private dealings with one another, but in all public matters we abide by the law: it is fear above all which keeps us obedient to the authorities of the day and to the laws, especially those laws established for the protection of the injured and those unwritten laws whose contravention brings acknowledged disgrace.
Furthermore, as rest from our labours we have provided ourselves with a wealth of recreations for the spirit — games and festivals held throughout the year, and elegant appointed private houses, giving us a pleasure which dispels the troubles of the day. The size of our city attracts every sort of import from all over the world, so our enjoyment of goods from abroad is as familiar as that of our own produce.
We differ too from our enemies in our approach to military matters. The difference is this. We maintain an open city, and never expel foreigners or prevent anyone from finding out or observing what they will — we do not hide things when sight of them might benefit an enemy: our reliance is not so much on preparation and concealment as on our own innate spirit for courageous action. In education also they follow an arduous regime, training for manliness right from childhood, whereas we have a relaxed lifestyle but are still just as ready as they to go out and face our equivalent dangers. I give you an example. The Spartans do not invade our land on their own, but they have all their allies with them: when we attack others’ territory we do it by ourselves, and for the most part have no difficulty in winning the fight in a foreign country against men defending their own property. No enemy has yet met our full force, because we have simultaneously been maintaining our navy and sending out our men on a number of campaigns by land. If they do engage some part of our forces somewhere, a victory over just a few of us has them claiming the defeat of us all, and if they are beaten they pretend that they lost to our full strength. If then we choose to approach dangers in an easy frame of mind, not with constant practice in hardship, and to meet them with the courage which is born of character rather than compulsion, the result is that we do not have to suffer in advance the pain which we shall face later, and when we do face it we show ourselves just as courageous as those who have spent a lifetime of labour. This is one reason for the admiration of our city: and there are others too.
We cultivate beauty without extravagance, and intellect without loss of vigour; wealth is for us the gateway to action, not the subject of boastful talk, and while there is no disgrace in the admission of poverty, the real disgrace lies in the failure to take active measures to escape it; our politicians can combine management of their domestic affairs with state business, and others who have their own work to attend to can nevertheless acquire a good knowledge of politics. We are unique in the way we regard anyone who takes no part in public affairs: we do not call that a quiet life, we call it a useless life. We are all involved in either the proper formulation or at least the proper review of policy, linking that what cripples action is not talk, but rather the failure to talk through the policy before proceeding to the required action. This is another difference between us and others, which gives us our exceptional combination of daring and deliberation about the objective — whereas with others their courage relies on ignorance, and for them to deliberate is to hesitate. True strength of spirit would rightly be attributed to those who have the sharpest perception of both terrors and pleasures and through that knowledge do not shrink from danger.
We are at variance with most others too in our concept of doing good: we make our friends by conferring benefit rather than receiving it. The benefactor is the firmer friend, in that by further kindness he will maintain gratitude in the recipient as a current debt: the debtor is less keen, as he knows that any return of generosity will be something owed, not appreciated as an independent favour. And we are unique in the way we help others — no calculation of self-interest, but an act of frank confidence in our freedom.
In summary I declare that our city as a whole is an education to Greece; and in each individual among us I see combined the personal self-sufficiency to enjoy the widest range of experience and the ability to adapt with consummate grace and ease. That tis is no passing puff but factual reality is proved by the very power of the city; this character of ours built that power. Athens alone among contemporary states surpasses her reputation when brought to the test: Athens alone gives the enemies who meet her no cause for chagrin at being worsted by such opponents, and the subjects of her empire no cause to complain of undeserving rulers. Our power most certainly does not lack for witness: the proof is far and wide, and will make us the wonder of present and future generations. We have no need of a Homer to sing our praises, or of any encomiast whose poetic version may have immediate appeal but then fall foul of the actual truth. The fact is that we have forced every sea and every land to be open to our enterprise, and everywhere we have established permanent memorials of both failure and success.
This then is the city for which these men fought and died. They were nobly determined that she should not be lost: and all of us who survive should be willing to suffer for her.
This is why I have dwelt at length on the nature of our city, to demonstrate that in this contest there is more at stake for us than for those who have no comparable enjoyment of such advantages, and also to set out a clear base of evidence to support the praise of the men I am now commemorating. Their highest praise is already implicit: I have sung the glories of the city, but it was the qualities of these men and others like them which made her glorious, and there can be few other Greeks whose achievements, as theirs do, prove equal to their praises. I consider that the way these have now met their end is the index of a man’s worth, whether that be first glimpse or final confirmation. Even if some had their faults, it is right that the courage to fight and die for their country should outweigh them: they have erased harm by good, and the collective benefit they have conferred is greater than any damage done as individuals. None of these men set higher value on the continued enjoyment of their wealth and let that turn them cowards; none let the poor man’s hope, that some day he will escape poverty and grow rich, postpone that fearful moment. For them victory over the enemy was the greatest desire: this they thought the noblest of all risks, and were prepared to take that risk in the pursuit of victory, forsaking all else. The uncertainties of success and failures they entrusted to hope, but in the plain and present sight of what confronted them they determined to rely on themselves, and in the very act of resistance they preferred even death to survival at the cost of surrender. They fled from an ignominious reputation by withstanding the action with their lives. In the briefest moment, at the turning point of their fortune, they took their leave not of fear but of glory.
Such were these men, and they proved worthy of their city. The rest of us may pray for a safer outcome, but should demand of ourselves a determination against the enemy no less courageous than theirs. The benefit of this is not simply an intellectual question. Do not simply listen to people telling you at length of all the virtues inherent in resisting the enemy, when you know them just as well yourselves: but rather look day after day on the manifest power of our city, and become her lovers. And when you realise her greatness, reflect that it was men who made her great, by their daring, by the recognition of what they had to do, and by their pride in doing it. If ever they failed in some attempt, they would not have the city share their loss, but offered her their courage as the finest contribution they could make. Together they gave their lives, and individually they took as their reward the praise which does not grow old and the most glorious of tombs — not where their bodies lie, but when their fame lives on in every occasion for speech and ceremony, an everlasting memory. Famous men have the whole earth as their tomb. Their record is not only the inscription on gravestones in their own land, but in foreign countries too the unwritten memorial which lives in individual hearts, the remembrance of their spirit rather than their achievement.
You should now seek to emulate these men. Realise that happiness is freedom, and freedom is courage, and do not be nervous of the dangers of war. The unfortunate, with no hope of improvement, have better reason to husband their lives than those who risk reversal of fortune if they live on and have the most to lose should they fail. To a man with any pride cowardice followed by disaster is more painful than a death which comes in the vigour of courage and the fellowship of hope, and is hardly felt.
For that reason, to the parents of the dead here present I offer not sympathy so much as consolidation. You know that you were born into a world of change and chance, where the true fortune is to meet with honour — the most honourable death for these we commemorate, the most honourable grief for you — and to enjoy a life whose measure of happiness fills both the living and the leaving of it. It is hard, I know, to convince you of this, since you will often have reminders to your sons when you see others blessed with the good fortune which was once your source of pride too: and grief is felt not for the deprivation of joys experienced, but for the loss of a once familiar joy. Those of you who are still of an age to bear children should hold firm to the hope of further sons. In their own lives some will find that new children help them forget those they have lost, and for the city there will be double benefit — both maintenance of the population and a safeguard, since those without children at stake do not face the same risks as the others and cannot make a balanced and judicious contribution to debate. Those of you who are past that age should consider it a gain that you have lived the greater part of your life in happiness and that what remains will be short: and you should take comfort in the glory of the dead. Love of honour alone does not age, and in the unproductive time of life the greater pleasure is not the accumulation of gain, as some day, but the enjoyment of honour.
For those of you here who are sons or brothers of the dead I can see a formidable task. It is common experience that all speak highly of those who are gone, and however you excel in your own qualities you will struggle to be judged even a close second to them, let alone their equals. The living are exposed to the emigration of rivalry, but anything no longer present meets with warm and uncompetitive recognition.
If I may speak also of the duty of those wives who will now be widows, a brief exhortation will say it all. Your great virtue is to show no more weakness than is inherent in your nature, and to cause least talk among males for either praise or blame.
I have made this speech as custom demands, finding the most suitable words I could. The honour expressed in ceremony has now been paid to those we came to bury: and in further tribute to them the city will maintain their children at public expense from now until they come of age. This is the valuable crown which in contests such as these the city confers on the dead and those they leave behind. The state which offers the greatest prizes for valour also has the bravest men for citizens.
And now it is time to leave, when each of you has made due lament for your own.
NEXT POST: THE PLAGUE OF ATHENS, 430 - 429 BC: The Fall of Pericles
SOURCES
- Thucydides, "History of the Peloponnesian War", Book 2.1 - 2.47
- Plutarch, "Lives: Pericles"
- Donald Kagan, "The Peloponnesian War, Athens and Sparta in Savage Conflict 431 - 404 BC"
YOUTUBE LINKS
(I do NOT own these videos)
"Ancient Greek History - Part 2 of the Peloponnesian War - 18" by "Historyden"
"How did the Peloponnesian War Happen? - Athens Faces Sparta (431-404 BC)" by "Knowledgia"
MY ANCIENT GREEK HISTORY BLOG PAGE
MY ANCIENT PERSIAN HISTORY BLOG PAGE
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