Johnny Shumate Illustrations
As Athens grew
powerful and wealthy – and just a little cocky – the Spartans watched from
their safe haven deep in the Eurotas river valley of the Peloponnesus. Content
to remain at home since the Pausanias affair, the Spartans were more concerned
with the ever menacing presence of the helots. Critical to this control was
their dominance over their neighbors, most of whom were members of the military
alliance that Sparta led, the Peloponnesian League.
But in c. 464 disaster
struck: an earthquake of tremendous force left virtually every house and
building in Sparta destroyed. Striking in daylight, loss of life was severe,
including a school full of boys of elite status. Only a few of these survived,
having run after a rabbit that appeared moments before the earthquake struck,
killing most still inside. Years later remains of the school, now the tomb of
those killed, the Seismatias , remained a visible reminder of the tragedy
(Plut. Cim . 16.5).
The Messenian helots,
ever dangerous, quickly seized the moment and rose in rebellion, pressing the
Spartans hard. Establishing a formidable position on Mt. Ithome, the Messenians
repelled successive Spartan attacks. In one of these Arimnestus, Mardonius ’
killer at Plataea, died with three hundred others in the battle of Stenyclerus,
having taken on the Messenians unaided (Hdt. 9.64.2). So severe was the
situation that the Spartans appealed to the Athenians for aid. A lone Spartan
envoy appeared before the Athenians, a simple and silent suppliant. Moved by
this appeal, Cimon led a thousand Athenian volunteers to rescue the Spartans.
Soon after arriving, however, the Spartans worried about their would – be
saviors. Perhaps afraid that the democratic Athenians might switch sides and
help the Messenians, the Spartans told the Athenians that their help was no
longer required.
This Spartan volte –
face ruined Cimon ’s stature in Athens and explains the circumstances of his
ostracism (c. 461) engineered by his opponents. When fighting with the Spartans
flared up and that with the Persians soured in Egypt and the east, Pericles and
others called him home, soon sending him off to Cyprus where he died
campaigning. But before his death he managed to bring about a five – year peace
between Athens and Sparta (c. 452/1). This was only a temporary cessation in
the hostilities. Relations between the two states would harden considerably in
the following years.
But the Spartans still
needed help against the Messenians and called in assistance from other
communities, perhaps thought more trustworthy than the Athenians. The struggle
with the helots, especially those of Messenia continued for years. Those Messenians holding out in their mountain
stronghold on Ithome (as late as 456?) finally agreed to terms with the
Spartans, only too happy to grant their safe exit. The Messenians found
protection with Athenians who were just as happy to settle these battle –
hardened veterans at Naupactus, a port in Ozolian Locris, which guarded the
northern approaches to the Corinthian Gulf (Thuc. 1.103.1 – 3).
After the Persian
Wars, Athens and Sparta had taken divergent paths. Sparta remained an old –
fashioned tribal community whose goal focused on preserving the status quo –
maintaining control over the Peloponnesians to ensure control over the helots.
Athens, however, was becoming increasingly a ‘ modern ’ state where, as Pericles
emphasizes in Thucydides, democracy had reshaped its citizens into lovers of
the polis . Democratic institutions
established at the end of the sixth century continued to be expanded and refined
throughout the fifth – magistrates with defined tenures of office ce, a
functioning assembly that wielded real authority, law courts and juries that
expressed the will of the people. To
maintain this development – and the wealth of empire that came with it – Athens
had to stay the course, to exercise power and authority wherever possible.
But this Athenian reality may be expanded. Political scientist John Mearsheimer has argued that democratic states are as driven by power politics as their authoritarian counterparts and practice similar policies of aggression. Such analysis fi ts democratic Athens in the middle years of the fi fth century. In stark contrast to slow and ‘ conservative ’ Sparta, as the Corinthians emphasized in an illuminating comparison (Thuc. 1.70), Athens constantly looked for opportunity wherever it could be found. The tensions between these two states were not only between a ‘ land ’ power and a ‘ sea ’ power, but between two communities that for more than two generations had been heading in opposite directions.
A long-term peace
treaty between Athens and Sparta in 445 proved illusory, though, for as
Pericles put down several revolts within the empire he alarmed the Spartans. In
440-439, for instance, Samos revolted and received some aid from Persia, only
to be crushed in an eight-month blockade and siege by Pericles and his
reinforced fleet of 160 triremes of Athens and another 55 from Chios and
Lesbos. As penalties, Samos lost her autonomy and navy altogether. Then, in
435, war broke out on the Adriatic coast-Corinth of the Peloponnesian League
and Epidamnus (later Dyrrachium, modern Durazzo) against Corcyra (Corfu)-
during which, the next year, the Corcyran fleet destroyed or captured 75
Corinthian triremes in a naval battle off Actium, then blockaded and captured
Epidamnus. Angered by this reverse, Corinth created a 150-trireme fleet of new
and allied Peloponnesian vessels, whereupon Athens gave support-10 triremes-to
Corcyra. In the naval battle off the Sybota Islands in 433 Corinth claimed 60
Corcyran ships, but was checked from finishing the job by the Athenian
intervention.
Athens’ brief war
against a Spartan ally, Corinth, now precipitated the general Peloponnesian War
in 431 between the two major powers of the Greek world-already mutually
suspicious competitors. For ten years Athens pitted her maritime strategy
against the armies of continental Sparta. Aided by allied vessels from Chios
and Lesbos, the Athenians used their navy to blockade and raid the
Peloponnesus, the Ionian coast of Asia Minor and the Gulf of Corinth, while
Spartan and Boeotian armies ravaged the Attican countryside, leading to a
strategic stalemate. When, in 429, a Corinthian-Spartan fleet of 47 and then 77
triremes attempted to wrest command of the Gulf of Corinth from an Athenian
squadron of 20 galleys under Phormio, he routed it in two successive
engagements at Chalcis and Naupactus (Lepanto). However, the cramped conditions
of insular, walled-in Athens gave rise to a disastrous plague which claimed the
life of the brilliant Pericles in 429. His successors, notably Cleon and
Demosthenes, continued his strategy by suppressing revolts in Lesbos and
Corcyra in 427, but began to overextend Athenian energies by carrying the war
overland into Boeotia and overseas into Sicily.
Then, in 425,
Demosthenes brought the war home to Sparta by taking the coastal city of Pylos
and offshore Sphacteria by amphibious operations, capturing a Spartan fleet in
the process. Athenian warships also occupied the island of Kythera to further
strangle Peloponnesian overseas communications, and the theater of active
fighting shifted northward to mainland Boeotia and Thrace, where the Spartans
tried to cut the Athenian grain routes to the Black Sea. Refusing to make peace
following the success at Pylos, Athens suffered sufficiently in the north-where
Cleon met his death-to accept a settlement in 421.
But Athens had become
so aggressive, particularly under the new leadership of Alcibiades, that cold
war ensued throughout the Aegean and finally grew into a full-blown world war.
While Sparta crushed a revolt by Argos and other cities, Alcibiades used 30
triremes to virtually annihilate the small island state of Melos in 416 and
then to extend the Athenian Empire west to Sicily. Little had happened there
until 415 when the cities of Segesta and Leontini appealed to Athens for help
against Syracuse, ally of Corinth. The next year Alcibiades and Nicias led a
fleet of 136 galleys to Catana, Sicily, followed later by reinforcements under
Demosthenes. Alcibiades fled his political enemies by defecting to Sparta,
which now rallied to the side of Syracuse and again declared open war on
Athens.
An Athenian blockade
of Syracuse was broken by a skirmish with a Spartan Corinthian squadron in 413,
thus opening maritime communications between Syracuse, Sparta and Corinth.
Athens tried to disrupt these connections by stationing a 33-ship squadron off
the Gulf of Corinth, only to have it ravaged by 25 Corinthian triremes equipped
with a new, reinforced prow for bows-on ramming. Then the Syracusans blocked
the 115 Athenian triremes returning to the blockade in the harbor of Syracuse
by sinking several hulks at the harbor entrance. There, after several
skirmishes, on September 9, 74 Syracusan triremes – all reinforced with the new
Corinthian prow-pressed in on the cautious Nicias and aggressive Demosthenes.
In cramped waters that prevented the use of their diekplous and periplous
maneuvers, the Athenian fleet was roundly defeated, losing 50 triremes sunk to
30 of Syracuse. Trapped, the Athenians scuttled their surviving craft and
attempted to escape overland, only to be pursued and captured, Nicias and
Demosthenes being executed. Still, the loss of 200 triremes did not deter
Athens from raising another fleet and conniving successfully to get Alcibiades
back from Sparta to command it. More colonies revolted, Persia intervened on
the side of Sparta, and long-quiescent Carthage became involved in the Sicilian
theater. The Peloponnesian War had become general.
Because of the
remarkable Athenian ability to recover from the disaster in Syracuse and retain
command of the Aegean, the issue would have to be settled at sea-for which
non-maritime Sparta only slowly and with great difficulty prepared itself. A
general Ionian revolt against Athens in 412 resulted from the news from
Syracuse, but under the inspired political and naval leadership of Alcibiades
between 411 and 407 Athens so isolated rebellious Lesbos, Chios, Thasos and
Euboea by his naval and amphibious victories that pro-Athenian parties managed
to return to power throughout the Aegean, with Samos being restored as the
staunchest of Athenian allies and main naval base in the eastern Aegean. Sparta
developed a fleet to cut Athenian supply routes to the Black Sea, but its
various inexperienced commanders suffered disastrous defeats at the hands of
Alcibiades, in 411 at Cynossema and Abydos and in 410 at Cyzicus, where the
main Spartan fleet was wiped out. Alcibiades restored Athenian control over the
Hellespont, only to be removed from command by his political enemies in 407.
Sparta built another
fleet of 170 triremes, a contingent of which under Lysander won a small
engagement at Notium in Asia Minor, and then moved against Lesbos under
Callicratidas. This fleet trapped 70 Athenian triremes under Conon in the
roadstead of Mytilene, only to be attacked and defeated by a relieving force of
150 triremes from Athens off Arginusae which sank or took 70 ships and killed
Callicratidas. By now, the Athenian thalassocracy had degenerated into a
military despotism which executed six admirals, allegedly for their poor
performance at the battle. By contrast, Sparta placed its fortunes in the hands
of Lysander, who cemented relations with Persia and took the offensive at sea
with yet another fleet. The Athenian fleet of 180 ships under Conon moved to
Aegospotami near the Hellespont to guard the supply route and in 405 was there
surprised at anchor and on the beach by Lysander, whose fleet made quick work
of the helpless Athenians, destroying some 170 triremes. With Athenian
lifelines to the Black Sea now severed and the fleet destroyed, all Aegean
cities submitted to Spartan sea power, and Lysander commenced a land-sea siege
of Athens itself. In April 404 Athens surrendered.
As long as Athens had
followed Themistocles and Pericles in their maritime strategy aimed at
commanding only the sea, she had prospered, but Athenian commitments on the
mainland and abroad in Sicily had dangerously overextended her resources and
irreparably undermined the thalassocracy. With the demise of Athens, maritime
stability collapsed in the Aegean, and the victor states hastened to improve
their fortunes.
