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Transcript
11/2/2011
L18.
Peloponnesian War 2
HIST 225
Fall 2011
Peloponnesian War
Peace of Nicias breaks down
418 Battle of Mantinea
• proxy war (Argos vs. Tegea)
• Sparta almost loses but wins in the end
• reestablished her hegemony over Pelo after being weak
416 Melos crushed by Athens
• Delian fleet sails to island of Melos
• Athenian soldiers walk in and demand their surrender
“Melian Dialogues”
– “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what
they must.”
– The Athenians further suggest that the Spartans are no
strangers to this principle, and thus that the Spartans will
not assist the weak Melians if doing so is to Sparta's
disadvantage.
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Phase 2: Exporting the War West
Sicilian Expedition (415-413)
• Athens spends all its resources to “help” small
Greek polis in Sicily
– Nicias
– Alcibiades
– largest fleet ever assembled by Athens
• Syracuse asks Sparta for aid
• Sparta eventually wins the conflict
• Athens forced to withdraw
War breaks out in
the West
416
two cities in Sicily go to war
– Segesta
– Selinus
• Selinus was joined by Syracuse, a colony of Corinth and
implied ally of Sparta
• Segestans turned to Athens.
An embassy of Egesta asked for 60 ships with men from
Athens.
• Alcibiades saw this opportunity to carve out $ and
political power
• After a speech by Alcibiades to the ekklesia, Athenians
voted for over 200!
• By this time Alcibiades was becoming too powerful for
jealous political opponents to endure.
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Differing Strategies
Nicias
• wants slower, quieter planning
before rushing off to help some
“foreigners”
• loses debate but forced to joint
command of fleet
• wanted to scout out enemy
• lays siege to Syracuse
• trapped and forced to withdraw
• Athenians slaughtered (413)
Alcibiades
• argues that war is good for all
and Athens can conquer and
spread its power West
• Eve of embarking, called in for
religious improprieties
• starts by invading neighboring
city
• Defects to Sparta
• assists them with war in Attica
• sleeps with King’s wife
Alcibiades: James Bond
of Ancient Greece
Athenians still maintained respect for aristocrats
• Alcibiades was stylish and flamboyant with
tremendous ambition
• He fought bravely in 424 at the battle of Delium,
which the Athenians lost to the Boeotians.
• His life was saved in that battle by none other
than Socrates, the philosopher, who became a
lifelong friend.
• Some say he wanted to be the new Pericles
– Initially favored democracy
– Over time demonstrated that he was more selfserving than ideologically wed to democracy
Alcibiades’ Speech
“Know that we shall increase our power at
home by this adventure abroad . . . Let us
humble the pride of the Peloponnesians by
sailing off to Sicily . . . And at the same time we
shall become either masters, as we very easily
may, of the whole of Hellas . . . Or in any case
ruin the Syracusians, to no small advantage to us
and our allies.”
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Nicias’ Speech
“I say then, that you wish, though leaving many
enemies behind you here, to bring hither fresh ones besides,
by sailing there. And you fancy, perhaps, that the treaty that
has been made by you affords some round of confidence. But
tho as long as you remain quiet, that will, indeed, be a
treaty—in name (for this condition have certain persons here
and among your enemies brought it by their intrigues), yet if
we are ever defeated with any considerable force, those who
hate us will quickly make an attack upon us; seeing, in the first
place, that the arrangement was made of necessity by them,
under circumstances of disaster, and of greater discredit to
them than to us; and, secondly, that in this very arrangement
we have many subjects open to debate.
Nicias’ Speech, (cont.)
There are some, too, who have not yet acceded
even to this composition, such as it is, and those
not the least powerful states; but some of them are
at war with us downright, and, in the case of others,
because the Lacedæmonians remain quiet at
present, they too are restrained by truces from one
ten days to another. But probably, if they should
find our power divided (which we are now so
anxious to bring about), they would with all their
might attack us, in conjunction with the Siceliots,
whose alliance they would in time past have valued
most highly.”
The “Great” Sicilian Expedition
• 134 triremes
• 70 supply vessels
• 27,000 men
– Treasury is emptied
• Three Commanders to keep things balanced
– Alcibiades
– Nicias
– Lamachus
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Day of the Expedition’s Launch
The night before the fleet sailed
• busts were systematically defaced all
over the city
• the blasphemy was compounded as this
came during the celebration of the
Eleusinian Mysteries.
• Alcibiades was suspected immediately
and called for an inquiry
– Fleet would not sail without him
– Alcibiades’ political enemies arranged for
him to sail with a cloud hanging over him.
The Fleet Arrives in Sicily
• ship summons Alcibiades to return to Athens to
face charges brought by the ekklesia.
– Alcibiades dives into the sea
– defects to Sparta, leaving Nicias and Lamachus in
charge of the operation.
• Syracuse was built on an island and peninsula
defended by an old wall.
– The key to victory was to cut off all escape by land by
spanning the peninsula and reducing the city.
• The Athenians won early victories but then
withdrew to establish winter quarters in Catana,
north of Syracuse.
• The Syracusans used this extra time to throw up
an entirely new and stronger wall, and beg the
Spartans for help.
Alcibiades in Sparta
• On the advice of Alcibiades, Sparta agrees to send
troops to Syracuse
• Sparta occupies the Decelea, near Athens
– prevents Athenians from making use of their land year
round. The fortification disrupted silver production and
freed 20,000 Athenian slaves
• Athenian treasury and emergency reserve fund of
1,000 talents dwindling away
• Athens forced to demand even more tribute from
her subject allies, increasing rebellion within the
Empire
– He then sleeps with Spartan King’s wife (pregnant?)
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Sparta Sends Help
• The Corinthians, the Spartans, and others in
the Peloponnesian League sent more
reinforcements to Syracuse
• Athenians sent another hundred ships and
another 5,000 troops to Sicily.
• Under Gylippus, the Syracusans and their allies
were able to decisively defeat the Athenians on
land
– Syracusans to build a navy, Athenian fleet was
destroyed,
– Athenian army, divided and defeated
– entire Athenian army was sold off into slavery.
9,000 Athenian hoplites had perished
Real concern was the loss of the huge fleet dispatched to Sicily.
Triremes could be replaced, but the 25,000 experienced sailors lost in
Sicily were irreplaceable and Athens had to rely on ill-trained slaves to
form the backbone of her new fleet.
Aftermath of the “Expedition”
• Most of the original 25,000 man force died due to
incompetent leadership, especially that of Nicias
– lunar eclipse prevented a withdraw
• Demosthenes and Nicias were condemned to
death by the Spartans.
• The last battle is humiliating for Athenians back
home as they hear horrible stories of fellow
citizens cut off from their ships, dying of thirst.
• Surviving Athenian prisoners are forced to work
in stone quarries on a diet of bread and water for
six months.
• Spartans intervene to make sure they are not put
to death by Syracusans.
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Fate of Athenian and Allied Survivors
(Thucydides, 7.87)
• The prisoners in the quarries were at first harshly treated by the
Syracusans. Crowded in a narrow hole, without any roof to cover
them, the heat of the sun and the stifling closeness of the air
tormented them during the day, and then the nights which came on
autumnal and chilly made them ill by the violence of the change;
besides, as they had to do everything in the same place for want of
room, and the bodies of those who died of their wounds or from
the variation in the temperature, or from similar causes, were left
heaped together one upon another, intolerable stenches arose;
while hunger and thirst never ceased to afflict them, each man
during eight months having only half a pint of water and a pint of
grain given him daily. In short, no single suffering to be
apprehended by men thrust into such a place was spared them. For
some seventy days they thus lived all together, after which all,
except the Athenians and any Siceliots or Italians who had joined in
the expedition, were sold. The total number of prisoners taken it
would be difficult to state exactly, but it could not have been less
than 7,000.
Athenian Reaction to Sicily
• The expedition and consequent disaster left Athens reeling.
• In Athens, the citizens did not, at first, believe the defeat
• When the magnitude of the disaster became evident, there
was a general panic.
• Attica seemed free for the taking, as the Spartans were so
close by at the Decelea.
• The defeat caused a great shift in policy for many other states
– Neutral states joined with Sparta, assuming that Athens' defeat
was imminent.
– Many Delian League allies in the also revolted
• Athens began to rebuild its fleet, there was little they could
do about the revolts for the time being.
Athens Recovers
• Alcibiades (who pissed off Spartan king) escapes to
Samos
– wants to come back to Athens if they reinstate him
– given command of Samian fleet
411 Sparta makes alliance with Persia for a fleet
• Battle of Syme
– indecisive
410 Battle of Cyzicus
• Athenian fleet obliterates Spartan fleet
– Between 410 and 406, Athens won a continuous string of
victories and eventually recovered large portions of its
empire
• due, in no small part, to Alcibiades
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Thucydides (6.15) on Alcibiades
• [H]e was very much in the public eye, and his
enthusiasm for horse-breeding and other
extravagances went beyond what his fortune
could supply. This, in fact, later on had much
to do with the downfall of the city of Athens.
For most people became frightened at a quality
in him which was beyond the normal and
showed itself both in the lawlessness of his
private life and habits and in the spirit in which
he acted on all occasions….Although in a
public capacity his conduct of the war was
excellent, his way of life made him
objectionable to everyone as a person
Spartan Naval Commander Lysander
– not of royal family line
– skilled strategist, statesman and speaker
– was able to get Persian money to build a Spartan fleet
• After being removed from command briefly was
reinstated and became the victorious Spartan
general
406 cuts off Athenian grain supply from
Hellespont
405 Battle of Aegospotami
– destroys Athenian fleet
Defeat of Athens
• Spartan King Pausanias lays siege to Athens
• Lysander blockades Piraeus
• Theramenes started negotiations with Lysander
– took three months, but in the end Lysander agreed
to terms at Piraeus
Facing starvation and disease from the prolonged
siege, Athens surrendered in 404 BCE
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Lysander’s Puppet government
Initially Spartans wanted to raze Athens
– Lysander said “no!”—honor for defeating Persians
He establishes an the oligarchy called Tyranny of the 30
– under Critias
– included Theramenes as a leading member
• executed a number of citizens
• deprived all but a few of their former rights as citizens of
Athens
• Many of Athens’ former allies now ruled by boards of ten
(decarchy)
• often reinforced with garrisons under a Spartan
commander (harmost)
Resistance by Athens
Tyranny of the 30
• Severely reduced the rights of Athenian citizens.
• Imposing a limit on the number of citizens
allowed to vote
The Athenian general Thrasybulus, had been exiled
from Athens led the democratic resistance to the
new oligarchic government
403 He invades Attica with a small force of exiles
• first defeats Spartan garrison
• forces of the oligarchic government into Battle of
Munychia
– Critias killed in battle.
9