The Peloponnesian War

      Corinth was a rich trading city like Athens, but it belonged to Sparta's Peloponnesian League and so remained quite independent. Athens kept Corinth's merchants away from the profitable trade of the Aegean area and provoked Megara, another state, by likewise excluding her from ports of the Athenian Empire. When Athens began to interfere with Corinth's colonies, it was accused of breaking its peace treaty with Sparta and provoked the so-called Peloponneisan War. This was the longest, most bitter and costly war the Greeks ever fought. Almost every city-state aligned itself with one side or the other. At the outset, Athens seemed the strongest of the combatants and the best prepared for war.
      Pericles knew that Attica (greater Athens) could be invaded yearly by the more powerful land army of the Spartans. He therefore arranged for food to be imported and for the people to take refuge behind the Long Walls connecting the seaport of Piraeus with Athens whenever Attica was attacked. The Athenian fleet was strong and could raid the coast of the Peloponnese at will, and there was a big surplus in Athen's treasury. Prospects for victory looked good.
      What Pericles could not have foreseen was the plague that struck Athens in 430 BCE, the second year of the Peloponnesian War. Athenians had sought refuge between the Long Walls when Sparta invaded that year, and in the cramped, unsanitary conditions, a horrible disease struck. Thucydides, who wrote a history of this war, caught the plague himself but survived. He left a detailed description of its terrible symptoms. In two years, perhaps a third of the Athenians died, including their great leader Pericles. With Pericles out of the picture, the two opponents were now on more equal ground.
     The conflict lasted for 27 years. First one side gained a strategic victory, then the other. After 300 Spartiates were trapped and captured alive off the coast of the Peloponnese, Sparta wanted peace. Then Sparta successfully attacked Athens's allies in the North Aegean, and Athens wanted peace. Finally, King Brasidas of Sparta, and Cleon, the leader of the radical democrats in Athens, were killed in battle at Amphipolis in the North Aegean. This provoked a brief peace in 421 BCE.
      Athens found a new leader who pushed for further hostilities. He was Alcibiades, the nephew and ward of Pericles. In 418 BCE, Athens put together an alliance to fight Sparta on land; the attack was not very successful. In 416 BCE, Athens attacked Melos, killing or enslaving its population and bringing this island into the Athenian Empire. Sparta was on the point of attacking Athens again.
      At this critical point, Athens foolishly decided to try to conquer Syracuse, the most powerful city on the distant island of Sicily. this two-year campaign (415-413 BCE) required huge quantities of ships, manpower, and money to undertake. It was a total disaster. Alcibiades strongly supported the expedition and could have saved it, but having been charged with a school boy prank at a drinking party, he was forced to flee to Sparta for several years. When he finally returned to Athens to help its sinking cause in 411 BCE, he was able to turn the war effort around for a short time. When he went into exile again for losing a small naval engagement, Athens could find no other general to take his place.
      By 408 BCE, the Persians had begun supporting the Spartans, providing ships to fight the Athenians. the Spartan general, Lysander, developed more effective ways to combat the Athenian fleet. Athens became desperate as its money for new ships dwindled and losses at sea continued. After one Athenian victory at sea in 406 BCE, a storm suddenly blew up and prevented the Athenians from picking up 2000 men drifting away from their wrecked triremes. Athens recalled its ten commanders to stand trial for this added loss. Only six of them dared to return for the trial, including Pericles, the son of the great Athenian leader of the same name. All six were found guilty and executed.
      The decisive, final battle occurred in 405 BCE at Aegospotami in the Hellespont area. Athens put one last fleet on the water, depending on it for victory. After days of maneuvering against the Peloponnesian fleet without a battle, the Athenian sailors beached their ships to collect food for their lunch as they had on previous days. The Pelopponnesians caught them off guard, burned or captured their ships, and rounded up the sailors. The end had come. Just as the Athenians had killed all the men of Melos in 416 BCE and enslaved their women and children, now they could expect the same treatment.
      Sparta's allies, Thebes and Corinth, forcefully encouraged Sparta to do exactly as Athens had done to Melos. What a tragic loss it would have been for Greece. In the end, Sparta spared Athens. As punishment, Athens was required to tear down its Long Walls, surrender all but 12 ships of its fleet, take back its political exiles, and acknowledge Spartan leadership in matters of peace and war.
      The loss of freedom was just the beginning of dark days for the Athenians. Thirty men, backed by a Spartan garrison, were granted the authority to rule in Athens. These men, who came to be  known as the 30 Tyrants, unleashed a reign of terror during which many people were declared outlaws and killed. Over the course of eight months, 1500 men died. Finally, the city was retaken by exiles favouring democracy. The blood bath came to an end in 403 BCE, after which Athens then began a remarkably swift recovery, but it was never again a great power.

Thucydides

      Thucydides, writer of the remarkable history of the Peloponesian War, was old enough to recall and record the war's events right from the outbreak of the hostilities; he also fought in the war as an Athenian commander. His refusal to help the Athenians near Amphipolis in 424 BCE proved to be a disaster for his military career, but a blessing for future generations. Rather than fight, he chose to go into exile instead, and from that neutral vantage point he had a better perspective on all the events of the war. Though he lived to see the end of the Peloponnesian War, his book ends in mid-sentence in the year 411 BCE, seven years from the war's end. It is possible that another Greek historian edited and prepared his account for publication.
      The introduction to The Peloponnesian War tells us much about Thucydides and his goals.

I lived through the whole of it, being of an age to understand what was happening, and I put my mind to the subject so as to get an accurate view of it. It happened, too, that I was banished from my country fro twenty years after my command at Amphipolis; I was what was being done on both sides, particularly on the Peloponnesian side, because of my exile, and this leisure gave me rather exceptional facilities for looking into things.

Thucydides The Peloponnesian War 1.1; V.26

Writing: ECHOES from the Past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd.