Hi, and welcome to Strategy Stuff. This is a video series I originally made for CaspianReport
on the geostrategic analysis of the Peloponnesian War. Way back in March, I
analyzed the causes of this conflict; and now, as war became a reality, we
examine how Athens and Sparta planned their opening moves.
When war began in 431BC, most Greeks expected
Sparta to defeat Athens within three years. While this piece of conventional
wisdom turned out to be wildly incorrect, its reveals something about how the
Ancient Greeks thought of strategy.
I. The Conventional Strategy of Ancient Greece
Strategies don’t emerge in a vacuum, but are
instead they are influenced by memory, habit, and articles of faith. In this
sense we can talk about a ‘conventional strategy’ in Ancient Greek Warfare, a template
that informed commanders about how wars were fought and what was needed to win.
The key article of faith within this ‘conventional strategy’
was that wars were settled by decisive battles between mobilized armies of
citizens. Greek cities relied on local farms for food, and if an enemy took
them over or destroyed them, surrender and starvation became the only choices.
So cities not only had to force battle with an invading army as soon as
possible, but defeat in battle would also be game over for all intents and
purposes.
This is what both sides in the Peloponnesian War
expected as war broke out. But even as commanders thought in terms of the conventional
strategy, the strategic ground was shifting under their feet. Significantly,
Sparta and Athens were cities that had, to some extent, exploited the internal
logic of the conventional strategy to achieve an unequal dominance in war.
To use a gamer term, Sparta had been ‘breaking the
meta’ for centuries before the Peloponnesian War. By subjugating the
Messenians, Sparta freed its own citizens from farm work and turned them into
unparalleled warriors capable of winning any decisive battle and therefore any
war. This was the basis for their hegemony over Greece.
By contrast, Athens’ exploit was meant to ensure that
it would not fall even after defeat in land battle. First, it established an
overseas grain supply from its empire and trade network, which could replace
any lost food production if local farms fell into enemy hands. To protect these
flows in turn from enemy interception, it built the premier navy in Greece and
also a system of Long Walls linking Athens’ port with the actual city. So long
as the fleet and walls remained, Athens would not only be spared the threat of
starvation, but also the need to immediately respond to enemy invasion, allowing
it to execute the strategy it wanted with minimal interference.
The Greeks appreciated that Sparta would inevitably
dominate if the coming War was fought as the conventional strategy dictated.
They were less confident that Athens’ little-tested defenses would actually save
the city from its fate in such a situation. After all, even people who
recognized that the Athenians couldn’t be smoked out by burning local farms
thought that maybe honor would force them into decisive battle anyway. After
all, wasn’t that the only way to fight a war?
II. The Geostrategic Situation at the Start of War
Before
we look at the opening moves of Athens and Sparta, we will first examine the
geostrategic position at the start of the Peloponnesian War in 431BC.
The
War mainly involved the cities in the area of modern-day Greece and the western
coast of Turkey. Roughly speaking, Sparta and its allies controlled the
Peloponnese and Central Greece, while Athens and its tributaries controlled the
islands and the overseas coasts, with toeholds on the Greek mainland around
Athens itself, the Greek Northeast, and a Northwestern base at Naupactus.
The
mainland contained most of Ancient Greece’s population and thus the Spartan
alliance enjoyed a 3-1 numerical superiority in soldiers. That said, this
alliance was only loosely unified and consisted of two main wings: Sparta’s
Peloponnesian League southwest of Athens, and Thebes’ Boeotian League northwest
of Athens. Even within the Peloponnesian League, major allies like Corinth and
Elis would argue, non-cooperate or even defect from Sparta if their interests
dictated so.
Another problem facing Sparta was physical fragmentation.
Athens’ empire formed a U shape around the Spartan alliance, which combined
with Athens’ naval dominance cut the Spartans from the rest of the
Mediterranean and rendered all its coastline vulnerable. Furthermore, Athens
itself lay in between Thebes and Sparta, complicating coordination between the
two wings. This and the aforementioned lack of unity would erode much of
Sparta’s numerical advantage.
In contrast to Spartan insecurity, most of Athens’
Delian League was essentially invulnerable thanks to Athens’ sea control. Even
the tributaries themselves, resentful of the Athenian yoke, recognized that
without the ability to link up with Sparta, any rebellion would only result in
an overwhelming Athenian vengeance. There was therefore little choice but to
continue paying tribute to Athens, and as the city’s coffers swelled, its
ability to sustain its unique strategic exploit, rather than living
harvest-to-harvest like the rest of Greece, increased.
Two additional factors need to be considered in
brief. First was the impending expiry of Sparta’s peace with its traditional
rival Argos, which would place a hostile power right next to Sparta by 421BC,
ten years’ time. Sparta undoubtedly felt some time pressure to wrap things up
before then.
Second was Spartan ally Corinth’s extensive links
with the broader Mediterranean world, through former colonies ranging from the
Bosphorus to Syracuse in Sicily. Syracuse, in particular, was always seen by
the Peloponnesians as a potential balance-tipper in ending Athens’ control of
the sea. Less positively, however, friendly colonies in distress also
threatened to draw off Spartan power into irrelevant theaters.
With this geostrategic overview, we can start
looking at how Athens and Sparta planned out their war.
III. Athens: Pericles’ Strategy – A Strategic
Defensive?
Scholars have continued to debate Athens’ opening
strategy to this day, because it seems so out-of-sync with the city’s
geostrategic position. The Athenian Empire both enveloped and divided the
Spartan alliance; its navy could move forces faster and further than any
Spartan general; its overseas food supply allowed it to choose its battles
regardless of the enemy’s action. Especially from a modern perspective, this
was an invitation to action: where defensively or offensively, Athenian troops
could have raided, unbalanced and out-maneuvered even Spartans for strategic
effect.
Instead, the plan of Athens’ longtime leader
Pericles seemed to hinge on inaction. Pericles asked the Athenians not to
battle Sparta: instead, they should focus on the navy, reject expansionism, and
simply maintain the Delian League. And Pericles practiced what he preached:
apart from the continuing campaign against rebels in the Northeast, Athens’
actions under his rule were mainly limited to large but short-term raids
against neighboring cities, as well as naval demonstrations in the Peloponnese.
For a city of 300 triremes, 20,000 soldiers and 10 years’ worth of financial
reserves, this has often been seen as an underwhelming performance. Was
Pericles hoping to win by doing nothing?
In fact, this is indeed what sympathetic scholars,
starting with Thucydides himself, have made of Pericles’ strategy. The
reasoning goes like this: as the defender, Athens’ goal was merely to preserve
the status quo, both in terms of territory but its ability to exercise
influence over its portion of Greece. Under the conventional strategy, this
would mean at least holding off Sparta in battle; but Pericles recognized that
Athens’ overseas food supply meant that Sparta could raze all the local farms
and still achieve nothing. So why take on the risk of fighting Sparta in the
first place? Better to just wait for Sparta to realize that its vaunted
military strength could not overturn the status quo and peace out at
minimal cost to Athens. Seen in this light, the various half-hearted raids
Athens made were of purely symbolic value, done to exercise the troops or avoid
accusations of cowardice.
Is this a reasonable interpretation of Pericles’
opening move? Those who have watched the previous video might have concluded
that Athens was hardly a status quo power satisfied with its lot, as it
sought to displace Corinth in the Greek Northeast and Northwest. Pericles would
also use the War to annex Athens’ historic rival Aegina in 431BC, and Athens’
aggression after Pericles’ death undoubtedly indicate a large well of support
for Athenian expansionism.
Furthermore, we should also ask if Pericles really
thought that maintaining the current status quo was something worth
risking war over. For him, status quo might have meant regaining the
territories lost in the First Peloponnesian War, which would mean retaking
Central Greece and boxing Sparta back into the Peloponnese. But even
discounting this clearly provocative goal, the current status quo had
still resulted in yet another war with Sparta after just 15 years of a 30-year
peace. Did Pericles really want to re-fight Sparta every generation or so?
This characterization of Pericles’ opening move as
‘defensive’ comes in part thanks to Thucydides, who with the hindsight of
Athens’ future disasters called Pericles’ plan ‘prudent’ compared with what
followed. But was it Pericles’ goals that were ‘prudent’, or instead the means
he would use to achieve them?
IV. Athens: Pericles’ Strategy – A Strategic
Offensive
In contrast to the ‘strategically defensive’
interpretation of Pericles’ strategy, the ‘strategically offensive’
interpretation argues that Pericles’ ultimate goal was for Athens to seize the
leadership of Greece from Sparta. To achieve this, Athens would have to go
beyond stalemate, and actually break the military might of Sparta.
Under the conventional strategy, this would mean
the Athenian army trying to defeat the Spartan alliance, which was clearly
suicide. Luckily for Athens, its navy and empire shielded the city from being
forced into such a decision. Athens therefore had the luxuries of time and
strategic autonomy – it could choose when and where to strike.
Sparta’s key weakness was clear – its army might be
invincible in battle, but its relatively small population meant that to win
wars, Sparta needed its allies. And these allies were independent powers, not
the tributaries that were shackled to Athens. If placed under enough pressure
over time, these allies might well defect to Athens, deducting from Spartan
strength and adding to Athens’ own. And eventually, Athens would achieve such a
numerical advantage that its alliance would be able to take on and defeat
Sparta’s in decisive battle.
Seen in this light, Pericles’ underwhelming raids
around Greece now become the beginning of a concerted, long-term pressure
campaign against Sparta’s allies – the desired effect of what Thucydides called
‘encircling the Peloponnesus with War’. He targeted cities that were either
once Athenian allies, like Megara or the towns near Argos, or were
alternatively fellow democracies, most notably Elis. Thousands of Athenian
soldiers would amphibiously land near these cities, carrying out a bit of
raiding before being transported to their next destination. The goal was to
demonstrate Athenian strength and, through that, encourage pro-Athenian
factions in these cities to seize power and defect from Sparta.
For these operations, Pericles was willing to
deploy a sizeable portion of Athenian manpower – about 20-50% per voyage. If
so, why use his forces in so limited a fashion? The reason lies in personal
experience, and this is where Thucydides’ assessment of ‘prudence’ comes into
play.
In 460BC, two years into Pericles’ long leadership,
the First Peloponnesian War erupted between Athens and Sparta. Over the next
decade, Athens would deploy troops not just in Greece, but also all across the
Eastern Mediterranean. Overstretched and overwhelmed, Athenian forces met with
disaster in Egypt and Cyprus – which, in turn, encouraged its tributaries to
revolt. This stretched Athenian forces even further, and eventually, the city
had no choice but to abandon its conquest of Central Greece, and hand the
region over to its opponent Thebes.
The lesson was clear: too many commitments would
overstretch Athenian resources, which in turn could reverse any strategic gain
that Athens had previously obtained. As such, Pericles preferred to focus his
forces on a few sure-win targets, intending to capture and secure them before
methodically resuming the advance. After all, Athens did not lack for time.
All in all, the ‘strategically offensive’
interpretation of Pericles’ strategy puts a different spin on Athens’ opening
moves. The emphasis is not on Pericles telling Athenians to stay inside the
walls, but instead on the often-overlooked raids on vulnerable cities. Pericles
was not trying to exhaust the Spartans, he hoped to eventually crush them and
secure Athens’ leadership once and for all. In my view, this interpretation
seems to be the more reasonable one.
V. Athens: Assessing Pericles’ Strategy
Defensive or offensive, both interpretations have
Pericles assume that Athens would ride out the stresses of conflict better than
Sparta. That assumption would quickly be called into question.
Athens’ political stability was in doubt from the
beginning. Even before the War Pericles was already embroiled in a major
scandal, and some have even accused him of starting the War as a distraction! But
if anything, the War made him more vulnerable: by its second Year, continued
Spartan invasions had deposed Pericles from his office, albeit temporarily, as
the frustrated Athenians thought about suing for peace.
The city’s finances were also shaky. War spending
was tremendous, with rebel suppression in the Northeast alone consuming Athens’
entire annual tribute. Pericles in 3 years of low-intensity war would spend a
third of his city’s reserves, and soon Athens was levying higher taxes on its
unhappy landowners and even more unhappy tributaries.
These political and financial troubles, by
themselves, would have undermined Pericles’ optimism that Athens could sustain
a long war. But then, starting in the second year of the War, came the
notorious Plague of Athens. Exacerbated by Pericles’ decision to cram evacuated
farmers into the city, the Plague would wipe out 20-30% of the city’s manpower
and up to 40% of its population. Among its victims was Pericles himself, who
succumbed in 429BC. With his death, the city’s strategic direction fell into
the hands of a new, untested generation of leaders.
VI. Sparta: Archidamus’ Strategy
In contrast to Athens, much less debate surrounds
Sparta’s opening moves, because on the surface, it seems like a repeat of the conventional
strategy: the Spartan coalition, led by King Archidamus II, marched out seeking
decisive battle, only to be foiled by the Long Walls and Pericles’ foresight.
It’s easy to assume that Spartans saw war strategy
as just a question of fighting battles. Yet Archidamus thought otherwise: in
his celebrated pre-War analysis, the King recognized that the conventional
strategy would not generate a favorable solution, because Athens would only
surrender if it lost control of the sea, and achieving that would require ships
and money that Sparta did not have. Archidamus instead proposed a program of diplomatic
and military buildup: if Sparta was clearly seen to be strengthening, Athens
would naturally be deterred.
The King’s analysis shows what he considered
Sparta’s most effective weapon to be: not actual, but threatened military
action. Unlike typical hegemons who possess a dominant resource base, it was
Sparta’s military reputation that instead kept larger powers in line. This
reputation had to be protected – and the more it was tested, the more likely it
would be destroyed, and take down Sparta’s hegemony with it. In other words, it
was possible to win against Athens yet still lose the hegemony.
The easiest way for that to happen was to have
Sparta sidelined in the coming conflict. Having failed to prevent war,
Archidamus’ backup strategy called for an allied navy of 500 ships. While some
of his less-worldly colleagues might have imagined Sparta becoming a naval
power overnight, inevitably this fleet would have come from allies like Corinth
or Syracuse. Would Sparta still be calling the shots if somebody else was doing
all the work?
As it turned out, Sparta’s allies were unable to
mobilize such a fleet, but Sparta still needed to demonstrate some contribution
to the War. And so it was that Archidamus, despite his opposition, led the
invasion of Athens’ core territory of Attica in 431BC.
Archidamus’ invasion has often been criticized as
lethargic, but it makes sense from a reputation-preservation standpoint: the
last time Sparta marched against Athens in 510BC, its soldiers had paraded on
the Acropolis. Greeks now expected history to repeat itself.
But back then, Athens had no Long Walls. The first
thing Archidamus did in his invasion was to attack an Athenian border fort, whose
continued resistance after two weeks laid bare the miserable state of Spartan
siegecraft. The next year, Spartans and Thebans besieged the village of Plataea,
and it would take them two years to overcome resistance. Taking Athens would
have been impossible, especially in the couple of weeks the Spartan army could
stay in the field for.
As such, rather than risking reputation on inevitable
failure, Archidamus decided to slowly inch towards Athens, giving ample
opportunity for the Athenians to lose their nerve. He also tried to cause
political chaos by razing the district of Acharnia, home to many of Athens’
soldiers, but only managed to force Pericles out for a brief period of time.
With his viable options exhausted, the King led his army back to Sparta,
without a victory but at least without a loss.
Archidamus recognized early on that Sparta had no
viable strategy to win against Athens, at least not in the short term. He also
understood that Sparta’s goals could not be limited just to beating Athens, but
instead on preserving its always-precarious hegemony. Under this logic he would
lead increasingly-symbolic invasions until his death in 427BC, and before long,
the Spartans would learn to appreciate his foresight.
VII. Conclusion
It may seem odd that a whole video has been devoted
to analyzing the underwhelming first few years of the Peloponnesian War, but
Pericles and Archidamus would set the strategic direction for the generation to
follow. Athens needed to find a way to break Sparta’s land power; while Sparta
needed to win at sea in a way that would not endanger its broader hegemony.
Their opening strategies reflected the concerns of experienced statesmen who
understood the fragility of state power: but ultimately neither delivered
results, and with their passing a new generation sought ways of overcoming the emerging
deadlock.
*
If you liked this video, please do give a like and
subscribe. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them in the
comments section. This is part of a longer video series I originally made for
CaspianReport, and the rest should be coming out shortly. As many of you might
know and have kindly written to me about, I’ve been very slow on video
production because of events in my home city Hong Kong, which have gone on for
far longer than anybody expected. Will I write something on it? Actually, I
already have, and will get the video done once I put out the remaining 3 videos
in the Peloponnesian War series. Thank you for all of your patience and take
care!
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