SCRIPT - Geostrategy of the Peloponnesian War, Part 2: Pericles vs Archidamus (08/12/2019)

Geostrategy of the Peloponnesian War, Part 2: Pericles vs Archidamus

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 This is a video series I originally made for CaspianReport on the geostrategic analysis of the Peloponnesian War.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.

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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!