The Strategy of the
Peloponnesian War
From 431 to
404BC, Athens, Sparta and their respective allies fought a 27-year-long war spanning
much of Classical Greece and its colonies. This video will assess the
strategies pursued by both sides of the Second Peloponnesian War, and how they
affected the course of the conflict.
Athens and Sparta
Since the
defeat of the 2nd Persian invasion in 479, Athens and Sparta were on
a collision course. Sparta had been the dominant Greek power, but the
foundations of its military might were built upon a shrinking population of citizen-soldiers,
increasingly conscious of their numerical inferiority compared with their
tributary subjects and helot slaves.
Athens, on
the hand, was fast rising. It was already the largest city in Greece, one of
the wealthiest, and certainly one of the more cultured. Under Athenian
leadership, the Delian League, once an anti-Persian defense pact, had become an
informal empire with colonies and subjects across the Aegean. The city was also
active in democracy-promotion, encouraging the poor in other cities to revolt
against their masters in the name of freedom.
Athens was
thus hardly popular across Greece outside of its empire, and many looked to
Sparta for leadership against this threat. This led to one of Thucydides’ most
famous observations.
The Thucydides Trap
Thucydides
offers ‘surface motives’ and ‘real reasons’ for explaining why Sparta declared
war on Athens in 431. On the surface, Sparta was responding to Athenian
provocations against other city states: the latter’s embargo against Megara,
its siege of its ex-ally Potidaea, and its war on Corinth on behalf of Corcyra.
These victims of Athenian aggression appealed to Sparta for help, and the
city-state readily obliged.
However,
Thucydides posits that the ‘real reason’ for the war was that Sparta ‘feared
the growth of the power of the Athenians’: with each passing year, Athens would
gain more resources to influence allies, stir up democrats, and extend its
cultural and political reach. The Athenian-Corcyran alliance linked the Greek
world’s first and second-largest navies together, and Corinth was already
threatening to defect towards Athens if Sparta did not act. Sparta, therefore,
decided on pre-emptive action before its hegemony over Greece passed over to
Athens – and thus fell into what scholars have dubbed the ‘Thucydides Trap’.
The irony is
that since the 440s, Athenian power was on the decline: it had lost influence
over Central Greece after defeat in the First Peloponnesian War, its attempts
to invade the Persian Empire had failed, and it suppressed the revolts of its
subjects only with difficulty.
In any case,
in 432, Sparta issued demands to Athens, demanding a halt to the city’s
aggression as well as the dismantling of the Delian League. These were
rejected, and along with Thebes’ attack on the Athenian ally of Plataea in 431,
most of Classical Greece descended into war.
Archidamian Phase I
The
Peloponnesian War pitted two radically different types of state against each
other: Athens directed a coalition of maritime, commercial and democratic
states, while Sparta’s Peloponnesian League consisted of continental,
agricultural and oligarchic cities. Even the way the two camps were structured
was different: Athens paradoxically exercised dictatorial control over the
Delian League, while Sparta pursued a more consensual approach with its allies.
A key
similarity, however, was that both cities had evolved past the tradition of the
farmer-soldier, campaigning for only a few weeks before returning to his crops.
Sparta, through its helots, and Athens, through grain shipments, were freed
from this burden; their armies were thus, theoretically, able to campaign
anywhere and anytime.
Initially,
both sides tried to win through their own strengths. King Archidamus of Sparta understood
that Athens’ maritime empire was only vulnerable if Sparta took to the seas: he
therefore proposed a strategy where Sparta, over time, would find allies to
fund the construction of a 500-ship fleet able to challenge Athenian maritime
dominance.
But such a
strategy would take time, and in the meantime Sparta risked losing prestige
through inaction. There was, therefore, little else for Archidamus to do but
lead annual invasions of Athens from 431-425 and hope that the Athenians would suicidally
fight the feared Spartan phalanx before the latter exhausted local supplies and
had to retreat.
Unfortunately
for the Spartans, Athens refused to cooperate, having other ideas of how to win
the war. For Athens’ leader Pericles, stalemate was the same thing as victory: time
was on the city’s side, and as long as Sparta didn’t win in the short-run, the
dynamism of Athenian society would bury its enemies in the long-run. Athens
would therefore refuse any sort of battle or risky land operations, focusing
instead on coastal raids launched by its unchallenged navy.
Unlike
Archidamus, Pericles’ strategy did not propose a method, even in the abstract,
on how to beat Sparta on land. The city might have fallen into a reverse
‘Thucydides Trap’, being so confident of its long-term success that it entirely
surrendered the initiative to Sparta. As it turned out, Athens was not as
secure as Pericles might have thought: while it had a reserve of 6,000 talents,
this was only enough to fund the 300-ship Athenian navy for around 2 years, and
by the third year Athens had to demand special tribute from its subjects.
Pericles’
strategy also required evacuating rural refugees into Athens in the face of
Spartan invasion, which led to overcrowding and poor hygiene. Plague broke out
from 430-427, causing the death of a third of Athens’ population, including
Pericles himself. Athens, however, remained capable of fighting and raiding
around enemy territory.
In such a
way, the opening moves of the Peloponnesian War resulted in stalemate. Sparta could
not challenge Athens at sea, while Athens would not fight Sparta on land.
Raiding, invasions, and plague were not enough to decide the outcome of the
war. The next few years would see both sides try out new approaches under new
leaders, in an attempt to break the deadlock.
Archidamian Phase II
Sparta
understood that the Athenian empire was the key to Athens’ capability for war:
without the tribute, ships and soldiers that the Delian League provided, the
city would ultimately fall before the Peloponnesian coalition. Many Athenian
subjects also wished to be freed of the imperial yoke, but while Athenian
maritime dominance existed there was little that Sparta could do to help them,
as demonstrated by Lesbos’ failed revolt in 428.
Still, Sparta
stirred up trouble whenever it could. A major success occurred in 427 when the
Peloponnesians successfully incited Corcyra’s wealthy aristocrats to revolt
against the democracy, causing a destructive civil war that lasted until 425
and effectively knocked the island out of the war.
Sparta also
moved against the parts of the Athenian empire it could reach. In 424, Brasidas
struck out against Athens’ northern subjects in Thrace. Presenting himself as a
liberator for those oppressed by Athens, Brasidas successfully incited most of
these cities to revolt. While he was eventually killed outside the city of
Amphipolis in 422, the region was effectively detached from Athenian control.
For Athens,
Pericles’ death allowed new thinking in the democracy that he once presided
over. Men such as Demosthenes now proposed a more permanent occupation of enemy
territory instead of mere raiding. While still not a strategy to defeat Sparta,
the subsequent capture of ports coerced a few minor settlements to peace out against
Athens.
Most
important, however, were the successes that resulted from the fortification of
the Athenian base at Pylos on the tip of the Peloponnese. Perhaps attempting to
overthrow the entire foundation of Spartan power, Athenian generals turned the
base into a sanctuary for escaped helots, something which troubled Sparta far
beyond its actual physical impact. Their attempts to recapture Pylos resulted
in the further trapping and surrender of 300 Spartans on the island of
Sphacteria in 425, which given Sparta’s demographic weakness was a huge blow to
that city. While Athens refused Sparta’s offers for status quo peace, with demagogues such as Cleon arguing for gains
in Central Greece, their threats to execute the captives were enough to halt
the hitherto-annual Spartan invasions of Athens.
New thinking
not always so effective, however. Athens attempted to score another knockout
blow against another powerful enemy through an attack against Thebes. This
time, however, the Athenian army was destroyed at Delium in 424, causing a
sudden downturn in Athenian fortunes compounded by Brasidas’ aforementioned
strike against the city’s Thracian subjects.
Shaken by
their respective defeats, Athens and Sparta agreed to the Peace of Nicias in
421. Both sides would return captured prisoners and cities, and enter into an
alliance with each other than would hopefully secure the peace for generations
to come.
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian
Expedition
The Peace of
Nicias solved none of the issues underlying the Peloponnesian War, and from the
start its provisions were immediately violated. Athens refused to return Pylos
while Sparta did the same with Athens’ former northern subjects. The allies of
Sparta were not consulted and quickly soured on their former leader.
Despite the
peace, Athens remained interested in the defeat of Sparta. An Athenian strategy
to defeat Sparta finally appeared when Alcibiades constructed a new alliance
between Sparta’s former allies – Argos, Elis and Mantinea – which he hoped
would result in a large enough army that could overwhelm Sparta once and for
all. Such a coalition had potential and presaged what Thebes was to do against
Sparta in the 360s, but Athens was slow to exploit this and the coalition
dissolved after Sparta defeated it at 1st Mantinea in 418.
A similar
motive to secure for itself a powerful ally might have been the driving force
behind Athens’ infamous Sicilian Expedition of 415-413. Alcibiades argued that
Syracuse might be inclined to help fellow Peloponnesians should it be given a
free hand in Sicily; conversely, adding Sicilian resources to Athens would have
enhanced the city’s power immeasurably. In any case, the benefits hardly
justified the risks – the city would have been better-off following Nicias’
suggestion to secure Athens’ former subjects in Thrace first, rather than
sending 200 ships and 20 thousand soldiers to conquer a city 800 km away, a
tall order even in the best of times.
And it was
not the best of times. Of the three commanders, Lamachus was killed, Alcibiades
defected to Sparta upon hearing of his recall to Athens, and Nicias moved too
slowly to ensure Syracuse’s fall. In response to Syracusan calls for aid,
Sparta re-declared war in 414 and trapped the Athenians on Sicily. Both the
Athenian navy and the expeditionary force – representing more than half of
Athens’ strength – were eventually annihilated, dealing a devastating blow to
Athenian prestige, shattering its naval dominance and providing a golden
opportunity for tis enemies to strike.
The Ionian Phase
Various
actors quickly took advantage of Athenian weakness after the Sicilian disaster.
Sparta reinvaded Athens in 413, but this time, imitating Athenian attempts at
Pylos, they set up a permanent fort at Decelea and turned it into a haven for
runaway slaves. Over time over 20 thousand Athenian slaves escaped to Decelea,
representing a constant drain on Athenian resources.
Furthermore,
Archidamus’ strategy for Sparta could finally be put into action in 412, when
Persia agreed to fund the creation of a strong Spartan fleet. Amassing more
than 100 ships, Sparta then sailed around the Aegean, inciting Athenian
subjects to revolt, including key allies such as Chios, Lesbos and Euboea.
Sparta was helped by the civil turmoil within Athens that broke out in response
to Sicily, with oligarchs and democrats struggling for power and enlisting
Spartan help to do so. By 407 barely anything of the former Athenian Empire was
left but the island of Samos. These subject revolts greatly impacted the
ability of Athens to fight, with Athenian fleets starved of funds and regularly
needing to break off campaigning in order to plunder and obtain tribute.
In order to
complete its victory, however, Sparta needed to control the Hellespont, which
would sever Athens’ grain lifelines and force the city to starve or surrender.
An initial attempt at doing that ended in disaster as Alcibiades, who had
defected back to the Athenians, destroyed the Spartan fleet at Cyzicus in 411.
It was Sparta, however, that possessed the superior financial resources now,
and its response was simply to build another fleet while Athens tried to
recover its lost territories. This fleet was again annihilated by Athens at
Arginusae in 406, prompting the Spartans to temporarily sue for peace, but a
third Spartan fleet under Lysander finally destroyed the Athenians at
Aegospotami at 405.
Without a
fleet, Athens had only an unwinnable siege to wait for, and it surrendered in
404, agreeing to dismantle its empire, demolish its walls, limit its fleet and
establish and oligarchy. Thus Sparta had, after 27 years of on-and-off-warfare,
achieved victory in the Peloponnesian War.
Conclusion
Sparta clearly
had the better war effort in the Peloponnesian War, possessing a clear
understanding of how to beat Athens and achieve victory, something that the
other side never really had. Executing Archidamus’ strategy, however, was much
more difficult, and only with Athens’ self-inflicted Sicilian disaster and the
arrival of Persian gold did Sparta really possess the resources and confidence
to challenge Athens at sea. The confidence of the Athenians in the financial
and cultural superiority of their state caused them to be lethargic in
prosecuting the war, with the result that they conceded the initiative to the
Spartans.
Arguably,
however, the ultimate winner from the war was Thebes, who saw the defeat of its
strongest rival without expending any of the blood and treasure Sparta had to
in order to achieve victory. Within a few decades of the war’s end Thebes would
fight Sparta for dominance, causing even more disruption in Greece until its
tentative union under Macedon.
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