Some thoughts on The Geostrategy of the Peloponnesian War Part 4:
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== 1) Literature Review (in Youtube description) ==
- It seems that it’s generally acknowledged by scholars that Thucydides’ Books 5, 6, 7 and 8 were written separately from the previous works and I have to agree. To me, Thucydides’ analysis in these latter 4 books seems to be a bit more surface-level, more concerned with the chronology of “X went to Y” than the reasons for why such a thing happened. Book 8 (the revolt of Athens’ tributaries) is unfortunately filled with proper nouns and as such is not easy to read.
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- Since Xenophon was a soldier, Hellenica is naturally more tactically-oriented (this division moves up, this dispatch-boat moves out etc.) and as such is less useful for wider strategic analysis.
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- 2ndary Sources (Nicias and Mantinea): Kagan as usual writes extensively on the diplomatic politicking during Nicias, where it was Corinth, rather than Athens or Sparta, that seemed to be the main driver of events. Re: Hanson, I can’t believe I have this line in my notes – “418: Alcibiades' grand strategy: create democratic revolutionary movement”. Did he/I write that?!?
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- 2ndary Sources (Sicily): Because Thucydides wrote the Sicilian Expedition a bit like a “morality play” (for example, the Melian Dialogue right before the whole event to showcase Athens’ pride before its fall), the 2ndary sources have differing opinions on how seriously to take T’s assertions. Kagan argues that T essentially overhyped the importance of Alcibiades to the whole expedition b/c that was his main source, and that A’s plan was a risky diplo offensive. Hanson thinks Athens’ plan was either a small intervention or attempted takeover, in which case the cost-benefit analysis simply didn’t work. Lazenby and Henderson have positions more similar to Hanson.
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- 2ndary Sources (Ionia): I think the major difference between the sources here (apart from level of detail) lies in how they view Alcibiades. Kagan views Alcibiades as somewhat talented, but more trouble than he is worth because of his divisiveness. Hanson doesn’t have much to say on A, preferring instead to look at broader pictures of resources etc (as such he is also the historian who most emphasizes the contribution of Persia to the Spartan victory). Henderson emphasizes the good aspects of A’s strategy – his decision to keep Athens’ navy in the Central Aegean instead of being led around by Sparta + Athenian political instability. Lazenby instead emphasizes A’s weakness in overpromising when he couldn’t actually deliver, e.g. in detaching Persia from Sparta.
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== 2) Thoughts on Athenian and Spartan Strategy ==
- A key running theme throughout this video series is that: despite the different methods that Athens went about attacking Sparta + allies, the underlying logic remained the same: take away resources from Sparta, add to Athens, and seek decision once the “resource gap” was large enough. Pericles > Cleon > Alcibiades were not that strategically different in this regard.
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- This is a point that I feel gets lost when people raise the point that Pelop War was “different” from other Greek wars because there weren’t many hoplite battles. Athenian strategy hadn’t moved away from decisive battle, it just wanted to amass enough power before fighting such a battle. In this sense Mantinea was indeed the culminating point of Athens’ rather conventional strategy.
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- By contrast, Sparta is usually seen as having an outdated conventional strategy. This might have been true at first but was definitely not the case in the Ionian War. Sparta during the Ionian War was not seeking decisive BUT attritional battle: NOT letting one battle decide the war, but instead weakening Athens to such an extent that Spartan victory was the only outcome possible. As Cyzicus and Arginusae showed, Sparta could suffer major strategic reverses yet still be in a favorable strategic position. In that sense, Sparta actually had the more innovative strategy.
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- In my opinion, Athens during PW never made that conceptual leap; for example, the allies at Mantinea were not advised to use fortress warfare to slowly bleed out the Spartan army. Maybe it was harder to conduct attritional warfare on land because of the Greek religious attachment to farmland.
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== 3) Thoughts on the Video ==
- Thinking about how to represent the Ionian War was difficult. As the tributaries schemed and revolted and (some) got re-conquered in such a fluid situation, it’s easy to make a mess of the whole map. Ultimately it was “good-enough” compromise to categorize the Aegean into 3 theaters and then describe Spartan strategy on that basis.
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- I thought about describing/including the Athenian political instability as a contributing factor to the Athenian Empire’s collapse after 413 but that’s better left to the next video. Even had Athens had a unified government I doubt the strategy or outcome would have changed much.
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