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Archidamian War Archidamian War: name of the
first part of the Peloponnesian War (431-404), the great conflict between
Athens and Sparta. It is called after the Spartan king Archidamus II. This war
started in 431 and ended in 421 with something that came close to an Athenian
victory and a Spartan defeat. However, Athenian diplomatic mistakes, Spartan
intransigence, and a catastrophic Athenian attempt to conquer the island of
Sicily were enough to change the balance of power, so that Sparta got a second
chance: the Decelean or Ionian War.
The Archidamian War did not start without serious disturbances in the Greek
balance of power. In 433, Athens had concluded an alliance with Corcyra (modern
Corfu; more...), and had started to besiege Potidaea. This threatened to reduce
Corinth, until then an important city, to a third-rank power. To Sparta, this
was dangerous: it needed the Corinthian navy. The Spartans started to fear that
Athens was becoming too powerful but still tried to prevent war. Peace was
possible, they said, when Athens would revoke an economical decree against
Megara, a Spartan ally. The Athenian leader
Pericles refused this,
because Sparta and Athens had once agreed that conflicts would be solved by
arbitration. If the Athenians would yield to Sparta's request to revoke the
Megarian Decree, they would in fact allow Sparta to give orders to Athens. This
was unacceptable, and war broke out between two regional empires: Athens and
its Delian League, and Sparta and its Peloponnesian League. When Sparta
declared war, it announced that it did so to liberate Greece from Athenian
oppression. And with some justification, because Athens had converted the
Delian League, which had once been meant as a defensive alliance against the
Persian Empire, into an Athenian empire. To achieve victory, Sparta had to
force Athens into some kind of surrender; on the other hand, Athens simply had
to survive the attacks. Pericles' strategy was to evacuate the countryside,
leave it to the Spartans, and concentrate everyone in the city itself, which
could receive supplies from across the sea. Cattle, for example, could be kept
on the isle of Euboea. As long as the "Long walls" connected the city
to its port Piraeus, as long as Athens ruled the waves, and as long as Athens
was free to strike from the sea against Sparta's coastal allies, it could
create great tensions within the Spartan alliance. So, the Athenian position
was better than that of their enemies, and it comes as no surprise that the
Spartans immediately asked for help in Persia. This is only recorded by
Diodorus, who mentions that the Spartans did not just declare war, but decided
to declare war and ask for help in Persia. Thucydides also admits, much later,
that the Spartans sent an embassy to the east. They failed to achieve their
aim, because they were captured by the Athenians.
War broke out when the Thebans, without declaration of war, attempted to
capture Plataea during a nightly attack. If it had succeeded, Theban armies
could easier move to the Peloponnese, and Peloponnesian armies would have been
capable of marching to Boeotia. However, the operation was a failure, and
Plataea was to be a major bone of contention for some time. In 431 and 430, the
Spartan king Archidamus II invaded Attica (the countryside of Athens) and laid
waste large parts of it. The Athenian admiral Phormio retaliated with attacks
on the Spartan navy. However, it soon became apparent that Pericles' strategy
was too expensive, and the Athenian leader was deposed. Worse was to come,
because in 429, a terrible plague (probably typhoid fever) took away about a
third of the Athenian citizens, including Pericles. At the same time, the
Spartans laid siege to Plataea, which fell in 427. Believing that Athens was
about to collapse, the island of Lesbos revolted and Archidamus invaded Attica
again. However, the Athenians were not defeated at all. They suppressed the
revolt (427) and at the same time embarked upon a more aggressive policy,
invading western Greece and launching a small expedition to Sicily to gain
support from the far west. At the same time, general Nicias seized the small
island Minoa, which controlled the port of Megara. In the following year, the
same Nicias pillaged the
isle of Melos, and the countryside of Tanagra and Locris; at the same time, the
Athenian commander Demosthenes wanted to attack
central Greece from the west, but he failed. The Athenian statesman
Cleon was able to triple the
tribute that the Athenians received, enabling the Athenian commanders to
undertake more daring actions. In 425, Demosthenes and Cleon captured 292
Spartan soldiers on the island Sphacteria. The Athenians also built a fortress
at Pylos, where they could receive runaway slaves and helots. This did great
damage to the Spartan economy. For the Spartans, invading Attica was no longer
an option (the POWs would be executed), but they had in the meantime captured
Plataea, which controlled the way to Thebes and beyond. Proceeding along this
road, the Spartans reached Thessaly and Macedonia and started to attack
Athenian possessions in the northern Aegean. The Spartan
Brasidas provoked
rebellions in this area and captured the strategically important Athenian
colony of Amphipolis. The Athenian commander Thucydides, who was too late to
save this town, was punished with exile and became this war's historian. Bronze
head of Nike (Victory), dedicated in 420-415 Another disaster that befell the
Athenians was a defeat by the hands of the Thebans at Delium. Not much later,
an armistice of a year was signed (423-422). When it had expired and the
Athenian war leader Cleon and the Spartan general Brasidas were both killed in
action during an Athenian attempt to recover Amphipolis, both sides were ready
for peace: the Peace of Nicias, which had already been satirized by the
comedian Aristophanes before it had been signed (text). Athens had survived and
won the Archidamian War. However, Sparta had not been decisively defeated and
was - although it regretted that it had attacked Athens - still very strong.
And this humiliated superpower was looking for an opportunity to show that it
was still a power to be reckoned with. It did not have to wait very long. This
page was created in 2005; last modified on 15 October 2020.
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