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The Great Peloponnesian War (431-404 ) was a
titanic struggle between Athens and Sparta that engulfed the entire Greek
world, and that ended with the total defeat of Athens and the destruction of
her naval empire. The Great Peloponnesian War is largely famous because of the
efforts of the historian Thucydides, the second great Greek historian. His work
on the Peloponnesian Wars was written after he was exiled from Athens for a
failure early in the war, and he combines a personal knowledge of many of the
main figures of the time with a determination to discover the truth. Thucydides
was writing soon after the end of the wars, but sadly his great work ends in
mid-sentence in 411 , but until then he provides us with one of the greatest
works of ancient history. Background In 480-479 the combined forces of Athens
and Sparta played a central part in the Greek victories at Thermopylae, Salamis
and Plataea, the great victories that defeated the second Persian invasion of
Greece. In the aftermath of these great victories the Spartans took a leading
role in the campaign to liberate Greek cities on the east coast of the Aegean,
but the Spartan leader Pausanias acted with increasing arrogance and was soon
disgraced. Sparta withdrew from the war and returned to her more traditional
isolationism. Regions of Ancient Greece Regions of Ancient Greece Leadership of
the war against Persian then passed to Athens. Their role was officially
recognised by the formation of the Delian League, in which each ally agreed to
provide an agreed amount of men, ships or money. The league's treasury was
placed in the sanctuary of Apollo on the island of Delos in the Cyclades. The
League would eventually achieve its aim. A Persian fleet was destroyed at the
battle of the Eurymedon River in 466, removing the direct threat to the Aegean.
An attempt to help a rebellion in Egypt ended in disaster and the destruction
of the entire expedition (459-455), but the League bounced back and in 449 a
formal peace treaty, the Peace of Kallias, ended the war. During this period
the Delian League slowly turned into an Athenian Empire. Any attempt to leave
the league was met with force. The island of Naxos was the first member of the
league to discover this, although this came in 470, before the Persians had
been defeated at the Eurymedon River. In 465, the year after the Persian
defeat, the island of Thasos revolted, and was subjected to a two year long
siege. In both cases the rebellious state's original military commitment to the
league was replaced with a cash payment, and the rebels were reduced to
tributary status. The rise of the Athenian Empire greatly worried the
conservative Spartans, but they also had some more direct problems. In the mid
460s a major earthquake hit Sparta, triggering a revolt of the Helots, the
slave population that supported the Spartan economy. The helots took up a
strong defensive position on Mount Ithome in Messenia, and resisted all Spartan
attempts to dislodge them. In 462 Sparta called for help from her allies, which
at this date included the Athenians. An Athenian army was dispatched, under the
command of Kimon, but soon after arriving the Athenians were sent home,
probably because they were sympathetic to the Helot cause. Kimon was exiled by
an angry public, and the alliance between Sparta and Athens crumbled. Two years
later the First Peloponnesian War (460-446) began. This was not really a single
fifteen year long struggle, but was a series of clashes between Athens, Sparta
and their allies. For much of this war Athens controlled Boeotia, but this
domination ended after the Athenians were defeated at Koroneia in 446 . In the
same year Athens and Sparta made peace, although the 'Thirty Years Peace' only
lasted for fifteen years. One key development during this period was the
construction of the 'Long Walls', which linked Athens to the port of Peiraieus.
These walls would allow the city to withstand repeated Spartan blockades during
the Great Peloponnesian War. The existence of the Long Walls would allow
Pericles to suggest the strategy that foiled Spartan attempts to threaten
Athens early in the Great Peloponnesian War. Causes Thucydides gives both long
term and short term reasons for the outbreak of the Great Peloponnesian War.
The long term causes were the rise of Athenian power and the concern this
caused in Sparta, Corinth and Thebes. Although we tend to think of Athens the
democracy and Sparta the military state, to many at the time it was the
Athenians who posed to biggest threat to their freedom. The members of the
Peloponnesian League retained their independence, and each had a vote in the
league. In contrast Athens dominated her empire, and only a handful of islands
and cities retained their independence. The short-term reasons for the war were
a series of minor conflicts and revolts that involved Athens. The first was the
Corinth-Corcyra War. This began as a despute between Corcyra (Corfu) and her
colony of Epidamnos, but soon escalated to include Corinth on the side of
Epidamnos and Athens on the side of Corcyra. The two major powers clashed at
the naval battle of Sybota (433 ), in which both sides claimed victory,
although the Corinthians abandoned their campaign. Next was the revolt of
Potidaia in 432 . This city, on the Chalcidice peninsula, was a colony of
Corinth but part of the Athenian Empire. This worried the Athenians, who
demanded that the city abandoned its Corinthian connections. Instead the people
of Potidaia decided to ask Sparta for help. The Spartans agreed that if Athens
attacked Potidaia then they would invade Attica. This encouraged the Potidaians
to begin their revolt. A third cause was the Megarian Decree, a decision of the
Athenian Assembly to forbid the people of Megara from using Athenian harbours
or markets. Megara had been an Athenian ally until 446, but was now allied with
Sparta. All of these complaints, and the Athenian responses, were heard in the
Spartan assembly. The full Spartan citizens then met privately to decide what
to do. The general mood was in favour of war, but King Archidamos (after whom
the first ten years of the war would later be named) was more cautious. Despite
Archidamos's concerns, the assembly voted for war. Next the issue had to be
decided by the Peloponnesian League. A majority of members of the league agreed
that Athens had broken the terms of the Thirty Year's Peace. The Spartans made
one more attempt to preserve the peace, sending an embassy to Athens, but when
this failed war began inevitable. Archidamian War At the start of the war much
of the Greek world was tied to either Sparta or Athens through alliances,
leagues or membership of the Athenian empire. Sparta controlled large parts of
the Peloponnese, with Corinth as an ally. The other major Peloponnesian power,
Argos, remained neutral during the first phase of the war. Macedonia tended to
ally with Sparta, although this was never an entirely stable relationship.
Sparta's allies also include Thebes (north-west of Athens), Boeotia and most of
the northern coast of the Corinthian Gulf. The Athenian Empire was rather more
scattered. The city ruled Attica (the area around Athens), but this was
vulnerable to Spartan attack. The large island of Euboea was also held, as were
most Aegean islands, and the Greek communities on the coast of Asia Minor, the
southern coast of Thrace, the Chalcidice peninsula, through the Hellespont and
up to Byzantium and the entrance to the Black Sea. A large amount of the food
needed to feed Athens came from the areas around the Black Sea. Athens also had
support in Thessaly, and amongst some of the Greek states on the west coast.
The war between these two power blocks would drag on for over twenty five
years. The main reason for this prolonged struggle was that for some time
neither side had the ability to inflict serious damage on the other. Sparta was
unable to challenge Athens at sea, and so could neither conquer her empire nor
threaten her food supplies. The Spartans also lacked the expertise in siege
warfare that they would have needed for a direct attack on the city. In turn
the Athenian army wasn't powerful enough to risk a battle with the feared
Spartans, particularly when combined with their able Theban and Boeotian
allies. The key to this stalemate was the Athenian decision to abandon the
Attic countryside to attack and retreat behind the walls of Athens whenever the
Spartans approached. The great Athenian statesman Pericles was largely
responsible for this strategy, which was made possible by the Long Walls and by
Athenian control of the seas. The first few years of the war fell into a
similar pattern. The Spartans invaded Attica five times between 431 and 425,
although the longest of these invasions, in 430, only lasted for forty days. At
the same time the Athenians used their naval power to attack around the edges
of Spartan territory. The war actually started with a surprise attack by Thebes
on Plataea (431 ). This was the only Boeotian city that hadn't joined the
Theban dominated Boeotian League, and was thus a key Theban objective. The
surprise attack failed, and Plataea wouldn't fall until 427 , but it did serve
as an effective declaration of war. The first year of the war saw the first
Spartan invasion of Attica. Pericles was able to convince his fellow Athenians
not to try and fight, and instead to retreat into the city. Archidamus was
blamed for giving the Athenians time to carry out this move, advancing slowly
from the Isthmus of Corinth, and then attempting to besiege the border fortress
of Oenoe. They then moved into Attica, but had no response to the Athenian
refusal to come out and fight. Eventually their supplies ran out and the
Spartans had to retreat. At the same time the Athenians sent a fleet of 100
triremes around the coast of the Peloponnese, where they carried out a series
of raids. One side-effect of Pericles' plan to concentrate the population of
Attica inside Athens was the outbreak of a devastating plague that hit the city
between 430-428. This plague also followed the Athenian army. In 430 a large
army under Hagnon was sent to Potidaia, but the plague killed 1,050 out of the
4,000 hoplites and the army achieved nothing. Eventually the city surrendered
on terms in the winter of 430/429, and its citizens and auxiliary troops were
allowed to leave in safety (a rare occurrence during this war). The plague
returned to Athens in 429, this time killing Pericles, and removing his
restraining influence. The year also saw the Peloponnesians begin the formal
siege of Plataia (429-427 ), which lasted for two years. In the summer of 429
the Spartans attempted to conquer Acarnania, the area to the north-west of the
Gulf of Corinth. Their plan was for an army to invade from the north while a
fleet operated off the coast. Both parts of the plan ended in failure. The
allied army formed up at Leucas, an island just outside the gulf of Ambracia,
then moved east, before advancing south into Acarnania from the eastern end of
the gulf. The army reached as far south as Stratus, the largest town in the
area, but suffered a defeat in battle just outside the town and was forced to
retreat. At about the same time a naval force moving west from Corinth to join
the invasion was defeated by a smaller Athenian fleet in the naval battle of
Chalcis. The Peloponnesians then combined the fleet that had lost at Chalcis
with the fleet that had taken part in the invasion of Acarnania, but despite
outnumbering the Athenians by seventy-seven warships to twenty still suffered a
second naval defeat, at the battle of Naupactus. Although the most famous
Athenian intervention on Sicily came later in the war, their involvement began
much earlier. In 425 the Athenians decided to send a fleet around the
Peloponnese to aid their allies on Sicily. Demosthenes, who accompanied this
expedition, managed to convince its leaders to allow him to fortify the rocky
headland of Pylos, in the south-west of the Peloponnese, and give him a small
garrison. The Spartans moved a force to attack this Athenian foothold on their
own territory, but the resulting battle of Pylos (425 ) saw the Athenians
thrown back a Spartan attack. It ended when an Athenian naval force arrived and
defeated the Spartan fleet in the bay of Pylos. This left 420 Peloponnesian
hoplites trapped on the island of Sphacteria, which ran across the mouth of the
bay. After a forest fire removed the cover on the island Demosthenes landed his
troops on the island, and after a short fight the Spartans surrendered. This
was one of the most dramatic moments of the entire war. Spartans were not
expected to surrender, but to die in battle. Around 120 full Spartan citizens
were captured on Sphacteria, and their fate played a part in Spartan policy
until they were released after the Peace of Nicias of 421 . Elsewhere Athens
was less successful. An attempted two-pronged invasion of Boeotia ended in a
disastrous defeat at Delium (424 ). In the same year the Spartan general
Brasidas led an army overland to Thrace, where he was able to raise a rebellion
amongst Athens's allies in the area. Most notably elements in the recently
founded Athenian colony of Amphipolis rebelled. An expedition led by the
historian Thucydides arrived just too late to save the city, and it fell to the
Spartans. Thucydides was exiled for his role in this failure. Tentative peace
negotiations began after the battle of Sphacteria. In 423 they achieved some
success when a one year truce was agreed. Brasidas managed to find ways around
it in Thrace, but it was obeyed elsewhere. When the truce expired in 422 an
Athenian army under Cleon was sent to Thrace. Cleon attempted to recapture
Amphipolis, but was defeated and killed in a disastrous battle outside the
city. Brief Peace Brasidas was also killed during this battle. With two of the
more warlike leaders dead, the peace parties in Athens and Sparta gained
ground, and in 421 they agreed the Peace of Nicias. This restored the situation
at the start of the war, although Athens kept Nicaea and Sparta kept Plataea,
both cities having changed sides after an agreement was reached with the
citizens. The peace treaty was not popular amongst Sparta's allies. Corinth and
the Boeotians both opposed the treaty, and in particular the clause that
allowed Athens and Sparta to make changes to it without consulting their
allies. Sparta responded to this defiance by agreed an alliance with Athens, in
which each city agreed to come to the other's aid if their territory was
invaded. One of the reasons for this dramatic new alliance was that Sparta's
peace treaty with Argos was about to expire. Argos was Sparta's main rival in
the Peloponnese, and having stayed out of the war between Athens and Sparta was
now one of the stronger Greek cities. The Spartans were worried that Argos
would create an alliance in the Peloponnese that they would struggle to defeat.
The Spartans were right to be concerned. A period of somewhat confused
diplomacy now followed, which ended with Argos at the head of an alliance of
Greek cities that included Athens and some of Sparta's allies from the first
phase of the Peloponnesian War. The diplomatic dance began during 421 as
Sparta's allies were returning home after the disagreements over the peace
treaty. The Corinthian delegates went to Argos on their way home, and denounced
the Spartans. They suggested that the Argives should create a new defensive
alliance, open to any independent Greek state. The purpose of this alliance
would be to help control replace Sparta as the main power in the Peloponnese.
The Argives already believed that war with Sparta was coming, and so were
easily convinced by the Corinthians. Twelve men were appointed to carry out the
negotiations with any city other than Athens or Sparta - if either of those
cities wanted to join, then the people of Argos would have to make the
decision. The first city to join the new alliance was Mantinea, another
Peloponnesian city. They were accompanied by all of their allies. As this news
spread around the Peloponnese, a number of other cities considered making the
same move while the Spartans sent an embassy to Corinth to try and convince
them not to turn against Sparta. This embassy failed. A deputation from Elis
arrived in Corinth where an alliance was agreed between the two cities. The
Eleans then went to Argos and joined their alliance. Soon after this Corinth
also joined up, as did the cities of the Chalcidice in Thrace. The Boeotians
and Megarians stayed neutral. Corinth soon began to loose enthusiasm for the
new alliance. Argos and Corinth attempted to convince Tegea, a key Spartan
ally, to change sides. When Tegea refused to turn against Sparta the
Corinthians began to be worried that they would isolated, and that no other
Peloponnesian states would join them. The alliance also failed in its first
military test. The Spartans decided to move against the Parrhasians, allies of
Mantinea in Arcadia, in the centre of the Peloponnese. Argos provided a
garrison for the city of Mantinea, leaving the Mantinean army free to help
their allies, but despite this the Spartans were victorious. The Parrhasians
were detached from their alliance with Mantinea, and a Mantinean fortress was
destroyed. In the winter of 421-420 new ephors came into office in Sparta. The
new men were opposed to the peace treaty, and approached the Corinthians and
Boeotians with a plan that they hoped would bring it to an end. The plan was
for Boeotian to join the Argive alliance and then try and bring Argos into an
alliance with Sparta. On their way home the Boeotian and Corinthian
representatives ran into two senior leaders from Argos, who also suggested that
Boeotian join the new alliance. The Boeotian military leaders supported this
plan, but they still had to convince the four Councils of Boeotia to approve
the new alliance. The councils had not been informed of the suggestion made by
the ephors in Sparta, and voted against the proposal. Instead, early in 420 the
Boeotians agreed a new alliance with Sparta. This left the Argives feeling
isolated. They believed that the Athenians must have known of the new alliance
between Sparta and Boeotia, and were worried that their entire new alliance
would soon side with the Spartans. Accordingly they sent an embassy to Sparta
to discuss a new peace treaty. These ambassadors came close to success, but
support for their mission faded after the Argives realised that the Athenians
were actually increasingly angry with the Spartans, who they believed had
breached the peace treaty. The Argives then sent an embassy to Athens, where
with the support of the young politician Alcibiades they were successful,
eventually getting the Athenians to join their alliance. The Allies now
included Argos, Athens, Mantinea and the Eleans, Corinth didn't joint this new
alliance, and technically it didn’t breach the alliance between Sparta and
Athens, or the peace treaty, both of which remained in force. The armies began
to march in 419 . An Athenian army under the command of Alcibiades marched
through the Peloponnese visiting the new allies. A Spartan army under King Agis
marched to the border, then turned back because the sacrifices were
unfavourable. Once the Spartans had retreated the Argives invaded Epidaurus. A
Spartan force marched to stop them, but once again turned back after the
auspices were bad, and an Athenian force send to support the Argives turned
back once they learnt that the Spartans had retreated. In the meantime
Epidaurus was ravaged. The next major clash came in 418 . Once again Epidaurus
was under pressure, and the Spartans decided to help. They ordered their allies
to meet up at Phlius, and assembled an impressive army. The Boeotians sent
5,000 hoplites, 5,000 light troop, 500 cavalry and 500 infantry trained to
fight alongside the cavalry. Rather tellingly Corinth sent 2,000 hoplites. The
Argives also summoned their allies, and received help from Mantinea and Elis.
The two armies came close to a battle on a number of occasions, but this first
campaign ended without a major battle. On the day before the battle finally
seemed inevitable two leaders from Argos and King Agis from Sparta met and
agreed to arbitration. The two armies disengaged, but the move was unpopular on
both sides, with members of both armies believing that they had missed a chance
for a great victory. Soon after this non-battle, the Athenians arrived to join
their allies. The united armed besieged and captured Orchomenus in Arcadia, and
then moved to Mantinea, where they prepared to attack Tegea. The Spartans
reacted by sending a large army to support their allies. The two sides met in
battle at Mantinea (418 ), and the Spartans were victorious. In the following
year the Argives made peace with Sparta, and the alliance they had formed
collapsed. Although Spartan and Athenian forces had clashed at Mantinea, no
terms of the Peace of Nicias had been breached, and so the uneasy peace
continued. Sicily Something of a stalemate now developed in Greece, with Sparta
and Athens each involved in minor actions that didn't lead to a breach of the
Peace of Nicias, but that did mean that the conflict continued. Despite the
defeat at Mantinea, the Athenian public remained confident, and so when an
embassy appeared from some of the Greek cities of Sicily asking for help the
Athenians were in the right mood to respond. They had already campaigned on
Sicily, although only on a small scale, and had allies on the island. In 416
one of those allies, Segesta, went to war with Selinus but was defeated. The
Segestans then allied with Leontine, another Athenian ally, and the two cities
sent an embassy to Athens asking for help against Selinus and its ally
Syracuse. A number of arguments were used in an attempt to gain Athenian
support, including the idea that Syracuse might be about to gain control over
the entire island, and would then help Sparta against Athens. The Athenian
people were soon won over to the idea of a campaign on Sicily, but not all of
their leaders shared this enthusiasm. Nicias was particularly opposed to the
war, believing that the Athenians were underestimating the difficult of the
task. When his first arguments failed, Nicias tried exaggerating the size of
army and navy that he believed it would take to succeed, but this backfired,
and the assembly granted the generals all of the ships and men that Nicias had
demanded. The army was to be commanded by Nicias, his political opponent and
supporter of the war Alcibiades and the older but less important general
Lamachus. The expedition began badly. The Athenians had hoped to find allies
amongst the Greek cities of southern Italy, but even their long-terms allies in
Rhegium refused to take sides. The money promised by Segesta also failed to
appear, and turned out not to exist, the Athenian envoys sent to investigate it
having been the victims of an elaborate con. The three generals each proposed a
different solution to the problem. Lamachus wanted to launch a surprise attack
on Syracuse. Nicias wanted to visit Segesta and Selinus, see if any Sicilians
supported him, and if not return to Athens. Alcibiades wanted to seek allies
from every power on Sicily, and especially Messenia, at the north-eastern
corner of the island. The allied army would then advance on Syracuse. Lamachus
eventually supported Alcibiades, but his plan suffered an early setback when
Messenia refused to support the Athenians. The first Athenian success came at
Catane, half way between Syracuse and Messenia. After originally refusing to
admit the Athenians, the city was won over, and the Athenian expedition finally
had a suitable base on Sicily. Soon after this Alcibiades suffered a dramatic
fall from power. He was accused of impiety, and a trireme sent from Athens to
arrest him. He was forced to leave Sicily, but managed to escape arrest and
take refuse in the Peloponnese. This left Nicias and Lamachus in joint command.
They were now to win the only major Athenian victory of the campaign, but
failed to take advantage of it. Realising that the Syracusan cavalry made it
very difficult for their army to move on land, the Athenians decided to trick
the Syracusans into marching towards Catane. They then shipped their entire
army to a position at the southern end of the Great Harbour at Syracuse
(putting them several miles south of the city). The Syracusan army marched back
south, only to suffer a defeat in a battle fought on ground of the Athenian's
choosing. The Athenian victory at the battle of Syracuse (or of the Anapus
River) of 415 had no long term impact on the war. Soon after winning the
victory the Athenians abandoned their camp close to Syracuse and returned to
Catane. This is generally seen as the turning point of the campaign. By failing
to press their advantage after the battle the Athenians gave their enemies time
to recover, and for Syracuse to persuade Sparta to declare war and send some
limited aid. The winter of 415-414 went badly for the Athenians. The Syracusans
raided their camp at Catane, forcing them to spend the winter at Naxos. Their
attempts to find allies on Sicily were generally unsuccessful. Both Athens and
Syracuse sent envoys to Camarina, but the city decided to stay neutral. The
Athenians had also expected to find allies amongst the Sicels, one of the
native groups on Sicily, and some independent Sicel communities did come over
to them, but most were dominated by Syracusan garrisons and remained loyal. The
Syracusans were much more active. The walls of Syracuse were extended to make
it harder for the Athenians to build siege walls around the city. The temple of
Zeus was fortified. Spikes were driven into the sea at any potential landing
point. They also sent envoys to Greece, where they attempted to gain support
from Corinth and Sparta. The Syracusan envoys were received with enthusiasm in
Corinth, and the Corinthians voted to provide them with as much direct support
as possible. They also agreed to try and persuade the Spartans to support
Syracuse and to wage open war against Athens in Greece. The envoys arrived in
Sparta at the same time as Alcibiades, who now spoke in favour of a Spartan
intervention on Sicily. He claimed that Athens was planning to conquer Sicily,
the Italian cities in Italy and Carthage, before returning to crush Sparta. The
Spartans agreed to send a small force, under the command of Gylippus, to help
Syracuse. The Athenian siege of Syracuse began in the spring of 414 . At first
things went their way. They began to build a blockading wall around the city,
and stopped two attempts to built counter walls. Unfortunately Lamachus was
killed during this fighting, leaving Nicias in command. He appears to have been
a rather careless commander, and when Gylippus arrived on Sicily he was able to
get past the Athenian lines, and join up with the Syracusans. With his help the
defenders were finally able to build a counter wall that blocked the progress
of the Athenian wall north of the city, preventing the city from being
blockaded. The second year of the siege began with a land and naval battle that
saw the Athenians defeat the Syracusan fleet, but lose control of the headland
at the southern entrance to the Grand Harbour. From now on they had to fight to
get supplies to their army and navy inside the harbour. A second naval battle
ended in an Athenian defeat - a great shock for a maritime power. Crumbling
Athenian morale was restored when Demosthenes arrived with reinforcements, but
he then attempted an ambitious night attack on the Syracusan fortifications on
the heights and suffered a significant defeat. The Athenians now realised that
they had to retreat, but dithered over how and when to escape. Just as they
were about to leave by sea there was an eclipse of the moon, and the more
superstitious members of the army (including Nicias) insisted that they wait
for 27 days. This gave the Syracusans time to prepare for them, and the attempt
to leave by sea ended in defeat. This forced the Athenians to move by land.
Short of supplies, this retreat ended in disaster, and the entire Athenian
force surrendered. Nicias and Demosthenes were executed, and the surviving
Athenians put to work in the stone quarries outside Syracuse. The Last Years
The Spartans officially resumed hostilities in 414, using some Athenian naval
incursions into their waters as the official pretext. The Spartans, advised by
Alcibiades, decided to occupy a fortress in Athenian territory, and in the
spring of 413 captured Decelea, on the slopes of Mount Parnes. This position
was visible from Athens, and would become a permanent thorn in their sides. The
Spartans were able to raid Attica at will. They also blocked the land route to
Euboia, a large island that had provided Athens with much of its food, and
Decelea became a refuge for Athenian slaves. The Spartans also began to build a
large fleet of their own. This would be the key to the final Spartan victory -
despite a number of naval defeats they now had the resources to replace their
losses, and rapidly gained experience of naval warfare. Eventually the
Athenians would lose control of the sea, and with it the entire war. The
Athenian disaster on Sicily encouraged revolts across their empire. The
Spartans almost had too many potential new allies, each making a different
demand. The Euboeans were first to arrive in the winter of 413-2. They were
followed by a contingent from Lesbos, then from Chios, and then by
representatives from two of the nearest Persian satraps. Both had the same idea
- use the Spartans to weaken Athenian control over the Greek cities of Asia
Minor. Tissaphernes wanted the Spartans to campaign in western Asia Minor,
while Pharnabazus wanted them to operate in the Hellespont. The Spartans
decided that their campaign in 412 would start with a naval expedition to
Chios, and then to Lesbos. This expedition ended rather disastrously. The
Athenians discovered that Chios was planning to revolt, and managed to
intercept and destroy the Spartan fleet at Spiraeum, in Corinthian territory.
Alcibiades convinced the Spartans to send a second fleet, and accompanied this
smaller force of five ships in person. The Athenians won a second victory in
this period, defeating a fleet of Peloponnesian ships coming back from Sicily
off Leucadia. Alcibiades' arrival encouraged the Chians to begin their revolt.
Clazomenae soon joined the revolt. The Athenians immediately sent a small fleet
to the area, but it was forced to flee to Samos. The revolt then spread to Teos
and Miletus. A larger Athenian fleet reached Miletus just after the revolt, and
took up a position on the nearby island of Lade, from where they blockaded
Miletus. Soon after the revolt of Miletus, Sparta and Persia concluded a formal
alliance. This treaty had four clauses: All territory and all cities now or in
the past held by the king of Persia (at this point Darius II) should be held by
him; Both Spartan and the Persians should attempt to stop any money from
reaching Athens; Both sides should make war on Athens and should only make
peace with the others agreement; Anyone who revolts against either Persian or
Sparta to be considered an enemy of the other. A series of minor engagements
then took place on the coast of Asia Minor, with most focus on Chios and
Miletus. The Athenians won a victory outside Miletus, but on the same day a
large Peloponnesian fleet arrived (accompanied by a number of Syracusan ships
that had sailed east to join the attack on Athens, and so nothing was gained.
The Athenian fleet escaped to Samos. At the same time Chios was effectively
besieged. Over the winter of 412-411 the treaty between Sparta and Persian was
renegotiated. This time Sparta agreed not to attack any Persian possession or
former possession, not to take tribute from any of them, the Persians agreed
not to attack the Spartans, both agreed to help the other, although the exact
nature of the help was left unclear, both sides agreed to make war jointly
against the Athenians, and only make peace together. Any troops fighting on
Persian territory at the request of the Persians would be paid by the Persians.
The final clauses are an interesting reflection on the somewhat chaotic nature
of both the Spartan alliance and the Persian Empire. If any state that had
signed up to the treaty attacked Persian, then the Spartans agreed to stop
them, while the Persians agreed to stop anyone who attacked the Spartans from
their territory. The changing balance of naval power was demonstrated over the
winter of 412/11, when the Spartans won a minor naval victory over an Athenian
fleet off Cnidus. In the aftermath of this defeat a second Athenian fleet
appeared on the scene, but refused to fight. The Athenians were now well aware
that they couldn't afford to risk a defeat. At this point cracks began to
appear in the alliance between Persian and Sparta. The key to the problem was
that both treaties had referred to all territories currently controlled by the
Great King and all territories once controlled by him or his predecessors. This
would have included a large number of Aegean islands, Thessaly and parts of
Greece down to Boeotia. The Spartan negotiators demanded a better treaty, and
Tissaphernes left in a rage. The winter of 412-411 saw the start of a dramatic
political crisis in Athens. It began when some of the Spartans turned on
Alcibiades and ordered their commander in Asia Minor to kill him. Alcibiades
escaped to Tissaphernes, and became his advisor. Alcibiades suggested that a
total Spartan victory would be against their best interests. Instead they
should play the two sides off against each other, weaken them as much as
possible and then expel the Spartans from Asia Minor. Tissaphernes accepted
this advice, and began to delay his support for the Spartans. Alcibiades then
worked on getting recalled to Athens. He decided that his best chance was to
convince the Athenians to overthrow their own democracy and implement an
oligarchy. He found support amongst the fleet at Samos and amongst the richer
citizens back in Athens. In one of the most extraordinary twists of the war,
the Athenians now proposed to vote away their own democracy. The argument used
to convince them was that their only chance to win the war was to gain the
support of the Persian king, and the only way to achieve this was to replace
the unpredictable democracy with a more stable oligarchy, as well as to recall
Alcibiades. Both proposals were initially very unpopular in Athens, but
eventually the people began to be won over by a lack of any obvious
alternative. Even so it took a coup to actually make the change. The
negotiations with the Persians soon proved disappointing. According to
Thucydides, Alcibiades decided to sabotage the talks because he wasn't sure of
his own status with Tissaphernes. Alcibiades made a series of increasingly
unacceptable demands. First he demanded the return of all the Greek cities of
Asia Minor to Persia, then the return of a number of Aegean islands. Both of
these proposals were accepted by the Athenians, but then Alcibiades demanded
that the Persians be allowed to build as large a fleet as they like in the
Aegean. This was too much, and the negotiations were broken off. After the end
of these negotiations Tissaphernes arranged a third treaty with the Spartans.
This was similar to the second treaty, but with no mention of lands that had
formerly belonged to the Persians, and a promise that a Persian fleet would
join the Spartans. This treaty greatly reduced Alcibiades' usefulness to the
Persians, and also removed one of the main reasons for the Athenian abandonment
of democracy. Despite the changing circumstances, the plotters still continued
to work towards replacing Athenian democracy. A series of political murders
began in Athens, and the supports of democracy were intimidated by violence. A
council was then called, and the new system was forced into place. The
democratic council of 500 was replaced by a newly selected council of 400. This
council was to select a group of 5,000 richer Athenians who would form the new
assembly. Pay for public service was abolished. When the news of the coup
reached Samos the fleet refused to accept it, and set itself up as the last
refuge of the democracy. The Spartans reacted by bringing an army to Athens,
hoping to take advantage of the possible chaos in the city, but despite the
coup the city's defenders were still alert and the Spartans retreated. Serious
negotiations then began between Sparta and the Athenian oligarchs. The Spartans
in Asia Minor were also unable to take advantage of the turmoil in the Athenian
camp. In a rather ironic twist, the democrats at Samos now invited Alcibiades
to join them, and then to lead them. The 400 quickly lost their grip on Athens.
The turning point came when a Spartan fleet sailed past the city and landed on
Euboea. The Athenians suffered a defeat at Eretria (411 ), and the island of
Euboea rebelled. This cut Athens off from one of its last remaining source of
food, leaving the city reliant on food from the Black Sea. In the aftermath of
this defeat the people of Athens overthrew the 400. It was officially replaced
by a new '5,000', this time made up of every citizen who could afford to equip
themselves as a hoplite. The fall of the oligarchy restored the link between
the city and its fleet, and morale was soon restored by a military victory. The
battle of Cynossema (411 ) saw an Athenian fleet defeat a Peloponnesian fleet
that had entered the Hellespont. Indeed this area would become the main theatre
of the war for the next few years, and a second victory was won soon afterwards
at Abydos. Sadly at this point the surviving copies of Thucydides end in the
middle of a sentence. Our main source after this is the Hellenica of Xenophon,
a useful but rather less impressive work of history. Diodorus also provides a
version of events, although this is more variable in quality. In 410 the
Athenians won a major victory that appeared to have altered the balance of
power once again. The battle of Cyzicus (410 ) saw the Peloponnesian fleet in
the Hellespont virtually destroyed, securing Athens's grain supply from the
Black Sea. Byzantium, which had rebelled against Athens, held out, but was now
isolated. This victory ended the rule of the '5,000' and saw the restoration of
the democracy. The military situation continued to fluctuate. In 410 the
Messenian garrison of Pylos was forced to surrender. In 409 the Athenians won a
land battle near Megara against a force that included a number of Spartans. In
408 the Athenians went onto the offensive around the Hellespont, capturing a
number of cities including Byzantium. The final phase of the war began in 407.
In this year the Spartans appointed a new admiral, Lysander, to command their
fleet in the Aegean. He would prove to be an able leader who improved the
quality of the Peloponnesian fleet, and laid the foundation of the final
Spartan victory. In the same year Cyrus, the younger son of the Great King, was
appointed as satrap of Lydia, Great Phrygia and Cappadocia. He was determined
to support Sparta and to ensure the defeat of Athens. In 406 Alcibiades fell
from grace for a second time. He was appointed to command the army fighting in
Asia Minor, but he was not entirely trusted by the fleet. In the spring he left
the main fleet to visit Thrasybulus, leaving his helmsman Antiochus in command.
Antiochus was ordered not to risk a battle, but he was unable to resist the
chance to ambush some of Lysander's fleets. The resulting battle of Notium was
a minor Athenian defeat, but Alcibiades was blamed for it, was removed from his
command, and decided to go into exile in Thrace instead of risking a return to
Athens. The same period saw a change of command on the Spartan side, where
Lysander was replaced by Callicratidas. The new commander was apparently
unpopular with the fleet, and definitely with Cyrus, but his time in command
would be short. The Athenian fleet, now under Conon, was blockaded in Mytilene.
A messenger managed to reach Athens, where a fresh fleet of 110 ships was
raised. This fleet crossed the Aegean, collecting another 40 ships on the way.
The two sides clashed in the battle of the Arginusae Islands (406 ), a major
Athenian victory. The Spartans lost more than seventy ships, the Athenians
twenty-five. Callicratidas was amongst the dead. The aftermath of the defeat
was disastrous for Athens. A storm blew up soon after the fight ended, and the
Athenians were unable to rescue the survivors of the twenty-five lost ships.
Eight of the generals were recalled to Athens. Six went, while two fled. After
a prolonged debate the six generals were condemned to death. Thrasyllus, one of
the more experienced commanders of the last few years, was amongst the victims
of this hysterical over-reaction. The Athenians then reacted against their own
behaviour, and Callixenus, the man who had proposed the death penalty, was
himself soon killed. By the start of the campaigning season of 405 Lysander had
been restored to command, although officially as second in command to get
around a Spartan rule against serving for two terms in a single command.
Towards the end of the summer Lysander took his large fleet into the
Hellespont, in an attempt to intercept the Athenian grain fleets. An Athenian
fleet of 180 ships followed, under three new generals. For four days the two
fleets faced each other across the Hellespont, the Athenians at Aegospotami,
the Spartans at Lampsacus. On five days the Athens put to sea to offer battle,
and Lysander refused to take the bait. On the fifth day, as soon as the
Athenians returned to shore and dispersed from their ships, Lysander attacked.
The resulting battle of Aegospotami (405 ) was the final decisive battle of the
long Great Peloponnesian War. Caught entirely by surprise, the Athenian fleet
was annihilated. Conan escaped with eight or nine ships, but the rest of the
fleet was captured, along with two of the three generals. Everyone now knew
that the war was effectively over. Both of the Spartan kings led an army to
Athens - Agis from the fort at Decelea, Pausanias from the Peloponnese.
Lysander sailed to the Piraeus with 150 ships, and blockaded the city from the
sea. The resulting siege of Athens lasted into 404 , but the final outcome was
never in doubt. The only issue was what terms would be imposed. Corinth and
Thebes led a group of cities that wanted to see Athens destroyed, the men of
military age executed and everyone else sold into slavery, but the Spartans
refused to impose such draconian terms (officially because of the important
services Athens had performed for Greece, but probably because they didn't want
to see either Corinth or Thebes step into a power vacuum in Attica). The final
terms were comparatively moderate, considering the length and often bitter
nature of the war. Athens was to dismantle the Long Walls and the
fortifications of the Piraeus. She was only allowed to retain twelve warships.
Exiles were to be allowed to return home and Athens was to become an ally of
Sparta on the same terms as members of the Peloponnesian League - to have the
same friends and enemies as Sparta and to follow them on land and sea. After
the terms were accepted Lysander's fleet sailed into the Piraeus, and began to
demolish the walls to the sound of flutes. Conclusion In some ways Athens
quickly recovered from her defeat. The democracy was overthrown and replaced by
the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, but this was short-lived. The democracy was
soon restored, and Athens soon regained some naval power and a more limited
empire. Sparta's attempt to gain control of at least part of the old Athenian
empire failed, and their alliance with Persian soon came to an end. By 395
Sparta had so annoyed her former allies that a new war broke out, the
Corinthian War (395-387 ). This time Thebes, Corinth and Persia allied with
Athens against Sparta, and an Athenian admiral commanded the Persian fleet.
This war was ended by the King's Peace of 387, in which the King of Persian
promised to guarantee the autonomy of all Greek cities outside Asia Minor. At
the same time most of the restrictions on Athens were removed. The real
significance of the Great Peloponnesian War was that it ended any chance that
Athens would come to dominate the Greek world. The rule of Imperial Athens
would probably have been far harsher than we tend to realise - her democracy
was firmly limited to citizens of Athens, and that citizenship was far more
limited than in the later Roman Empire. Sparta and later Thebes would also fail
to dominate Greece. Fifty years after Sparta's humbling of Athens, Philip II of
Macedon would appear on the scene, and the period of the independent Greek
cities states would soon come to a permanent end.
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