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The Sicilian Expedition was an Athenian
military expedition to Sicily, which took place from 415–413 during the
Peloponnesian War
between the Athenian empire, or the
Delian League, on one
side and Sparta, Syracuse and Corinth on the other. The expedition ended in a
devastating defeat for the Athenian forces, severely impacting Athens. The
expedition was hampered from the outset by uncertainty in its purpose and
command structure—political manoeuvring in Athens swelled a lightweight
force of twenty ships into a massive armada, and the expedition's primary
proponent, Alcibiades, was recalled from command to stand trial before the
fleet even reached Sicily. Still, the Athenians achieved early successes.
Syracuse, the most powerful state in Sicily, responded exceptionally slowly to
the Athenian threat and, as a result, was almost completely invested before the
arrival of back up in the form of Spartan general, Gylippus, who galvanized its
inhabitants into action. From that point forward, however, as the Athenians
ceded the initiative to their newly energized opponents, the tide of the
conflict shifted. A massive reinforcing armada from Athens briefly gave the
Athenians the upper hand once more, but a disastrous failed assault on a
strategic high point and several crippling naval defeats damaged the Athenian
soldiers' ability to continue fighting and also their morale. The Athenians
attempted a last-ditch evacuation from Syracuse. The evacuation failed, and
nearly the entire expedition were captured or were destroyed in Sicily. The
effects of the defeat were immense. Two hundred ships and thousands of
soldiers, an appreciable portion of Athens' total manpower, were lost in a
single stroke. The city's enemies on the mainland and in Persia were encouraged
to take action, and rebellions broke out in the Aegean. Some historians
consider the defeat to have been the turning point in the war, though Athens
continued to fight for another decade. Thucydides observed that contemporary
Greeks were shocked not that Athens eventually fell after the defeat, but
rather that it fought on for as long as it did, so devastating were the losses
suffered. Athens managed to recover remarkably well from the expedition
materially, the principal issue being the loss of manpower rather than the loss
of ships.
Opponents: Athens Allies: Delian League Segesta versus Syracuse, Corinth,
Sparta
Commanders and leaders:
Athens - Nicias (POW)
Executed, Lamachus †,
Demosthenes (POW)
Executed, Eurymedon
†
Syracuse + Sparta Gylippus,
Hermocrates
Strength:
Athens - Original expedition: 5,100 hoplites 750 Mantineans and Argives 1,300
light and missile troops 30 cavalry 134 triremes[1] Reinforcements: 5,000
hoplites Large number of light troops 73 triremes[2]
Syracuse - Unknown, but included at least 1,200 cavalry and 1,000 Spartans At
least 100 ships
Casualties and losses:
Athens - Entire expeditionary force killed, captured or sold into slavery
Syracuse - Unknown
Background:
Sicily and the Peloponnesian War
Athens and Sicily:
Although Athens had never involved itself deeply in Sicilian affairs, it had
ties there before the onset of the Peloponnesian War, dating back to at least
the mid-5th century. To small Sicilian cities, Athens was a potential counter
to the powerful city of Syracuse, which was strong enough to potentially
dominate the island. (Syracuse, like Sparta and its Peloponnesian allies, was a
Dorian city, while most of Athens's allies on the island were Ionian.) Another
source of conflict was the close relationship of Syracuse and other Dorian
cities of the west to Athens's great commercial rival, Corinth. To the
Athenians, Sicily was a threat—an unencumbered Syracuse might send grain
or other aid to the Peloponnesians—as well as a venue for possible
conquests. In 427, Athens had sent twenty ships, under the command of Laches,
in response to an appeal for help from Leontini. That expedition, operating
from a base at Rhegium, remained in the area for several years, fighting
alongside Athens's local allies against the Syracusans and their allies,
without achieving any dramatic successes.
In 425, the Athenians planned to reinforce their contingent with an additional
forty triremes, but that fleet never reached Sicily, as it became caught up in
the pivotal Battle of Pylos on the way there. By the time that fleet reached
Sicily in late summer, Athens's Sicilian allies had grown weary of stalemated
warfare, and agreed to negotiate with Syracuse and its allies. At the Congress
of Gela, the Sicilian cities made peace on the basis of "Sicily for the
Sicilians", and the Athenian fleet left for home.
State of the War:
In 415, Athens and Sparta had been formally at peace since 421, when the
Peace of Nicias had
brought the Archidamian War to a close. The terms of that peace, however, had
never been fulfilled; Sparta had never surrendered Amphipolis to Athens, as
required by the treaty, and in return the Athenians had held Pylos. More
recently, Athenian and Spartan troops had fought at the Battle of Mantinea in
418, with Athens supporting Argos, Mantinea, and other Peloponnesian cities in
an attempt to establish a stable anti-Spartan alliance in the Peloponnese. That
attempt, largely orchestrated by the Athenian nobleman Alcibiades, would have
destroyed Sparta's control over the Peloponnesian League had it succeeded.
Alcibiades rebounded politically from this defeat, and was elected as a general
in the spring of 417. Control of Athens' foreign policy remained divided
between a "peace party" (or pro-Spartan party) led by Nicias, and a
"war party" led by Alcibiades.
Appeal from Segesta:
The peace established in Sicily at the Congress of Gela did not last long.
Shortly after the Congress, Syracuse intervened in an episode of civil strife
between the democratic and oligarchic parties in Leontini, supporting the
oligarchs. Before too long, the prospect of foreign domination had united the
Leontinians, and the two parties united in war against Syracuse. Athens had
sent an emissary to Sicily in 422 to sound out the possibility of renewing the
war against Syracuse, but achieved nothing. In 416, however, a second Sicilian
conflict provided the invitation Athens had sought in 422.
The city of Segesta—an Athenian ally in the 420s—went to war against
Selinus and, after losing an initial battle, sent to Athens for help. In order
to win the Athenians' support, the Segestaeans claimed that they were capable
of funding much of the cost of sending a fleet, offering 60 talents of uncoined
silver up front, and tricking Athenian ambassadors into believing that the city
was more prosperous than it actually was, by making sure that the ambassadors
saw all their golden and other valuable objects in a way as if these were just
part of what they had.
The debate:
At Athens, the Segestan ambassadors presented their case for intervention to
the assembly, where debate over the proposal quickly divided along traditional
factional lines. The assembly eventually approved an expedition composed of
sixty triremes, without hoplite accompaniment, commanded by Nicias, Alcibiades,
and Lamachus. Thucydides reports that Nicias had been appointed against his
preference, but offers no further detail regarding that debate.
Five days after that first debate, a second assembly was held to arrange the
logistics of the expedition. There, Nicias attempted to persuade the assembly
to overturn its previous decision regarding whether to send an expedition at
all. Over the course of several speeches, Nicias raised a series of different
arguments against the expedition. He reminded the Athenians that they would be
leaving powerful enemies behind them if they sent a force to Sicily, and warned
that they would be opening hostilities with enemies too difficult and numerous
to conquer and rule. Nicias also attacked Alcibiades's credibility, claiming
that he and his allies were inexperienced and self-aggrandizing young men eager
to lead Athens into war for their own ends. In response, Alcibiades dismissed
the attack on himself by pointing to the good he had done for Athens as a
private citizen and public leader. He rebutted Nicias's warnings about the plan
for the expedition by reminding the Athenians of their obligation to their
Sicilian allies, appealing to the enterprising spirit that had won Athens her
empire, and pointing out that many states on Sicily would support Athens in her
operations there. The assembly was clearly leaning towards Alcibiades's side,
so Nicias, judging them unlikely to cancel the expedition if he argued against
it directly, chose a different tactic. He described the wealth and power of the
Sicilian cities Athens would be challenging, and stated that a larger
expedition than previously approved would be required, expecting that the
prospect of approving such a massive expenditure would prove unappealing to the
citizenry.
Contrary to Nicias's plan, the assembly enthusiastically embraced his proposal,
and passed a motion allowing the generals to arrange for a force of over 100
ships and 5,000 hoplites. Nicias's ploy had failed badly. His misreading of the
assembly had altered the strategic situation; whereas the loss of 60 ships
would have been painful but bearable, the loss of the larger force would be
catastrophic. "Without Nicias's intervention," wrote Donald Kagan,
"there would have been an Athenian expedition against Sicily in 415, but
there could not have been a disaster."
Destruction of the Hermai:
After lengthy preparations, the fleet was ready to sail. The night before they
were to leave, someone destroyed many of the hermai—the stone markers
representing Hermes, placed around the city for good luck. This event was taken
very seriously by the Athenian people as it was considered a bad omen for the
expedition, as well as evidence of a revolutionary conspiracy to overthrow the
government. According to Plutarch, Androcles, a political enemy of Alcibiades,
used false witness to claim that Alcibiades and his friends were responsible.
Alcibiades volunteered to be put on trial under penalty of death in order to
prove his innocence (wanting to avoid his enemies charging him, in his absence,
with more false information), but this request was denied. He was otherwise
extremely popular and had the support of the entire army; he had also gained
the support of Argos and Mantinea during the preparations. He was not charged,
and the fleet sailed the next day. His opponents, however, waited for
Alcibiades to set sail before they leveled the charges against him. This was
because the army, his main source of support, would be absent, and his
supporters would be outnumbered when the votes were cast.
Reaction in Syracuse:
Many people in Syracuse, the richest and most powerful city of Sicily, felt
that the Athenians were in fact coming to attack them under the pretense of
aiding Segesta in a minor war. The Syracusan general Hermocrates suggested that
they ask for help from other Sicilian cities, and from Carthage. He also wanted
to meet the Athenian fleet in the Ionian Sea before they arrived. Others argued
that Athens was no threat to Syracuse, and some people did not believe there
was a fleet at all, because Athens would not be so foolish as to attack them
while they were still at war with Sparta. Athenagoras accused Hermocrates and
others of attempting to instill fear among the population and trying to
overthrow the government. Three generals, three strategies At the first
assembly that authorized the expedition, the Athenians named Nicias,
Alcibiades, and Lamachus as its commanders; that decision remained unchanged at
the second assembly. Alcibiades was the expedition's leading proponent, and the
leader of the war party, Nicias its leading critic and the leader of the peace
party. Lamachus, meanwhile, was a fifty-year-old career soldier, of whom the
longest extant portrayal is a series of scenes in Aristophanes' The Acharnians
that satirize him as a braggadocious, perpetually impoverished warrior.
The reasons for the Athenians' choice are not recorded, but the assembly may
have been seeking to balance the aggressive young leader with a more
conservative older figure, with Lamachus added for his military expertise.
In practice, each of the three generals proposed a different strategy. Nicias
proposed a narrowly circumscribed expedition; he felt that the fleet should
sail to Selinus and force a settlement between Selinus and Segesta. After that,
he proposed to briefly show the flag around Sicily and then return home, unless
the Segestans were willing to pay for the full cost of the expanded expedition.
Alcibiades proposed to first attempt to win over allies on the island through
diplomacy, and then attack Selinus and Syracuse. Lamachus, meanwhile, proposed
taking advantage of the element of surprise by sailing directly to Syracuse and
giving battle outside the city. Such a sudden attack, he felt, would catch the
Syracusans off guard and possibly induce their quick surrender. Eventually,
however, Lamachus settled the three-way division of opinion by endorsing
Alcibiades's plan.
Athenian landing:
The route the Athenian fleet took to Sicily:
The Athenian fleet first sailed to Corcyra to meet up with their allies, and
the ships were divided into three sections, one for each commander. Three of
the ships were sent ahead to look for allies in Sicily. The fleet at this point
consisted of 134 triremes (100 of which were from Athens), 5,100 hoplites (of
which 2,200 were Athenians), 480 archers, 700 slingers, 120 other light troops,
and 30 cavalry, as well as 130 other supply ships and all the crews of the
triremes and other non-combatants. They had little luck finding allies along
the coast of southern Italy and, when the three other ships returned, they
learned that Segesta did not have the money they promised. Nicias had expected
this, but the other commanders were dismayed. Nicias suggested they make a show
of force and then return home, while Alcibiades said they should encourage
revolts against Syracuse, and then attack Syracuse and Selinus. Lamachus said
they should attack Syracuse right away, as it was the predominate city-state in
Sicily. The fleet proceeded to Catania, where an Athenian ship arrived to
inform Alcibiades that he was under arrest, not only for the destruction of the
hermai, but also for supposedly profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Alcibiades agreed to return in his ship, but when they stopped in southern
Italy at Thurii, he escaped and sailed to the Peloponnese, where he sought
refuge in Sparta. Athens passed a death sentence in absentia, his guilt
seemingly proven. In Sparta, Alcibiades gave the members of the Peloponnesian
League critical information on the Athenian Empire. In Sicily, the fleet was
redivided into two parts. The army landed and joined with the cavalry of
Segesta. They did not immediately attack Syracuse and, as the Athenians
wintered their camp at Catania, the Syracusans prepared to attack. When the
Syracusans marched out to Catania, they learned the Athenians had reboarded
their ships and sailed into the harbour at Syracuse. The Syracusans quickly
hurried back and prepared for battle.
First Battle of Syracuse:
The Athenian troops landed outside Syracuse and lined up eight men deep, with
the Argives and Mantineans on the right, the rest of the allies on the left,
and the Athenians themselves in the centre. The Syracusans were deployed
sixteen men deep, in order to offset the advantage of the Athenians in
experience. They also had 1,200 cavalry, vastly outnumbering the Athenian
cavalry, although the total numbers of men were about the same. The Athenians
attacked first, believing themselves to be the stronger and more experienced
army, and after some unexpectedly strong resistance, the Argives pushed back
the Syracusan left wing, causing the rest to flee. The Syracusan cavalry
prevented the Athenians from chasing them, thereby averting a catastrophe for
the Syracusans, who lost about 260 men, and the Athenians about 50. The
Athenians then sailed back to Catania for the winter.
Winter of 415 – spring of 414:
Hermocrates suggested that the Syracusans reorganize their army. He wanted to
reduce the number of generals from fifteen to three; Hermocrates, Heraclides,
and Sicanus were elected and Hermocrates sent for help from Corinth and Sparta.
During the winter the Athenians also sent for more money and cavalry, while the
Syracusans built some forts, and a wall extending the territory of the city.
Meanwhile, diplomats from both camps went to Camarina in an attempt to form an
alliance with that city. Hermocrates wanted Camarina and the other cities to
unite with Syracuse against Athens, but Euphemus, the representative for the
Athenians, said Syracuse only wanted to rule Camarina, and they should join
with Athens if they wanted to remain free. The Camarinans decided not to join
either side, although they quietly sent aid to the Syracusans, whose greater
proximity and potential victory they feared more than that of the Athenians.
Athens then sent for help from the Carthaginians and Etruscans, and both Athens
and Syracuse tried to gain assistance from the Greek cities in Italy. In
Corinth, representatives from Syracuse met with Alcibiades, who was working
with Sparta. Alcibiades informed Sparta that there would be an invasion of the
Peloponnese if Sicily was conquered, and that they should send help to Syracuse
and also fortify Decelea near Athens. The Athenians, he said, feared nothing
more than the occupation of Decelea. The Spartans took this advice into
consideration, and appointed
Gylippus to command their fleet.
In the spring of 414, reinforcements arrived from Athens, consisting of 250
cavalry, 30 mounted archers, and 300 talents of silver, which was used to pay
for 400 more cavalry from their Sicilian allies. In the summer, they landed on
the Epipolae, the cliff above Syracuse, which was defended by Diomilus and 600
Syracusans. In the attack, Diomilus and 300 of his men were killed.
Map of the siege showing walls and counter-walls
Both sides then began building a series of walls. The Athenian circumvallation,
known as "the Circle", was meant to blockade Syracuse from the rest
of the island, while the Syracusans built a number of counter-walls from the
city to their various forts. A force of 300 Athenians destroyed part of the
first counter-wall, but the Syracusans began to build another one, this time
with a ditch, blocking the Athenians from extending their wall to the sea.
Another 300 Athenians attacked this wall and captured it, but were driven off
by a Syracusan counter-attack in which Lamachus was killed, leaving only Nicias
from the three original commanders. The Syracusans destroyed 300 m (1,000 feet)
of the Athenian wall, but could not destroy the Circle, which was defended by
Nicias. After Nicias defeated the attack, the Athenians finally extended their
wall to the sea, completely blockading Syracuse by land, and their fleet
entered the harbour to blockade them from sea. The Syracusans responded by
removing Hermocrates and Sicanus as generals and replacing them with
Heraclides, Eucles, and Tellias.
Spartan intervention:
Soon after this, the Spartan general Gylippus, responding to the call for help,
landed at Himera. He marched towards Syracuse with 700 marines, 1,000 hoplites,
100 cavalry, and 1,000 Sicilians. They built another counter-wall on the
Epipolae, but were driven back by the Athenians; in a second battle, however,
Gylippus defeated the Athenians by making better use of his cavalry and
javelin-throwers. The Syracusans completed their counter-wall, making the
Athenian wall useless. The Corinthian fleet also arrived, under the command of
Erasinides. Nicias, exhausted and suffering from illness, now believed it would
be impossible to capture Syracuse. He wrote a letter to Athens, not trusting
messengers to give an accurate report, and suggested that they either recall
the expedition or send out massive reinforcements. He hoped they would choose
to recall him, if not the whole expedition, but instead they chose to send
reinforcements, under Demosthenes and Eurymedon. Eurymedon left immediately
with ten ships, and Demosthenes left sometime later with a much larger force.
Meanwhile, in early 413 Sparta acted on Alcibiades's advice to fortify Decelea,
and the Athenian force sent to relieve it was destroyed. While Eurymedon was
sailing, Gylippus's 80 Syracusan ships, including 35 triremes, attacked 60 of
the Athenian ships (25 of which were triremes) in the harbour. Gylippus
commanded a simultaneous attack on the Athenian land forces. In the harbour,
the Athenians were successful, losing only three ships while the Syracusans
lost eleven. However, Gylippus defeated the Athenians on land and captured two
Athenian forts. Afterwards, Gylippus succeeded in convincing all the neutral
cities on Sicily to join him, but the allies of Athens killed 800 Corinthians,
including all but one of the Corinthian ambassadors.
Demosthenes' arrival:
Demosthenes and Eurymedon then arrived with 73 ships and 5,000 hoplites. On
their arrival, 80 Syracusan ships attacked 75 of the Athenian ships in their
harbour. This battle went on for two days with no result, until the Syracusans
pretended to back away and attacked the Athenians while they were eating.
However, only seven Athenian ships were sunk. Demosthenes landed his forces and
attacked the Syracusan counter-wall on Epipolae in a risky night engagement. He
succeeded in breaching the wall, but was defeated by a force of Boeotians in
the Spartan contingent. Many Athenians fell off the cliff to their deaths, and
some of the rest were killed as they fled down the slope. Demosthenes' arrival
provided little relief to the other Athenians.
Their camp was located near a marsh and many of them had fallen ill, including
Nicias. Seeing this, Demosthenes thought they should all return to Athens to
defend Attica against the Spartan invasion that had taken Decelea. Nicias, who
had opposed the expedition at first, now did not want to show any weakness
either to the Syracusans and Spartans, or to the Athenians at home who would
likely put him on trial for failing to conquer the island. He hoped the
Syracusans would soon run out of money, and he had also been informed that
there were pro-Athenian factions in Syracuse who were ready to turn the city
over to him. Demosthenes and Eurymedon reluctantly agreed that Nicias might be
right, but when reinforcements from the Peloponnese arrived, Nicias agreed that
they should leave.
Second Battle of Syracuse:
Retreat of the Athenians from Syracuse:
Just as the Athenians were preparing to sail home, on August 28, there was a
lunar eclipse, and Nicias, described by Thucydides as a particularly
superstitious man, asked the priests what he should do. They suggested the
Athenians wait for another 27 days, and Nicias agreed. The Syracusans took
advantage of this, and 76 of their ships attacked 86 Athenian ships in the
harbour. The Athenians were defeated and Eurymedon was killed. Many of the
ships were pushed on to the shore, where Gylippus was waiting. He killed some
of the crews and captured 18 beached ships, but a force of Athenians and
Etruscans forced Gylippus back.
The Athenians were now in a desperate situation. On September 3, the Syracusans
began to completely blockade the entrance to the port, trapping the Athenians
inside. Outside Syracuse, the Athenians built a smaller walled enclosure for
their sick and injured, and put everyone else (including many of the soldiers
remaining on land) on their ships for one last battle, on September 9. The
fleet was now commanded by Demosthenes, Menander, and Euthydemus, while the
Syracusan fleet was led by Sicanus and Agatharchus of Syracuse on the wings and
Pythen from Corinth in the centre. Each side had about 100 ships participating.
The Athenian ships were extremely cramped and had no room to manoeuvre.
Collisions were frequent, and the Syracusans could easily ram the Athenian
ships head-on, without the Athenians being able to move to ram them broadside,
as they preferred. Javelin throwers and archers shot from each ship, but the
Syracusans deflected Athenian grappling hooks by covering their decks with
animal hides. The battle went on for some time with no clear victor, but the
Syracusans eventually pushed the Athenian ships toward the coast, and the
Athenian crews fled to the camp behind their wall. Demosthenes suggested that
they man the ships again and attempt to force their way out, as now both fleets
had lost about half their ships and Nicias agreed. The men themselves did not
want to board the ship because they were afraid. They then decided to retreat
by land. Hermocrates sent some supposed informers to the Athenians to falsely
report that there were spies and roadblocks further inland, so the Athenians
would be safer if they did not march away. Gylippus used this delay to build
the roadblocks that did not yet exist, and the Syracusans burned or towed away
the Athenian ships on the beach, so that they had no way off the island.
Final Syracusan victor
Map of Athenian retreat from Syracuse
On September 13, the Athenians left camp leaving their wounded behind and their
dead unburied. The survivors, including all the non-combatants, numbered
40,000, and some of the wounded crawled after them as far as they could go. As
they marched they defeated a small Syracusan force guarding the river Anapus,
but other Syracusan cavalry and light troops continually harassed them. Near
the Erineus river, Demosthenes and Nicias became separated, and Demosthenes was
attacked by the Syracusans and forced to surrender his 6,000 troops. The rest
of the Syracusans followed Nicias to the Assinarus river, where Nicias's troops
became disorganized in the rush to find drinking water.
Many Athenians were trampled to death and others were killed while fighting
with fellow Athenians. On the other side of the river a Syracusan force was
waiting, and the Athenians were almost completely massacred, by far the worst
defeat of the entire expedition in terms of lives lost. Nicias personally
surrendered to Gylippus, hoping the Spartan would remember his role in the
peace treaty of 421. The few who escaped found refuge in Katana. The prisoners,
now numbering only 7,000, were held in the stone quarries near Syracuse which
were considered the safest prison for such a number of men. Demosthenes and
Nicias were executed, against the orders of Gylippus. The rest spent ten weeks
in horrible conditions in their makeshift prison, until all but the Athenians,
Italians, and Sicilians were sold as slaves. The remaining Athenians were left
to die slowly of disease and starvation in the quarry. In the end some of the
very last survivors managed to escape and eventually trickled to Athens,
bringing first-hand news of the disaster. The specific fate of Nicias and
Demosthenes is not clearly recorded, but according to Thucydides account, were
executed after their surrender, Demosthenes due to his earlier role in the war
at Pylos, Nicias due to worries of a possibility of escape through bribery and
possibility of causing later harm.
Causes of the failure:
Some historians have said that the Sicilian expedition was fatally flawed from
the outset, that the Athenian attempt to conquer Sicily was an example of mad
arrogance. Others however argue that there was nothing inherently wrong with
the plan strategically, and that it would have succeeded if the Athenian
leadership had not made a succession of bad tactical decisions. J. B. Bury
judged that by far the biggest single reason for the expedition's catastrophic
failure was the incompetence of Nicias, aggravated by the recall of Alcibiades.
Athenian reaction:
Destruction of the Athenian army in Sicily:
In Athens, the citizens did not, at first, believe the defeat. Plutarch, in his
Life of Nicias, recounts how the news reached the city: It is said that the
Athenians would not believe their loss, in a great degree because of the person
who first brought them news of it. For a certain stranger, it seems, coming to
Piraeus, and there sitting in a barber's shop, began to talk of what had
happened, as if the Athenians already knew all that had passed; which the
barber hearing, before he acquainted anybody else, ran as fast as he could up
into the city, addressed himself to the Archons, and presently spread it about
in the public Place. On which, there being everywhere, as may be imagined,
terror and consternation, the Archons summoned a general assembly, and there
brought in the man and questioned him how he came to know. And he, giving no
satisfactory account, was taken for a spreader of false intelligence and a
disturber of the city, and was, therefore, fastened to the wheel and racked a
long time, till other messengers arrived that related the whole disaster
particularly. So hardly was Nicias believed to have suffered the calamity which
he had often predicted. When the magnitude of the disaster became evident,
there was a general panic. Attica seemed free for the taking, as the Spartans
were so close by in Decelea. The defeat caused a great shift in policy for many
other states, as well.
States which had until now been neutral joined with Sparta, assuming that
Athens's defeat was imminent. Many of Athens' allies in the Delian League also
revolted, and although the city immediately began to rebuild its fleet, there
was little they could do about the revolts for the time being. The expedition
and consequent disaster left Athens reeling. Some 10,000 hoplites had perished
and, though this was a blow, the real concern was the loss of the huge fleet
dispatched to Sicily. Triremes could be replaced, but the 30,000 experienced
oarsmen lost in Sicily were irreplaceable and Athens had to rely on ill-trained
slaves to form the backbone of her new fleet. In 411, the Athenian democracy
was overthrown in favour of an oligarchy, and Persia joined the war on the
Spartan side. Although things looked grim for Athens, they were able to recover
for a few years. The oligarchy was soon overthrown, and Athens won the Battle
of Cynossema;
however, the defeat of the Sicilian expedition was essentially the beginning of
the end for Athens. In 404 they were defeated and occupied by Sparta.
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