Ancient Greece by Britannica Educational Publishing

Author:Britannica Educational Publishing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Britannica Educational Publishing
Published: 2011-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

MYTILENE AND PLATAEA

It is perhaps surprising that it was only in 428 that a revolt within the Athenian empire gave Sparta the opportunity to implement its basic war aim of liberating Greece. This was the revolt of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, to which Athens reacted with a prompt blockade. It was a shrewd Spartan move to summon the Mytileneans and other injured Greeks to the Olympic Games at this point, thus emphasizing that one aspect of the war was the tension between Dorians and Ionians. (Athens was hardly formally excluded from the solemnities, but Olympia always had a Dorian flavour.) Alcidas, the Spartan commander sent to assist the Mytileneans, failed, however, to do anything for them. On its surrender (427) the city narrowly escaped the wholesale executions and enslavements Cleon had recommended, but only as a result of second thoughts on the part of the Assembly (these events and decisions form the context of the famous “Mytilene debate”). It is to the Athenians’ credit that some of them were moved by the thought that their original decision was bloodthirsty.

There were no such doubters among the Spartans who supervised the final phase of Plataean fifth-century history. When the remaining Plataeans surrendered (some had already broken out to Athens), they were put to death to a man, after the “brief question” had been put to them, “Have you done anything for Sparta during the war?” This was a question that the Plataeans, despite some moving pleas, could answer only negatively. At least Cleomenes I in the sixth century and Agesilaus II in the fourth, both of whom applied much the same criterion as this in international affairs, made no pretense of being liberators of Greece. It is impossible for the modern reader to reflect on these two fully reported incidents at Mytilene and Plataea without coming to some general conclusions about Spartan behaviour. And Thucydides, too, was prompted to generalize in this fashion. His thoughts are attached to an account of civil strife at Corcyra, in the west, in 427. After a bloodbath, the democratic pro-Athenian faction prevailed over the oligarchical pro-Spartan party, with the Athenian commander Eurymedon making no attempt to stop it.

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