The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece by Ober Josiah

Author:Ober, Josiah
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2015-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

PELOPONNESIAN WAR TO 416 BCE

Thucydides’ account leads us to believe that Pericles and the Spartans had done the same math and had come to similar conclusions: Pericles realized that war with Sparta was inevitable. But, as he assured the Athenian assembly in the first of his speeches in Thucydides’ text, it was winnable so long as the Athenians did not overreach by seeking to grow the empire before Sparta had given up the attempt to end it. Pericles’ optimism about Athens’ prospects was not universally shared. Many Greeks apparently agreed with the Spartans that, given Sparta’s unquestioned superiority in infantry forces and the fact that Greek wars on the mainland tended to be decided by infantry battles, it would be a relatively short war: Within a few campaigning seasons, at most, the highly trained Spartan hoplites, backed by the Peloponnesian infantry and Boeotian cavalry, would crush the Athenian land forces, deciding the contest decisively in Sparta’s favor (Thucycides 2.8.4, 5.14.3).

Pericles foresaw a very different war: The Peloponnesians would invade Attica annually, but the Athenians would not meet them in the field. Since the Peloponnesian allies had farms of their own to look after, the occupation of the Athenian homeland would be fairly brief. The Athenian cavalry, along with garrison troops at fortified outposts, would harry the invaders, preventing them from dispersing to plunder efficiently, and thus protecting, as well as possible, Athenian extramural assets. The Athenians did not, in any event, need to confront the Spartan–Peloponnesian army on land. Athens’ extramural population would be evacuated from the villages and towns of Attica and housed in the fortified city–Piraeus complex. The entire population could readily be fed for as long as necessary with imported food, paid for by the unimpaired imperial economy. The Athenian fleet would keep order in the Empire and would launch maritime raids on vulnerable targets along the Peloponnesian coasts. Megara would be subjected to biannual invasions and forced back into the Athenian fold. Eventually the Spartans would tire of the fruitless enterprise and retire to their strongholds in Laconia and Messenia, leaving the rest of the Greek world to be integrated into the empire and developed at leisure under Athenian leadership.47

The first year of the war, 431 BCE, went exactly according to Pericles’ policy recommendations and plans. The Peloponnesians marched into Attica, but despite some grumbling by the residents of the very large deme of Acharnai, where the Spartans, not coincidentally, made their camp, there was no break in Athenian discipline. Harrying by Athenian cavalry and garrisons kept the invading forces relatively compact, and the damage done by the invaders was minimal. The counterraids and invasions of Megara went off like clockwork. Pericles’ inspiring funeral oration, given over the bodies of the relatively few Athenian soldiers who fell in the course of the year, was offered at a high point of optimism and enthusiasm. The democratic political order, characterized by skillfully deployed expertise and rational planning, had brought Athens to its acme of wealth and power. Athens

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