Monday, 3/9: The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War

Relative strengths of Athenian league and Peloponnesian league at the outbreak of hostilities

• Land power -v- sea power
  • Athens vulnerable to Peloponnesians in Attika and Thrace
  • Peloponnesians vulnerable to Athenians in Corinthian gulf, Ionian sea

Periclean strategy

• concentration on naval supremacy
• abandonment of Attika
• alternatives?

Plataia

• March 431: 300 Thebans enter Plataia at night, invited by anti-Athenian faction, invite Plataians to defect
  • Plataians capture most of this force
• Larger Thban force approaching
  • Plataians move their people and property within the walled city, appeal to Athens for help
  • Athens helps Plataia prepare for blockade
  • evacuate women, children, old men
  • provision city
  • leave garrison of 80 Athenians

May 431: Archidamus leads 2/3 of Peloponnesian army on Attika

• sends heralds ahead, hoping to reach a settlement before hostilities commence, but offer is rejected
• Archidamus attacks Oinoe, fails to take it
• Athenians move people and property within the walls, move livestock to Euboia
  • crowded conditions; eventually eased by moving people into Pireaus and area between long walls
• Archidamus ravages Eleusis and Thirasian plain
• Crosses to Cephisian plain by pass between Mt. Aigaleos and Mt. Parnes, into deme of Acharnai
  • harrassed by squadrons of Athenian cavalry
• moves northwards between Parnes and Pentelikos to Dekelea, through Oropus to Boiotia

Athenians, meanwhile, active by sea

• Sent 100 ships around Peloponnese, attacked Methone in Messenia, but failed
  • Fleet repelled by Brasidas
• moved north, took Cephallenia, some towns on the Acarnanian coast
• Efforts to protect Euboia
  • capture of Thronion, island of Atalanta against Opus for a guard station
• Aegina untrusted
  • population driven out
  • territory settled with Athenain cleruchies

Winter 431: Pericles' funeral oration

430 -- Spartans again invade Attika, this time move south as far as Laurion

Plague at Athens

• Acc. to Thuc., started in Ethiopia, spread through Egypt and Persia
• 4,400 out of 13,000 hoplites dead
  • pre-war population of 172,000 down to below 140,000?

Athens again active on sea

• Attacks coast of Argolis with 4000 troops, 300 horse, commanded by Pericles
  • aim was to capture Epidaurus, whose troops were away with the Peloponnesian army
    • good base for raids against Corinth, Megara, and Peloponnesian armies moving through the Isthmus
    • might persuade Argos to join Athens
  • expedition fails, for reasons that are unclear
• Later in the summer, Athenians active on the west coast of Greece
  • Before the war, Amphilocians harrassed by Ambraciotes, appeal to Athens
  • Phormio with 30 ships restores situations
  • Now back, when trouble is brewing again, at Naupactos with 20 ships to monitor situation and guard the Corinthian gulf

Potideia finally capitulates late in the year, population expelled from the city

Move toward peace on Athens' part

• setbacks of the plague, etc.
• make peace overtures to Sparta, whcih are rejected
• Pericles, on his return from unsuccessful expedition to the Argolis, is temproarily suspended as strategos, but then restored.
  • but his political position is a little less secure:
  • his enemies can't attack him directly, but they do start attacking some of the people he associated with:
    • Phidias, for mishandling money allocated for Acropolis building projects
    • Anaxagoras, Aspasia
  • Death of Pericles in fall of 429

429: Third year of the war

Seige of Plataea

• Instead of marching on Attica a third time, Archidamus moves across Mt. Kithairon and lays seige to Plataia
  • controls route from Megara to Thebes that avoided Attica
• offers to accept Plataian surrender: Plataia was, after all, the site of the great victory over Persia
  • Plataians, on the promise of help from Athens, refused
  • garrison at this point about 400 Platians and 80 Athenians
  • cirucit wall of maybe a mile or so?
• Archidamus invests the city with a palisade to prevent anyone escaping
  • Begins to build a mound against the southern wall
    • work takes 70 days and nights
  • Plateans try to raise the height of their wall at the point of the Spartan mound with mud bricks
    • used hide screens to protect workers from flaming arrows
  • Couldn't keep up with Spartans, so tried mining through the wall to draw out the dirt of the mound
    • Spartans pack the hole with clay, harder to draw out
  • Plateans mine under the mound, start drawing away the earth in the vicinity, to slow down Spartan progress
  • Build a crescent wall inside the area where the Spartans were mounding
  • Countered Spartan battering rams with huge beams that they would drop to break off the head of the ram
  • Spartans try to set the town on fire, build huge fires along the wall, but the wind was favorable to the Plateans and the town didn't ignite
• Spartans eventually realize they can't take the city by force, begin a long blockade
  • Circumvallate the city about 100 years away, build ditches inside and outside the wall
  • Left part of the army during the winter to maintain the blockade
• Late the following year, Plateans saw that Athens wasn't going to come to the rescue, supplies very short -- escape is planned
  • Spartan wall actually a double wall, 15 feet apart, roofed over, with battlements and towers every so often covering wall to wall, guards in towers
  • On a rainy night, about half the Platean garrison came out with ladders
    • climbed walls between a pair of towers, killed guards in each tower, held the passages until people could get over and across the other side
    • Then had to cross the ditch, which was treacherous with water and ice
    • Had to escape the patrol of 300 Spartans outside walls, but this patrol carried torches, and were thus an easy target for Platean archers.
    • Fugitvues headed toward Thebes, to put pursuers off the scent, a mile or so later tunerd east, then south, to reach Athens by way of Erythrai: 212 reach Athens
• Remainder surrender the following year, in 427 -- 200 Plateans and 25 Athenians put to death

Wednesday, 3/11: Mytilene, Phormio's Successes, and the opening of the Pylos campaign

Why didn't Athenians help at Plataia?

• In 429, struggling with Plague, not eager to extend themselves at all
• 428 -- Revolt of Mytilene
  • Archidamus invading Attica for the 3rd time
  • news arrived that all of Lesbos except Methymna had revolted
    • preparations for revolt: fortification of Mytiline harbor
    • Envoys went to Olympia to get Peloponnesian support
    • Lesbos accepted into alliance, and Sparta ordered that ships in the Corinthian Gulf be dragged across the Isthmus to operate in the Aegean, but there was delay while the harvest season went on.
  • By Autumn, the Athenians had blockaded the 2 harbors of Mytilene, and 1000 hoplites were sent under Paches
    • built wall on land side of city
  • Early in 427, a Spartan envoy penetrates Mytiliene, tells them to hold out, help is on the way
  • Summer, 42 ships under Alcidas sent, and a 4th invasion of Attica as diversion
    • but the ships are slow in coming, and in the meantime there is dissention in the city of Mytilene, and a faction decides to capitulate.
  • Paches enters the city, sends home to Athens for orders on what to do.
    • sent leaders of the revolt, along with the Spartan envoy, who was immediately executed.
  • Athenian assembly met
    • decision to execute all the men, enslave women and children
      • trireme dispatched to bring orders to Paches
  • Mytilenean envoys convince Athenians to hold a second assembly meeting the next day to reconsider
    • arguments of Cleon and Diodotus; appeal to expediency
  • Assembly decides to rescind execution order, dispatch a ship to cathc up with the other, which had at 24 hour head start
    • Mytilenean envoys provided food and wine to the crew, offered huge rewards, slept and rowed by turns, rowed while they ate.
    • Arrived just after the first ship, stopped Paches just as he received his orders and was about to execute them
      • leaders executed
      • walls of Mytilene torn down
      • Lesbian fleet taken over
      • Lesbian land (except Methymnian territory) parcelled out to Athenian cleruchs

Western Greece:

• Phormio stationed at Naupaktos with 20 ships
• The Ambraciots in 429 persuade the Peloponnesians to get involved in the region, to try to pry away Athenian interests.
  • Cornthian fleet of 47 ships sent to support a land expedition of 1000 hoplites
    • most of the ships are carrying troops, not set up for speed and manouverability
• Phormio lets fleet pass as it comes west along the south coast of the gulf, knowing it will have to cross eventually and enter open water
  • When they do, Athenians go out to meet them
  • Corinthians adopt circular defensive formation
    • merchantmen in center, as well as 5 fast ships to move in at any troubled point
  • Phormio circles around their circle, forces them in closer
    • Waits for breeze to pick up
    • when it does, Corinthian ships can't maintain formation
  • Phormio gives signal to attack,
  • Athenians capture 12 ships, rest flee to Patrai in Achaea
• In the wake of this defeat, a second, larger Peloponnesian fleet is sent:
  • 77 ships, under Brasidas-- cleared for action
    • sails around Peloponnese, moves into the gulf to Rhion
  • Phormio stands watch at Antirrhion
  • Brasidas wants to engage in confined waters
    • need to get an enemy ship in sights from a distance to ram effectively, and Brasidas wants to deny the Athenians that opportunity
      • opposite strategy from Salamis, but remember that at Salamis it was the Phonecian ships of the Persian navy that were the fastest and most manouverable -- now Athens has that advantage over the Peloponnesians
  • After several days waiting, Brasidas moved his fleet east in four parallel files in line ahead toward Naupaktos along the south coast of the gulf
  • Phormio matches him on the opposite side of the gulf with his 20 ships in line ahead
    • Peloponnesian right wing, with its fastest ships, lead
      • Brasidas wants it to cut off any attempt by the Athenian ships to get around the Peloponnesian ships and into open water when they engage
  • At some point along this move up the gulf, Brasidas turns his flet from line ahead to line abreast, heading for the Athenian column as fast as possible
    • But the first 11 Athenian ships manage to get around the Peloponnesian right wing, and so managed not to be confined.
    • The nine other ships are driven aground, but Messenian land forces on the shore areable to recover them
  • 11 Athenian ships make for Naupactus, pursued by the 20 fast Peloponnesian ships
    • 10 of them reach the harbor, turn and arrange themselves line abreast,
    • One ship laging behind
      • fastest Peloponnesian ship (Leucadian) catching up with it
      • Athenian ship heads toward a merchant ship anchored off shore, swings around it, and rams the Leucadian ship
      • disoriented the Peloponneians ships
      • some dig in their oars, others run aground
      • gives the Athenians the opportunity they needed
        • Peloponnesian ships routed, head for Panormus. Athenians captured six.

427: stasis in Corcyra

• Athens aids democrats
• Peloponnesians aid oligarchs
• Athenian naval victory
• Thucydides account of the inhumanity and cruelty of the civil strife
  • broader lesson?

426: Demosthenes in Acarnanian and Aetolia

425: Athenian fleet of 40 ships under Eurymedon and Sophocles sent to Sicily

• Demosthenes accompanies the fleet, though not as commander
  • sail round Peloponnese
  • On northward leg, Demosthenes decides to establish an Athenian outpost at Pylos
    
• Athenian fleet sailed into the harbor, began fortifying the area
  • Pylos promontory rather rocky, good natural forticfications
    
  • Athenians shore these up with walls along the SE, SW, and NW, where the slopes are more gentle
  • project took six days, fleet departed, leaving Demosthenes with 5 ships to hold the place
• Spartan troops move on the area to try to take the Athenian fortificiation, and Sparta sends word to a fleet of 60 ships near Corcyra to return to help take the place
  • Demosthenes sends two of his ships to try to overtake the main fleet and get them to return to help.
• Spartans want to blockade hill of Pylos by land and sea, prevent any new Athenian forces from landing
  • establish camp at the north side of the promontory to keep any help from ships entering Buphras from helping
  • 420 Spartans and their Helots under Epitadas occupy Sphacteria in case the Athenians try to use that for their operations
    
• Demosthenes puts most of his forces on the northern part of the promontory and some at the SE, and guards the SW himself with 60 hoplites and some archers -- most likely place for a Spartan landing
  • Spartan fleet of 43 tried to approach, difficult to do -- shallows, reefs, Athenian harrassment
  • repelled for 3 days
• Athenian fleet, now 50 strong, returns, can't land at Buphras or Sphacteria, so decides to wait until the next day and try to take the harbor
  • enter through both entrances, captured a few Peloponnesian ships, disabled others
  • result was that the Spartans couldn't support the troops that were on the island of Sphacteria:
    • desperate situation, ephors themselves came to see what could be done
    • concluded that the situation was hopeless, and negotiated a truce with Demosthenes until ambassadors could be sent to Athens to try to come to terms of a peace
      • truce gave back the Athenians any captured ships
      • allowed Spartans to supply the troops on Sphacteria
      • agreement by Athens that they could continue to blockade but not attack
• Ambassadors go to Athens to negotiate an end to the war, but Cleon convinced the assembly to ask for terms that were clearly too harsh
  • Cleon -- demagogue as opposed to strategos; war good for the poor?
  • Nicias leader of the 'peace party' (noting anachronism of that concept), prominent politician
• Embassy fails, truce over, Athenians reenforce their blockade
  • Spartans manage to sneak supplies in when high winds made it difficult for the Athenian ships to maintain their postitions
  • hard blockade for the Athenians
    • they themselves weren't well supplied, and water was short

Friday, 3/13: Pylos, Delium, and Amphipolis

Athenians at home begin to get impatient as the Pylos blockade drags on

• start to think that they should have used the opportunity they had to end the war, that Cleon gave bad advice
  • Cleon responds that he could wrap the affair up with a minimum of fuss, if he were in charge
    • note Cleon's lack of military command experience -- probably no more than a taunt to the generals
  • Nicias calls his bluff, offers his command, insists Cleon take it when he tries to back down.
  • Cleon consents, takes forces including archers and other light-armed troops, promises to be finished in 20 days
• Demosthenes, meanwhile, has been looking for an opportunity to take Sphacteria:
  • rocky island, sheer cliffs on the east, summit at the north, lots of brush
  • Some Spartans on the summit, most of them at a camp near the the center of the island, at the only water source
  • Brush fire clears away much of the vegetation, expose Spartan positions to Athenian observers
• Cleon arrives
  • at night, forces put onto a few boats, land on the south side of the island before dawn, where there is a small Spartan outpost
    • something like 14000 Athenians against 420 Spartans, maybe 1000 helots
    • but Spartans have the defender's advantage, and this certainly isn't any place that a phalanx can be put together
  • Atheinans overpower the southern outpost, light-armed troops advance along a high ridge on the harbour side of the island toward the main Spartan camp, sent another detachment along the low shore on the sea side, to squeeze in the Spartans.
    • Quickly degenerates into chaos
    • lots of dust from the burnt wood being stirred up by troops and weapons, but Spartans are not holding out
  • Spartans retreat to the high hill on the north of the island -- hard path, but Spartans are good at that kind of thing
    • used the remains of an old prehistoric wall to make a defensive stand
    • repelled assailants, refused to surrender
• Messenian soldier tells the Athenians about a path to the rear of the Spartan position
  • detachment takes a boat to a gorge that empties out to the east of the Spartan positon, climbs up and takes the Spartans by surprise
    
  • Spartans finally agree to surrender
  • 292 of the original 420 taken prisoner, of whom120 were Spartaites
  • Taken to Athens as hostages
• Two major advantages for Athens:
  • military camp in the Peloponese,
  • prisoners for bargaining
    • security agianst further invasions of Attica
    • means of making advantageous peace, if they so chose

Other gains for the Athenians:

• Autumn 425: Nicias at Methone, Cythera:
  • now 3 Athenian bases in Spartan territory
• 424: Athenians recapture Nisaea, which they had lost as part of the terms of the 30 year's peace, but don't capture city
  • interesting story of the capture in Thucydides: Demosthenes, Hippocrates
• Led Demosthenes to hope that gradually Athens could recapture its land conquests: Boiotia
  • departure from Periclean policy, and Nicias, who is the main proponent of continuing the Periclean strategy, stays away from the enterprise
• Plan was for Demosthenes to return to Naupaktos, gather a force of Acarnanians, secure Siphai, the port of Thespiai, while Hippocrates marched with the Atheian army to Boiotia on the northeast fronteir of Attika, at Delium
  • also worked out a plan with some people of Chaironeia to instigate a revolt at the same time
• But Boitians got word of the plan, occupied Siphai and Chaeroneia, levied a large army to oppose Hippocrates at Delium
  • Demosthenes has to retire when he finds out Siphai has been guarded
• Hippocrates able to reach and fortify Delium with 7,000 hoplites, 20,000 light-armed troops
  • built palisade and trench within a few days, withdrew most of the army back to Attika
  • hoplites halt about a mile from Delium to wait for Hippocrates, who was among the last to leave the garrison at Delium
  • light-armed troops keep going
• Word arrives from Hippocrates to get ready immediately for battle:
  • Boiotian forces, which had been gathering at Tanagra a few miles from Delium, have decided to asttack the Athenian forces in retreat, even though they aren't in Boiotia at this point.
  • are now on the other side of a hill that blocked the Athenian view
  • 7,000 hoplites, but also 1,000 cavalry, 10,000 light armed troops
• Thebans on right of Boiotian line, drawn up 25 deep; other Boiotian contingents at various depths
• Athenians in standard 8-deep formation, getting ready for the attack, when Boitians charged from the crest of the hill
• Athenians hold out on their right
  • but on left, they can't withstand the deep Theban phalanx
• Squadron of Boiotian cavalry comes around the hill, and the Athenian army, thinking it's the vanguard of another Boiotian army, flees, Hippocrates is killed.
• Athenian army routed, but the garrison at Delium is secure
  • Athenians at Delium ask for permission to take up the dead
  • But the Athenians at Delium were occupying a temple of Apollo, so the Boiotians told them they couldn't pick up their dead until they vacated the temple
• Boitians blockaded Delium, took it using peculiar seige machine:
  • split a large beam, hollowed it out, joined it back together
  • hung a cauldron on one end, with an iron tube leading from the beam into it
  • brought it on a cart to a vulnerable part of the wall, filled the cauldron with burning coals, sulphur and pitch
  • put a bellows in the other end, and essentially made a huge flamethrower, whcih set fire to the palisade
• garrison fled, fort taken
  • Athenians then get to pick up their dead

Amphipolis

• Macedonia concerned about Athenian agression in the north
  • invites Brasidas to bring an army north to harrass Athens in the region.
• 424 Brasidas marches with an army of 700 Helots and some other Peloponnesian recruits; on his way north comes to the aid of Megara during the crisis over Nisaea, helps to prevent Athenians from taking the city itself
  • Marches through Thessaly, approaches Acanthus on the base of the Acte peninsula, convinces the Acanthians to withdraw form Athens and join Sparta; Stagira and Argilus follow soon after
  • Puts him in a good position to deal with Amphipolis, which is the most important Athenian possesion in the region, one of the most important in the whole empire
    • had attempted a colony at Ennea Hodoi, at the Strymon bridge, under Kimon in 465, but it was destroyed by local Thracians
    • 437: Hagnon, son of Nicias, established Athenian colonists at Amphipolis, so named b/c it was surrounded on 3 sides by the Strymon
    • Amphipolis had eclipsed the power of Argilus in the area, so the Argilians were willing to help Brasidas against the Athenians at Amphipolis.
• Brasidas easily captured the bridge over the Strymon, which had only a small guard
  • but he doesn't attempt to take Amphipolis, even though it is unprepared
    • he expects that local discontents will open the city for him
• The two Athenian generals in the area were Eucles, who was stationed at Amphipolis itself
  • why no better guard on the Strymon bridge?
• The other was Thucydides, who was at Thasos with a squadron overseeing mining interests in Thrace
  • Moves his fleet to Amphipolis at the request of Eucles, after Brasidas had taken the bridge
  • Too late -- Amphipolitans surrendered the city to Brasidas, who offered them favorable terms
    • Thucydides withdraws to Eion
      • Result is the exile of Thucydides
• Winter 424-423: Brasidas uses his base at Amphipolis to consolidate control of more of the Chalcidice, in particular the Acte peninsula, the eastern finger, and Sithonia, the central finger
  • won over towns in the region by treating them well, offerning good terms, etc.
• In the wake of Delium and Amphipolis, the Athenians are again interested in peace:
  • Nicias has always favored settlement, wants to do so before things get any worse in Thrace
  • some other Athenians want to regain some of their lost ground before negotiationg a peace
  • Pleistoanax
    • banished in 447 after he failed to invade Attica when he was helping to liberate Megara
    • by now reinstated and also anxious to conclude peace with Athens
• In early spring of 423, a one-year truce was declared, to give time to prepare a more durable peace.
• Meanwhile, Scione on the western prong of Chalcidice revolted and invited Brasidas in
  • surprising b/c of Potidaea: Scione is cut off by land and vulnerable by sea
  • Happened two days after the armistice was concluded, but it's only after Brasidas is already in Scione that messengers from Athens and Sparta arrive to announce the truce
    • how to resolve?
• question made more significant when, shortly afterwards, the neighboring town of Mende also revolted, and Brasidas doesn't hesitate to accept their alliance, even though now he knows of the truce between Athens and Sparta
  • shortly afterward, Brasidas obliged to help Perdiccas, the Macedonian king (who was helping to finance Brasidas' operations)
  • when he returns, he discovers that Nicias, with 50 ships, has recovered Mende and is in the process of blockding Scione
• None of this provides fertile ground for peace negotiations
  • Cleon and his pro-war postion becoming more popular in Athens again
    • had been elected general in 424 after his success at Spacteria
    • not re-elected for 423 (didn't seem to do much in 424)
    • but now reelected for 422
• Between Cleon and Brasidas, there's plenty on each side to prevent the cities from moving in the direction of peace, and none is concluded
  • After the expiration of the truce, in 422, Cleon carries a resolution in the Assembly that an expedition be made to recapture Amphipolis