Greece History – The Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian War broke out in 431. Occasional causes were: a conflict between Corinth and its colony of Corcira, in which Athens to ensure its trade and its expansion into the Ionian Sea (on whose shore it was founded in 444, for initiative of Pericles, the Panhellenic colony of Turî), allied himself with Corcira; a controversy that arose between Athens and Potidea, a Corinthian colony in the Halkidiki peninsula belonging to the Athenian Empire, a dispute that ended with the Potidea rebellion, supported by the Corinthians; and finally a decree that excluded the Megaresi (participants, like the Corinthians, of the Peloponnesian league led by Sparta) from the ports of the Athenian empire. Having Pericles refused all satisfaction to the Spartans even on the last point shows that he, for the reasons we have said, wanted war. Pericles, however, intended to conduct the war without major offensives or major land battles. He did not count on the army of hoplites, which, recruited into the possessing classes, had allowed itself to decay under the government of radical democracy, and therefore, having abandoned the very territory of Attica to the enemy, had concentrated the rural population in the fortifications. of the city and Piraeus. The war, in his opinion, had to be waged by sea, damaging Peloponnesian trade and reasserting Athenian naval supremacy. But this war plan required an all-round persistence and a very high expense to pay the sailors mobilized. This explains how the discontent, worsened by an epidemic that caused a massacre of the agglomerated population in Athens, But in the meantime the rebellions renewed themselves in the Athenian empire. But that of Potidea (429) and that of Lesbos (427) were tamed, but neither then nor later that of Amphipolis (424), a colony founded by Pericles in southern Thrace, near Strymon (437), and of the nearby cities of Chalkidiki, aroused by the Spartan Brasida. The death of Cleon, which took place in battle in an attempt to recover Amphipolis (422), gave the upper hand in Athens to the peace party, composed of moderate democrats and headed by Nicias, and thus concluded the peace that bears the name of Nicias (421), and shortly after a defensive alliance treaty between Athens and Sparta. This peace and more this alliance deprived Athens of the advantages ensured by its ten-year persistence. In fact, a truce of thirty ‘was about to expire. years, which Sparta had concluded with Argos, the second largest among the Peloponnesian cities, the only one that did not accept the hegemony of Sparta. The end of this truce was the signal of a resumption of hostility between Argos and Sparta and of a renewal of the democratic movement in the Peloponnese, in conditions much more favorable than it had been immediately after the Persian wars, when the memory was fresh. of the victory, mainly due to the Spartan valor, of Plataea. But now the predominance in Athens of moderate democracy and more the two Nicias treaties meant that the Athenians did not succor the anti-Spartan democratic coalition if not softly and, facilitating the victory of Mantinea over the democratic coalition for the Spartans (418), meant that the possibility of demolishing the Peloponnesian league was definitively lost for Athens, anticipating the work of Epaminondas. Closed to the Athenians by the peace with Persia the way of expansion in the East, from the present contingencies that of expansion into Greece itself, there was no other field than the West for expansionist aims. These sprouted from the vigor of strength and were favored by the finances restored with the doubling of the tributes that Cleone had imposed on the allies, taking advantage of the success of Sfacteria. In the West, with the fall of the Dinomenidi monarchy (465), the Siceliote and Italiote cities weakened under the apparent prosperity in infighting, making themselves unable to take advantage of their still thriving forces for an expansion, which then could have had a chance of success, against the adversaries who endangered its future, the Carthaginians and the Italians. Athens had extended its trade there, had formed more or less stable links with the Chalkidian cities, which felt suffocated by the prevailing Doric element, had also founded the colony of Turî, which was however not very faithful to it, and fought for a few years, but with little energy, in defense of the Chalcidian cities during the first part of the Peloponnesian war (427-24). Now, taking as a pretext a struggle between Selinunte, a Syracusan ally, and Segesta, its ancient ally, it intervened with a large expedition, which evidently aimed at subjecting Greek Sicily to Athenian hegemony (415-413).

The tenacious resistance opposed, under the leadership of Hermocrates, from Syracuse, which the Athenians besieged, the Corinthian and Spartan aids led by Gilippo, the poor ability of the Athenian commander, Nicias, meant that the enterprise ended, with a disaster: the destruction of the Athenian fleet in the great port of Syracuse, and that of the besieging army in its disastrous retreat. To prevent aid from reaching Syracuse from the Peloponnese, in the last phase of the Sicilian war, the Athenians had themselves violated the peace of Nicias, devastating the Spartan territory. Now the war resumed with new vigor in Greece, where the destruction of the Athenian fleet gave courage to the opponents of Athens (Decelic War, 413-404). The Spartans no longer limited themselves to temporarily invading Attica, as in the first part of the war, but they occupied a fortified position, Decelea, from which they permanently devastated it. The Athenian allies rose up; moreover Sparta, unlike what it had done after the Athenian catastrophe in Egypt, made an alliance against Athens with Persia, forcing itself to cede the Greek cities of Asia Minor to the Persians, thus obtaining the means to arm and pay a mighty fleet. The resistance of the Athenians was strenuous. They still achieved remarkable naval victories (411-10) at Cinossema, Abido, and finally at Cyzicus, where they captured and destroyed the entire Peloponnesian army. They even managed to overcome the difficulties created by a revolution in the oligarchic sense that took place in 411 in Athens, well explainable after so many disasters that were attributed to the dominance of radical democracy, and the democratic restoration that followed immediately after. Among these events, the ambiguous and brilliant figure of Alcibiades, an expert in business management no less than in strategy, an adventurer rather than a politician, suspected for the boundless ambition of his fellow citizens, who removed him from command in the moments in which only his genius might, perhaps, have saved them. In fact, the exhaustion was such that it was only surprising that they succumbed so late to the unequal struggle. Another great victory they brought back by sea, gathering all their energies in a supreme effort, in the battle of the Arginuse (406). But their army was destroyed shortly after (405) by the Spartan Admiral Lysander at the Battle of Egospotami. That even if the immediate cause of the defeat was the neglect of the Athenian generals, this only shortened the agony of the city. Squeezed by sea and by land, after having prolonged its resistance to the extreme, Athens had to capitulate (April 404).