Athens. Although the terms of the peace allowed Athens a free hand in their brutal suppression of the Samian revolt in 440/439,19 by the mid-430s a series of disputes broke out—Thucydides’ “openly acknowledged grievances” (1.23.6), especially between Athens and Corinth, Sparta’s most powerful and aggressive ally. Open warfare between Corinth and its disaffected colony of Corcyra led to the Corcyraeans approaching the Athenians with a request for a defensive alliance. As a neutral state, they were permitted by the terms of the Thirty Years’ Peace to join either the Spartan or the Athenian bloc (Thuc. 1.35.2, 1.40.2), and the Athenians had their eyes upon their large navy, especially as they were well aware that war was in the air.20 Inevitably, however, the Athenian acceptance of this defensive alliance resulted in open warfare between Athenian and Corinthian ships in the Battle of Sybota in 433 (Thuc. 1.47–54). In the aftermath of the battle, the Athenians became concerned about the continued loyalty of Potidaea, a city in the Chalcidice, an area crucial for Athenian economic and military interests. Although Potidaea was a tribute-paying member of the Delian League, it was also a Corinthian colony that maintained a very close relationship with its mother city. When the Athenians demanded that they tear down a portion of their fortification walls, send hostages, and sever their official ties with Corinth (Thuc. 1.56.2), the Potidaeans appealed successfully to Corinth, resulting in the Athenian siege of the city (Thuc. 1.58–65). Soon afterward, the Corinthians, supported by the Megarians and the Aeginetans (Thuc. 1.67),21 put pressure on the Spartans to take action against the Athenians, and the Spartans issued an ultimatum, which the Athenians on Pericles’ advice rejected (Thuc. 1.145).
The outbreak of the Peloponnesian War occurred in the spring of 431, when the Thebans attempted to invade the recalcitrant Boeotian city of Plataea, a loyal ally of Athens. This act of aggression officially broke the terms of the Thirty Years’ Peace (Thuc. 2.7.1). Soon afterward, the Spartan King Archidamus led the Peloponnesian army into Attica, where he began the first of what was to be a series of annual invasions; hence the first phase of the Peloponnesian War is conventionally known as the Archidamian War (431–421). The Spartan strategy was to ravage Attic agricultural land in order to draw out the Athenians into a hoplite battle against the superior Peloponnesian land forces. Following Periclean strategy, however, the Athenians remained behind their walls, relying on their strong navy to import what they needed and to conduct reprisals on the Peloponnese by sea.22
In spite of the devastating plague that struck Athens in 430 (carrying off Pericles himself in the following year), at first the Athenian strategy was successful, culminating in the fortification in 425 of an outpost at Pylos in Messenia (ancestral homeland of the Spartan helots), which resulted in the shocking capture by the Athenian commanders Cleon and Demosthenes of 120 Spartan hoplites on the nearby island of Sphacteria.23 Overconfident as a result of this unexpected success, the Athenians (induced by Cleon) continued to reject Spartan negotiations for peace (Thuc. 4.41.3–4), and made a serious miscalculation the following year in engaging in a pitched hoplite battle at Delium in an attempt to democratize Boeotia and sway it away from the Peloponnesian side.24 The bloody defeat that the Boeotian army inflicted on the Athenian forces at Delium proved conclusively that the latter were no match on land.25 After the disaster at Delium, matters went rapidly downhill for the Athenians, when the Spartan commander Brasidas succeeded in winning away from Athens a number of strategically important cities in the north (Thuc. 4.102–116). Nevertheless, it was only when both Cleon and Brasidas (the “pestles” of war in Aristophanes’ Peace) died in the course of the unsuccessful Athenian attempt to recover Amphipolis that both sides finally agreed to negotiate for peace (Thuc. 5.16.1).
The resulting Peace of Nicias, named after the leading Athenian negotiator, was signed in 421 and essentially restored both Athens and Sparta to the status quo, as both sides were required (with a few exceptions) to restore any territorial gains they had made during the war (Thuc. 5.18–19). In other words, it addressed none of the issues that caused Sparta’s allies to push for war, and it revealed the hollowness of the Spartan claim to be the “liberators” of Greece (Thuc. 2.8.4, 3.32.2, 3.59.4).26 Thus, the Greek world returned to the state of unstable polarization with which the war had begun, and the peace that was supposed to last for a period of 50 years endured only for 6 (Thuc. 5.25.3). A coalition of the Spartans’ disgruntled allies began to jeopardize their control of the Peloponnesian League, a situation exploited by the charismatic young Athenian aristocrat Alcibiades, who negotiated a defensive alliance between Athens and Sparta’s traditional rival of Argos, as well as some other Peloponnesian cities (Thuc. 5.43–48). These anti-Spartan movements within the Peloponnese culminated in the Battle of Mantinea in 418, identified by Thucydides (5.74.) as the largest hoplite battle to have occurred for a considerable time, where at one fell swoop the Spartans reasserted their hegemony of the Peloponnese (Thuc. 5.75.3). As the uneasy peace continued, both sides began to seek out potential resources beyond mainland Greece and to search for new ways of achieving total defeat of their enemies, including the massacre of civilians (the Spartans at Hysiae in Argos, and the Athenians upon the reduction of the Dorian island of Melos; Thuc. 5.83, 5.85–111).
This new mindset left the Athenians vulnerable to the grandiose ambitions of the unscrupulous Alcibiades, who persuaded his fellow citizens (contrary to the caution urged by the seasoned general Nicias) to mount a large expedition to Sicily, ostensibly in support of their Italian allies, but in reality to gain an upper hand against their enemies in Greece (Thuc. 6.1, 9–24). Despite the unprecedented magnitude of the Sicilian expedition (415–413), it went wrong for the Athenians right from the start. The night before the ships were to set sail, busts of the god Hermes (the patron god of travelers) were mutilated, and in the course of their investigations the authorities uncovered evidence of the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries; public opinion considered these religious scandals to be part of a plot to overthrow the democracy in which Alcibiades himself was implicated.27 Thus, the expedition began under a cloud and the situation did not improve once the Athenian armada reached Sicily. The Athenians discovered that their so-called allies were unwilling to support the effort against Syracuse (the most powerful and aggressive city in Sicily), and they failed to follow up their initial successes.28 Worse yet, Alcibiades was recalled to stand trial for the profanation of the Mysteries (Thuc. 6.61), but escaped en route and made his way to Sparta (Thuc. 6.88.9), where he gave the Spartans two ultimately devastating pieces of advice: to intervene in Sicily and to fortify Decelea in Attica (6.91–92), which would cut the Athenians off from accessing supplies by land (cf. Thuc. 7.27–28). In the meantime, the Athenians successfully besieged Syracuse by sea, but failed to complete the circuit walls that would have blockaded the city completely. Athenian morale began to plummet, especially in light of the arrival of Peloponnesian reinforcements under the Spartan commander, Gylippus, and the chronic illness of the sole remaining Athenian general, Nicias, who requested to be recalled. Neverthless, the Athenians at home believed victory was still possible and sent a large fleet of reinforcements, commanded by the capable Demosthenes. Correctly surmising that the Athenians’ only chance lay in striking immediately (Thuc. 7.42.3–5), he attempted a bold night attack, but was unsuccessful because many of the new recruits were unfamiliar with the terrain. At this point, Demosthenes advised cutting Athenian losses and withdrawing from Sicily, but was overridden by Nicias (Thuc. 7.47–49). Nicias only agreed to retreat after the Athenian position became untenable, but was further delayed by the seers’ advice after an eclipse of the moon (Thuc. 7.50.3–4). Following a final desperate attempt to break out of the Great Harbor in Syracuse, the Athenians were forced to abandon their remaining ships and retreat by land, where they were slaughtered by the pursuing Syracusans and forced to surrender. Nicias and Demosthenes were executed, and the surviving Athenians were imprisoned in horrific conditions in the quarries in Syracuse (Thuc. 7.86–87.4).
Following the massive Athenian defeat in the ill-fated Sicilian expedition, the theater shifted to Ionia, as the Spartans resolved to make total war on the Athenians and become the undisputed leaders of Greece (Thuc. 8.2.4) in the final phase of the Peloponnesian War (413–404). To this end, the Spartans began to build up their fleet (Thuc. 8.3.1), foster revolts among the Athenian naval allies (Thuc. 8.5–6), and pursue Persian support in both aims. Although influential at first, Alcibiades soon lost the trust of both the Spartans and the Persians,
