The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 03

by Unknown

CHAPTER XXX. THE OUTBREAK OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

No admirer of Greek civilisation can turn from the peaceful age of Pericles and follow the next step in Grecian history without a feeling of sadness, for he has to see the most cultured people of antiquity torn by internal dissensions and interstate jealousies; he has to see the people who represent the acme of culture harassed for a generation by an imbecile strife, which shall leave it so weakened that it will become an easy prey to outside foes. In every succeeding generation, when men have studied the history of classical times, the same feeling of amazement has prevailed, and has often found expression in contemplating this period of the Peloponnesian War; but it remained for John Ruskin to invent the vivid phrase which in three words epitomises the entire story, when he speaks of this amazing conflict as the “suicide of Greece.” It was in truth nothing less than that.

There was no great question at issue between the Athenian and Spartan peoples that must be decided by the arbitrament of arms or otherwise. There was no reason outside the temperament of the people themselves why the Athenians on the one hand, and the Spartans on the other, might not have gone on indefinitely, each people pre-eminent in its own territory, and each standing aloof from the other; but that interstate jealousy which was responsible for so many things in Grecian history came as a determining influence which at last could not longer be controlled. Persian might, which dared not re-enter Greece, but which longed for the overthrow of an old enemy, urged on one side or the other, as seemed for the moment best to serve that end. The remaining Grecian cities took sides with Athens or Sparta according to their predilections, or their own personal enmities and jealousies, and there resulted a war which involved practically all the cities of Greece, and which, after continuing for a full generation, brought Hellas as a whole to destruction.

OUR SOURCES

The history of this war has been preserved to posterity in far greater detail than has the history of any preceding conflict anywhere in the world. The Athenian general Thucydides, who himself took an active part in the earlier stages of the war, commanding forces in the field until finally he suffered the displeasure of the Athenians, determined from the outset, as he himself tells us, to write a complete history of the conflict which he believed would be the most memorable of all in the annals of history. The work which he produced has probably been more widely celebrated and more universally applauded than any other piece of historical composition that was ever written. All manner of extravagant things have been said about it. Every one has heard, for example, of Macaulay’s saying that he felt he might perhaps equal any other piece of historical writing that had ever been done except the seventh book of Thucydides, before which he felt himself helpless. This eulogy is of a piece with much more that has been said in similar kind by a multitude of other critics. It has even been alleged that no historian of a later period has ever dealt out such impartial judgment as is to be found in the pages of Thucydides. Seemingly forgetful of the meaning of words, critics have even assured us that no period of like extent of the world’s history, ancient or modern, is so fully known to us as this period of the Peloponnesian War through the history of Thucydides.

To any one, who himself will take up the history of Thucydides, either in the original or in such a translation as the admirable one of Dale, two things will at once be apparent; in the first place it will not long be open to doubt, to any one who is familiar with the literature of antiquity, that this work of Thucydides, considered in relation to the time in which it was written, is really an extraordinary production; but, in the second place, it will be equally clear that if we are to consider the work not in comparison with the writings of ancient authors but as a part of world-literature, then much that has been said of it must be regarded as fulsome eulogy.

To say that this work covers the period of the Peloponnesian War as no modern period of history has been covered; to say that no modern historian has dealt with his topic with the calm impartiality of Thucydides; to say that no writer can hope to produce an historical narrative comparable to the seventh book, or to any other book, of Thucydides—to say such things as these is to abandon the broad impartial view from which alone criticism worthy of the name is possible, and to come under the spell of other minds. The History of the Peloponnesian War is a great book; as an historical composition it is one of the greatest ever written: but when one has said that one has said enough. Its style, by common consent, is not such as to make it a model, and its matter is very largely the recital of bald facts with evidence of an insight into the political motives beneath the surface, which seems extraordinary only because the predecessors of Thucydides and some of his successors had seemed so woefully to lack such insight. As to the impartiality of the narrative, we must not overlook the significance of Professor Mahaffy’s remark, that for most of the period covered in the history of Thucydides this history itself is our sole authority. That it does, nevertheless, evince a high degree of impartiality and a broad sweep of intellect on the part of its author will not be questioned; but Professor Mahaffy makes an estimate, which no one who is not fully under the spell of antiquity would think of disputing, when he asserts his belief that such modern historians as, for example, Thirlwall, must be accredited with at least as high a degree of impartiality as Thucydides can claim.

But all this must not be taken as in any sense denying that the work of Thucydides is a marvellous production. Considering the time when it was written, and that its author was a participant in many of the events which he describes, it is astonishing that his work should be measurably free from partiality. That it is so was, perhaps, at least in some measure, due to the fact that Thucydides was banished from Athens, and hence wrote his history not so much from the Athenian standpoint, as from the standpoint of a man without a country, who was at enmity with both Spartans and Athenians. But, partial or impartial, the history of Thucydides remains, and presumably must always remain, the sole contemporary record open to posterity of that great struggle through which Greece, as it were, voluntarily threw away her prestige and her power.

Thucydides, to be sure, did not complete his history of the war, or, if he did, his later chapters have not been preserved to us. The former supposition is doubtless the correct one, because the thread of the narrative, which Thucydides dropped so abruptly, was taken up by Xenophon, also a contemporary. It was a not unusual custom among the ancient authors to write important works as explicit continuations of the works of other writers. Xenophon’s narrative of the events of the later years of the Peloponnesian War is such a work. Like the history of Thucydides it is practically our sole authority for the period that it covers, but, by common consent of critics, it takes a much lower level than the work which it supplements.

Xenophon was also an exile from Athens; but he differed from Thucydides in being an ardent friend of Sparta, and his prejudices are well known to readers of his works. One must suppose, however, that the favourite pupil of Socrates may be depended upon for reasonable impartiality when he deals with matters of fact. But, be this as it may, it is Xenophon, and Xenophon alone, who tells us most that we know at first hand, not alone of the closing years of the Peloponnesian War, but of many in the period succeeding. We shall constantly support our narrative of the events of this period, therefore, by references to the pages of Xenophon, as well as to those of Thucydides.[a]

THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR

Even before the recent hostilities at Corcyra and Potidæa, it had been evident to reflecting Greeks that prolonged observance of the Thirty Years’ Truce was becoming uncertain, and that the mingled hatred, fear, and admiration which Athens inspired throughout Greece would prompt Sparta and the Spartan confederacy to seize any favourable opening for breaking down the Athenian power. That such was the disposition of Sparta was well understood among the Athenian allies, however considerations of prudence and general slowness in resolving might postpone the moment of carrying it into effect. Accordingly not only the Samians when they revolted had applied to the Spartan confederacy for aid, which they appear to have been prevented from obtaining chiefly by the pacific interests then animating the Corinthians—but also the Lesbians had endeavoured to open negotiations with Sparta for a similar purpose, though the authorities to whom alone the proposition could have been communicated, since it long remained secret and was never executed—had given them no encouragement.

The affairs of Athens had been administered, under the ascendency of Pericles, without any view to extension of empire or encroachment upon others, though with constant reference to the probabilities of war, and with anxiety to keep the city in a condition to meet it. But even the splendid internal ornaments, which Athens at that time acquired, were probably not without their effect in provoking jealousy on the part of other Greeks as to her ultimate views. The only known incident, wherein Athens had been brought into collision with a member of the Spartan confederacy prior to the Corcyræan dispute, was her decree passed in regard to Megara, prohibiting the Megarians, on pain of death, from all trade or intercourse as well with Athens as with all ports within the Athenian empire. This prohibition was grounded on the alleged fact, that the Megarians had harboured runaway slaves from Athens, and had appropriated and cultivated portions of land upon her border; partly land, the property of the goddesses of Eleusis; partly a strip of territory disputed between the two states, and therefore left by mutual understanding in common pasture without any permanent enclosure. In reference to this latter point, the Athenian herald Anthemocritus had been sent to Megara to remonstrate, but had been so rudely dealt with, that his death shortly afterwards was imputed to the Megarians. We may reasonably suppose that ever since the revolt of Megara fourteen years before—which caused to Athens an irreparable mischief—the feeling prevalent between the two cities had been one of bitter enmity, manifesting itself in many ways, but so much exasperated by recent events as to provoke Athens to a signal revenge. Exclusion from Athens and all the ports in her empire, comprising nearly every island and seaport in the Ægean, was so ruinous to the Megarians, that they loudly complained of it at Sparta, representing it as an infraction of the Thirty Years’ Truce; though it was undoubtedly within the legitimate right of Athens to enforce, and was even less harsh than the systematic expulsion of foreigners by Sparta, with which Pericles compared it.

Attendant of a Greek Warrior

(From a vase)

[432 B.C.]

These complaints found increased attention after the war of Corcyra and the blockade of Potidæa by the Athenians. The sentiments of the Corinthians towards Athens had now become angry and warlike in the highest degree. It was not simply resentment for the past which animated them, but also the anxiety farther to bring upon Athens so strong a hostile pressure as should preserve Potidæa and its garrison from capture. Accordingly they lost no time in endeavouring to rouse the feelings of the Spartans against Athens, and in inducing them to invite to Sparta all such of the confederates as had any grievances against that city. Not merely the Megarians, but several other confederates, came thither as accusers; while the Æginetans, though their insular position made it perilous for them to appear, made themselves vehemently heard through the mouths of others, complaining that Athens withheld from them the autonomy to which they were entitled under the truce.

According to the Lacedæmonian practice, it was necessary first that the Spartans themselves, apart from their allies, should decide whether there existed a sufficient case of wrong done by Athens against themselves or against Peloponnesus—either in violation of the Thirty Years’ Truce, or in any other way. If the determination of Sparta herself were in the negative, the case would never even be submitted to the vote of the allies; but if it were in the affirmative, then the latter would be convoked to deliver their opinion also: and assuming that the majority of votes coincided with the previous decision of Sparta, the entire confederacy stood then pledged to the given line of policy—if the majority was contrary, the Spartans would stand alone, or with such only of the confederates as concurred. Even in the oligarchy of Sparta, such a question as this could only be decided by a general assembly of Spartan citizens, qualified both by age, by regular contribution to the public mess, and by obedience to Spartan discipline. To the assembly so constituted the deputies of the various allied cities addressed themselves, each setting forth his case against Athens. The Corinthians chose to reserve themselves to the last, after the assembly had been inflamed by the previous speakers.

Of this important assembly, on which so much of the future fate of Greece turned, Thucydides has preserved an account unusually copious. First, the speech delivered by the Corinthian envoys. Next, that of some Athenian envoys, who happening to be at the same time in Sparta on some other matters, and being present in the assembly so as to have heard the speeches both of the Corinthians and of the other complainants, obtained permission from the magistrates to address the assembly in their turn. Thirdly, the address of the Spartan king Archidamus, on the course of policy proper to be adopted by Sparta. Lastly, the brief, but eminently characteristic, address of the ephor, Sthenelaidas, on putting the question for decision. These speeches, the composition of Thucydides himself, contain substantially the sentiments of the parties to whom they are ascribed. Neither of them is distinctly a reply to that which has preceded, but each presents the situation of affairs from a different point of view.

To dwell much upon specific allegations of wrong, would not have suited the purpose of the Corinthian envoy; for against such, the Thirty Years’ Truce expressly provided that recourse should be had to amicable arbitration—to which recourse he never once alludes. He knew that, as between Corinth and Athens, war had already begun at Potidæa; and his business, throughout nearly all of a very emphatic speech, is to show that the Peloponnesian confederacy, and especially Sparta, is bound to take instant part in it, not less by prudence than by duty. He employs the most animated language to depict the ambition, the unwearied activity, the personal effort abroad as well as at home, the quick resolves, the sanguine hopes never dashed by failure—of Athens, as contrasted with the cautious, home-keeping, indolent, scrupulous routine of Sparta. He reproaches the Spartans with their backwardness and timidity, in not having repressed the growth of Athens before she reached this formidable height, especially in having allowed her to fortify her city after the retreat of Xerxes and afterwards to build the Long Walls from the city to the sea. The Spartans (he observes) stood alone among all Greeks in the notable system of keeping down an enemy, not by acting, but by delaying to act—not arresting his growth, but putting him down when his force was doubled. Falsely indeed had they acquired the reputation of being sure, when they were in reality merely slow. In resisting Xerxes, as in resisting Athens, they had always been behindhand, disappointing and leaving their friends to ruin; while both these enemies had only failed of complete success through their own mistakes.

After half apologising for the tartness of these reproofs—which however, as the Spartans were now well disposed to go to war forthwith, would be well-timed and even agreeable—the Corinthian orator vindicates the necessity of plain-speaking by the urgent peril of the emergency and the formidable character of the enemy who threatened them. “You do not reflect” he says “how thoroughly different the Athenians are from yourselves. They are innovators by nature, sharp both in devising, and in executing what they have determined: you are sharp only in keeping what you have got, in determining on nothing beyond, and in doing even less than absolute necessity requires. They again dare beyond their means, run risks beyond their own judgment, and keep alive their hopes in desperate circumstances: your peculiarity is, that your performance comes short of your power, you have no faith even in what your judgment guarantees, when in difficulties you despair of all escape. They never hang back, you are habitual laggards: they love foreign service, you cannot stir from home: for they are always under the belief that their movements will lead to some further gain, while you fancy that new products will endanger what you already have. When successful, they make the greatest forward march; when defeated, they fall back the least. Moreover they task their bodies on behalf of their city as if they were the bodies of others, while their minds are most of all their own, for exertion in her service. When their plans for acquisition do not come successfully out, they feel like men robbed of what belongs to them: yet the acquisitions when realised appear like trifles compared with what remains to be acquired. If they sometimes fail in an attempt, new hopes arise in some other direction to supply the want; for with them alone the possession and the hope of what they aim at are almost simultaneous, from their habit of quickly executing all that they have once resolved. And in this manner do they toil throughout all their lives amidst hardship and peril, disregarding present enjoyment in the continual thirst for increase, knowing no other festival recreation except the performance of active duty, and deeming inactive repose a worse condition than fatiguing occupation. To speak the truth in two words, such is their inborn temper that they will neither remain at rest themselves nor allow rest to others.

“Such is the city which stands opposed to you, Lacedæmonians—yet ye still hang back from action. Your continual scruples and apathy would hardly be safe, even if ye had neighbours like yourselves in character: but as to dealings with Athens, your system is antiquated and out of date. In politics as in art, it is the modern improvements which are sure to come out victorious; and though unchanged institutions are best, if a city be not called upon to act, yet multiplicity of active obligations requires multiplicity and novelty of contrivance. It is through these numerous trials that the means of Athens have acquired so much more new development than yours.”

The Corinthians concluded by saying, that if, after so many previous warnings, now repeated for the last time, Sparta still refused to protect her allies against Athens, if she delayed to perform her promise made to the Potidæans of immediately invading Attica, they (the Corinthians) would forthwith look for safety in some new alliance, which they felt themselves fully justified in doing. They admonished her to look well to the case, and to carry forward Peloponnesus, with undiminished dignity, as it had been transmitted to her from her predecessors.

Such was the memorable picture of Athens and her citizens, as exhibited by her fiercest enemy before the public assembly at Sparta. It was calculated to impress the assembly, not by appeal to recent or particular misdeeds, but by the general system of unprincipled and endless aggression which was imputed to Athens during the past, and by the certainty held out that the same system, unless put down by measures of decisive hostility, would be pushed still farther in future, to the utter ruin of Peloponnesus. And to this point did the Athenian envoy (staying in Sparta about some other negotiation and now present in the assembly) address himself in reply, after having asked and obtained permission from the magistrates. The empire of Athens was now of such standing that the younger men present had no personal knowledge of the circumstances under which it had grown up, and what was needed as information for them would be impressive as a reminder even to their seniors.

In her position, he asserted, no Grecian power either would or could have acted otherwise—no Grecian power, certainly not Sparta, would have acted with so much equity and moderation or given so little ground of complaint to her subjects. Worse they had suffered, while under Persia; worse they would suffer, if they came under Sparta, who held her own allies under the thraldom of an oligarchical party in each city; and if they hated Athens this was only because subjects always hated the present dominion, whatever that might be.

Having justified both the origin and the working of the Athenian empire, the envoy concluded by warning Sparta to consider calmly, without being hurried away by the passions and invectives of others, before she took a step from which there was no retreat, and which exposed the future to chances such as no man on either side could foresee. He called on her not to break the truce mutually sworn to, but to adjust all differences, as Athens was prepared to do, by the amicable arbitration which that truce provided. Should she begin war, the Athenians would follow her lead and resist her, calling to witness those gods under whose sanction the oaths were taken. At any time previous to the affair of Corcyra, the topics insisted upon by the Athenian would probably have been profoundly listened to at Sparta. But now the mind of the Spartans was made up. Having cleared the assembly of all “strangers,” and even all allies, they proceeded to discuss and determine the question among themselves. Most of their speakers held but one language—expatiating on the wrongs already done by Athens, and urging the necessity of instant war. There was however one voice, and that a commanding voice, raised against this conclusion: the ancient and respected king Archidamus opposed it.

The speech of Archidamus is that of a deliberate Spartan, who, setting aside both hatred to Athens and blind partiality to allies, looks at the question with a view to the interests and honour of Sparta only. He reminded them of the wealth, the population (greater than that of any other Grecian city), the naval force, the cavalry, the hoplites, the large foreign dominion of Athens—and then asked by what means they proposed to put her down. Ships, they had few; trained seamen, yet fewer; wealth, next to none. They could indeed invade and ravage Attica, by their superior numbers and land-force. But the Athenians had possessions abroad sufficient to enable them to dispense with the produce of Attica, while their great navy would retaliate the like ravages upon Peloponnesus. To suppose that one or two devastating expeditions into Attica would bring the war to an end, would be a deplorable error; such proceedings would merely enrage the Athenians, without impairing their real strength, and the war would thus be prolonged, perhaps for a whole generation. Before they determined upon war, it was absolutely necessary to provide more efficient means for carrying it on; and to multiply their allies not merely among the Greeks, but among foreigners also. While this was in process, envoys ought to be sent to Athens to remonstrate and obtain redress for the grievances of the allies. If the Athenians granted this—which they very probably would do, when they saw the preparations going forward, and when the ruin of the highly-cultivated soil of Attica was held over them in terrorem without being actually consummated—so much the better: if they refused, in the course of two or three years, war might be commenced with some hopes of success. Archidamus reminded his countrymen that their allies would hold them responsible for the good or bad issue of what was now determined; admonishing them, in the true spirit of a conservative Spartan, to cling to that cautious policy which had been ever the characteristic of the state, despising both taunts on their tardiness and panegyric on their valour.

The speech of Archidamus was not only in itself full of plain reason and good sense, but delivered altogether from the point of view of a Spartan; appealing greatly to Spartan conservative feeling and even prejudice. But in spite of all this, and in spite of the personal esteem entertained for the speaker, the tide of feeling in the opposite direction was at that moment irresistible. Sthenelaidas, one of the five ephors to whom it fell to put the question for voting, closed the debate. His few words mark at once the character of the man, the temper of the assembly, and the simplicity of speech, though without the wisdom of judgment, for which Archidamus had taken credit to his countrymen.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “these long speeches of the Athenians. They have praised themselves abundantly, but they have never rebutted what is laid to their charge—that they are guilty of wrong against our allies and against Peloponnesus. Now if in former days they were good men against the Persians, and are now evil-doers against us, they deserve double punishment as having become evil-doers instead of good. But we are the same now as we were then: we know better than to sit still while our allies are suffering wrong: we shall not adjourn our aid, while they cannot adjourn their sufferings. Others have in abundance wealth, ships, and horses—but we have good allies, whom we are not to abandon to the mercy of the Athenians: nor are we to trust our redress to arbitration and to words, when our wrongs are not confined to words. We must help them speedily and with all our strength. Nor let any one tell us that we can with honour deliberate when we are actually suffering wrong—it is rather for those who intend to do the wrong, to deliberate well beforehand. Resolve upon war then, Lacedæmonians, in a manner worthy of Sparta. Suffer not the Athenians to become greater than they are: let us not betray our allies to ruin, but march with the aid of the gods against the wrong-doers.”

With these few words, so well calculated to defeat the prudential admonitions of Archidamus, Sthenelaidas put the question for the decision of the assembly—which at Sparta was usually taken neither by show of hands, nor by deposit of balls in an urn, but by cries analogous to the ay or no of the English House of Commons—the presiding ephor declaring which of the cries predominated. On this occasion the cry for war was manifestly the stronger. Yet Sthenelaidas affected inability to determine which of the two was the louder, in order that he might have an excuse for bringing about a more impressive manifestation of sentiment and a stronger apparent majority—since a portion of the minority would probably be afraid to show their real opinions as individuals openly. He therefore directed a division—like the speaker of the English House of Commons when his decision in favour of ay or no is questioned by any member—“Such of you as think that the truce has been violated and that the Athenians are doing us wrong, go to that side; such as think the contrary, to the other side.” The assembly accordingly divided, and the majority was very great on the warlike side of the question.

The first step of the Lacedæmonians, after coming to this important decision, was to send to Delphi and inquire of the oracle whether it would be beneficial to them to undertake the war. The answer brought back (Thucydides seems hardly certain that it was really given) was—that if they did their best they would be victorious, and that the gods would help them, invoked or uninvoked. They at the same time convened a general congress of their allies to Sparta, for the purpose of submitting their recent resolution to the vote of all.

[432-431 B.C.]

If there were any speeches delivered at this congress in opposition to the war, they were not likely to be successful in a cause wherein even Archidamus had failed. After the Corinthian had concluded, the question was put to the deputies of every city, great and small indiscriminately: and the majority decided for war. This important resolution was adopted about the end of 432 B.C., or the beginning of January 431 B.C.: the previous decision of the Spartans separately, may have been taken about two months earlier, in the preceding October or November 432 B.C.

Reviewing the conduct of the two great Grecian parties at this momentous juncture, with reference to existing treaties and positive grounds of complaint, it seems clear that Athens was in the right. She had done nothing which could fairly be called a violation of the Thirty Years’ Truce: while for such of her acts as were alleged to be such, she offered to submit them to that amicable arbitration which the truce itself prescribed. The Peloponnesian confederates were manifestly the aggressors in the contest; and if Sparta, usually so backward, now came forward in a spirit so decidedly opposite, we are to ascribe it partly to her standing fear and jealousy of Athens, partly to the pressure of her allies, especially of the Corinthians. Thucydides, recognising these two as the grand determining motives, and indicating the alleged infractions of truce as simple occasions or pretexts, seems to consider the fear and hatred of Athens as having contributed more to determine Sparta than the urgency of her allies. That the extraordinary aggrandisement of Athens, during the period immediately succeeding the Persian invasion, was well-calculated to excite alarm and jealousy in Peloponnesus, is indisputable. But if we take Athens as she stood in 432 B.C., it deserves notice that she had neither made, nor (so far as we know) tried to make, a single new acquisition during the whole fourteen years which had elapsed since the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce—and moreover that that truce marked an epoch of signal humiliation and reduction of her power. The triumph which Sparta and the Peloponnesians then gained, though not sufficiently complete to remove all fear of Athens, was yet great enough to inspire them with the hope that a second combined effort would subdue her. This mixture of fear and hope was exactly the state of feeling out of which war was likely to grow.

Moreover the confident hopes of the Peloponnesians were materially strengthened by the widespread sympathy in favour of their cause, proclaiming as it did the intended liberation of Greece from a despot city.

To Athens, on the other hand, the coming war presented itself in a very different aspect; holding out scarcely any hope of possible gain, and the certainty of prodigious loss and privation—even granting that at this heavy cost, her independence and union at home, and her empire abroad, could be upheld. By Pericles, and by the more long-sighted Athenians, the chance of unavoidable war was foreseen even before the Corcyræan dispute. But Pericles was only the first citizen in a democracy, esteemed, trusted, and listened to, more than any one else by the body of citizens, but warmly opposed in most of his measures, under the free speech and latitude of individual action which reigned at Athens—and even bitterly hated by many active political opponents. The formal determination of the Lacedæmonians, to declare war, must of course have been made known at Athens, by those Athenian envoys who had entered an unavailing protest against it in the Spartan assembly. No steps were taken by Sparta to carry this determination into effect until after the congress of allies and their pronounced confirmatory vote. Nor did the Spartans even then send any herald, or make any formal declaration. They despatched various propositions to Athens, not at all with a view of trying to obtain satisfaction, or of providing some escape from the probability of war; but with the contrary purpose—of multiplying demands, and enlarging the grounds of quarrel. Meanwhile the deputies retiring home from the congress to their respective cities carried with them the general resolution for immediate warlike preparations to be made with as little delay as possible.

Greek Helmets and Standard

PREPARATIONS FOR THE CONFLICT

The first requisition addressed by the Lacedæmonians to Athens was a political manœuvre aimed at Pericles, their chief opponent in that city. His mother Agariste belonged to the great family of the Alemæonids, who were supposed to be under an inexorable hereditary taint, in consequence of the sacrilege committed by their ancestor Megacles nearly two centuries before, in the slaughter of the Cylonian suppliants near the altar of the Venerable Goddesses. Ancient as this transaction was, it still had sufficient hold on the mind of the Athenians to serve as the basis of a political manœuvre: about seventy-seven years before, shortly after the expulsion of Hippias from Athens, it had been so employed by the Spartan king Cleomenes, who at that time exacted from the Athenians a clearance of the ancient sacrilege, to be effected by the banishment of Clisthenes (the founder of the democracy) and his chief partisans. This demand, addressed by Cleomenes to the Athenians at the instance of Isagoras, the rival of Clisthenes, had been then obeyed, and had served well the purposes of those who sent it. A similar blow was now aimed by the Lacedæmonians at Pericles (the grand-nephew of Clisthenes), and doubtless at the instance of his political enemies: religion required, it was pretended, that “the abomination of the goddess should be driven out.” If the Athenians complied with this demand, they would deprive themselves, at this critical moment, of their ablest leader. But the Lacedæmonians, not expecting compliance, reckoned at all events upon discrediting Pericles with the people, as being partly the cause of the war through family taint of impiety; and this impression would doubtless be loudly proclaimed by his political opponents in the assembly.

The influence of Pericles with the Athenian public had become greater and greater as their political experience of him was prolonged. But the bitterness of his enemies appears to have increased along with it; and not long before this period, he had been indirectly assailed, as we have seen, through the medium of accusations against three different persons, all more or less intimate with him—his mistress Aspasia, the philosopher Anaxagoras, and the sculptor Phidias. It is said also that Dracontides proposed and carried a decree in the public assembly, that Pericles should be called on to give an account of the money which he had expended, and that the dicasts, before whom the account was rendered, should give their suffrage in the most solemn manner from the altar: this latter provision was modified by Agnon, who, while proposing that the dicasts should be fifteen hundred in number, retained the vote by pebbles in the urn according to ordinary custom.

If Pericles was ever tried on such a charge, there can be no doubt that he was honourably acquitted: for the language of Thucydides respecting his pecuniary probity is such as could not have been employed if a verdict of guilty on a charge of peculation had been publicly pronounced. But we cannot be certain that he ever was tried; indeed, another accusation urged by his enemies, and even by Aristophanes in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War, implies that no trial took place: for it was alleged that Pericles, in order to escape this danger, “blew up the Peloponnesian War,” and involved his country in such confusion and peril as made his own aid and guidance indispensably necessary to her, especially that he passed the decree against the Megarians by which the war was really brought on. We know enough, however, to be certain that such a supposition is altogether inadmissible. The enemies of Pericles were far too eager, and too expert in Athenian political warfare, to have let him escape by such a stratagem. Moreover, we learn from the assurance of Thucydides that the war depended upon far deeper causes—that the Megarian decree was in no way the real cause of it; that it was not Pericles, but the Peloponnesians, who brought it on, by the blow struck at Potidæa.

All that we can make out, amidst these uncertified allegations, is that, in a year or two immediately preceding the Peloponnesian War, Pericles was hard pressed by the accusations of political enemies—perhaps even in his own person, but certainly in the persons of those who were most in his confidence and affection. And it was in this turn of his political position, that the Lacedæmonians sent to Athens the above-mentioned requisition, that the ancient Cylonian sacrilege might be at length cleared out; in other words, that Pericles and his family might be banished. Doubtless his enemies, as well as the partisans of Lacedæmon at Athens, would strenuously support this proposition. And the party of Lacedæmon at Athens was always strong, even during the middle of the war; to act as proxenus to the Lacedæmonians was accounted an honour even by the greatest Athenian families. On this occasion, however, the manœuvre did not succeed, nor did the Athenians listen to the requisition for banishing the sacrilegious Alcmæonids. On the contrary, they replied that the Spartans too had an account of sacrilege to clear off: for they had violated the sanctuary of Poseidon at Cape Tænarus, in dragging from it some helot suppliants; and the sanctuary of Athene Chalciœcus at Sparta, in blocking up and starving to death the guilty regent Pausanias. To require that Laconia might be cleared of these two acts of sacrilege, was the only answer which the Athenians made to the demand sent for the banishment of Pericles. Probably the actual effect of that demand was to strengthen him in the public esteem—very different from the effect of the same manœuvre when practised before by Cleomenes against Clisthenes.

Other Spartan envoys shortly afterwards arrived with fresh demands. The Athenians were now required: (1) to withdraw their troops from Potidæa; (2) to replace Ægina in its autonomy; (3) to repeal the bill of exclusion against the Megarians.

It was upon the latter that the greatest stress was laid; an intimation being held out that the war might be avoided if such repeal were granted. We see plainly from this proceeding that the Lacedæmonians acted in concert with the anti-Periclean leaders at Athens. To Sparta and her confederacy the decree against the Megarians was of less importance than the rescue of the Corinthian troops now blocked up in Potidæa; but on the other hand, the party opposed to Pericles would have much better chance of getting a vote of the assembly against him on the subject of the Megarians: and this advantage, if gained, would serve to enfeeble his influence generally. No concession was obtained however on either of the three points: even in respect to Megara, the decree of exclusion was vindicated and upheld against all the force of opposition. At length the Lacedæmonians—who had already resolved upon war and had sent three envoys in mere compliance with the exigencies of ordinary practice, not with any idea of bringing about an accommodation—sent a third batch of envoys with a proposition which at least had the merit of disclosing their real purpose without disguise. Rhamphias and two other Spartans announced to the Athenians the simple injunction: “The Lacedæmonians wish the peace to stand; and it may stand, if you will leave the Greeks autonomous.” Upon this demand, so very different from the preceding, the Athenians resolved to hold a fresh assembly on the subject of war or peace, to open the whole question anew for discussion, and to determine once for all on a peremptory answer.

The last demands presented on the part of Sparta, which went to nothing less than the entire extinction of the Athenian empire—combined with the character, alike wavering and insincere, of the demands previously made, and with the knowledge that the Spartan confederacy had pronounced peremptorily in favour of war—seemed likely to produce unanimity at Athens, and to bring together this important assembly under the universal conviction that war was inevitable. Such however was not the fact.

The reluctance to go to war was sincere amidst the majority of the assembly, while among a considerable portion of them it was so preponderant, that they even now reverted to the opening which the Lacedæmonians had before held out about the anti-Megarian decree, as if that were the chief cause of the war. There was much difference of opinion among the speakers, several of whom insisted upon the repeal of this decree, treating it as a matter far too insignificant to go to war about, and denouncing the obstinacy of Pericles for refusing to concede such a trifle. Against this opinion Pericles entered his protest, in an harangue decisive and encouraging, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus ranks among the best speeches in Thucydides: the latter historian may probably himself have heard the original speech.

“I continue, Athenians, to adhere to the same conviction, that we must not yield to the Peloponnesians. Now let none of you believe that we shall be going to war about a trifle if we refuse to rescind the Megarian decree—which they chiefly put forward, as if its repeal would avert the war—let none of you take blame to yourselves as if we had gone to war about a small matter. For this small matter contains in itself the whole test and trial of your mettle: if ye yield it, ye will presently have some other greater exaction put upon you, like men who have already truckled on one point from fear: whereas if ye hold out stoutly, ye will make it clear to them that they must deal with you upon a footing of equality.”

Pericles then examined the relative strength of parties and the chances of war. The Peloponnesians were a self-working population, with few slaves, and without wealth, either private or public: they had no means of carrying on distant or long-continued war: they were ready to expose their persons, but not at all ready to contribute from their very narrow means: in a border-war or a single land battle, they were invincible, but for systematic warfare against a power like Athens, they had neither competent headship, nor habits of concert and punctuality, nor money to profit by opportunities, always rare and accidental, for successful attack. They might perhaps establish a fortified post in Attica, but it would do little serious mischief; while at sea, their inferiority and helplessness would be complete, and the irresistible Athenian navy would take care to keep it so. Nor would they be able to reckon on tempting away the able foreign seamen from Athenian ships by means of funds borrowed from Olympia or Delphi. For besides that the mariners of the dependent islands would find themselves losers even by accepting a higher pay, with the certainty of Athenian vengeance afterwards, Athens herself would suffice to man her fleet in case of need, with her own citizens and metics: she had within her own walls steersmen and mariners better, as well as more numerous, than all Greece besides. There was but one side on which Athens was vulnerable: Attica unfortunately was not an island—it was exposed to invasion and ravage. To this the Athenians must submit, without committing the imprudence of engaging a land battle to avert it: they had abundant lands out of Attica, insular as well as continental, to supply their wants, and they could in their turn, by means of their navy, ravage the Peloponnesian territories, whose inhabitants had no subsidiary lands to recur to.

“Mourn not for the loss of land and house,” continued the orator: “reserve your mourning for men: houses and land acquire not men, but men acquire them. Nay, if I thought I could prevail upon you, I would exhort you to march out and ravage them yourselves, and thus show to the Peloponnesians that for them at least ye will not truckle. And I could exhibit many further grounds for confidently anticipating success, if ye will only be willing not to aim at increased dominion when we are in the midst of war, and not to take upon yourself new self-imposed risks; for I have ever been more afraid of our own blunders than of the plans of our enemy. But these are matters for further discussion, when we come to actual operations: for the present, let us dismiss these envoys with the answer—That we will permit the Megarians to use our markets and harbours, if the Lacedæmonians on their side will discontinue their summary expulsions of ourselves and our allies from their own territory; for there is nothing in the truce to prevent either one or the other: That we will leave the Grecian cities autonomous, if we had them as autonomous at the time when the truce was made; and as soon as the Lacedæmonians shall grant to their allied cities autonomy such as each of them shall freely choose, not such as is convenient to Sparta: That while we are ready to give satisfaction according to the truce, we will not begin war, but will repel those who do begin it. Such is the reply at once just and suitable to the dignity of this city. We ought to make up our minds that war is inevitable: the more cheerfully we accept it, the less vehement shall we find our enemies in their attack: and where the danger is greatest, there also is the final honour greatest, both for a state and for a private citizen. Assuredly our fathers, when they bore up against the Persians—having no such means as we possess to start from, and even compelled to abandon all that they did possess—both repelled the invader and brought matters forward to our actual pitch, more by advised operation than by good fortune, and by a daring courage greater than their real power. We ought not to fall short of them: we must keep off our enemies in every way, and leave an unimpaired power to our successors.”

These animating encouragements of Pericles carried with them the majority of the assembly, so that answer was made to the envoys, such as he recommended, on each of the particular points in debate. It was announced to them, moreover, on the general question of peace or war, that the Athenians were prepared to discuss all the grounds of complaint against them, pursuant to the truce, by equal and amicable arbitration, but that they would do nothing under authoritative demand. With this answer the envoys returned to Sparta, and an end was put to negotiation.

It seems evident, from the account of Thucydides, that the Athenian public was not brought to this resolution without much reluctance, and great fear of the consequences, especially destruction of property in Attica; and that a considerable minority took opposition on the Megarian decree—the ground skilfully laid by Sparta for breaking the unanimity of her enemy, and strengthening the party opposed to Pericles. But we may also decidedly infer from the same historian—especially from the proceedings of Corinth and Sparta as he sets them forth—that Athens could not have avoided the war without such an abnegation both of dignity and power as no nation under any government will ever submit to, and as would have even left her without decent security for her individual rights. It is common to ascribe the Peloponnesian War to the ambition of Athens, but this is a partial view of the case.

The aggressive sentiment, partly fear and partly hatred, was on the side of the Peloponnesians, who were not ignorant that Athens desired the continuance of peace, but were resolved not to let her stand as she was at the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce. It was their purpose to attack her and break down her empire, as dangerous, wrongful, and anti-Hellenic. The war was thus partly a contest of principle, involving the popular proclamation of the right of every Grecian state to autonomy, against Athens: partly a contest of power, wherein Spartan and Corinthian ambition was not less conspicuous, and far more aggressive in the beginning than Athenian.

[431 B.C.]

Conformably to what is here said, the first blow of the war was struck, not by Athens, but against her. After the decisive answer given to the Spartan envoys, taken in conjunction with the previous proceedings, and the preparations actually going on, among the Peloponnesian confederacy, the truce could hardly be said to be in force, though there was no formal proclamation of rupture.

A few weeks undoubtedly passed in restricted and mistrustful intercourse; though individuals who passed the borders did not think it necessary to take a herald with them, as in time of actual war. Had the excess of ambition been on the side of Athens compared with her enemies, this was the time for her to strike the first blow, carrying with it of course greater probability of success, before their preparations were completed. But she remained strictly within the limits of the truce, while the disastrous series of mutual aggressions, destined to tear in pieces the entrails of Hellas, was opened by her enemy and her neighbour.

The little town of Platæa, still hallowed by the memorable victory over the Persians as well as by the tutelary consecration received from Pausanias, was the scene of this unforeseen enterprise which marks the opening of hostilities in the Peloponnesian war.[b]

Greek Helmets

THE SURPRISE OF PLATÆA

War had been only threatened, not declared; and peaceful intercourse, though not wholly free from distrust, was still kept up between the subjects of the two confederacies. But early in the following spring, 431 B.C., in the fifteenth year of the Thirty Years’ Truce, an event took place which closed all prospects of peace, precipitated the commencement of war, embittered the animosity of the contending parties, and prepared some of the most tragical scenes of the ensuing history. In the dead of night the city of Platæa was surprised by a body of three hundred Thebans, commanded by two of the great officers called Bœotarchs. They had been invited by a Platæan named Nauclides, and others of the same party, who hoped with the aid of the Thebans to rid themselves of their political opponents, and to break off the relation in which their city was standing to Athens, and transfer its alliance to Thebes. The Thebans, foreseeing that a general war was fast approaching, felt the less scruple in strengthening themselves by this acquisition, while it might be made with little cost and risk. The gates were unguarded, as in time of peace, and one of them was secretly opened to the invaders, who advanced without interruption into the marketplace. Their Platæan friends wished to lead them at once to the houses of their adversaries, and to glut their hatred by a massacre. But the Thebans were more anxious to secure the possession of the city, and feared to provoke resistance by an act of violence. Having therefore halted in the marketplace, they made a proclamation inviting all who were willing that Platæa should become again, as it had been in former times, a member of the Bœotian body, to join them.

The Platæans who were not in the plot, imagined the force by which their city had been surprised to be much stronger than it really was, and, as no hostile treatment was offered to them, remained quiet, and entered into a parley with the Thebans. In the course of these conferences they gradually discovered that the number of the enemy was small, and might be easily overpowered; and, as they were in general attached to the Athenians, or at least strongly averse to an alliance with Thebes, they resolved to make the attempt, while the darkness might favour them, and perplex the strangers. To avoid suspicion they met to concert their plan of operation by means of passages opened through the walls of their houses; and having barricaded the streets with wagons, and made such other preparations as they thought necessary, a little before daybreak they suddenly fell upon the Thebans.

The little band made a vigorous defence, and twice or thrice repulsed the assailants; but as these still returned to the charge, and were assisted by the women and slaves, who showered stones and tiles from the houses on the enemy, all at the same time raising a tumultuous clamour, and a heavy rain increased the confusion caused by the darkness, they at length lost their presence of mind, and took to flight. But most were unable to find their way in the dark through a strange town, and several were slain as they wandered to and fro in search of an outlet. The gate by which they were admitted had in the meanwhile been closed, and no other was open. Some, pressed by their pursuers, mounted the walls, and threw themselves down on the outside, but for the most part were killed by the fall. A few were fortunate enough to break open one of the gates in a lone quarter, with an axe which they obtained from a woman, and to effect their escape. The main body, which had kept together, entered a large building adjoining the walls, having mistaken its gates, which they found open, for those of the town, and were shut in. The Platæans at first thought of setting fire to the building; but at length the men within, as well as the rest of the Thebans who were still wandering up and down the streets, surrendered at discretion.

Before their departure from Thebes it had been concerted that as large a force as could be raised should march the same night to support them. The distance between the two places was not quite nine miles, and these troops were expected to reach the gates of Platæa before the morning; but the Asopus, which crossed their road, had been swollen by the rain, and the state of the ground and the weather otherwise retarded them, so that they were still on their way when they heard of the failure of the enterprise. Though they did not know the fate of their countrymen, as it was possible that some might have been taken prisoners, they were at first inclined to seize as many of the Platæans as they could find without the walls, and to keep them as hostages. The Platæans anticipated this design, and were alarmed, for many of their fellow citizens were living out of the town in the security of peace, and there was much valuable property in the country. They therefore sent a herald to the Theban army to complain of their treacherous attack, and call upon them to abstain from further aggression, and to threaten that, if any was offered, the prisoners should answer for it with their lives. The Thebans afterwards alleged that they had received a promise, confirmed by an oath, that, on condition of their retiring from the Platæan territory, the prisoners should be released; and Thucydides seems disposed to believe this statement. The Platæans denied that they had pledged themselves to spare the lives of the prisoners, unless they should come to terms on the whole matter with the Thebans; but it does not seem likely that, after ascertaining the state of the case, the Thebans would have been satisfied with so slight a security. It is certain however that they retired, and that the Platæans, as soon as they had transported their movable property out of the country into the town, put to death all the prisoners—amounting to 180, and including Eurymachus, the principal author of the enterprise, and the man who possessed the greatest influence in Thebes.

On the first entrance of the Thebans into Platæa a messenger had been despatched to Athens with the intelligence, and the Athenians had immediately laid all the Bœotians in Attica under arrest; and when another messenger brought the news of the victory gained by the Platæans, they sent a herald to request that they would reserve the prisoners for the disposal of the Athenians. The herald came too late to prevent the execution: and the Athenians, foreseeing that Platæa would stand in great need of defence, sent a body of troops to garrison it, supplied it with provisions, and removed the women and children and all persons unfit for service in a siege.

After this event it was apparent that the quarrel could only be decided by arms. Platæa was so intimately united with Athens, that the Athenians felt the attack which had been made on it as an outrage offered to themselves, and prepared for immediate hostilities. Sparta, too, instantly sent notice to all her allies to get their contingents ready by an appointed day for the invasion of Attica. Two-thirds of the whole force which each raised were ordered to march, and when the time came assembled in the isthmus, where King Archidamus put himself at their head. An army more formidable, both in numbers and spirit, had never issued from the peninsula; and Archidamus thought it advisable, before they set out, to call the principal officers together, and to urge the necessity of proceeding with caution and maintaining exact discipline, as soon as they should have entered the enemy’s territory; admonishing them not to be so far elated by their superior numbers as to believe that the Athenians would certainly remain passive spectators of their inroads. And though all except himself were impatient to move, he would not yet take the decisive step, without making one attempt more to avert its necessity. He still cherished a faint hope, that the resolution of the Athenians might be shaken by the prospect of the evils of war which were now so imminent, and he sent Melesippus to sound their disposition. But the envoy was not able to obtain an audience from the people, nor so much as to enter the walls. A decree had been made, at the instigation of Pericles, to receive no embassy from the Spartans while they should be under arms. Melesippus was informed that if his government wished to treat with Athens, it must first recall its forces. He himself was ordered to quit Attica that very day, and persons were appointed to conduct him to the frontier, to prevent him from holding communication with any one by the way. On parting with his conductors he exclaimed, “This day will be the beginning of great evils to Greece.”

Such a prediction might well occur to any one, who reflected on the nature of the two powers which were now coming into conflict, and on the great resources of both, which, though totally different in kind, were so evenly balanced that no human eye could perceive in which scale victory hung; and the termination of the struggle could seem near only to one darkened by passion. The strength of Sparta, as was implied in the observation of Sthenelaidas, lay in the armies which she could collect from the states of her confederacy. The force which she could thus bring into the field is admitted by Pericles, in one of the speeches ascribed to him by Thucydides, to be capable of making head against any that could be raised by the united efforts of the rest of Greece. Within the isthmus her allies included all the states of Peloponnesus, except Achaia and Argos; and the latter was bound to neutrality by a truce which still wanted several years of its term. Hence the great contest now beginning was not improperly called the Peloponnesian War. Beyond the isthmus she was supported by Megara and Thebes, which drew the rest of Bœotia along with it; and Attica would thus have been completely surrounded on the land side by hostile territories, if Platæa and Oropus had not been politically attached to it. The Locrians of Opus, the Dorians of the mother-country, and the Phocians (though these last were secretly more inclined to the Athenians, who had always taken their part in their quarrels with Delphi, the stanch friend of Sparta) were also on her side. Thessaly, Acarnania, and the Amphilochian Argos, were in alliance with her enemy; but for this very reason, and more especially from their hostility to the Messenians of Naupactus, the Ætolians were friendly to her; and she could also reckon on the Corinthian colonies, Anactorium, Ambracia, and Leucas.

The power which Sparta exerted over her allies was much more narrowly limited than that which Athens had assumed over her subjects. The Spartan influence rested partly on the national affinity by which the head was united to the Dorian members of the confederacy, but still more on the conformity, which she established or maintained among all of them, to her own oligarchical institutions. This was the only point in which she encroached on the independence of any. Every state had a voice in the deliberations by which its interests might be affected; and if Sparta determined the amount of the contributions required by extraordinary occasions, she was obliged carefully to adjust it to the ability of each community. So far was she from enriching herself at the expense of the confederacy, that at the beginning of the war there was, as we have seen, no common treasure belonging to it, and no regular tribute for common purposes. But, to compensate for these defects, her power stood on a more durable basis of goodwill than that of Athens; and though in every state there was a party attached to the Athenian interest on political grounds, yet on the whole the Spartan cause was popular throughout Greece; and while Athens was forced to keep a jealous eye on all her subjects, and was in continual fear of losing them, Sparta, secure of the loyalty of her own allies, could calmly watch for opportunities of profiting by the disaffection of those of her rival.

At home indeed her state was far from sound, and the Athenians were well aware of her vulnerable side; but abroad, and as chief of the Peloponnesian confederacy, she presented the majestic and winning aspect of the champion of liberty against Athenian tyranny and ambition: and hence she had important advantages to hope from states which were but remotely connected with her, and were quite beyond the reach of her arms. Many powerful cities in Italy and Sicily were thus induced to promise her their aid, and it was on this she founded her chief expectations of forming a navy, which might face that of Athens. Her allies in this quarter engaged to furnish her with money and ships, which, it was calculated, would amount to no less than five hundred, though for the present it was agreed that they should wear the mask of neutrality, and admit single Athenian vessels into their ports. But as she was conscious that she should still be deficient in the sinews of war, she already began to turn her eyes to the common enemy of Greece, who was able abundantly to supply this want, and would probably be willing to lavish his gold for the sake of ruining Athens, the object of his especial enmity and dread.

The extent of the Athenian empire cannot be so exactly computed. In the language of the comic stage, it is said to comprehend a thousand cities; and it is difficult to estimate what abatement ought to be made from this playful exaggeration. The subjects of Athens were in general more opulent than the allies of Sparta, and their sovereign disposed of their revenues at her pleasure. The only states to which she granted more than a nominal independence were some islands in the western seas, Corcyra, Zacynthus, and Cephallenia—points of peculiar importance to her operations and prospects in that quarter, though even there she was more feared than loved. At the moment of the revolt of Potidæa her empire had reached its widest range, and her finances were in the most flourishing condition; and at the outbreak of the war her naval and military strength was at its greatest height. Pericles, as one of the ten regular generals, or ministers of war, before the Peloponnesian army had reached the frontier, held an assembly, in which he gave an exact account of the resources which the republic had at her disposal.

Her finances, beside the revenue which she drew from a variety of sources, foreign and domestic, were nourished by the annual tribute of her allies, which now amounted to six hundred talents [£120,000 or $600,000]. Six thousand, in money, still remained in the treasury, after the great expenditure incurred on account of the public buildings, and the siege of Potidæa, before which the sum had amounted to nearly ten thousand. But to this, Pericles observed, must be added the gold and silver which, in various forms of offerings, ornaments, and sacred utensils, enriched the temples or public places, which he calculated at five hundred talents, without reckoning the precious materials employed in the statues of the gods and heroes. The statue of Athene in the Parthenon alone contained forty talents’ weight of pure gold, in the ægis, shield, and other appendages. If they should ever be reduced to the want of such a supply, there could be no doubt that their tutelary goddess would willingly part with her ornaments for their service, on condition that they were replaced at the earliest opportunity.

They could muster a force of 13,000 heavy-armed, beside those who were employed in their various garrisons, and in the defence of the city itself, with the long walls and the fortifications of its harbours, who amounted to 16,000 more; made up, indeed, partly of the resident aliens, and partly of citizens on either verge of the military age. The military force also included 1200 cavalry and 1600 bowmen, beside some who were mounted; and they had 300 galleys in sailing condition.

PERICLES’ RECONCENTRATION POLICY

After rousing the confidence of the Athenians by this enumeration, Pericles urged them without delay to transport their families and all their movable property out of the enemy’s reach, and, as long as the war should last, to look upon the capital as their home. To encourage a patriotic spirit by his example, and at the same time to secure himself from imputations to which he might be exposed, either by the Spartan cunning, or by an indiscreet display of private friendship, he publicly declared, that if Archidamus, who was personally attached to him by the ties of hospitality, should, either from this motive, or in compliance with orders which might be given in an opposite intention, exempt his lands from the ravages of war, they should from that time become the property of the state.

Officers’ Helmets

To many of his hearers that which he required was a very painful sacrifice. Many had been born, and had passed all their lives, in the country. They were attached to it, not merely by the profit or the pleasure of rural pursuits, but by domestic and religious associations. For though the incorporation of the Attic townships had for ages extinguished their political independence, it had not interrupted their religious traditions, or effaced the peculiar features of their local worship; and hence the Attic countryman clung to his deme with a fondness which he could not feel for the great city. In the period of increasing prosperity which had followed the Persian invasion, the country had been cultivated and adorned more assiduously than ever. All was now to be left or carried away. Reluctantly they adopted the decree which Pericles proposed; and, with heavy hearts, as if going into exile, they quitted their native and hereditary seats. If the rich man sighed to part from his elegant villa, the husbandman still more deeply felt the pang of being torn from his home, and of abandoning his beloved fields, the scenes of his infancy, the holy places where his forefathers had worshipped, to the ravages of a merciless invader. All however was removed: the flocks and cattle to Eubœa and other adjacent islands; all beside that was portable, and even the timber of the houses, into Athens, to which they themselves migrated with their families.

The city itself was not prepared for the sudden influx of so many new inhabitants. A few found shelter under the roofs of relatives or friends; but the greater part, on their arrival, found themselves houseless as well as homeless. Some took refuge in such temples as were usually open; others occupied the towers of the walls; others raised temporary hovels on any vacant ground which they could find in the city, and even resorted for this purpose to a site which had hitherto been guarded from all such uses by policy, aided by a religious sanction. It was the place under the western wall of the citadel, called, from the ancient builders of the wall, the Pelasgicum: a curse had been pronounced on any one who should tenant it; and men remembered some words of an oracle, which declared it better untrodden. The real motive for the prohibition was probably the security of the citadel; but all police seems to have been suspended by the urgency of the occasion. It was some time before the newcomers bethought themselves of spreading over the vacant space between the long walls, or of descending to Piræus. But this foretaste of the evils of war did not damp the general ardour, especially that of the youthful spirits, which began at Athens, as elsewhere, to be impatient of repose. Numberless oracles and predictions were circulated, in which every one found something that accorded with the tone of his feelings. Even those who had no definite hopes, fears, or wishes shared the excitement of men on the eve of a great crisis. The holy island of Delos had been recently shaken by an earthquake. It was forgotten, or was never known out of Delos itself, that this had happened already, just before the first Persian invasion. It was deemed a portent, which signified new and extraordinary events, and it was soon combined with other prodigies, which tended to encourage similar forebodings. Such was the state in which the Athenians awaited the advance of the Peloponnesian army.[c]

Adolf Holm[e] compares the Periclean policy of voluntary reconcentration with the acts of the Dutch, when in the sixteenth century they let the Spanish destroy their crops, and then opened the dikes and flooded their own country. We may compare also the compulsory reconcentration of the country people in the cities as carried out by General Weyler in Cuba, in 1897, and by Lord Kitchener in South Africa, in 1901.[a]

THE FIRST YEAR’S RAVAGE

Archidamus, as soon as the reception of his last envoy was made known to him, continued his march from the isthmus into Attica—which territory he entered by the road of Œnoe, the frontier Athenian fortress of Attica towards Bœotia. His march, was slow, and he thought it necessary to make a regular attack on the fort of Œnoe, which had been put in so good a state of defence that, after all the various modes of assault—in which the Lacedæmonians were not skilful—had been tried in vain, and after a delay of several days before the place, he was compelled to renounce the attempt.

The want of enthusiasm on the part of the Spartan king, his multiplied delays, first at the isthmus, next in the march, and lastly before Œnoe, were all offensive to the fiery impatience of the army, who were loud in their murmurs against him. He acted upon the calculation already laid down in his discourse at Sparta—that the highly cultivated soil of Attica was to be looked upon as a hostage for the pacific dispositions of the Athenians, who would be more likely to yield when devastation, though not yet inflicted, was nevertheless impending and at their doors. In this point of view, a little delay at the border was no disadvantage; and perhaps the partisans of peace at Athens may have encouraged him to hope that it would enable them to prevail.

After having spent several days before Œnoe without either taking the fort or receiving any message from the Athenians, Archidamus marched onward to Eleusis and the Thriasian plain—about the middle of June, eighty days after the surprise of Platæa. His army was of irresistible force, not less than sixty thousand hoplites, according to the statement of Plutarch, or of one hundred thousand, according to others. Considering the number of constituent allies, the strong feeling by which they were prompted, and the shortness of the expedition combined with the chance of plunder, even the largest of these two numbers is not incredibly great, if we take it to include not hoplites only, but cavalry and light armed also. But as Thucydides, though comparatively full in his account of this march, has stated no general total, we may presume that he had heard none upon which he could rely.

As the Athenians had made no movement towards peace, Archidamus anticipated that they would come forth to meet him in the fertile plain of Eleusis and Thria, which was the first portion of territory that he sat down to ravage. Yet no Athenian force appeared to oppose him, except a detachment of cavalry, who were repulsed in a skirmish near the small lakes called Rheiti. Having laid waste this plain without any serious opposition, Archidamus did not think fit to pursue the straight road which from Thria conducted directly to Athens across the ridge of Mount Ægaleos, but turned off to the eastward, leaving that mountain on his right hand until he came to Cropia, where he crossed a portion of the line of Ægaleos over to Acharnæ.

He was here about seven miles from Athens, on a declivity sloping down into the plain which stretches westerly and northwesterly from Athens, and visible from the city walls; and here he encamped, keeping his army in perfect order for battle, but at the same time intending to damage and ruin the place and its neighbourhood. Acharnæ was the largest and most populous of all the demes in Attica, furnishing no less than three thousand hoplites to the national line, and flourishing as well by its corn, vines, and olives, as by its peculiar abundance of charcoal burning from the forests of ilex on the neighbouring hills. Moreover, if we are to believe Aristophanes, the Acharnian proprietors were not merely sturdy “hearts of oak,” but peculiarly vehement and irritable. It illustrates the condition of a Grecian territory under invasion, when we find this great deme, which could not have contained less than twelve thousand free inhabitants of both sexes and all ages, with at least an equal number of slaves, completely deserted. Archidamus calculated that when the Athenians actually saw his troops so close to their city, carrying fire and sword over their wealthiest canton, their indignation would become uncontrollable, and they would march out forthwith to battle. The Acharnian proprietors especially (he thought) would be foremost in inflaming this temper, and insisting upon protection to their own properties—or if the remaining citizens refused to march out along with them, they would, after having been thus left undefended to ruin, become discontented and indifferent to the general weal.

Though his calculation was not realised, it was nevertheless founded upon most rational grounds. What Archidamus anticipated was on the point of happening, and nothing prevented it except the personal ascendency of Pericles, strained to its very utmost. So long as the invading army was engaged in the Thriasian plain, the Athenians had some faint hope that it might (like Plistoanax fourteen years before) advance no farther into the interior. But when it came to Acharnæ within sight of the city walls—when the ravagers were actually seen destroying buildings, fruit trees, and crops, in the plain of Athens, a sight strange to every Athenian eye except to those very old men who recollected the Persian invasion—the exasperation of the general body of citizens rose to a pitch never before known. The Acharnians first of all—next the youthful citizens, generally—became madly clamorous for arming and going forth to fight. Knowing well their own great strength, but less correctly informed of the superior strength of the enemy, they felt confident that victory was within their reach. Groups of citizens were everywhere gathered together, angrily debating the critical question of the moment; while the usual concomitants of excited feeling—oracles and prophecies of diverse tenor, many of them doubtless promising success against the enemy at Acharnæ—were eagerly caught up and circulated.

In this inflamed temper of the Athenian mind, Pericles was naturally the great object of complaint and wrath. He was denounced as the cause of all the existing suffering: he was reviled as a coward for not leading out the citizens to fight, in his capacity of general: the rational convictions as to the necessity of the war and the only practical means of carrying it on, which his repeated speeches had implanted, seemed to be altogether forgotten. This burst of spontaneous discontent was of course fomented by the numerous political enemies of Pericles, and particularly by Cleon,[47] now rising into importance as an opposition-speaker; whose talent for invective was thus first exercised under the auspices of the high aristocratical party, as well as of an excited public.

But no manifestations, however violent, could disturb either the judgment or the firmness of Pericles. He listened unmoved to all the declarations made against him, resolutely refusing to convene a public assembly, or any meeting invested with an authorised character, under the present irritated temper of the citizens. It appears that he as general, or rather the board of ten generals among whom he was one, must have been invested constitutionally with the power not only of calling the ecclesia when they thought fit, but also of preventing it from meeting, and of postponing even those regular meetings which commonly took place at fixed times, four times in the prytany. No assembly accordingly took place, and the violent exasperation of the people was thus prevented from realising itself in any rash public resolution. That Pericles should have held firm against this raging force, is but one among the many honourable points in his political character; but it is far less wonderful than the fact that his refusal to call the ecclesia was efficacious to prevent the ecclesia from being held. The entire body of Athenians were now assembled within the walls, and if he refused to convoke the ecclesia, they might easily have met in the Pnyx without him; for which it would not have been difficult at such a juncture to provide plausible justification. The inviolable respect which the Athenian people manifested on this occasion for the forms of their democratical constitution—assisted doubtless by their long-established esteem for Pericles, yet opposed to an excitement alike intense and pervading, and to a demand apparently reasonable, in so far as regarded the calling of an assembly for discussion—is one of the most memorable incidents in their history.

While Pericles thus decidedly forbade any general march out for battle he sought to provide as much employment as possible for the compressed eagerness of the citizens. The cavalry were sent forth, together with the Thessalian cavalry their allies, for the purpose of restraining the excursions of the enemy’s light troops, and protecting the lands near the city from plunder. At the same time he fitted out a powerful expedition, which sailed forth to ravage Peloponnesus, even while the invaders were yet in Attica. Archidamus, after having remained engaged in the devastation of Acharnæ long enough to satisfy himself that the Athenians would not hazard a battle, turned away from Athens in a northwesterly direction towards the demes between Mount Brilessus and Mount Parnes, on the road passing through Decelea. The army continued ravaging these districts until their provisions were exhausted, and then quitted Attica by the northwestern road near Oropus, which brought them into Bœotia. As the Oropians, though not Athenians, were yet dependent upon Athens—the district of Græa, a portion of their territory, was laid waste; after which the army dispersed and retired back to their respective homes. It would seem that they quitted Attica towards the end of July, having remained in the country between thirty and forty days.

Meanwhile, the Athenian expedition, under Caranus, Proteas, and Socrates, joined by fifty Corcyræan ships and by some other allies, sailed round Peloponnesus, landing in various parts to inflict damage, and among other places at Methone (Modon), on the southwestern peninsula of the Lacedæmonian territory. The place, neither strong nor well-garrisoned, would have been carried with little difficulty, had not Brasidas, the son of Tellis—a gallant Spartan now mentioned for the first time, but destined to great celebrity afterwards—who happened to be on guard at a neighbouring post, thrown himself into it with one hundred men by a rapid movement, before the dispersed Athenian troops could be brought together to prevent him. He infused such courage into the defenders of the place that every attack was repelled, and the Athenians were forced to re-embark—an act of prowess which procured for him the first public honours bestowed by the Spartans during this war. Sailing northward along the western coast of Peloponnesus, the Athenians landed again on the coast of Elis, a little south of the promontory called Cape Ichthys: they ravaged the territory for two days, defeating both the troops in the neighbourhood and three hundred chosen men from the central Elean territory. Strong winds on a harbourless coast now induced the captains to sail with most of the troops round Cape Ichthys, in order to reach the harbour of Phea on the northern side of it; while the Messenian hoplites, marching by land across the promontory, attacked Phea and carried it by assault. When the fleet arrived, all were re-embarked—the full force of Elis being under march to attack them. They then sailed northward, landing on various other spots to commit devastation, until they reached Sollium, a Corinthian settlement on the coast of Acarnania. They captured this place, which they handed over to the inhabitants of the neighbouring Acarnanian town of Palærus, as well as Astacus, from whence they expelled the despot Euarchus, and enrolled the town as a member of the Athenian alliance. From hence they passed over to Cephallenia, which they were fortunate enough also to acquire as an ally of Athens without any compulsion—with its four distinct towns or districts, Pale, Cranii, Same, and Proni. These various operations took up near three months from about the beginning of July, so that they returned to Athens towards the close of September—the beginning of the winter half of the year, according to the distribution of Thucydides.

This was not the only maritime expedition of the summer. Thirty more triremes, under Cleopompus, were sent through the Euripus to the Locrian coast opposite to the northern part of Eubœa. Some disembarkations were made, whereby the Locrian towns of Thronium and Alope were sacked, and further devastation inflicted; while a permanent garrison was planted, and a fortified post erected, in the uninhabited island of Atalante opposite to the Locrian coast, in order to restrain privateers from Opus and the other Locrian towns in their excursions against Eubœa. It was further determined to expel the Æginetan inhabitants from Ægina, and to occupy the island with Athenian colonists. This step was partly rendered prudent by the important position of the island midway between Attica and Peloponnesus. But a concurrent motive, and probably the stronger motive, was the gratification of ancient antipathy and revenge against a people who had been among the foremost in provoking the war and in inflicting upon Athens so much suffering. The Æginetans, with their wives and children, were all put on ship-board and landed in Peloponnesus, where the Spartans permitted them to occupy the maritime district and town of Thyrea, their last frontier towards Argos; some of them, however, found shelter in other parts of Greece. The island was made over to a detachment of Athenian cleruchs, or citizen proprietors, sent hither by lot.

To the sufferings of the Æginetans, which we shall hereafter find still more deplorably aggravated, we have to add those of the Megarians. Both had been most zealous in kindling the war, but upon none did the distress of war fall so heavily. Both probably shared the premature confidence felt among the Peloponnesian confederacy, that Athens could never hold out more than a year or two, and were thus induced to overlook their own undefended position against her. Towards the close of September, the full force of Athens, citizens and metics, marched into the Megarid, under Pericles, and laid waste the greater part of the territory; while they were in it, the hundred ships which had been circumnavigating Peloponnesus, having arrived at Ægina on their return, joined their fellow citizens in the Megarid, instead of going straight home. The junction of the two formed the largest Athenian force that had ever yet been seen together; there were ten thousand citizen hoplites (independent of three thousand others who were engaged in the siege of Potidæa), and three thousand metic hoplites, besides a large number of light troops. Against so large a force the Megarians could make no head, so that their territory was all laid waste, even to the city walls. For several years of the war, the Athenians inflicted this destruction once, and often twice in the same year. A decree was proposed in the Athenian ecclesia by Charinus, though perhaps not carried, to the effect that the strategi every year should swear, as a portion of their oath of office, that they would twice invade and ravage the Megarid. As the Athenians at the same time kept the port of Nisæa blocked up, by means of their superior naval force and of the neighbouring coast of Salamis, the privations imposed on the Megarians became extreme and intolerable. Not only their corn and fruits, but even their garden vegetables were rooted up, and their situation was that of a besieged city pressed by famine. Even in the time of Pausanias, many centuries afterward, the miseries of the town during these years were remembered and communicated to him, being assigned as the reason why one of their most memorable statues had never been completed.

To the various military operations of Athens during the course of this summer, some other measures of moment are to be added. Moreover, Thucydides notices an eclipse of the sun, which modern astronomical calculations refer to the third of August; had this eclipse happened three months earlier, immediately before the entrance of the Peloponnesians into Attica, it might probably have been construed as an unfavourable omen, and caused the postponement of the scheme. Expecting a prolonged struggle, the Athenians now made arrangements for placing Attica in a permanent state of defence, both by sea and land; what these arrangements were, we are not told in detail, but one of them was sufficiently remarkable to be named particularly. They set apart one thousand talents [£200,000 or $1,000,000] out of the treasure in the Acropolis as an inviolable reserve, not to be touched except on the single contingency of a hostile naval force about to assail the city, with no other means at hand to defend it. They further enacted that if any citizen should propose, or any magistrate put the question, in the public assembly, to make any different application of this reserve, he should be punishable with death. Moreover, they resolved every year to keep back one hundred of their best triremes, and trierarchs to command and equip them, for the same special necessity. It may be doubted whether this latter provision was placed under the same stringent sanction, or observed with the same rigour, as that concerning the money; which latter was not departed from until the twentieth year of the war, after all the disasters of the Sicilian expedition, and on the terrible news of the revolt of Chios. It was on that occasion that the Athenians first repealed the sentence of capital punishment against the proposer of this forbidden change, and next appropriated the money to meet the then imminent peril of the commonwealth.

The resolution here taken about this sacred reserve, and the rigorous sentence interdicting contrary propositions, is pronounced by Mitford[48] to be an evidence of the indelible barbarism of democratical government. But we must recollect, first, that the sentence of capital punishment was one which could hardly by possibility come into execution; for no citizen would be so mad as to make the forbidden proposition while this law was in force. Whoever desired to make it would first begin by proposing to repeal the prohibitory law, whereby he would incur no danger, whether the assembly decided in the affirmative or negative; and if he obtained an affirmative decision he would then, and then only, proceed to move the re-appropriation of the fund. To speak the language of English parliamentary procedure, he would first move the suspension or abrogation of the standing order whereby the proposition was forbidden; next, he would move the proposition itself; in fact, such was the mode actually pursued, when the thing at last came to be done. But though the capital sentence could hardly come into effect, the proclamation of it in terrorem had a very distinct meaning. It expressed the deep and solemn conviction which the people entertained of the importance of their own resolution about the reserve; it forewarned all assemblies and all citizens to come of the danger of diverting it to any other purpose; it surrounded the reserve with an artificial sanctity, which forced every man who aimed at the re-appropriation to begin with a preliminary proposition formidable on the very face of it, as removing a guarantee which previous assemblies had deemed of immense value, and opening the door to a contingency which they had looked upon as treasonable. The proclamation of a lighter punishment, or a simple prohibition without any definite sanction whatever, would neither have announced the same emphatic conviction, nor produced the same deterring effect. The assembly of 431 B.C. could not in any way enact laws which subsequent assemblies could not reverse; but it could so frame its enactments, in cases of peculiar solemnity, as to make its authority strongly felt upon the judgment of its successors, and to prevent them from entertaining motions for repeal except under necessity at once urgent and obvious.

Far from thinking that the law now passed at Athens displayed barbarism, either in the end or in the means, we consider it principally remarkable for its cautious and long-sighted view of the future—qualities the exact reverse of barbarism—and worthy of the general character of Pericles, who probably suggested it. Athens was just entering into a war which threatened to be of indefinite length, and was certain to be very costly. To prevent the people from exhausting all their accumulated fund, and to place them under a necessity of reserving something against extreme casualties, was an object of immense importance. Now the particular casualty, which Pericles (assuming him to be the proposer) named as the sole condition of touching this one thousand talents, might be considered as of all others the most improbable, in the year 431 B.C. So immense was then the superiority of the Athenian naval force, that to suppose it defeated, and a Peloponnesian fleet in full sail for Piræus, was a possibility which it required a statesman of extraordinary caution to look forward to, and which it is truly wonderful that the people generally could have been induced to contemplate. Once tied up to this purpose, however, the fund lay ready for any other terrible emergency: and we shall find the actual employment of it incalculably beneficial to Athens, at a moment of the gravest peril, when she could hardly have protected herself without some such special resource. The people would scarcely have sanctioned so rigorous an economy, had it not been proposed to them at a period so early in the war that their available reserve was still much larger. But it will be forever to the credit of their foresight as well as constancy, that they should first have adopted such a precautionary measure, and afterwards adhered to it for nineteen years, under severe pressure for money, until at length a case arose which rendered further abstinence really, and not constructively, impossible.

To display their force and take revenge by disembarking and ravaging parts of the Peloponnesus, was doubtless of much importance to Athens during this first summer of the war: though it might seem that the force so employed was quite as much needed in the conquest of Potidæa, which still remained under blockade, and of the neighbouring Chalcidians in Thrace, still in revolt. It was during the course of this summer that a prospect opened to Athens of subduing these towns, through the assistance of Sitalces, king of the Odrysian Thracians. That prince had married the sister of Nymphodorus, a citizen of Abdera; who engaged to render him, and his son Sadocus, allies of Athens. Sent for to Athens and appointed proxenus of Athens at Abdera, which was one of the Athenian subject allies, Nymphodorus made this alliance, and promised in the name of Sitalces that a sufficient Thracian force should be sent to aid Athens in the reconquest of her revolted towns: the honour of Athenian citizenship was at the same time conferred upon Sadocus. Nymphodorus further established a good understanding between Perdiccas II of Macedonia and the Athenians, who were persuaded to restore to him Therma, which they had before taken from him. The Athenians had thus the promise of powerful aid against the Chalcidians and Potidæans: yet the latter still held out, with little prospect of immediate surrender. Moreover, the town of Astacus in Acarnania, which the Athenians had captured during the summer, in the course of their expedition round Peloponnesus, was recovered during the autumn by the deposed despot Euarchus, assisted by forty Corinthian triremes and one thousand hoplites. This Corinthian armament, after restoring Euarchus, made some unsuccessful descents both upon other parts of Acarnania and upon the island of Cephallenia: in the latter they were entrapped into an ambuscade and obliged to return home with considerable loss.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[47] “Cleon,” says Thucydides, “attacked him with great acrimony, making use of the general resentment against Pericles, as a means to increase his own popularity, as Hermippus testifies in these verses:

“‘Sleeps then, thou king of Satyrs, sleeps the spear,

While thundering words make war? Why boast thy prowess,

Yet shudder at the sound of sharpened swords,

Spite of the flaming Cleon?’”

[48] “A measure followed which, taking place at the time when Thucydides wrote and Pericles spoke, and while Pericles held the principal influence in the administration, strongly marks,” says Mr. Mitford, “both the inherent weakness and the indelible barbarism of democratical government. A decree of the people directed that a thousand talents should be set apart in the treasury in the citadel, as a deposit, not to be touched unless the enemy should attack the city by sea; a circumstance which implied the prior ruin of the Athenian fleet, and the only one, it was supposed, which could superinduce the ruin of the commonwealth. But in a decree so important, sanctioned only by the present will of that giddy tyrant, the multitude of Athens, against whose caprices, since the depression of the court of Areopagus, no balancing power remained, confidence so failed that the denunciation of capital punishment was added against whosoever should propose, and whosoever should concur in, any decree for the disposal of that money to any other purpose, or in any other circumstances. It was at the same time ordered, by the same authority, that a hundred triremes should be yearly selected, the best of the fleet, to be employed on the same occasion only.”

Greek Terra-cotta

(In the British Museum)

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