In 421 a truce was agreed upon between Athens and Sparta, which was to last fifty years. Both sides were sorely weakened by the protracted struggle and neither had gained any real advantage over the other. Without waiting to recuperate from the losses of the war, Athens embarked in 415 on an ambitious plan of conquering Syracuse, and gaining all of Sicily as an Athenian colony. In the event of success Athens would have a western outpost for the eventual control of the Mediterranean, as she already had an eastern outpost in Ionia, which gave her control of the Ægean.
In the light of the event it is customary to refer to this expedition as the climax of folly, and yet it is clear that if the commander in chief had not wasted time in interminable delays the Athenians might easily have won their objective. At first the Syracusans felt hopeless because of the large army and fleet dispatched against them, and the great naval prestige of their enemy, but as delay succeeded delay, assistance arrived from Corinth and Sparta, and the besieged citizens took heart. The siege dragged on for the greater part of two years, with the offensive gradually slipping from the Athenians to the Syracusans, till finally the invaders found their troops besieged on shore and their ships bottled up in the harbor by a line of galleys anchored across the entrance. The Syracusans knew that they were no match for the Athenians on the open sea, but with a fleet crowded into a harbor with no room for maneuvering, the problem was not essentially different from that of fighting on land. They built a fleet of ships with specially strengthened bows for ramming and erected catapults for throwing heavy stones on the decks of the enemy. Meanwhile, the Athenian ships had deteriorated from lack of opportunity to refit and their crews had been heavily reduced by disease. In a pitched battle between the two fleets in the harbor, the Athenians were worsted. Shortly after as the Athenians were attempting to break through the barrier and escape, they were again attacked by the Syracusans. There was no room for maneuvering; the Athenian ships were jammed together in a mass in which all advantage of numbers was lost. Moreover, against the deadly rain of huge stones the Athenians had no defense whatever.
The result was an overwhelming victory for the Syracusans. Out of 110 triremes the Athenians lost fifty. The besieging army went to pieces in attempting a retreat across the island, and the whole expedition came to a tragic end. This defeat of the Athenian fleet in the harbor of Syracuse was the ruin of Athens. When the news reached Greece, many of her dependencies revolted, the Peloponnesian war had broken out anew, and she had no strength left to hold her own. The deathblow was given when a Spartan admiral destroyed all that was left of the Athenian navy at Ægospotami in the year 405. Thereafter Athens was merely a conquered province, permitted to keep a fleet of only twelve ships, and watched by a garrison of Spartan soldiers in the citadel.
The downfall of Athenian sea power at Syracuse may be compared with the downfall of Persian sea power at Salamis. Just as the latter prevented the spread of an Asiatic form of civilization in Europe and gave Greek civilization a chance to develop, so the former put an end to the extension of a strong Hellenic power in Italy and left opportunity for the rise of the civilization of Rome.
History of Greece, Ernst Curtius, 1874.
History of Greece, George Grote, 1856.
The Great Persian War, G. B. Grundy, 1901.
History of the Persian Wars, Herodotus, ed. and transl. by Geo. Rawlinson, 1862.
History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, ed. and transl. by Jowett.