Professor Donald
Kagan: Considering the
outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War,
last thing we were talking
about was the alliance that was
made between Athens and Corcyra
and the significance of that
difficult decision the Athenians
had to make,
which you will recall was
neither to accept the offer of
the Corcyraeans of the
traditional offensive and
defensive alliance,
nor to reject it,
but rather to make a different
kind of alliance than any we
know of before in Greek history,
a purely defensive alliance,
which I suggest to you really
should be understood less as a
military action than as a
diplomatic gesture,
as a diplomatic signal.
If the Pericles I have in my
mind has anything to do with the
real Pericles who existed,
he is a man who is very
sophisticated about the idea of
sending diplomatic signals by
action,
rather than merely by words,
and that his intention here was
to avoid the unacceptable change
in the balance of naval power,
which would have occurred if
the Corcyraeans had been
defeated by the Corinthians.
At the same time he was
trying to avoid blowing this
whole thing up into a major war
against the Peloponnesians by
preventing the fighting.
In fact, I don't know if I said
this flat out,
but let me say it now.
I think he hoped that when the
Corinthians approached Corcyra
and saw Athenian ships lined up
at the Corcyraeans,
the Corinthians would back off
and there would be no battle and
the result would be some other
way of getting out of this
crisis.
As it turned out his hopes were
dashed.
At the Battle of Sybota,
which took place in September
433, to which the Athenians,
you remember sent ten ships
with three generals,
one of whom,
the leading one was
Lacedaemonius the son of Cimon,
who received orders that were
the most difficult kinds of
orders you can imagine giving a
naval commander.
His orders were to stay
there and if the battle
commenced not to engage in that
battle,
unless and until that moment
when it appeared that the
Corinthians were not only going
to win but were going to land on
the island or Corcyra,
then and only then,
should Lacedaemonius bring the
Athenian ships into combat.
Now, how in the world,
in a naval battle especially
where things don't stand still,
they're either moving around
themselves or the sea is moving
them around, how can you be sure
what's going to happen ten
minutes from now,
half an hour from now?
It's impossible to be certain.
So, it would have been a
difficult call and I do think
that Pericles anticipated that
there might be an engagement,
which he would want to regret,
but he could blame
Lacedaemonius and the generals
for doing it.
However that may be,
that's all that the Athenians
sent, and again,
we ought to realize the
Athenians had four hundred
triremes.
They could have sent a
couple of hundred which would
have guaranteed that if the
Corinthians had fought,
the Corinthians would have been
swept from the sea.
Why didn't he do that?
It was obvious again that his
intention was not to frighten or
anger the Spartans,
the head of the Peloponnesian
League by such a crushing
victory, but instead to employ
the technique of deterrence.
Now, the decision to send
only ten was debatable.
After those ten had been sent
the question was raised again in
the Athenian assembly,
obviously by people who didn't
agree with Pericles' approach,
who insisted that there should
be a larger fleet sent,
and Pericles apparently could
not prevent them sending some
more ships, but the most they
could get a vote for was twenty
more ships.
So, now there's a second
Athenian detachment that is sent
some days after the first which
consists of twenty ships more;
keep that in mind.
Well, the battle which
Thucydides describes in great
detail works as follows.
The Corinthians do attack
against the combined forces of
120 or is it 110 Corcyraean
ships and ten Athenians that are
there with their 150,
and the Corinthians are
winning, and at a critical
moment Lacedaemonius engages the
Athenians in the fight and so
what Pericles hoped to avoid
took place.
The Corinthians would have
succeeded in winning the battle
and would have landed on the
island,
and presumably ultimately taken
charge of the Corcyraean fleet
when something happened that if
it wasn't the very stern and
factually determined Thucydides,
but it was a Hollywood movie,
you wouldn't believe it.
Namely, as all of this is
happening, you can imagine
somebody on one of the
Corinthian ships suddenly
looking behind and looking on
the horizon and seeing ships
coming,
and then seeing that they were
Athenian ships,
at which point the Corinthians
panicked,
pulled back,
gave up their victory and
withdrew from the fight.
You can't blame the
Corinthians.
Once they knew they were
Athenian ships they had every
reason to think,
my God maybe there's 200
Athenian ships coming at us and
so it turned of course there
were only twenty,
but it was too late.
So, the Battle of Sybota,
this naval battle I've
described to you,
ends in this way and it leaves
things up in the air.
The Corinthians have not been
deterred, they are determined
more than ever to continue the
fight and on the other hand,
the Corcyraeans aren't backing
down either, and so here we have
one of the issues that will be
decisive in bringing on the war.
Over that winter 433 to 432,
two events of importance in
this connection take place.
We cannot be sure precisely
when in that year they took
place and we can't even be sure
which of them came first.
I'm turning first to
Potidaea.
I'm doing what most scholars
do, but none of us have any
reason to believe it happened
before the next thing I'll tell
you about.
City of Potidaea up in the
Chalcidic Peninsula,
those three fingers sticking
out into the Aegean from Thrace,
was, you will perhaps recall,
a Corinthian colony and it was
extraordinarily lose to Corinth.
Remember when I was talking
about colonies and the varieties
of relations with the mother
city that they had,
I told you that Potidaea had
unusually close relations with
Corinth.
Each year the Corinthians sent
out magistrates who in fact
governed Potidaea and this was
voluntary on the Potidaeans'
part.
So, you have a very special
Corinthian-Potidaean thing.
Because of what had happened
and what was happening,
the Athenians feared,
and it turned out rightly
feared,
that the Potidaeans might be
planning to rebel against them
and to join their Corinthian
friends.
In fact,
the Potidaeans were planning
such a thing and in order to
make their chances greater they
secretly sent a mission to
Sparta in which they asked the
Spartans just as you remember
the Thasians had done back there
in 465.
If we rebel,
will you invade Attica?
I assume it was the
ephors--this was a secret
thing it would not have been
discussed in the Spartan
assembly.
I believe a majority of the
ephors must have said "we
will" and so the Potidaeans went
forward with their rebellion.
The Athenians,
before the rebellion broke out,
but suspecting such things as
being in the cards,
sent a fleet.
There was a fleet of Athenian
ships that was going to
Macedonia anyway for other
reasons and they were instructed
by the assembly,
again, I'm sure it's Pericles
calling the shots,
to stop by at Potidaea on the
way,
and when they were in Potidaea
to take down the defensive walls
that the Potidaeans had on the
seaside,
so that they would be
vulnerable to the Athenians
without question,
which would presumably deter a
rebellion.
But when that fleet went
out they found that the
Potidaeans were already in
rebellion,
they could not get at Potidaea,
and the Athenians subsequently
sent a fleet to blockade the
city and sent an army to
blockade it on the land side,
and they were now at war with
Potidaea, the colony of Corinth,
to suppress the rebellion.
The Corinthians responded in an
interesting, complicated way.
A band of--I think the number
was 2,000--I think it's 2,000
Corinthian hoplites came to
Potidaea and helped defend it
against the Athenian attackers.
Thucydides describes them as
privately sent.
That is to say,
he wants to make the point that
these were not sent officially
as Corinthian soldiers;
they were what--we've seen
these games being played in the
modern world too.
They were volunteers,
just like the 40,000 Cuban
volunteers that went to Angola
in the 1970s,
volunteers paid for,
supplied, and ordered there by
Castro.
That's the kind of volunteers,
I think, were in Potidaea at
this point.
Why did the Corinthians go
through this masquerade,
this very easily penetrated
masquerade?
Because they knew that the
Athenians under the treaty had
every right to suppress a
rebellion in their empire,
but they didn't want it to
happen.
If they had officially sent
their own forces to help they
would have been guilty of
aggression,
they would have been guilty of
breaking the treaty by
interfering in the other fellows
zone,
and that would have had a very
bad effect on what the
Corinthians were clearly deeply
concerned about now -- getting
the Spartans to get the
Peloponnesian League into the
war against Athens to achieve
the goals that Corinth wanted.
So, that explains this tricky
little business.
So, now event number two.
The Athenians are actually
having already fought the
Corinthians at sea in the Battle
of Sybota,
were now engaged in a siege of
a city which contained thousands
of Corinthian soldiers as well,
and yet nobody had declared war
on anybody.
This is all happening
technically during peace time.
The other important event that
took place over that winter had
to do with a town of Megara.
We've been hearing about that,
of course, at least ever since
the first Peloponnesian War.
What happened here was that at
a certain point in that winter,
the Athenians passed a decree
of the assembly,
which forbade the Megarians
from trading--Let me back up;
let me be very technical,
from using the harbor of the
Piraeus, from using the
agora of Athens,
or from using any of the ports
of the empire.
I'm being extremely technical
and careful about this.
If I were not I'd be simply
saying that they were barring
the Megarian trade from anywhere
in the Athenian Empire.
I don't do so,
because one brilliant late
Oxford scholar came up with a
theory about this event in which
he tried to say no this was not
an embargo,
but it was in fact,
merely an attempt to shame,
to disgrace the Megarians.
It was when the bill says you
may not use the Agora of Athens
it means the Agora as the civic
center.
This has nothing to do with
trade.
I just want to mention it,
so that I've done justice;
nobody has believed that theory
yet and I don't think they
should.
It's an embargo and its
intention is again--well,
why are we doing anything
against Megara?
I think the best explanation is
that when the Corinthians had
fought the Corcyraeans in two
naval battles,
you remember Leucimne in 435,
Sybota in 433.
In the first one a number of
Peloponnesian allies and other
allies too had assisted the
Corinthians in the battle.
Now, at the second battle the
number of allies assisting the
Corinthians was cut down
significantly.
In my opinion,
that is because the Spartans
had made clear that they wished
for their allies to stay clear
of this conflict,
that they didn't want to be
dragged into a war over it,
and I think the evidence for
that is that when--you remember
that conference that the
Corcyraeans asked for to meet
with the Corinthians to see if
the couldn't work this out.
The Spartans accompanied them
to that conference and clearly
that means they wanted such a
conference to take place,
and they would have liked a
peaceful outcome,
but the Corinthians wouldn't
have any,
and so I think that it was the
clear signal that the Spartans
gave that we want you to cool
this that explains why fewer
Peloponnesian allies showed up
to help at the second battle,
but among those few were the
Megarians.
Why?Because we know the
Megarians had a terrific grudge
against the Athenians,
of course, throughout all of
history but more to the point,
at the end of the first
Peloponnesian War when the
Megarians had rebelled against
the Athenians in their moment of
greatest danger and then had
slaughtered as they had an
Athenian garrison at the port,
there was tremendous ill will
between the two cities,
and the Megarians were just
going to take a shot at giving
the Athenians a hard time.
So, it was important for the
Athenians, or in any case,
led by Pericles,
that was the way the assembly
decided not to allow what the
Megarians had done to go
unpunished,
because they wanted to deter
other Peloponnesian allies from
doing the same the next time.
Well, what could they do?
Well, there are really two
things they could do;
come to think of it before they
came up with this idea there was
only one.
They could march into Megara
and fight, but of course,
that would be an attack
directly on an important ally of
Sparta;
it would be a breach of the
thirty-years peace and it would
bring about the great
Peloponnesian War.
Pericles didn't want to do
that, but he didn't the
Megarians to get away scott
free,
and so he invented a new thing
again, yet one more new idea,
which I again regard as
fundamentally a diplomatic
device meant to deter the kind
of behavior that was necessary
to deter and that was this
decree.
And scholars have fought
forever and a day about all
aspects of it,
and most importantly,
about what it's for,
why it's going on,
what's its purpose.Unless
you understand it as I'm
suggesting you should,
it really is hard to tell,
because it could not have
driven the Megarians out of the
Peloponnesian League over to the
Athenian side,
as it did not.
The Megarians are absolutely
determined, remained terribly
hostile.
Nothing, no matter how much
they suffered could make them
change sides.
This was an oligarchic
pro-Spartan outfit that ran the
place and hated the Athenians
terribly.
Pericles had to know that.
He wasn't trying to wipe them
out, he wasn't trying to take
them out of business,
he was trying to show not so
much them, but other Spartan
allies that the Athenians could
hurt them in ways that they had
not been hurt before without
going to war and dragging the
Spartans in.
Any commercial Greek state
in the Peloponnesus,
and most of them had to do some
kind of commerce,
and some of the most important
ones were right on the seashore,
would have had to understand
what the significance of this
was.
So, there we have the Megarian
Decree, and it is the third of
these provocations as the
Corinthians saw it,
that helped to bring on the
war.
We would use such terms as the
immediate causes,
the official complaints,
as Thucydides would speak of
them which are seen,
or were seen by contemporaries
as being the causes of the war.
It's important to recognize
that Thucydides whole work,
or at least certainly Book One,
is dedicated to correcting what
he thinks is an error about
these things.
In his view,
it's not these particularities
that matter;
it's the truest cause that is
the growing power of Athens and
the fear that it engendered
among the Spartans and that's
what that's all about.
Well, the Corinthians in
reaction to these events,
Corcyra, Potidaea,
Megara pressed the Spartans to
take action,
pressed them to call a meeting,
which would allow the allies to
make their complaints to the
Spartans,
and of course,
that wouldn't have had any
success, if there had not been
Spartans who themselves had
decided that war against Athens
was desirable and were prepared;
they would have had to be
influential Spartans who thought
that -- members of the
gerousia,
ephors,
possibly kings.
We know at least one Spartan
king was not in favor of it.
In fact, the other Spartan king
was in exile.
So this could not have been led
by kings, but rather by the
other two groups of people.
But it's also clear that
the majority of Spartans were
not convinced,
because they would not have
needed to do what they did if
that had been true.
They called a meeting of the
Spartan assembly to which they
invited all states that had any
grievance against the Athenians,
and of course,
you could see that the
magistrates clearly wanted to
stir the people to war,
but they were not capable of
delivering a majority,
and so the assembly takes place
and I hope that you read that
section very,
very carefully.
The Corinthians make the
decisive speech,
the essence of it is--some of
it is just sophistry,
but some of it is to make the
case, let's not worry about all
these technicalities.
Well, they might not worry
about those technicalities;
none of those technicalities
amounted to a breach of the
thirty-years peace.
So, they were asking the
Spartans to violate their oaths
by launching a war that violated
their previous commitments,
and later in the war the
Spartans themselves admitted
that they were troubled by the
fact that they had been guilty
of such a breach.
So what the Corinthians
were asking was very,
very difficult,
and because--whenever they
talked about the
particularities,
they wanted to get passed them
as fast as they could,
because they didn't work for
that.
Instead they brought in a
larger issue that was much
harder to defeat.
It was a statement about the
Athenian character,
the kind of people that the
Athenians were,
sort of all tied up in a phrase
that the Corinthians used,
something like,
the Athenians were born neither
to live themselves in peace,
nor to allow their neighbors to
live in peace.
They painted a horrible picture
of a people who--of a state
which was insatiable,
so ambitious that it would
always be a menace to all its
neighbors.
No sense worrying about the
details at any particular
moment.
They were growing stronger and
stronger, and stronger and it
was only a matter of time until
they fell upon their neighbors
and destroyed their freedom.
The Athenians sent
ambassadors to Sparta.
They had not been invited.
They were there,
says Thucydides,
mysteriously on other business.
I always wonder,
what other business could they
have had?
Were they negotiating a grain
treaty?
Was it an exchange for
violinists and piano players?
I mean, what in the world--I
don't know, because,
of course, I think that was a
cover story.
They were there with
instructions.
The instructions were:
go to that meeting,
listen.
If you think that it's
important to do so,
I want you to make the
following set of statements to
the Spartans and so we have a
speech delivered by the
Athenians after all the other
allies had complained about
this,
that, and the other thing and
the essence of the Athenian
speech, I think,
was first of all,
they did what they could to
make a case for themselves,
but the heart and soul of what
they said was this.
It came sort of at the end
of their speech,
which was, don't imagine that
if you go to war against us this
is going to be an easy war for
you.
In effect they were suggesting
what was true;
we are a different kind of a
state.
The Corinthians say,
we are a different kind of
state in one sense,
but we're telling you we're a
different kind of state in
another sense.
We don't need to do what your
defeated opponents regularly
have to do, that is to try to
get out and fight you in a
hoplite battle.
Because of our navy,
our walls, our money,
our empire we don't need to
fight you on the land at all and
we own the sea;
you cannot hurt us.
So, you'll be damn fools to
take us on.
Don't think you're going to win
this war or that it's going to
be quick and easy.
That part of the speech was
meant to deter the Spartans.
It has confused scholars,
who like so many people think
that if you want to avoid war
what you need to do is to be
very nice to the other fellow.
There's no guarantee of
that one way or the other.
But the other side of the
Athenian argument is very
important too.
They said, on the other hand,
whatever grievances you or your
allies have against us,
and that would have included
all of these things I have
mentioned to you,
we are prepared to submit to
arbitration as the treaty
requires.
In effect, if you want to keep
your oaths you must not attack
us;
you must submit all complaints
to arbitration.
The Athenians,
and again I'm sure this was
orchestrated entirely by
Pericles,
hoped that this combination of
approaches would get these
Spartans to back off and allow
the situation to cool down.
Thucydides records two speeches
made by Spartans at that
assembly, one by King
Archidamus,
who was a personal friend of
Pericles, we learn from other
sources, and who clearly from
what he says here does not want
to go to war now,
and I would suggest doesn't
want to go to war at any time at
all.
He makes a case against the
Corinthian argument and arguing
for delaying going to war if one
goes to war at all,
and he hoped to put the matter
off for several years.
That he had to do I think
because he recognized that the
speech of the Corinthians had
changed the mood in Sparta,
and he thought that if the
Spartans simply voted on the
question of war now,
they would vote for it.
So, he couldn't just say,
let's not go to war.
He felt all he could say was,
this is not the time;
let's wait for several years.
We need money,
we need to calculate all that
kind of stuff,
and so that was the argument
that he made and he backed up
the Athenian argument
essentially,
saying this is not going to be
a quick easy war of the kind
we're accustomed to.
If you go to war now,
and this is another memorable
phrase that he employed,
you will leave this war to your
sons.
That means he was saying this
is going to take a generation to
fight.
That was his argument.
Then on comes the ephor
who is the president of the
meeting on that day;
his name is Sthenelaidas and he
gives a wonderfully short
Spartan laconic speech.
He says, I've heard a lot of
long speeches,
most of which I don't
understand.
I'm just a simple Spartan is
what he's implying,
unlike these con men,
unlike these sophist that
you've been listening to.
What I know is these guys are
now laying hands on our allies
and he was talking mainly about
the Megarian Decree.
So, the only question is,
are we going to let them do
that or not, and I say let's
not.
And then he called for the vote.
Interesting thing happens there
too.
You know how the Spartans
vote?
They bang on their shields and
the yell.
Those in favor,
those who believe the Athenians
have broken the treaty.
That's the way the thing was
put to them and they indicate in
the usual way and they all bang,
and those who think not,
the same noise,
and then he said,
I really couldn't tell which
side was the louder.
So, let's have a division and
count, which was unusual,
very unusual in the Spartan
assembly.
At which time he found a very
large majority in favor of the
war.
You know I've gone on both ways
on the question of what did he
hear and what didn't he hear the
first time,
and so I still don't know for
sure what happened.
I mean, one interpretation is
really couldn't tell;
it was very close.
Well, why wasn't it close on
the division?
Because in a place like Sparta
you don't want to show yourself
as being against war when other
guys are in favor of it.
That's not what brave men and
Spartans do, even though you
think that would be a good idea.
The other possibility is he
knew right away there was a
majority, and a clear majority
for war,
but he wanted everybody else to
see how big that majority was.
I don't know what I think.
I think I wrote in one book one
thing and in another book
another thing.
So, the Spartans voted that the
Athenians had broken the peace
and the implication was we
should go to war;
that took place at a meeting in
Sparta probably in July of 432,
but the war doesn't start--let
me back up.
The Spartans don't go marching
into Attica to fight the
Athenians until probably March
of 431.
Why did it take so long for the
Spartans to fulfill what they
had just voted for?
There's no really good reason
why they couldn't begin
immediately.
Some scholars point out
July is too late to cut down the
grain in Athens,
which would already have been
harvested and put away.
Fine, but that's not all the
Spartans have to do in Athens.
One of the things they do is to
go out into the farms,
burn farmhouses,
destroy as many olive trees as
they can,
cut down as many grapevines as
they can, all of that can be
done in July and August,
and September just as well as
it can be done at any other
time.
So, I don't think that's a good
reason.
I think what happened was that
the heat that had been stoked up
by the Corinthian argument and
those of their allies--we only
have the Corinthian speech,
but you can bet the Megarians
and the Potidaeans laid on a
pretty hot set of complaints as
well,
so did the Island of Aegina.
So, it was in the heat of anger
that the Spartans voted.
It must be, I think,
that when they had a chance to
think it over they thought that
maybe Archidamus knew what he
was talking about and they
better think again.
So, there is time in this
stretch of--what is--about nine
months for the negotiations that
did indeed follow.
Missions were sent from Sparta
to Athens to try--well,
we shall see to try to do what.
The first mission sent to
Athens made the demand that
there need be no war,
if the Athenians would simply
drive out the curse.
Well, we know what that is,
the curse of the Alcmaeonidae.
What Alcmaeonidae are we
talking about?
Pericles mother is an
Alcmaeonid and he's the only
prominent Alcmaeonid around.
This is an attempt to--you
could think it to get Pericles
out of there;
you guys don't want war just
get rid of Pericles.
Well, they knew the Athenians
weren't going to do that.
The idea we are engaged here in
psychological warfare,
to undermine Pericles,
who they see rightly as the
driving force behind the
Athenian policies,
and they want to make his
political situation more
uncomfortable and cause him
trouble.
The Athenians basically say
take a walk and that's the first
mission.
Next, the Spartans send a
mission which in my--so the
first one, as I say,
was not a serious effort at
avoiding the war,
but the second one,
in my view was.
This second mission said to the
Athenians we want you to
withdraw your troops from
Potidaea;
we want you to leave Aegina
autonomous as you're supposed
to, and we want you to withdraw
the Megarian Decree.
In fact, if you will only
withdraw the Megarian Decree
there will be no war.
That really changed the
situation, because we now in
Athens the issue could be boiled
down by the opponents of the
war,
and Thucydides lets us see that
there was strong opposition to
going to war on the part of some
that--why in the world are we
going to war about this embargo
we have laid on the Megarians?
Who cares about that?
So, in the great final debate
about this issue,
what should we do,
how should we answer the
Spartan offer on this occasion?
Many speeches were made,
Thucydides tells us,
but the only one he reports is
that of Pericles.
Pericles makes the case as to
why it is necessary not to
withdraw the Megarian Decree,
and it is the classic argument
against appeasement out of fear.
If we do withdraw this,
we will do so only because
we're afraid that the Spartans
will attack us and we're afraid
to fight them.
Now, if we give way on this
point why should the Spartans
ever do anything,
but threaten us again when they
want something that we don't
want to do?
We will be under their power;
you cannot give way to that
kind of a menace and still
maintain a free hand or any
level of equality with the
potential opponent.
That, I think,
was the essence of what he had
to say along with reminding the
Athenians how wrong the Spartans
were and how inappropriate was
their behavior,
because he said remember we
have offered to submit every
complaint that they have to
arbitration.
They refused to do that.
How can we in all honor and in
all sense of security refuse to
resist that kind of behavior?
He won the day;
the Athenians refused to
withdraw the Megarian Decree.
The course of war was clearly
set.
But you know even then it
was months before the war began
and it wasn't the Spartans who
began it.
It all began when the Thebans
early or late in winter I guess
of 431 made a sneak attack on
the Boeotian town of Plataea
which was allied to Athens.
Why did they do it?
Scholars suggest one of two
possibilities,
either because they knew that
there was going to be a war and
they wanted to gain the
strategic advantage of having
Plataea which is close to the
Athenian border in their
control,
or the flip side could be they
were afraid there would not be a
war and they were eager that
there should be a war.
We just can't be certain about
it.
But what we can be certain
about was the attack on Plataea
led the Plataeans to ask their
Athenian allies to help them,
the Athenians at the very least
had to say they would although
in the fact they did not and
that would compel the Spartans
to come in and help their Theban
allies and that is indeed how
the war began.
When in probably March of
431 the Spartan and
Peloponnesian army--we don't
know how big but very much
bigger than the Athenian army
came marching into Attica and
the war--I'm sorry I've
forgotten one thing.
Before the attack on Plataea,
the Spartans sent one more
mission to Athens in which they
said, forget everything we've
said before.
If you want peace you must free
the Greeks.
That was understood to mean you
must give up your empire.
The Spartans did not for a
minute expect the Athenians to
do that.
This was psychological warfare
for what was to follow.
That Spartans were to fight the
war on the program,
we are the liberators of the
Greeks against these
imperialistic,
aggressive Athenians who are
destroying everybody's autonomy,
and making it impossible for
everybody to live comfortably;
we are the liberators and
that's what we're doing.
So, now we've seen that the
Athenians had refused to rescind
the decree and the war had
begun.
It's worth asking why did the
two sides make the decisions
they did.
The Spartans refused to
arbitrate.
Why?
Because their whole system
depended upon the allies of
Sparta being able to count on
the Spartans to protect them
from a third party,
when it was necessary.
So, if the Spartans said,
well we're not going to do
that, we'll leave it to some
arbitrator to take care of,
then they had to worry that the
fundamental reason for the
league, which gave them their
power and their security,
would disappear and that would
be the end of that.
They also had to worry that if
they did not do what the
Corinthians and the Megarians
and others wanted them to do,
the Corinthians might leave the
league.
That is what the Corinthians
threatened them with in their
speech as a matter of fact,
which itself might be something
that would lead to the
dissolution of the Peloponnesian
League,
which is so crucial to Sparta.
So, all of that was on their
minds.
Another reason that the
Spartans were not prepared to
give way was that they really
didn't believe,
the majority did not believe
what the Athenians said about
how the war would be fought or
about what Archidamus said,
which was to back up the
Athenian claim.
They could say what they want,
but there was no instance in a
Greek history ever in which one
state invaded the land of the
other state,
and the other state simply let
them do what harm they wanted.
No matter what the Athenians
might say, no matter what you
might think that the Athenians
had the capacity to do that,
they wouldn't do that and
Spartans could point--what
happened the last time we
invaded Attica?
445 the Athenians came out and
made a treaty with us,
they conceded,
they backed off,
why would it be otherwise this
time?
I think that you must
always be aware yourself when
you're thinking about outbreaks
of wars anywhere that one of the
powerful issues,
one of the things that helped
people decide one way or another
is their estimate of how that
war will be fought and what the
price of that war will be,
and what the chances of victory
are;
that's always in your mind.
You're much less likely to go
to war if you feel very
confident you're going to get
smashed,
or that the cost of the war
will be intolerable and so on.
So, that was another issue.
There is a real link,
in other words,
between the strategy that the
Spartans expected to be able to
employ and the policy that went
with it.
Now, of course,
their guess about how the war
would be fought turned out to be
wrong and very costly to them.
What else could they have done?
Well in theory,
at least, they could have
called the Corinthian bluff and
say,
no we're going to obey our
oaths in the previous treaty,
we're going to submit to
arbitration,
too bad if you don't like it.
What could the Corinthians have
done?
Well, they might have tried to
withdraw from the league and
their own withdrawal would not
have been critical,
only if they had been able to
bring with them other states.
We can only guess as to how
successful they might have been.
Perhaps, it's not out of the
question that Megara,
being as upset as they were
would have joined them.
That would have been a real
strategic problem,
because between the two of them
they control the isthmus and it
means the Spartans can't get out
of the Peloponnesus.
So, I don't know how much of a
choice that really was.
On the other hand,
I'm sure there must have been
Spartans who said,
say who's in charge of this
league anyway,
the Corinthians or us?
We make the policy,
they do what we tell them,
we don't get dragged around by
them,
but then the question would be,
well what if these things do
happen?
So it was, as always,
not an easy call for either
side.
After all, the Spartans always
had to fear the helots,
and Thucydides makes the point,
I think, that it is fear of the
helots that is always at the
core of Spartan policy
decisions.
Recently, scholars have decided
to challenge that but I don't
think they've been very
successful with that.
Thucydides describes the
motives that drive states to war
and gives a wonderful triad;
fear, honor,
and interest and in this
case--it's usually some
combination of all of these
things.
In this case,
all of them were engaged,
but I think fear is
legitimately the one that's
prominent.
It's the one that Thucydides
puts at the head of the list,
and you can see why it might be
right.
What about Athens?
Why did the Athenians behave as
they did?
Pericles and the Athenians
followed this moderate policy of
deterrence.
They insisted upon the terms of
the treaty, they insisted upon
their equality with the
Spartans,
and therefore on arbitration,
no dictation,
no appeasement out of fear.
The Megarian Decree was
intended as a warning,
and, I think,
Pericles relied on the fact,
a very unusual situation,
Sparta has only one king at
this time and that King is
Archidamus who is a friend of
Pericles and who is in favor of
peace.
Kings are very influential
in Sparta, and so Pericles might
well have thought with
Archidamus on my side,
the Spartans will understand
that I've no aggressive
intentions against them,
I don't want to wreck their
league, I don't want to do
anything to them,
but they will simply have to
arbitrate these problems,
and they'll see that and he was
wrong.
He was confident hereto--it's
the same issue of the question
of how does strategy and policy,
how do these connect with one
another?
He believed that his strategy
could not fail.
The Spartans could invade,
could do what harm they liked,
the Athenians would be able to
live through whatever they did
without taking casualties,
simply losing property,
because they had the empire
that they could live off,
which would bring them the
money they needed to buy
everything they wanted and they
had nothing to fear at sea.
So, surely the Spartans,
after they cooled off,
would see that they couldn't
win and then why fight,
because they just couldn't harm
the Athenians.
It was a strategy that was
totally rational and that's what
was wrong with it.
It didn't take account of the
irrationalities that governed
human beings so much of the
time.
It didn't take account of the
fact that the Spartans were both
angry and frightened,
and finally that the Spartans
didn't have the imagination,
and I mean I don't want to put
the Spartans down as
particularly blind in this
respect.
It seems to me all Greeks would
have had the same doubts;
they didn't have the
imagination to think that
anybody would do what Pericles
had in mind.
And even if it was explained to
them, they'd say they won't do
it.
Because to do so from the
Spartan and Greek perspective
would be cowardly,
and would the Athenians be
willing to be shown up to be
such terrible cowards as they
would have to be standing behind
their walls,
watching the Spartans ripping
up their homes,
destroying their crops,
and calling them every name in
the book as they shouted beneath
their walls.
They thought not.
So, Pericles and the
Athenians, I think,
went wrong as the Spartans did
really in anticipating what was
going to happen,
and finally,
I would make this point.
I make it as a general point
about the outbreaks of wars
anywhere, anytime and that is,
if you are going to use a
strategy of deterrence you must
have available to you a powerful
offensive threat.
It's one thing to say,
as Pericles was in effect
saying, you can't hurt me so
don't fight.
You have to be able to show the
enemy I can hurt you very badly;
so don't fight,
and Pericles had no intention
of employing anything like a
very serious offensive threat.
There were ways he might have
been able to do this or that,
but that was not what was on
his mind.
He expected that the Spartans
would behave fundamentally
rationally.
They would calculate their
chances of victory,
they would see they had none,
and they would negotiate,
which means accept arbitration
and get out of this fix.
In my view,
neither side wanted war,
but neither side was ready to
yield for the reasons that I
have suggested.
It's not that this was in my
view an irrepressible conflict.
I use the terminology of the
American Civil War,
because really that's what
Thucydides is saying about the
Peloponnesian War;
that it was an irrepressible
conflict.
I think not.
I think mistakes were made,
mistakes of judgment on both
sides that produced the outcome.
Both sides felt that they could
not back down and as Lincoln
would say of his great war,
"and the war came."
I don't really think it was a
case of one side deciding,
let's have a war.
I think it was they both
stumbled into it as a
consequence of the situation and
their misunderstandings of what
was going on.
So, now to turn to the war
itself.
I have long ago concluded that
running through the war at the
pace that's available to me in
time will be too superficial to
be anything but silly,
so I won't try to tell you what
happened in the war but you have
a pretty good informant there,
his name is Thucydides and your
textbook can fill the rest of it
in.
What I'd like to do in the time
available to me to talk about
the war is to pursue a couple of
topics in some depth to help you
understand some aspects of the
war,
rather than the hopeless effort
to describe the war to you so
briefly.
So, I want to talk to you first
about the main source that we
have for understanding the war
and the great historian who
wrote it,
Thucydides, in his history of
the war.
I guess when I give this as a
separate talk to people I use
the title, "Thucydides the
Revisionist Historian of the
Peloponnesian War,"
and let me just do that for you.
Now, just that title ought
to raise a number of questions.
Who is this guy?
Who is this Thucydides?
Why should we be interested in
what he wrote over 2,400 years
ago?
Also, what is a revisionist and
how can Thucydides be a
revisionist when he seems to
have been the first man to write
a history of the Peloponnesian
War?
What was there for him to
revise?
Well, Thucydides was an
Athenian aristocrat who came of
age at the height of the
greatness of Periclean Athens.
He appears to have been born,
let us say about 460 B.C.
He was not yet thirty,
when the Great War broke out,
with two interruptions that war
lasted for twenty seven years,
and left Greece shattered,
impoverished and permanently
weakened.
Never again were the Greeks
masters of their fate and that
war was his subject.
But why should a war among
the ancient Greeks interest us
today?
One answer lies in Thucydides'
definition of his task and in
the skill in which he carried it
out.
He said, it may well be that my
history will seem less easy to
read and he means here,
less easy to read than
Herodotus with all those
wonderful funny stories that he
tells,
because of the absence in it of
a romantic element.
Take that Herodotus.
It will be enough for me,
however, if these words of mine
are judged useful for those who
want to understand clearly the
events that happened in the
past,
and which human nature being
what it is, will at some time or
other and in much the same ways,
be repeated in the future.
My work is not a piece of
writing designed to meet the
tastes of an immediate public
like Herodotus is who read his
history out in public readings.
My work is a possession forever.
Now, that may sound
immodest, but his expectation
obviously was justified.
For his work has lasted and
been judged useful to this very
day, perhaps more influential in
our time than any time before.
But what's a revisionist?
In a sense, of course,
all historians are revisionist,
for each tries to make some
contribution that changes our
understanding of the past.
When we use the term
revisionist, we refer to a
writer who tries to change the
readers' mind in a major way,
to provide a new general
interpretation sharply and
thoroughly to change our way of
looking at the matter.
The term seems to have been
used first after the First World
War.
Most people who lived in the
allied nations believed that the
central powers were responsible
for bringing it on and deserved
to be punished for it.
Soon after the war,
some people began to argue that
Germany and Austria were no more
responsible than Russia,
France, and England and perhaps
less.
Soon historians,
called revisionists,
argued in support of that
position.
Before long the new view
captured the minds of educated
people in England and America,
even some Frenchmen were
convinced and the Bolshevik
government of Russia did not
need convincing of the
wickedness of their czarist
regime;
since then the phenomenon has
been calming.
A few writers,
most notably A.J.P.
Taylor tried to revise the
common opinion that held Hitler
responsible for the Second World
War, and had great success for a
while.
Later, the causes of the Cold
War and of the American War in
Vietnam underwent similar
treatment.
These attempts to reverse
opinion have had great practical
importance.
What happened in the past and
even more important,
what we think happened has a
powerful influence on the way we
respond to our current problems.
What historians say happened,
and what they say it means,
therefore, makes a very great
difference.
Let me just remind you about
the controversy about the First
World War to illustrate that
point.
The Americans and the English,
in particular,
came to feel that Germany was
wrongly blamed and therefore
unjustly treated by the
Versailles Treaty.
Americans used this as the main
justification for rejecting that
treaty and then retreating into
isolation from foreign affairs.
The English,
of course, couldn't go that
far, but their belief that
Germany was falsely accused made
it easy to permit and to justify
Hitler's violations of the
treaty.
Feelings of guilt helped
support a policy of disarmament,
unpreparedness,
and appeasement.
The English poet W.H.
Auden, responding to Hitler's
invasion of Poland in a poem
called, "September 1,
1939," a poem that was
subsequently deleted from
collections of his poetry,
revealed how deeply the idea
had penetrated and how late,
in spite of everything,
it lasted.
Here's what he says,
"Accurate scholarship can
unearth the whole offense from
Luther until now that has driven
a culture mad.
Find what occurred at Lynce.
What huge Imago made a
psychopathic god?
I and the public know what all
school children learn.
Those to whom evil is done,
do evil in return."
So we are to understand Hitler
and Nazi Germany as simply
responding to the bad deal they
got at the Battle of Versailles
and that's all there is to it.
More recent scholarship is
shown to most people's
satisfaction that the opinions
of contemporaries were more
right than the revisionists,
that the general blame for the
First World War can be laid at
Germany's door and that guilty
feelings were unjustified,
but it's too late.
The revisionist historians did
their work so well,
and it fit so nicely into the
climate of opinion of the 1920s
and 30s that these people
captured the minds of a
generation and helped to move
them in a direction that they
wanted to go.
So, what historians write and
what teachers teach can really
matter, mostly in the negative.
I mean, if we teach you
anything right you forget it,
but if we get it wrong you
remember.
Thucydides,
as much as anyone who has ever
written, believed in the
practical importance of history,
so, we should expect him to be
eager to set straight any errors
of fact or interpretation that
he found.
But his revisionist tendencies
are clear on a larger scale than
detail, he has the evidence of
Homer,
for instance to show,
he uses it, that it was the
poverty of the Greeks,
not the bravery of the Trojans
that made the siege of Troy so
long.
He seems to have been the first
one to present the view that the
Peloponnesian War was one single
conflict that began in 431 and
ended in 427,
not a series of separate wars.
But my question again is what
was there to revise?
The answer, I think,
is the same as in the modern
instances, I mentioned.
The not yet,
fully formed,
or written opinions of
contemporaries.
In modern times these are
very easy to recover.
Some of us still remember them,
and in any case,
modern revisionists always
confront and argue against them.
Thucydides' method is different.
He argues with no one and he
vents no alternative view even
to refute it.
There are a couple of
exceptions, but even then he
doesn't mention anybody,
who holds the view he's going
to refute.
He just puts forward the view.
He gives the reader only the
necessary facts and conclusions
that he has distilled from them
after careful investigation and
thought.
He has been so successful that
for more than 2,400 years few
readers have been aware that any
other opinion existed.
But a careful reading of
Thucydides himself and of a few
other ancient sources shows that
there were other opinions in
Thucydides' time and that his
history is a powerful and
effective polemic against them.
One interesting dispute
involved the causes of and
responsibility for the war,
which I've been chatting about.
To the ordinary contemporary,
the war must have seemed the
result of a series of incidents
beginning about 436 B.C.
at Epidamnus.
There, a Civil War brought
about the conflict with Corcyra,
the quarrel threatened the
general peace when Athens made
an alliance--I'm sorry with
Corcyra against Sparta's
Corinthian ally,
during the winter Potidaea.
I'm not going to go through
that because you know all about
it.
The opposition to the war,
I remind you,
focused on the Megarian Decree,
as its cause and held Pericles
responsible for both the decree
and the war.
In 425 the comic poet
Aristophanes presented a play
called, Acharnians.
The war had by that time
dragged on for six long and
painful years and his comic
hero, Dikaiopolis,
has decided to make a separate
peace for himself.
This so angers the patriotic
and bellicose chorus that the
hero is forced to explain that
it was not the Spartans who
began the war.
Here's what Dikaiopolis
says, "Some vice ridden
wretches, men of no honor,
false men,
not even real citizens,
they kept denouncing Megara's
little coats and if everyone,
anyone ever saw a cucumber,
a hair, a suckling pig,
a clove of garlic,
or a lump of salt all were
denounced as Megarian and
confiscated."
Then he goes on,
"Some drunken Athenians stole a
Megarian woman and in return
some Megarians stole three
prostitutes from the house of
Aspasia,
Pericles' mistress."
Next the infuriated Pericles,
I quote, again,
"Enacted laws which sounded
which sounded like drinking
songs,
that the Megarians must leave
our land, our market,
our sea, our continent.
Then, when the Megarians were
slowly starving,
they begged the Spartans to get
the law of the three harlots
withdrawn.
We refused though they asked us
often, and from that came the
clash of shields."
Now, using the evidence of
Athenian comedy to understand
contemporary politics is a
tricky business.
Just imagine the trouble
somebody 2,000 years from now
would have making sense of a Jay
Leno monologue or a skit from
Saturday Night Live.
Aristophanes is clearly having
fun by connecting the Megarian
Decree, which we know was
supported by Pericles,
with the rape of women,
which according to Homer
started the Trojan War,
and according to Herodotus,
was said to have caused the war
between the Greeks and the
Persians as well.
Still he does make the Megarian
Decree and the Athenian refusal
to withdraw it central to the
coming of the war,
both in Acharnians and in
another comedy he wrote called
Peace, performed in 421.
In the latter play,
he makes Hermes the god,
explain to the war weary
Athenian farmers how peace was
lost in the first place,
I quote, "The beginning of our
trouble was the disgrace of
Phidias."
He is referring to the great
sculptor who had been charged
with impiety in connection with
the great statue of Athena that
he had constructed for the
Parthenon.
Then Pericles,
"fearing he might share in the
misfortune, because Phidias was
his close friend,
dreading your ill nature,
that is the Athenians and your
stubborn ways,
before he could suffer harm set
the city aflame with that little
spark the Megarian Decree."
Well, the full context reveals
that the connection between the
attacks on the great sculptor
Phidias,
Pericles' friend and associate,
and the Megarian Decree was
Aristophanes' own joke,
but it was taken seriously by
other ancient writers,
and it surely reflected charges
that were made by real
contemporary enemies of
Pericles.
The hard kernel of opinion
central to all this is the
common belief that the cause of
the war was the Megarian Degree
and that Pericles was
responsible for it.
Well, of course,
that view, at the very most,
is an over simplification and
any good historian would have
rejected it as a sufficient
explanation.
Thucydides, in fact,
gives it very little attention.
He doesn't mention it in its
natural place in the narrative.
He doesn't give its date.
He doesn't tell us the purpose,
and he doesn't tell us how it
worked in practice.
He does not conceal the fact
that the peace was conditional
on its withdrawal,
or that it became the center of
the final debate in Athens.
His way of refuting the common
opinion was to indicate its
unimportance by the small place
it occupies in his account,
and to include it among all the
specific quarrels that he
regards as insignificant.
His own explicit interpretation
is a sweeping revision of the
usual explanation,
and it's the one I've told you
about before.
He states that same
explanation, in other words,
twice more in his account of
the wars' origins and the whole
first book is a carefully
organized unit meant to support
that interpretation.
So skillfully and powerfully
did he work that his
interpretation has convinced all
but a few readers over the
centuries.
I should point out that in
spite of my clearing up that
error, it's been available for
about forty years now.
I hate to tell but most people
still agree with Thucydides and
not with me.
The revisionist view quickly
and lastingly became orthodoxy.
Another controversy surrounds
Pericles most unusual strategy
for waging the war and I'll talk
to you about that next time.
So, let me move onto the next
point.
Just give me a second.
Here we go.
Sorry about this.
The point that I want to
make--the other instance that I
want to bring to your attention
is in the summary that
Thucydides makes of Pericles'
career and of his importance to
Athens in Chapter 65 of Book II,
after Pericles' death.
He interrupts the narrative to
give you this really lengthy
evaluation.
One of the things he says in
that evaluation is that Athens
in the time of Pericles was a
democracy in name,
but the rule of the first
citizen in fact.
That is a remarkably powerful
statement.
He is saying that Periclean
Athens was not a democracy and
that it was in effect some kind
of an autocratic government with
Pericles as the autocrat.
I would say that all the
evidence we have suggests that
that is not accurate.
Just a few points to illustrate
why that is so--I mean,
one way to do that I think is
by comparison.
People have suggested that what
Thucydides is saying is like
what Augustus,
the Emperor or Rome said about
himself,
that he ruled not by any
particular power,
not by potestas,
but by his auctoritas,
that is to say by the influence
that his persona and his
achievements,
and all those things had over
his fellow citizens.
Well, in the case of
Augustus it was a flat lie.
Augustus had a monopoly of all
the armed force there was in the
Mediterranean.
He also had a vast treasury
that he could use for his own
purposes.
He was, as all historians in
the modern world made perfectly
clear, he was an emperor who
ruled,
no matter what instruments he
used, it was a one-man rule.
In a second you can see how it
doesn't apply to Pericles.
Pericles had no armed forces
available to him;
he could not enforce anything
by pulling out some soldiers to
do anything that he wanted to
do.
Any use of any armed forces
always had to be voted by the
assembly, and debated,
and discussed,
and a majority determined
whether it could be done.
Moreover, every month the
question was raised,
as you know,
is Pericles like all the other
generals, okay or has he
violated anything.
Charges could be brought
against him, he could be brought
to court and that's what
happened to him in the middle of
the war in 430.
His enemies did bring charges
against him, he was convicted,
he was removed temporarily from
the generalship,
and he had to pay a very,
very heavy fine.
This is not the business of
dictators.
So, very briefly,
Thucydides is wrong about that.
Why did he want to say that?
This gets to my own explanation
of how we can understand.
I've made the argument that
he's wrong about the origins of
war.
Next time, I'll make the case
that he was wrong in fully
supporting Pericles strategy in
the Peloponnesian War as the
correct one.
I'll make the claim that the
opposite is true.
If I'm right,
why in the world did he say the
things he did?
I think we need to understand
his situation.
In 424 he was a general
commanding Athenian naval forces
in the north.
He was away from the place
where they expected him to be
when there was a suddenly
surprise seizure of the
important Athenian city of
Amphipolis,
a charge was brought against
him, he was brought to trial,
and he was found guilty and
sent into exile.
He spent the last twenty years
of the war in exile.
Probably, I would guess,
among fellow exiles and fellow
opponents of the Athenian
democracy,
because he is very clearly a
critic of the Athenian
democracy.
There he had to speak all
the time to people who said,
wait a minute Thucydides,
let me get this right,
you think Pericles was a
terrific guy,
don't you?
Yeah, I do, he would have had
to say that.
They said, besides didn't you
get elected general in 424 and
wasn't that about the most
radical year in the entire
history of Athenian democracy?
Weren't you a great pal?
How could it be a blue blood
like you, who knows what
nonsense democracy is,
how could you possibly hold
those positions?
And in my view,
his history is his answer to
those questions.
You think that the war is about
the Megarian Decree and that
Pericles is responsible for it,
you're completely wrong.
The war was inevitable,
and became so as soon as the
Athenian Empire came on board to
challenge the Spartan hegemony.
Your view is naīve and
ignorant.
So, please pay attention to my
history when I get it fully
written.
You think that Pericles was
a democrat you bloody fool;
he was a man who ruled over
others;
he did not take his orders from
the assembly.
You think that we lost the war,
because we had a bad strategy?
The truth is the strategy was
right, and if his successors had
not abandoned that,
they would have held out and
won the war.
So, you see all of your main
ideas about what's happened to
us in the past are wrong,
and that is why I did what I
did and I was right to do so
every step of the way.
That was his history and in my
view was not merely an account
of the past;
it was an apologia pro vita
sua, a defense of his own
life and of the great decisions
that were made in it.
Of course, what I've just said
is highly controversial.
Next time we'll talk about the
strategy in the war.
