The Rise and Fall of Athens

After the victorious battles against the Persians at Thermopylae, Artemisium, Marathon, Salamis, Plataea and Mycale, Athens lay in ruins and the Greeks understood, in no uncertain terms, that they’d have to work together to keep the Persian Empire away from colonies in Ionia (what is, today, the Anatolian Peninsula and its coastal islands) and even mainland Greece.

Once the initial Persian attacks had been rebuffed, at tremendous loss of life on both sides, the Greeks decided they needed to cripple Persia’s ability to stage an invasion. Under the Spartan general, Pausanias, the Greeks attacked the city of Byzantion (which the Romans would call Byzantium, and now is modern-day Istanbul) and took it. However, Pausanias managed to annoy the crap out of all the other Greeks by putting on Persian airs, releasing Persian prisoners without consulting them, and generally acting like an ass.

Moreover, the Spartans supposedly had little interest in the independence of a bunch of Ionian Greek city-states (none of which they’d helped create, anyway), especially since it distracted them from maintaining security against the Helots, at home. So, the Spartans bailed on the alliance, and that meant leadership passed to Athens.

This was the Delian League, so-called because those members who wanted to contribute money, rather than troops or ships, decided to make the sacred island of Delos (supposedly a birthplace of two deities and a center of Greek religious life) the storehouse for the league’s treasury.

At first, things went well enough. The members of the league provided funds to allow the Athenians to rebuild their city (which they’d evacuated during the second Persian invasion, and which the Persians had subsequently burned before the Greeks clobbered them at the Battle of Plataea) and put up new walls. In addition, the Athenians used a bunch of the funds to create “walls of wood” – a large fleet to allow the league to control the Aegean Sea, as well as the straits at the Bosporus and Dardanelles, so as to prevent the Persians from crossing.

Pretty soon, though, the Athenians realized they possessed the largest fleet the Eastern Mediterranean had ever seen and controlled a sizeable army that, while it didn’t have any Spartans, nonetheless consisted of a lot of military veterans who had acquitted themselves well against the Persians. At that point, the Athenians began to lean on some of the islands that enjoyed the “protection” of the League of Delos, but which didn’t provide any support for the league’s fleet or military.

Before too many years had passed, the Delian League pretty much transformed into the First Athenian Empire. By the time Pericles, son of Xanthippus, of the noble clan of Acamantis, became an archon of Athens, the city had pretty much stopped pretending. While they remained the “defenders of the Greeks,” they also declared themselves an empire and the first city of Greece. Pericles stuck his fork in the Delian League when he ordered the treasury moved from the island of Delos to the city of Athens, where he and the Athenian government could control it, directly.

A lot of what we know about Pericles comes from a history written by an Athenian named Thucydides, who lived at the same time. Thucydides personally witnessed a lot of what happened during the “Age of Pericles” and the years that followed, and decided to write about it.

Thucydides patterned his histories after those written by Herodotus; any event he didn’t see, himself, he sought multiple eyewitnesses to and found what little documentation that was available. He also traveled as extensively as he could, to visit places where significant events had taken place. In that sense, he tried to act as the best historiographer possible.

Thucydides did take one liberty, however. Nobody had tape-recorders, back then, and shorthand hadn’t been invented yet, so some of the speeches he included in his works were reconstructions based on his own memories, or the recollections of others. They probably weren’t verbatim transcriptions of what the speakers actually said, but Thucydides acknowledged this, frankly, at the beginning of his book.

The historian said he based the speeches on what witnesses recalled, and what made the most sense, given what transpired. That’s probably about the best anybody could have done at the time and, given that Thucydides lived through many of the events, himself, he probably got things a lot more right than wrong.

That said, his wrote his histories more than 2,400 years ago, so they haven’t survived completely intact. However, between what he wrote, and some other sources, we have a pretty decent idea about the events that led to the creation, and downfall, of the first Athenian Empire.

While Thucydides worked hard to be objective, he did have his biases and some of the people who appear in his books come off better than they might deserve. Other writers who lived at the time had different views on people and events.

He spent a fair amount of time, early on, devoted to Pericles, and for good reason. Pericles was widely considered the “First Citizen” of Athens during his time as leader, and he primarily planned and funded the architecture, sculpture and layout of the Athens that associates with the city. He used Delian League funds to pay for the glorious Parthenon, including the gilded statue of the goddess, Athena. Re-elected as archon 29 times, he also funded an amphitheater, renovated the agora (or marketplace) and, most importantly, built the parallel “Long Walls” that connected the city to its harbor town, the Piraeus, five miles away.

With three good anchorages, the Piraeus served as the home-base of the League fleet, and then the Athenian fleet. It was also one of the primary entries for goods into Greece from throughout the Mediterranean (rival city Corinth, which dominated the narrow isthmus between the two lobes of the Peloponnesian Peninsula, was another…).

Pericles was also something of an iconoclast, when it came to traditional Greek culture. He married his first wife as part of an arranged marriage with another wealthy family, and had two children with her. However, the two couldn’t get along and, with the blessings of both his family and hers, they divorced. She married another wealthy Athenian and disappeared from history.

For his part, Pericles met Aspasia, a woman from Miletus, the home of Thales born a couple of centuries prior. Aspasia had moved with her family to Athens while she was young and, as such, stood as part of the metis class in Athens.

The metis were resident aliens free to live and work in the city, but not citizens of Athens and thus unable to vote and ineligible to hold political office. However, the family had grown quite wealthy and, as such, Aspasia received a much better education than most Greek women.

While Pericles’ enemies wrote all sorts of unpleasant things about her, it is clear that Aspasia had a sharp mind and an interest in philosophy, read everything she could, and held interests in common with the man who became her lover.

It’s also clear that Pericles loved Aspasia deeply, and showed her public affection in a way quite unusual for the Greeks of the time. Rather than confine herself to the women’s quarters, Aspasia apparently had the run of the house, kept it beautifully, and participated in the intellectual life that took place there. As such, when Pericles ran into political trouble, Aspasia faced charges of impiety and stood trial, although she was acquitted of all charges.

She also had a son with Pericles, whom they also named Pericles. Since one of his parents was a metis and not a citizen, young Pericles spent the early part of his life aware of his lower status, although his contributions to Athens later in life caused them to declare him a citizen.

Anyway, the construction of the walls around Athens had caused a lot of consternation as the League of Delos got started. Sparta and most of the other city-states feared the strong defenses and the large fleet would allow Athens to project force far beyond its own borders in the region of Attica. When Pericles built the “Long Walls” to the Piraeus, the worry only intensified.

This fear proved well-founded, as Athens started to add more and more members to the league, whether or not they wanted to join, and began to use the fleet to not just guard against the Persians, but also to “protect the peace” throughout the Aegean.

This made the other Greek city-states increasingly nervous, and none more than reactionary Sparta, which had no interest in any sort of change, ever. Adding to the fact that, while many Greek cities, including Sparta, were ruled by kings or oligarchs, Athens had granted citizenship (and voting rights) not only to wealthy land-owners, but also to soldiers and even the sailors who manned the vital fleet.

As such, Athens came as close as any ancient city to what we might recognize as a “democracy,” even though it wasn’t much of one, by modern standards. The vote was restricted to male citizens born in the city or its territory in Attica, to parents who were both Athenians, and who either met minimum standards of wealth and property or who served Athens, militarily.

That meant Athens had a wealthy class of oligarchs who despised the lower classes as ill-educated rabble, and wanted to rule the city as their counterparts did in other places. However, while Pericles came from a wealthy family, his clan had sided with the lower classes more often than not.

Pericles acquired the prestige needed to rise to power by appealing to the sailors and the common folk. He sponsored plays, beautified the city and kept wages for sailors high, and that’s why the Athenians supported him as a “populist” leader for 29 years, straight.

The oligarchs hated him with a rare and special passion.

While Pericles was well-educated and dedicated to the people of Athens, he was very much a man of his times. To him, Athens (and Sparta) stood at the apex of Greek civilization, and the city’s wealth and energy meant that even the Spartans couldn’t compare, culturally.

(To be fair, even most Spartans would have agreed with at least that much. Spartans were killers, and all their arts were martial, and they knew it. However, that did not mean they wanted to be ruled by Athens, and most certainly felt the greatest threat from the rise of its empire.)

The rise of Athens under Pericles triggered an equal and opposite reaction from Sparta, which created an alliance of its own, the Peloponnesian League. Members of that league primarily consisted of city-states ruled by kings and oligarchs, who considered the inwardly-focused Spartans – although militarily awesome – a lot less of a threat than an expansive Athens.

The Peloponnesian League also had a fair smattering of people who had historical differences and enmities with Athens, as well as trade rivals, such as Corinth, who felt they could gain financially should the empire suffer setbacks.

That meant the unanimity enjoyed by Greece during the Persian Wars didn’t last very long after they’d beaten back the invaders. Instead, the Greeks returned to the intermittently violent quarrels with one another they’d had throughout most of their history. The rise of Athens, and the subsequent creation of the Peloponnesian League, added considerable tension to the already fractious Greek political culture, and pressures steadily built during the succeeding decades.

All of that exploded in about 433 BCE, when Athens created an alliance with Corfu and started to besiege the city of Potidea as a part of the arrangement. This directly threatened the position of Corinth, one of the Peloponnesian League’s most important members. War broke out between the Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian League, and the entire Eastern  Mediterranean descended into chaos.

Things started out pretty rough for Athens. Rather intimidated by Sparta’s military prowess, Pericles ordered all the farmers and country people inside the walls, and refused to take the field against the Spartan army led by one of its kings, Archidamus II. As a consequences, Archimadus ravaged the farms and fields of Attica, unopposed, and the Athenians had to sit there and watch it happen.

This cost Pericles a fair amount of political clout, and that only got worse a couple of years later, when a bad plague broke out because of the crowded conditions in Athens. About a third of the citizens died, but the blame didn’t linger long with Pericles, as the illness killed him, too.

At that point, the island of Lesbos revolted against the Athenians, because they figured the city couldn’t last. Unfortunately for them, the new leaders of Athens were a lot more aggressive than Pericles, and they quashed the rebellion in a hurry. They also ordered the huge Athenian navy to raid and pillage the coastal areas of their enemies, including Lacedaemon – the home territory of Sparta.

Things came to a head when a storm drove part of the Athenian fleet ashore at Pylos, on the coast of Lacedaemon. The ships had been raiding the area, but the storm damaged them enough that they had to put the heavy infantry a shore so they could free themselves.

Kinda bored with nothing to do, the soldiers of the Athenian empire started to build fortifications on the peninsula at Pylos. In so doing, they created a permanent, hostile fortification on Spartan territory – the first time that had ever happened, in history. Meanwhile, the ships limped back to Athens for repairs.

The notion that the Helots might have a place to run to, or get weapons from, terrified the Spartans, and they pulled their army back. They tried to storm the heights of Pylos, failed in the face of strong Athenian resistance, and decided to call in their own fleet. Once it arrived, the Spartans decided to try an amphibious assault on Pylos while they also attacked from the land. In preparation for the attack, they moved a bunch of Spartan heavy infantry to the island of Sphacteria, just off the coast.

However, before they could launch the assault, the main body of the Athenian fleet appeared, attacked the Peloponnesian League fleet, nearly wiped it out, provided relief to the troops at Pylos, and surrounded Sphacteria where the 420 or so Spartans were stuck. After a few months of siege, the Athenians accidentally set the forest of Sphacteria on fire, realized how few Spartans it actually held, attacked them, and forced them to surrender.

The surrender of any Spartan military force came as a terrible shock to the ephors who ruled Sparta, and they grew even more distraught when the Athenians herded the Spartan hoplites onto ships and carried them back to Athens. Knowing that their own people would tear them apart if anything happened to the troops, the ephors stopped raiding Attica, and in the end negotiated a treaty with Athens.

In it, the two cities agreed to stop fighting each other, returned some of the territories each had captured, kept others, and agreed to act as allies if either were ever attacked. The treaty guaranteed peace after nearly two decades of war, and was supposed to last for 30 years.

It lasted about six.

The notion that Athens and Sparta might actually work together as allies freaked out many of the other cities in Greece. The combination of Athenian wealth and the strength of its combat-hardened navy, combined with Sparta’s sheer bad-assery, meant the new alliance had the potential to rule all of Greece.

The Corinthians hated this idea, and the people of Argos didn’t like it, either. So, the two of them made a secret alliance to resist such an eventuality, and they began to quietly approach other cities they suspected might feel similar dismay. Not surprisingly, they found quite a few willing to listen, and this new alliance quietly grew.

Meanwhile, Sparta and Athens licked their wounds and recovered their strength – and Athenian trade began to refill the city’s coffers and allow them to rebuild their army and expand the fleet. While they did spend a fair amount of their time stamping out brush-fire rebellions throughout the empire, they started to get a handle on it, and Athens looked to soon become stronger than ever.

As expected, the Spartans really didn’t like that, at all, so when diplomats from Corinth and Argos started to feel them out about possibly opposing Athens, they found a fair number of Spartans willing to listen. However, the Spartans had no desire to take it in the chin, again, and it soon became apparent that they’d do nothing unless they had a clear advantage in any potential conflict with the Athenians.

That opportunity arose when Athens got greedy and made a serious strategic blunder. Over on the island of Sicily, the people of the city of Egesta found themselves in yet another nasty little war with their traditional enemies, in the city of Selinus. However, this time, the Selenuntines had called on their allies in the large and powerful city of Syracuse for assistance, and the Egestans knew they had a problem.

So, they went to the Athenian empire and pulled off a long con. They asked the Athenians for help, agreed to serve as the empire’s primary member on Sicily, promised to help Athens in any military endeavors in Sicily or southern Italy and, to top it all off, agreed to pay the cost of the entire Athenian expeditionary force in the efforts against Selinus and (most importantly) Syracuse.

The Athenians had been at peace long enough for enough young men who had never fought to reach adulthood, and the most charismatic of these was a particularly rich and stupid young punk named Alcibiades. The son of a wealthy family, and quite a talented hand with horses, himself, Alcibiades advocated strongly on behalf of the Egestans. He saw it as a way to rise as high in Athenian society as the military veterans, and declared that if Athens managed to conquer all of Sicily and add it to the empire, they’d be stronger than ever.

The Athenians bit down on the bait hard, and Alcibiades got what he wanted, despite every effort by the veteran general, Nicias, to scotch the whole deal. Nicias argued (to no avail) that a huge expedition to far-away Sicily would cost too much in the way of troops and money to do right, and the blood and treasure was better spent stabilizing and securing the existing empire.

Soon enough, Nicias realized that Alcibiades would likely win the argument, so he changed tactics. Nicias provided something of an exaggerated estimate of the troop strength, funding, and support personnel needed to do the job correctly, hoping the cost would convince the government of Athens to abandon the idea.

Somewhat to his chagrin, the Athenians agreed to provide the full funding, all the troops and the support personnel he said would be needed, and appointed Alcibiades as a general. However, they gave overall command to Nicias, himself, since he’d provided a solid estimate of the effort needed. Unable to refuse something like that, Nicias armored up and (despite his misgivings) led the army to Syracuse.

Unfortunately, even his own exaggerated estimate proved inadequate to the task. By the standards of the day, Sicily was very far away from the Peloponnesus, and no good map existed that showed the actual size of the island – one of the biggest in the Mediterranean. It was also fairly densely populated, by the standards of the day, and had decent farmland as compared to the rather arid fields of Greece.

Moreover, the Greeks’ own sense of superiority rose up and bit them. Alcibiades had argued that, since the Syracusans had intermarried with the indigenous Sicilians, they were no doubt ill-mannered, ill-disciplined half-barbarians who would fly apart if faced with a disciplined force of hoplites from the empire. As such, given the rather overpowered army granted to Nicias, Alcibiades said Syracuse would fall within a few weeks, the whole war would be over in a few months, and Athens would have a solid bridgehead they could use to take over the entire island in just a few years’ time.

So, off the expeditionary force went. They stopped briefly in Italy to resupply, and the Syracusans and Selenunintines slowly began to understand that the Athenians really meant to do something this stupid. Syracuse hastily started to prepare, and when Nicias’ army landed, it found itself stuck in quagmire against a prepared enemy that was much stronger than expected.

That meant the Athenians had to settle in for a long siege, instead of enjoying the quick victory promised by Alcibiades. Even the departure of the rich young loudmouth to answer charges of religious vandalism didn’t help, and Nicias found himself in an inextricable mess.

(Alcibiades most likely had nothing to do with the desecration of the herms, which turned out to be a drunken prank by a bunch of rich young men. However, he apparently did take part in an observation of the Eleusinian mysteries in a private home, considered criminally heretical since it took place without the presence of a priest.)

At that point, that point, Sparta, Corinth, Argos and the other members of the alliance took advantage of the opportunity that had dropped in their laps. They declared war against Athens, and this time (just to be sure) Sparta called on the Persian king, Darius II, for help. Darius offered to fund a new navy for Sparta if they could find someone to command it.

The Spartans, for their part, knew just the guy. Alcibiades had decided not to return to Athens to face charges of impiety for the Eleusinian heresy (also a pretext by which his political enemies could destroy him for sucking Athens into the war in Sicily), and he’d taken up residence in Sparta.

Not one to miss a chance at power, the defector agreed to lead the fleet, so long as he was made tyrant of Athens should the war succeed. The Spartans agreed to that deal, and they re-started the war with Athens.

The Athenians fought the two-front war gamely enough, though, and that scared Alcibiades enough that he offered to bring Darius into the war against Sparta, if the Athenians, themselves, agreed to make him tyrant and restore the rule of the oligarchs.

Things went back and forth for a while, but in the end Athens was over-extended and unable to keep it together. Eventually, the member-cities of the empire started to revolt, and the oligarchs staged a coup (and then got thrown out, again). The Persians took advantage of the Greeks’ distraction and started to re-conquer the empire’s cities in Ionia – which is exactly what they’d planned, all along.

The Athenians lost their fleet in the Bosporus because they completely ran out of experienced commanders, and then three Spartan armies converged on Athens. After that, it was all over. The oligarchs took control of Athens and tore down the Long Walls as the Spartans demanded, and the war ended.

Eventually, of course, the oligarchs proved tyrannical, so the Athenians rebelled in a violent revolution which forced the Spartans to intervene. The Spartans permitted the overthrow of the “30 Tyrants” and allowed the Athenians to create a new democracy led by those who had fled the oppression of the oligarchs. This proved an even bigger mistake, because once the Athenians had popular and competent leaders, again, they started to rebuild their empire. It never grew as strong as it had been, and the Persians maintained control of the Greek colonies on the Anatolian Coast, but Athens eventually eclipsed Sparta a second time, and once again became the center of Greek culture.

However, that took a couple of decades to accomplish. In the meantime, 27 years of war, tens of thousands of lost lives, and ignominious defeat, caused the best and brightest of Athens to ask a lot of hard questions about how the whole thing had happened. What flaw in the Athenian character had caused them to make such arrogant decisions, they asked, and how could they, as a society, address those flaws and prevent another terrible failure?

One man who began to ask such questions had served with distinction as a soldier in the 27 years of the war, and had witnessed Athens at its brightest moments, and its deepest despair. The questions asked by the old soldier, Socrates, and the answers he and his students found, have shaped the culture of Western civilization more than any others, in all of history.

Links:

Thucydides (my copy is stored in a box, so I re-read it at this site) – http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.html

http://www.livius.org/articles/person/aspasia/

http://www.livius.org/articles/concept/peloponnesian-war/ (Easier to read than Thucydides, but missing some fun details.)

http://www.penfield.edu/webpages/jgiotto/onlinetextbook.cfm?subpage=1647293

http://www.iep.utm.edu/socrates/