First Peloponnesian War
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| First Peloponnesian War | |||||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||||
| Delian League led by Athens, Argos | Peloponnesian League led by Sparta, Thebes | ||||||||
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| Pericles Cimon Leosthenes Tolmides Myronides |
Pleistoanax Nicodemes |
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The First Peloponnesian War began in 460 BC and lasted circa 15 years. This war constituted a series of conflicts and minor wars, such as the Second Sacred War, featuring Athens and her allies on one side and Sparta and her allies on the other. All these battles were the prelude of the Second or Great Peloponnesian War (431 BC-404 BC). The First Peloponnesian War ended in an arrangement between Sparta and Athens, which was ratified by the Thirty Years' Peace (winter of 446 BC–445 BC). According to the provisions of this Peace Treaty both sides maintained their primary empires: for Athens the sea and for Sparta the land. The second war ended with the defeat of Athens and Sparta the dominant force in the region.
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[edit] Origins and Causes
A mere twenty years before the First Peloponnesian War broke out, Athens and Sparta had fought alongside each other in the Greco-Persian Wars; in that war, Sparta had held the hegemony of what modern scholars call the Hellenic League and the overall command in the crucial victories of 480 and 479 BC. Over the next several years, however, Spartan leadership bred resentment among the Greek naval powers that took the lead in carrying the war against Persian territories in Asia and the Aegean, and after 478 BC the Spartans abandoned their leadership of this campaign.[1] Athens, meanwhile, had been asserting itself on the international scene, and was eager to take the lead in the Aegean. The Athenians had already rebuilt their walls, against the express wishes of Sparta,[2] and in 479 and 478 BC had taken a much more active role in the Aegean campaigning. In the winter of 479/8 BC they accepted the leadership of a new league, the Delian League, in a conference of Ionian and Aegean states at Delos. At this time, one of the first hints of animosity between Athens and Sparta emerges in an anecdote reported by Diodorus Siculus, who says that the Spartans in 475/4 BC considered reclaiming the hegemony of the campaign against Persia by force;[3] modern scholars, although uncertain of the dating and reliability of this story, have generally cited it as evidence of the existence even at this early date of a "war party" in Sparta.[4]
For some time, however, friendly relations prevailed between Athens and Sparta. Themistocles, the Athenian of the period most associated with an anti-Spartan policy, was ostracized at some point in the early 470s BC, and was later forced to flee to Persia.[5] In his place in Athens rose Cimon, who advocated a policy of cooperation between the two states. Cimon was Sparta's proxenos at Athens, and so fond was he of that city that he named one of his sons Lakedaemonios.[6] Still, hints of conflict emerged; Thucydides reports that in the mid 460s BC, Sparta actually decided to invade Attica during the Thasian rebellion, and was only prevented from doing so by an earthquake, which triggered a revolt among the helots.[7]
It was that helot revolt which would eventually bring on the crisis that precipitated the war. Unable to quell the revolt themselves, the Spartans summoned all their allies to assist them, invoking the old Hellenic League ties. Athens responded to the call, sending out 4,000 men with Cimon at their head.[8] Once an assault on the helots' fortifications had failed, the Spartans, suspicious of the Athenians, dismissed them, alone of all their allies. This action destroyed the political credibility of Cimon; he had already been under assault by opponents at Athens led by Ephialtes, and shortly after this embarassment he was ostracized. The demonstration of Spartan hostility was unmistakable, and as Athens responded events spiralled rapidly into war. Athens concluded several alliances in quick succession: one with Thessaly, a powerful state in the north; one with Argos, Sparta's traditional enemy for centuries; and one with Megara, a former ally of Sparta's which was faring badly in a border war with Sparta's more powerful ally Corinth. At about the same time, Athens settled the helots exiled after the defeat of their revolt at Naupactus on the Corinthian gulf. By 460 BC, Athens was actively fighting with Corinth and Aegina, and the war was clearly on.
[edit] First phase of the war
Hoping to develop Megara as a protective base against Spartan invasion and a jumping-off point for naval activity in the Corinthian gulf, the Athenians built long walls for the Megarans to their port at Nisaea, thereby earning the everlasting enmity of Megara's old rival Corinth. At the height of their success in this war, the Athenians controlled all of Central Greece except for Thebes.[9]
In 459 BC The Athenians were defeated at Halieis by the Corinthians and Epidaurians, but their fleet won a victory at Cecryphaleia. A year later The Aeginetans joined the Peloponnesian alliance, but their combined fleet was defeated by the Athenians in the Battle of Aegina. The Athenians, under the command of Leosthenes, landed on the island of Aegina and besieged the city. The Corinthians invaded Attica, trying to force the Athenians to raise the siege, but were defeated by a reserve force of old men and boys under Myronides. A second force of Corinthians was surrounded and annihilated in the Megarid.
In 457 BC The Aeginetans surrendered and joined the Delian League. Sparta then entered the war, sent an army across the Corinthian Gulf, and restored the Boeotian League under the hegemony of Thebes. The Athenians were defeated at the Battle of Tanagra, but, when the Spartans returned home, the Athenians defeated the Boeotians at the Battle of Oenophyta. Thereby, Athens enrolled all the Boeotian cities except Thebes in the Delian League; Phocis and Opuntian Locris also joined. In 455 BC the Athenian general Tolmides sailed around the Peloponnese, raiding the coast, burning the Spartan naval base at Gytheum, and recruiting Achaea into the Delian League. In 454 BC Pericles attacked Sicyon and Acarnania.[10] He then unsuccessfully tried to take Oeniadea on the Corinthian gulf, before returning to Athens. Nonetheless, Fortune turned against Athens in 454 when the destruction of a large Athenian force aiding an Egyptian revolt against Persia led to unrest and rebellions throughout the Athenian Empire.[9]
In 451 BC Cimon is said to have returned from exile and negotiated a five years' truce with Sparta, in which Athens agreed to abandon its alliance with Argos, while Sparta promised to give up its alliance with Thebes. The same year Argos signed the first "Thirty-Years Peace" with Sparta.
[edit] Second phase of the war
In the spring of 449 BC, Pericles proposed the Congress Decree, which led to a meeting ("Congress") of all Greek states in order to consider the question of rebuilding the temples destroyed by the Persians. The Congress failed because of Sparta's stance.[11] The same year the Second Sacred War erupted, when Sparta detached Delphi from Phocis and rendered it independent. In 448 BC, Pericles led the Athenian army against Delphi, in order to reinstate Phocis in its former sovereign rights on the oracle of Delphi.[12]
In 447 BC a revolt broke out in Boeotia which was to spell the end of Athens's "continental empire" on the Greek mainland.[9] The conservatives of Thebes conspired against the democratic faction. The Athenians demanded the immediate surrender of the oligarchs, but, after their defeat at the Battle of Coronea, Pericles imposed a more moderate stance.[13] The Athenians evacuated Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris, which quitted the Delian League.
In 446 BC, a more dangerous arousal erupted. Euboea and Megara revolted and Pericles crossed over to Euboea with his troops. He was forced however to return, when the army of Sparta invaded Attica. Through briberies [14] and negotiations, Pericles repulsed the imminent threat.[15] Just after the deliverance of Athens from Sparta's threat, Pericles crossed back to Euboea with 50 ships and 5,000 soldiers, cracking down any opposition. He then inflicted a stringent punishment on the landowners of Chalcis, who lost their properties. The residents of Istiaia, who had butchered the crew of an Athenian trireme, were chastised more harshly, since they were uprooted and replaced by 2,000 Athenian settlers.[15] The arrangement between Sparta and Athens was ratified by the second "Thirty Years' Peace" (winter of 446 BC–445 BC). According to this treaty, Megara was returned to the Peloponnesian League, Troezen and Achaea became independent, Aegina was to be a tributary to Athens but autonomous, and disputes were to be settled by arbitration. Each party agreed to respect the alliances of the other.[9]
[edit] External links
[edit] Citations
- ^ Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 1.95
- ^ Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 1.89-93
- ^ Diodorus Siculus, Library 11.50
- ^ See Kagan, Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 51-2, and de Ste. Croix, Origins of the Peloponnesian War, 171-2.
- ^ Kagan, Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 53-5
- ^ de Ste Croix, Origins of the Peloponnesian War, 172
- ^ Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 1.101
- ^ For the convoluted events of this period, see Kagan, Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 73-82 and de Ste. Croix, Origins of the Peloponnesian War, 180-3.
- ^ a b c d K. Kuhlmann, Historical Commentary on the Peloponnesian War
- ^ Thucydides, I, 111
- ^ Plutarch, Pericles, XVII
- ^ Thucydides, I, 112 and Plutarch, Pericles, XXI
- ^ "Pericles". Encyclopaedic Dictionary The Helios. (1952).
- ^ Thucydides, II, 21 and Aristophanes, The Acharnians, 832
- ^ a b Plutarch, Pericles, XXIII
