XLVIII. End as of 11/15/95
A. Plataea, 431: The Balloon Goes up.
1. Thebes tries to jump the gun and serve ITS own interest, botched night attack.
2. Plataeans get a little-self indulgent too, kill the 180 Thebans WHILE sending to Athens for help.
3. Athens and Sparta sought to look westward:
a) Athens allies with Leontini and Rhegium, grain in Sicily and Italy--Thurii (Yet another of Themistocles' policies. Keep your eyes open for Ghosts!)
b) Sparta tried to get a large fleet from Syracuse: There's a name we'll be hearing again! Carthaginian threat, and who WANTS to dive into a food processor?
4. Archidamus strikes, after envoys, but Pericles wants to settle it, crops burned, but Pericles is BARELY strong enough to keep most everybody within the walls.
5. Pericles strikes:
a) Iron reserve: 1,000 T and 100 ships not to leave Athens in the event of an emergency.
b) Goodbye, Aegina! See Dorians? Sparta can't help you, Cleruchs settled.
c) Fleet of 100 ships dispatched around the Peloponnese
d) Attack on Methone thwarted by the coincidental intervention of Brasidas
(1) WATCH THIS MAN! He's Athens' worst nightmare!
(2) This general is about the only Spartan with a trace of imagination or intitiative, hence his low position and lack of support among more traditional Spartans.
(3) He will nearly undo Athens' greatest victory of the entire war at Pylos, 425.
(4) He will use an land army to denude Athens' holdings on the Thracian and Macedonian coast and, incidentally,
(5) Die taking Amphipolis in 422, incidentally getting a certain Athenian admiral court-martialed.
B. The Plague (Thuc. 2.47-55): Something unforeseen.
1. Delphi had sent messengers to the Spartans announcing that Apollo would support them in the war. Several reason for this:
a) Athenian support since Pisistratus of Delos as a rival, Ionian shrine AND
b) Sacred War of 448: The Athenians had supported the Phocians in a bid to take over the shrine!
c) Apollo is the god of medicine, you see, and as early as Homer is wiping out armies with diseases. Weigh it into to your assessment of people's morale.
d) Thucydides was intimately acquainted with the plague, and left a masterful discussion of it.
e) Started in Egypt, worked its way through the Persian Empire (if you wonder why the Persians are idle at a given moment, it's an argument)
f) Hit the Piraeus, traveled up the refugees packed in between the Long Walls, and worked its way to the troops still besieging Potidaea (falls under terms, 430)
2. That'll play hob with the man-powered Navy, needless to say.
3. And here's a twist: The Greeks knew enough from empirical observation that crowded conditions nurture epidemics, and Pericles goes down, after Anaxagoras and Aspasia get tried for impiety. Loses the election of 430, gets back in, dies 429. There went the rudder...
C. Phormio with almost no help holds Naupactus, 430/29 (Thuc. 2.79-95). There's those heavy Corinthian ships again, but you just can't defeat Captain Kirk.
D. BRASIDAS and Cnemus 2.93-94 try and almost pull off a novel sneak-attack (Triremes over the Megarid) on the Piraeus, but the Spartans get nervous and blow it.
E. All right: You've got two play-by-plays in Thucydides and B3 using him, and you're not going to get a third.
F. When Empires Die: What's Happening, Here
1. Athens gets ungodly desperate for money, starts a property tax (eisphora: WORSE than Income Tax!) and ungodly tribute but you can only put so much straw on a camel:
2. Mytilene on Lesbos revolts in 427 revolts with the promise of Spartan aid, which never makes it past the Athenian fleet.
3. For their part, the Spartans exstirpate Plataea, Thuc. 3.52-68. Nobody's getting good press.
4. Cleon runs the show.
a) Aristophanes HATED Cleon, with apparently good cause.
b) On the other hand, his epithet "the tanner" shows that an industrialist could write.
c) Explain demagouge as a term and tactics, example: Paches and the Great Trireme race of 427, cleruchy on Mytilene
d) Corcyra goes up in flames from 427-425, and those who like poltical horror are well advised to read Thuc. 3.69-85.
e) Demosthenes (whom Thucydides dislikes for the Aetolian debacle, 3.94-114, esp. 3.98--best men killed in the war) brings back Pericles' periplus strategy with great success at Pylos, Thuc. 4.1-41.
f) BRASIDAS tries to save them 4.11 with modern landing- craft tactics--as a trireme commander!
g) Nicias, in charge of the resurgent Timocratic/Peace party gives Cleon his chance to capture the 420 Spartiates trapped on Sphaceteria (v. B3 p. 270), which, by backing Demosthenes, Cleon wins!
5. Sparta freaks and offers the Athenians ANYTHING they want.
a) Pledges the entire Spartan fleet as a guaranty during negotiations--Athenians break off negotiations and keep the fleet! Thuc. 4.23
b) Cleon holds out for more, instead takes a major beating in Boetia at Delion 424/3--here's your flamethrower! (4.100) Thuc. 4.89-101. Watch that Theban habit of drawing up their troops in 25 as opposed to 8 ranks deep (4.93) It's got potential.
c) Meanwhile, at a loss, the Spartans FINALLY give Brasidas his head, and he proceeds to cut the Athenians off from their timber in Macedonia and their silver in Thrace, Thuc. 4.78-88.
d) The Athenians learn how popular they aren't, Thucydides loses his job (Thuc. 102-116)
e) Cleon is considerate enough to get himself killed trying to re-take Amphipolis in 424/3 and Brasidas is kind enough to get himself killed in the same battle, 5.2-12.
XLIX. End as of 11/20/95
A. Nicias briefly runs the show--right into the ground.
1. Peace? Nicias's and Aristophanes' 421
a) Status quo ante, which means nobody won anything--but Sparta CAN'T return Amphipolis. Watch that city. Athens accordingly keeps Pylos. 50 years alliance.
b) Thebes and Corinth again wonder if Athens and Sparta aren't planning on dividing Greece and Corinth, Mantinea, and Elis break-off from the Peloponnesian League.
2. Argos decides that this is her moment--remember what I said about the burden of history!
a) A young liberal politician named Alcibiades got himself elected strategos in 420 and convinced the Athenians that an alliance with Argos would give them an advantage.(Thuc. 5.40-51)
b) Argos allied with the disaffected league defectees, BUT
c) Argos (with Athenian help) gets the hell kicked out of it at Mantinea in 418(5.63-80). Alcibiades, politically and physically, however, will prove harder to kill than a cockroach.
3. Melos (416) gets a valuable lesson in machtpolitik-- shame they didn't live to profit by it. Thuc. 5.84- 116, who is going to great lengths to make sure that you get it. Moral: Don't sit on the fence and snipe! You can always be pushed off.
4. Over and including Nicias's dead body, Alcibiades hits upon another tactic for self-advancement: Re- activating Themistocles' and Pericles' old western policy. Athens tries to take Syracuse, 415-413. This is the sort of thing that happens when you don't have a war plan!
a) Segesta, Leontini, and Rhegium had all asked Athens to help them against Syracuse back in 427.
b) Syracuse was supporting Corinth, but not expecting trouble herself, especially after an Athenian debacle at Gela in 425.
c) A competent aggressive general could take it before Sparta could react. They sent out two: Alcibiades and Lamachus, with an incompetent, defensive general in supreme command.
d) Worse yet, Alcibiades goes down HARD in a political scandal and defects to Sparta (Thuc. 6.88-93). Guess who's idea it was to support Syracuse and fortify Decelea?
e) Another Alcibiades idea: Gylippus, a competent (if corruptible) general goes to take charge of the defense in 414.
f) Nicias was determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and through prompt inaction, vacillation, and superstition (Lunar eclipse 8/27/413) gets Lamachus killed, Demosthenes and himself captured and executed.
g) Remember what I said about those heavier Corinthian ships? They start building them at Syracuse, and Nicias is dumb enough to fight their kind of battle in the Great Harbor. That's it!
h) Speaking of the Beatles revival: the quarrymen!
L. The Endgame: Sparta wins by a sell-out
A. Nobody bothered to declare war this round--what's the point, when you're already fighting?
B. Decelea hits Athens on three fronts, all economic (Grant and Sherman's end to the American Civil War: End your enemy's ability to fight). Who needs the plague?
1. Athens' domestic economy: c. 20,000 slaves, all of whom can be free if they can get to Decelea (this had also worked at Syracuse)
2. Athens' monetary policy: closure of the mines at Laurion, 413--Athens coins in gold, silver-washed copper, and the entire Agean monetary system trembles.
a) That's a bad consequence of the coinage decree!
b) An effort to compensate: the conversion of the Imperial tribute to a 5% import/export tax--but who's going to collect it? And do you want to screw up trade NOW?
3. The fleet: Harder to pay oarsmen, harder to guard Hellespont, especially when Sparta itself abandons all principle in order to win the war.
C. Chios, the most powerful state left in the Empire, revolts in 412, taking Mytilene, Methymna, Miletus, Methone, Teos, and Lebedus with them.
D. Sparta signs the treaty of Miletus.
1. Some GREAT provisions: the Spartans are to restore to the Great King "the territory of his Fathers." Does that include, e.g., Plataea?
2. They end up restricting that one to Asia and the Agean by 411 (after Laches, the new envoy, causes a break), but there's a real fix for the Agean islanders, isn't it?
3. The satrap Tissaphernes of Lydia is in charge, he plots with Alcibiades (who's already seduced King Agis' wife! 412), and Tissaphernes' goal is to weaken both sides.
E. As more than one would-be conqueror has found out: Democracies can be muddled, but they can also be surprisingly resilent, although they can collapse if the stress builds up..
1. Athens counterattacks at Chios and blockades the city, 412-11
2. First an emergency war-board, the probouloi after the Sicilian disaster, 10-man boule.
3. Consensus begins to break down by 411:
a) Alcibiades had worked with the Hetaeriae, basically poltical action committees who had worked behind the scenes to support him
b) The opposition had been driven underground by people like Cleon, Hyperbolus, and Cleophon, and these sorts of organizations began plotting a coup of their own.
c) Alcibiades sends a message: Persian alliance if you get rid of that extremist democracy of yours.
d) Abydos and Lampsachus revolt, and Pisander makes a motion: That we suspend the graphe paranomon for a day!
4. Phony Solonian Constitution of the 400/5000
a) Only the 400 could decide who could bear arms. They had them, and dissolved the Assembly
b) Tried to pull the Bolshevik bit and secure their coup by surrendering to Sparta
c) Started to fortify Eetionea to protect themselves and admit the Spartans if necesssary.
d) The Navy revolts at Samos, but doesn't intervene-- Alcibiades wants Athens intact! He's ba-ack!
e) Euboea and naval battle of Oropus lost--that's it! Theramenes patches his 5000 constitution together but it'll only last until Cleophon invents welfare (diobelia) and buys back the democracy in 410.
F. The Final Naval Slugging Match:
1. Naval defeat by the Peloponnesians at Syme in 411
2. Oligarchic Diagorid family on Rhodes stages revolt and synoecism of 411, although the Spartans do little to make themselve loved.
3. Admiral Thrasybulus (organized the Samos 'mutiny') saves the day at Cynossema, 411. Watch out for this man!
4. Tissaphernes relieved, new admiral Mindarus sent out, and gets surprised by Thrasybulus, Alcibiades, and Theramenes and wiped out at Cyzicus. "Ships gone, Mindarus dead, men starving, don't know what to do."
5. Fighting transfers to the Hellespont as Sparta (necessarily) goes for the jugular.
6. Athens starts charging the transit-tax, recovers Thasos. Loses Pylos, though, by 409.
1. End as of 11/22/95