The Peloponnesian War
The immediate occasion of this major conflict, which was fought out in various phases
from the outbreak of hostilities in 431 until the defeat of Athens in 404, was a dispute
between Athens and Corinth over Corcyra, a colony of the latter which sought to
make an alliance with Athens contrary to the interests of Corinth, which appealed to
Sparta to intervene. Sparta declared war with the expressed aim of liberating the
states of Greece from the dominance of Athens. Thucydides, the historian of the war,
finds the underlying cause to be Spartan fear of increasing Athenian power (1, 23).
The strategy of Pericles was to avoid a pitched battle with the superior Spartan
forces by retreating behind the walls by which the city and the harbour were both
connected and defended. Thucydides represents his policy and thinking as follows:
Their navy, in which their strength lay, was to be brought to the highest state of
efficiency, and their allies were to be handled firmly, since, he said, the strength
of Athens came from the money paid in tribute by her allies, and victory in war
depended on a combination of intelligent resolution and financial resources. Here
Pericles encouraged confidence, pointing out that, apart from all other sources of
revenue, the average yearly contribution of the allies amounted to 600 talents, then
there remained still in the Acropolis a sum of 6,000 talents of coined silver.
(2, 13)With naval superiority, Athens was assured of food supplies by way of her traditional
grain routes through the Bosporus. Meanwhile she might herself blockade the
Peloponnese, interfering with food imports and sowing dissension among the allies of
Sparta. When the Spartans invaded Attica, which they did in the grain-growing season
for the first six years of war, the rural population retreated to the city. One of the most
promising engagements from the Athenian point of view was the occupation of Pylos
in Messenia on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese. Here a number of Spartiates
were taken prisoner and shipped back to Athens, and from here it might have been
expected that the Athenians could foment a rebellion of the Messenian Helots. Sparta
sued for peace but the successors of Pericles (who had died in 429) urged continuation
of the war. Sparta now made a successful attempt against the Athenian empire in the
north, in the Thracian Chalcidice, where she captured Amphipolis, an important source
of raw materials and a promising base for further interference in the region. But neither
side could press home any significant advantage in the overall conflict, and a peace
was agreed in 421 in which both sides more or less gave up their gains and returned
to the status quo. Athenian power remained intact.
The peace did not suit the allies of Sparta, and Athens, at the instigation of
Alcibiades, who had been brought up in the household of Pericles and now began to
68 THE GREEKS