The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

[432-431 B.C.]

If there were any speeches delivered at this congress in opposition to the war, they were not likely to be successful in a cause wherein even Archidamus had failed. After the Corinthian had concluded, the question was put to the deputies of every city, great and small indiscriminately: and the majority decided for war. This important resolution was adopted about the end of 432 B.C., or the beginning of January 431 B.C.: the previous decision of the Spartans separately, may have been taken about two months earlier, in the preceding October or November 432 B.C.

Reviewing the conduct of the two great Grecian parties at this momentous juncture, with reference to existing treaties and positive grounds of complaint, it seems clear that Athens was in the right. She had done nothing which could fairly be called a violation of the Thirty Years’ Truce: while for such of her acts as were alleged to be such, she offered to submit them to that amicable arbitration which the truce itself prescribed. The Peloponnesian confederates were manifestly the aggressors in the contest; and if Sparta, usually so backward, now came forward in a spirit so decidedly opposite, we are to ascribe it partly to her standing fear and jealousy of Athens, partly to the pressure of her allies, especially of the Corinthians. Thucydides, recognising these two as the grand determining motives, and indicating the alleged infractions of truce as simple occasions or pretexts, seems to consider the fear and hatred of Athens as having contributed more to determine Sparta than the urgency of her allies. That the extraordinary aggrandisement of Athens, during the period immediately succeeding the Persian invasion, was well-calculated to excite alarm and jealousy in Peloponnesus, is indisputable. But if we take Athens as she stood in 432 B.C., it deserves notice that she had neither made, nor (so far as we know) tried to make, a single new acquisition during the whole fourteen years which had elapsed since the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce—and moreover that that truce marked an epoch of signal humiliation and reduction of her power. The triumph which Sparta and the Peloponnesians then gained, though not sufficiently complete to remove all fear of Athens, was yet great enough to inspire them with the hope that a second combined effort would subdue her. This mixture of fear and hope was exactly the state of feeling out of which war was likely to grow.

Moreover the confident hopes of the Peloponnesians were materially strengthened by the widespread sympathy in favour of their cause, proclaiming as it did the intended liberation of Greece from a despot city.

To Athens, on the other hand, the coming war presented itself in a very different aspect; holding out scarcely any hope of possible gain, and the certainty of prodigious loss and privation—even granting that at this heavy cost, her independence and union at home, and her empire abroad, could be upheld. By Pericles, and by the more long-sighted Athenians, the chance of unavoidable war was foreseen even before the Corcyræan dispute. But Pericles was only the first citizen in a democracy, esteemed, trusted, and listened to, more than any one else by the body of citizens, but warmly opposed in most of his measures, under the free speech and latitude of individual action which reigned at Athens—and even bitterly hated by many active political opponents. The formal determination of the Lacedæmonians, to declare war, must of course have been made known at Athens, by those Athenian envoys who had entered an unavailing protest against it in the Spartan assembly. No steps were taken by Sparta to carry this determination into effect until after the congress of allies and their pronounced confirmatory vote. Nor did the Spartans even then send any herald, or make any formal declaration. They despatched various propositions to Athens, not at all with a view of trying to obtain satisfaction, or of providing some escape from the probability of war; but with the contrary purpose—of multiplying demands, and enlarging the grounds of quarrel. Meanwhile the deputies retiring home from the congress to their respective cities carried with them the general resolution for immediate warlike preparations to be made with as little delay as possible.

Greek Helmets and Standard

PREPARATIONS FOR THE CONFLICT

The first requisition addressed by the Lacedæmonians to Athens was a political manœuvre aimed at Pericles, their chief opponent in that city. His mother Agariste belonged to the great family of the Alemæonids, who were supposed to be under an inexorable hereditary taint, in consequence of the sacrilege committed by their ancestor Megacles nearly two centuries before, in the slaughter of the Cylonian suppliants near the altar of the Venerable Goddesses. Ancient as this transaction was, it still had sufficient hold on the mind of the Athenians to serve as the basis of a political manœuvre: about seventy-seven years before, shortly after the expulsion of Hippias from Athens, it had been so employed by the Spartan king Cleomenes, who at that time exacted from the Athenians a clearance of the ancient sacrilege, to be effected by the banishment of Clisthenes (the founder of the democracy) and his chief partisans. This demand, addressed by Cleomenes to the Athenians at the instance of Isagoras, the rival of Clisthenes, had been then obeyed, and had served well the purposes of those who sent it. A similar blow was now aimed by the Lacedæmonians at Pericles (the grand-nephew of Clisthenes), and doubtless at the instance of his political enemies: religion required, it was pretended, that “the abomination of the goddess should be driven out.” If the Athenians complied with this demand, they would deprive themselves, at this critical moment, of their ablest leader. But the Lacedæmonians, not expecting compliance, reckoned at all events upon discrediting Pericles with the people, as being partly the cause of the war through family taint of impiety; and this impression would doubtless be loudly proclaimed by his political opponents in the assembly.