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THUCYDIDES

The Peloponnesian War

The Athenian historian, Thucydides, was born about 471 B.C., within ten years of the great repulse of the Persian invasion. Before he was thirty, the great political ascendancy of Pericles was completely established at Athens, and the ascendancy of Athens among the Greek states was unchallenged, except by Sparta. He was forty at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides was appointed to a military command seven years later, but his failure in that office caused his banishment. From that time he remained an exiled spectator of events; the date of his death is uncertain. His great work is the history of the Peloponnesian War to its twentieth year, where his history is abruptly broken off. To Herodotus, history presented itself as a drama; Thucydides views it with the eyes of a philosophical statesman, but writes it also with extraordinary descriptive power, not only in pregnant sentences which have never been effectively rendered in translation, but in passages of sustained intensity, of which it would be vain to reproduce fragments. The abridged translation given here has been made direct from the Greek.

I.--The Beginning of the War

I have written the account of the war between Athens and Sparta, since it is the greatest and the most calamitous of all wars hitherto to the Greeks. For the contest with the Medes was decided in four battles; but this war was protracted over many years, and wrought infinite injury and bloodshed.

Of the immediate causes of the war the first is to be found in the affairs of Epidamnus, Corcyra, and Corinth, of which Corcyra was a colony. Of the Greek states, the most were joined either to the Athenian or the Peloponnesian league, but Corcyra had joined neither. But having a quarrel with Corinth about Epidamnus, she now formed an alliance with Athens, whose intervention enraged the Corinthians.

They then helped Potidæa, a Corinthian colony, but an Athenian tributary, to revolt from Athens. Corinth next appealed to Sparta, as the head of Hellas, to intervene ere it should be too late and check the Athenian aggression, which threatened to make her the tyrant of all Greece. At Sparta the war party prevailed, although King Archidamus urged that sufficient pressure could be brought to bear without actual hostilities.

The great prosperity and development of Athens since the Persian war had filled other states with fear and jealousy. She had rebuilt her city walls and refortified the port of Piræus after the Persian occupation; Sparta had virtually allowed her to take the lead in the subsequent stages of the war, as having the most effective naval force at command. Hence she had founded the Delian league of the maritime states, to hold the seas against Persia. At first these states provided fixed contingents of ships and mariners; but Athens was willing enough to accept treasure in substitution, so that she might herself supply the ships and men.

Thus the provision of forces by each state to act against Persia was changed in effect into a tribute for the expansion of the Athenian fleet. The continuous development of the power of Athens had been checked only momentarily by her disastrous Egyptian expedition. Her nominal allies found themselves actually her tributary dependencies, and various attempts to break free from her yoke had made it only more secure and more burdensome.

Hence the warlike decision of Sparta was welcomed by others besides Corinth. But diplomatic demands preceded hostilities. Sparta and Athens sent to each other summons and counter-summons for the "expulsion of the curse," that is of all persons connected with certain families which lay under the curse of the gods.

In the case of Athens, this amounted to requiring the banishment of her greatest citizen and statesman, Pericles. To this the Spartans added the demand that the Athenians should "restore the freedom of Hellas," and should specifically remove certain trading disabilities imposed on the people of Megara.

At this crisis Pericles laid down the rules of policy on which Athens ought to act--rules which required her to decline absolutely to submit to any form of dictation from Sparta. When a principle was at stake, it made no difference whether the occasion was trivial or serious. Athens could face war with confidence. Her available wealth was far greater--a matter of vital importance in a prolonged struggle. Her counsels were not divided by the conflicting interests of allies all claiming to direct military movements and policy. Her fleet gave her command of the sea, and enabled her to strike when and where she chose. If Peloponnesian invaders ravaged Attica, still no permanent injury would be done comparable to that which the Athenians could inflict upon them. The one necessity was to concentrate on the war, and attempt no extension of dominion while it was in progress.