The causes of the Second Peloponnesian War (431–403 BCE) between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies are controversial. However, the Athenian historian Thucydides view that his city's rise to greatness made their traditional rivals in Sparta fear for their position is widely accepted.
While events at the end of the First Peloponnesian War had seriously weakened the Athenians, they were still inclined to throw their weight around.
When they crushed Samos in 440–439, Sparta would have gone to war, but their allies in Corinth advised against a resumption of hostilities.
However, tensions rose through the 430s.
A string of incidents in 431 escalated into a full-scale war best described as a conflict of opposites. Sparta's army was larger and superior, while the Athenians had an even greater advantage at sea.
First, the Corinthians fell out with Athens when the Athenians intervened in a domestic quarrel involving their colonies in Corcyra (Corfu) and Potidea.
Then, in the spring, the Thebans launched an attack on Athens' ally, Plataea.
Eighty days later, the Spartans and their allies invaded the Athenian heartland in Attica.
The Athenian disadvantage on the land was negated by a strong defensive position within the Long Walls that linked the city to its port in Piraeus. Naval supremacy meant Athens could import supplies almost with impunity. Maritime links to the Black Sea's grain-growing areas allowed Athenians to sit out Spartan attempts to wear them down by starvation.
So, when Sparta and her allies in the Peloponnesian League invaded the city's hinterland, Pericles persuaded the Athenians to withdraw behind the Long Walls and survive on seaborne imports. The Peloponnesians found the countryside deserted and returned home after about a month.
Sparta repeated the invasion five times and only ceased after Athens threatened to kill some Spartan citizen hoplites captured on Sphakteria.
Meanwhile, the Athenian triremes raided the Peloponnese and kept the city's trade routes open.
In 430, a devastating plague outbreak in Athens killed more than a quarter of the population, including Pericles. His death left Athens prey to hostile factions of reckless warmongers and demagogues. The result was a more daring strategy as Athens established bases on the Peloponnesian coast, countered Peloponnesian operations elsewhere, and attempted to knock Boeotia out of the war. Their second attempt to do that in 424 ended in defeat at Delium.
Nevertheless, the fleet performed well, and the Athenians won several victories at sea.
When the Spartans gave up their annual invasions of Attica, Pericles' successor Cleon persuaded the Athenians to reject their peace overtures.
However, in 424, the Spartan Brasidas marched overland to Chalcidice. He used a mixture of persuasion and threats to win over several Athenian allies, including Amphipolis.
Though the Spartan forces were victorious outside Amphipolis (422), Brasidas and Cleon both died in the fighting. After that, negotiations were easier.
The first ten years of the war, sometimes labelled the Archidamian War, ended with the inconclusive Peace of Nicias in 421. However, Corinth and Boeotia refused to sign the agreement, and it was never likely to last. A decade of fighting had settled nothing, and significant figures on both sides were keen to resume hostilities.
As the uneasy truce continued, both sides attempted to recruit more allies.
In Athens, Alcibiades and other prominent figures advocated a more aggressive foreign policy and set about creating an anti-Spartan coalition in the Peloponnese as regional rivalries and realignments continued.
The turning point in the war came when the Athenians launched a massive assault against Sicily (415–413) with Alcibiades as one of three commanders. The object of the offensive is unclear. It may have been an attempt to capture the whole island and ensure another source of food supplies that would conclusively secure the city's economic position. Alternatively, it may have been a pre-emptive strike to prevent Syracuse from dominating the island, bringing it into the Peloponnesian alliance.
The expedition became bogged down in a siege of Syracuse. Meanwhile, Alcibiades was recalled early to answer charges of sacrilege and fled to Sparta rather than risk condemnation.
So the expedition ended in complete disaster. The Athenians were defeated on land and at sea, and the expenses incurred drained the city's finances. However, Sparta chose not to press its advantage, beyond following Alcibiades' advice and seizing a permanent base in the foothills north of Athens when they invaded Attica in 413. However, the Athenian losses of ships and trained crews in Sicily encouraged the Spartans to believe they could match Athens at sea.
Meanwhile, Athens' allies in the Aegean were revolting. Athenian support for a rebel satrap had the Persian king inclined to support Sparta in the expectation that he would regain cities in Asia Minor 'liberated' by Athens after 479.
By 412, Sparta, with financial aid from Persia, had built up its navy.
Athens made a remarkable recovery but was hampered by internal problems, culminating in the overthrow of the democracy in June 411. However, the oligarchs who seized power were unable to keep the fleet at Samos on their side. When the oligarchs were overthrown in September, a limited form of democracy was restored, with full rights limited to the hoplite class. Still, the old system returned in the summer of 410.
Amid the turmoil, Alcibiades returned to Athens. He had fallen out with the Spartans, gone over to Persia, dealt with the Athenian oligarchs and then elected as one of the commanders of the Athenian fleet, which had fallen out with the oligarchy.
In the meantime, the Spartans realise the key to victory lay in the Hellespont (Dardanelles) and Sea of Marmara,
After 411, through the 'Ionian' or 'Decelean' War, the conflict became centred on the waterways that delivered essential supplies to the increasingly beleaguered city. By 411, the fighting became increasingly focused in that area.
At first, with Athenian naval victories at Cynossema (411), Cyzicus (410), and Arginusae (406), and the recapture of Byzantium (408), it seemed little had changed.
However, Persian financial support for Sparta and the Spartan general Lysander's strategic and tactical skills tilted the balance.
While Alcibiades played no part in the first victory, he was part of subsequent victories off Abydos and Cyzicus. After further success in the north, including the recovery of Byzantium, he returned to Athens in 407. He was appointed supreme commander of the navy. But Alcibiades was absent when his lieutenant was drawn into a scrambling fight off Notium in 406. After the deputy commander lost his life and several ships, the Athenians sacked Alcibiades, who fled to Thrace.
Although Lysander had overseen the successful Spartan campaign in the north, he too was superseded.
But when the new Spartan commander was defeated off the Arginusae in 406, Sparta's allies in Persia and Asia Minor demanded Lysander's reinstatement.
Spartan victories on the land eventually drove the Athenian forces to take refuge within the Long Walls. Then, in 405, Lysander took his fleet to the Dardanelles to cut off Athens' vital grain supply lines to the Black Sea. A surprise attack on Athenian ships at Aegospotami with the crews ashore saw all but nine of the Athenian vessels lost. Having destroyed the bulk of the Athenian fleet, Lysander turned south. When he appeared off Piraeus, the war was, effectively, over.
Under a blockade by both sea and land, without money or allies, Athens was forced to surrender in April 404.
Impoverished, her population severely depleted, her overseas possessions lost, her city walls torn down, and her fleet reduced to twelve ships, Athens became Sparta's subject. An oligarchic coup followed immediately, and for eight months, the Thirty Tyrants ruled the city. Democracy returned in 403.
The Spartan victory came because Persian gold enabled them to build more ships and outbid Athens for mercenaries. But the Spartans also recognised that Athens would have to be beaten at sea. In contrast, the Athenians do not appear to have understood that they could only beat Sparta on land.
While the war's immediate result was the Athenian maritime empire's demise, it had broader, longer-lasting effects. The fighting weakened all the city-states involved. As a result, they were vulnerable to Macedonian expansionism several decades later.
Sources:
- Brassey's Battles
- Encyclopedia Britannica
- Richard Holmes, Charles Singleton, and Dr Spencer Jones (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Military History
- Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, and Esther Eidinow (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary
- M. C. Howatson (ed), The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature
- John Keegan, A History of Warfare
- Anne Kerr and Edmund Wright (eds) A Dictionary of World History
- John Roberts (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World
- Wikipedia