Force and Strength: the Hellenic Commonwealth.

NB: I've used 'traditiona' (i.e. BC/AD Gregorian calendar) datse for the TL, although the Greek calendar was lunar and its year began in June rather than January. So when I say ' . . . happened in January 443 BC' I mean simply that, just for clarity's sake, in case you purists are scandalised.
Anyway, on with the show.

I.

The first Peloponnesian War began in 464 BC and ended in 453.
It was fought between the cities of Sparta and Thebes (with their respective allies and Leagues- the Peloponnesian and Boeotian) against Athens and her Delian League, which was swiftly becoming her own empire in the Aegean. Athens’ vibrant democracy had turned out some of the most gifted inventors, politicians, generals and philosophers of history. The figures of Pericles, Cimon and later Socrates would tower over the ancient world eclipsing even Leonidas and Themosticles who were consigned to the prologue of Greek history.

Sparta, her Peloponnesian allies, Corinth and Thebes had declared war on Athens for its expansion into Attica, its dominance over the Delian League and its massive defensive building project, which included the fortification of the Piraeus harbour and the renovation of the Walls of Themostikles, which protected it from assault, making it virtually un-siegeable without naval supremacy. The Athenian democracy could put to field not only a large hoplite force but also a large fleet of some 500 ships. The citizen hoplite militia was, however, little match for the Spartan hoplites, who fought their entire lives, and whose crimson cloaks struck fear into every freeman in Attica. The Athenians did, however, have two cards which they played to trump the discipline of the Spartans.

The leaders of the Athenian army-the strategoi- were elected by the General Citizen Assembly of Athens (the Ekklesia) which usually elected popular men: war heroes, great orators and the likes. The office of strategos conferred little constitutional power, other than the duty to lead the armies of Athens, but it conferred respect and legitimacy upon its holders. Every year, ten men were elected to become the military and political elite of the city, serving alongside the other citizen bodies. During the war, two strategoi would be elected almost continuously and those were Kimon and Pericles.

Kimon was a well respected general who had fought many battles and won many wars for Athens; he had harried the Persians around the Hellespont, conquered Tenedos and extended the Athenian Empire to the cost of the barbaric Persians. He was undoubtedly a war hero, although his pro-Spartan sentiments and his disdain of the common man made many nervous. Nonetheless, he oozed confidence and brilliance, and become the man the Athenians loved to hate.

His fellow general, Pericles, was the opposite. Whereas Kimon had made his name fighting the Sacred War against the Persians, he made his name as a strong advocate of Athenian Imperialism in the Ekklesia. His Athenian chauvinism coupled with a ready charm and a quick mind made him enormously popular, and so he was repeatedly elected strategos. The two made an unlikely team. Kimon was the bogeyman of Athenian politics; the man who no one liked but who everyone needed. Pericles, however, was the golden boy of the democracy, and as the far younger man his career seemed set on becoming ever brighter.

In early 460, after the capture of Aigine and the defection of the Argives from Sparta to Athens, Pericles came before the Ekklesia with his boldest proposal. He said that the Boeotian League was crumbling and ready to fall, and that if Thebes (its leader) could be humiliated in front of its allies, it would be left powerless. His initial proposal went no further than that, yet he added a proposal to send a second force to Corinth after supporters of Kimon demanded that he receive a command. Kimon himself said that if the Spartans could be kept in the Peloponnese, then the Athenians would have free reign in Boeotia, and meanwhile the fleet could harry Spartan allies and take any undefended positions.

The strategy, born of the burning rivalry between the two men, was audacious. It called for not one but two large hoplite armies to be put in the field and that not only must they make a good account of themselves in battle, but that they win outright; that the Boeotian contingent rush the Thebans, harry them and humiliate them, rather than merely bloody them and then barter over the cost of burying their dead. The Corinthian Contingent did not simply have to ravage the countryside around Corinth, but to blockade it, cut it off from the Peloponnese, and fend off any Spartan or Corinthian attacks that may come. Many in the Ekklesia thought it madness; that Athens’ power lay in its ‘wooden walls’-its navy, and that to fight the Spartans was madness.

Kimon was given command of the Corinthian contingent, and in March 459 he led a force of 6,000 Attic hoplites and 7,000 light skirmishers south. He passed by Megara and, after some initial resistance, bullied them into supplying 1,000 hoplites. He then sent word to Platea ordering them to send their hoplites as well. Platea, however, was hard pressed by the Boeotians, and so declined, although they promised troops to the Boeotian contingent.

Kimon engaged the Corinthians outside Lekhaion, which was an Athenian ally. The city sent 700 hoplites and 1,000 light troops to the Athenian force. Kimon smashed the Corinthians, who had deployed some 7,000 hoplites, and harried them all the way back to the walls of Corinth. He then garrisoned his army in Lekhaion, sending out frequent scouting parties to provide forewarning of any Corinthian or Spartan activity to the south.

This was accomplished in five weeks, and Kimon sent 2,000 hoplites back to Athens after the fighting was done, and these reinforced the Boeotian contingent, which was brought up to a strength of 6,000 hoplites and 5,000 light troops. These were led by Pericles himself, who set off in late April. He marched to Platea, where he received 3,000 hoplites for reinforcement, and then he headed north. The Thebans and their Boeotian allies mustered some 8,000 hoplites and 11,000 light troops and 1,000 cavalry to oppose Athens’ 8,000 hoplites and 6,000 light troops.

It was the Thessalian cavalry which the Thebans brought to bare which did the most damage to the Athenians. The hoplite battle was evenly matched; both sides had fully dedicated themselves to the fight, and for half an hour Athens had the upper hand. However, the Theban cavalry crashed into their weaker left flank and scattered many men. Pericles, who was in the thick of the fighting, managed to extricate himself for enough time to order his light troops-his peltasts and his slingers- to attack the horsemen, and a hail of rocks and javelins drove the cavalry back. Their lack of stirrups and small ponies made them ineffective in prolonged combat, and they were forced to retreat with heavy casualties.

With the loss of the cavalry, the Thebans took a defensive posture and many of them fell back to a patch of higher ground while a screening force held the Athenians. However, Pericles ordered his peltasts to chase after the retreating Boeotians and many hundreds were slaughtered thus. The peltasts could run much faster than the heavily armoured hoplites, and the large numbers of Theban light infantry made it hard to tell friend from foe. In the chaos, the Boeotian allies broke and ran, leaving a core force of 3,000 Thebans on the field. These quickly retreated, yet were pursued mercilessly for three hours while the victorious Athenians stripped their fallen enemies and butchered any wounded.

The two victories of 460 turned the tide of war for the good of Athens. The Boeotian cities defected en masse to Athens, and Thebes, with nearly 1/3 of its hoplite class dead sued for peace. The Athenian diplomat Kallias negotiated terms whereby Thebes paid Athens 10,000 drachma and made a treaty of peace and friendship with her neighbours, promising them that she would never impinge upon their sovereignty again. This was ironic, as the Athenians were definitely the imperial power, yet this was overlooked in the Ekklesia, which rejoiced as a supporter of Pericles read the terms of the peace and of the safe return of Pericles, his army, and the successful recovery of all the dead.

Things were not to be so sweet to the south, however, as Corinth and Sparta together consolidated their power in the Peloponnese while Athens’ ally, Argos, was harried constantly. Her fields burned and her armies roundly beaten, she pleaded to Athens for aid in 457, saying that if things became any worse, then they would have no choice but to surrender to the caprices of the Corinthians.

The Ekklesia was at first keen to accept their call for help. Buoyed by three years of success, they believed that Athene was with them and that the Spartan hoplites could be turned aside by a good, well motivated and- moreover-free citizen army. They ordered Kimon to take the offensive, and he marched south with 6,000 hoplites and 9,000 light infantry. He scoured the land around Corinth and inflicted terrible damage on the local economy. This only steeled the Peloponnesians, who amassed a force led by King Pleistoanax of Sparta. It numbered 3,000 Spartans, 4,000 Corinthians and a further 3,000 allies. This enormous force bore down on Kimon and for a period of nearly a month a series of small skirmishes were fought until in August 457 they collided head on.

Badly outnumbered, the Athenians were soundly beaten. The dispirited Athenians retreated to Lekhaion; the city, however, had heard of the defeat, and a group of oligarchs had mounted a coup and had declared for the Spartans. Instead of finding succour, the Athenians found locked gates and merciless raids. Kimon ordered a retreat to Megara, whose Athenian garrison had retained control of the restless city. He had some 4,000 hoplites and 8,000 light infantry remaining, yet he had been forced to give up the isthmus.

The Ekklesia responded by bursting into venomous argument and factionalism. A large group wanted to make peace with Sparta, saying that the Athenians had made considerable successes and that the Spartans were not much concerned by Boeotia, and that if the left the Peloponnese alone, no more wars would be necessary.

Another wanted to muster all the forces they could and make total war upon the Spartans. This was small, yet aroused some popular support from the more chauvinistic Athenians. Pericles, meanwhile, stepped up naval raids on the Peloponnese, and also the reinforcement of Argos, sending supplies and soldiers to help them; Argos was alone against the two largest regional powers and had been economically devastated by seven years of war. In early 456 they capitulated to the Spartans, reckoning that the Spartans would be more lenient than the Corinthians, who had fought them longest and hardest. Argos was incorporated into the Peloponnesian League and all ties with Athens were cut off. A narrow military oligarchy was installed with a Spartan garrison.

The naval war had been largely one-sided; Athens dominated the waves, although Corinth stopped them from reaching any further than the Krisaian Gulf. In 454 the Athenians founded a colony on the island of Kythera, which lay due south off the Peloponnese, overshadowing Sparta. The colonists were almost universally men between 18 and 40 and they came bearing arms. The first thing they did after laying out their Sanctuary (where they offered sacrifice) was build a palisade and after that a series of watchtowers. Twelve ships lay moored on the beach, effectively waiting to be launched with a force of 1,000 hoplites to attack Lakonia.

This development made the Spartans fearful; the Athenians were only fifty miles away by boat, and they had little to no fleet to stop them. Their allies were blockaded and Corinth was still recovering from the ravages of Kimon. In February 453 the Athenians received an embassy from Sparta offering a peace treaty. They offered Athens free reign in Attica and Boeotia, as well as their right to their existing colonise and any further ones they might wish to make east of Sparta (i.e. not in Magna Graecia or Sicily). They demanded, however, that the cony on Kythera be demolished and the island given to Sparta. The Athenians countered that, if Kythera was to be surrendered, Argos should be released from the Peloponnesian League. For three weeks there was deadlock until the Spartans finally backed down. Kythera was abandoned and Argos was restored to full independence.

The Peloponnesian War had lasted from 464 to 453 BC, the longest in Hellenistic history since the Trojan War. Sparta’s lack of clear strategic objectives and a coherent policy towards Athens combined with a Peloponnesian localism that made them unwilling to send large expeditionary forces far from home meant that they were seen as powerful soldiers to be feared, who would intervene on the behalf of oligarchs anywhere they could; their reputation for success, however, was greatly diminished-naval power had been proven to be the most effective way of measuring a city’s power.

If that yardstick were to be used, then Athens and the Delian League was the hegemon of the hellenistic world. The fleet numbered some 800 ships stationed from Aigine to Cyprus. Crewed by the huge underclass of poor Athenians who could bring nothing to the war effort but the strength of their backs and a cushion to sit on while they heaved against the waves of the Mediterranean as rowers. These poor freemen were the bedrock of Athenian power, and their long tenures of service coupled with their conscription by deme (one ship would draw all its rowers from one small community) meant that they would become a powerful voting bloc in the Ekklesia in future decades.

In order to reflect this, in 451 BC the Borea (the Council of 500 Athenians picked by lot from the Ekklesia to decide on the items to be discussed at the next general assembly) appointed a sub-committee of fifty to draw up a new roster of citizen, ranking them by property. This was done to feed the massive growth of the Athenian navy and also to refine the tax system. Immediately after the War, Athens consolidated its empire; the treasury of the Delian League was moved to Athens and this huge horde of treasure ploughed into naval construction. Piraeus echoed to the sounds of hammering, chiselling and construction; the Sdea military harbour ran in shifts almost through the night churning out new triremes. Some 100 ships were moored off Salamis most of the time, with the rest of the fleet acting as patrol ships or garrisons. Meanwhile, peace was made with Persia. The Sacred War was over, yet Athens maintained the Delian League and its treasury and, most worryingly of all, its fleet.

The Borea’s reclassification of Athenians into four income groups served for military purposes. The top two tiers-farmers, merchants, noblemen and other relatively well off men were those who would be called up as hoplites. Encased in bronze and brandishing a hoplon shield, these formidable heavy infantry were the epitome of classical Greece and the backbone of the Athenian army. Attica’s poor soil and hilly terrain made horse-rearing impossible, so cavalry was almost non-existent; any horse was used either for personal transport or food.

The third tier were expected to be peltasts or slingers; they would come to battle with leather slings, a few light javelins, maybe a few pieces of leather armour if they were fortunate. These light troops supported the hoplites and drove back cavalry charges and harassed fleeing infantry. The last and poorest group were the very poorest-those expected to be oarsmen or sailors. Their strong sense of group solidarity and their function as the backbone of Athenian power earned them the name ‘nautikos’.

Decades in the future, the great philosopher Plato would say that this reformation of Athens’ property distinctions turned it into his ideal Republic; one where the noblest men were those who fought for the polis and who acted to guard it not out of personal vainglory but rather out of loyalty and honour. It also suited his view that a son should be employed the same as his father, and he would write that the ordering of society made Athens a match for-if not greater than-her rival Sparta.

In reality, these reforms had little impact on Athenians during times of peace. Their sense of loyalty lay to the polis and to their deme. There was some sort of class solidarity among the nautikos, but this was because the poorest demes were often called up to serve on the same ships, and so there was continuity in whom a man would serve alongside. Furthermore, Plato’s idea of a noble and self-sacrificing martial elite was fiction. The greatest warriors, politicians, musicians or indeed any Athenian, did what he did in order to be the best; the Panathenian Games had no prizes for second or third place, and an unsuccessful strategos was liable to ostracism (as happened to Kimon in 452), where he would be removed from the city for ten years, after which he would be received back as if nothing happened. This was less a punishment than a safety valve for all the feuds and vendetta that fuelled the Greek world.

Pericles, as Eponymous Archon of 449 called for the construction of new walls to defend Athens, specifically its links to Piraeus. Thus the Long Walls were started. Running from Athens to Piraeus, they served as a conduit down which trade and traffic would flow, but also as a way of securing the connection to the sea which Athens treasured so highly. Lines of communication were assured, and Athens was assured that she would never be held ransom by siege or starvation.

In 450 BC the cities of Boeotia rebelled against Athenian dominance, and Thebes took on the mantle of their leader once more. She found herself with many allies, who had abandoned her not out of fear or loathing but out of necessity and defeat. Thus the Boeotian League was reborn. Pericles, who was Basileus Archon that year insisted that a force be sent to break up the League. One of the strategoi, Philokrates, was selected to lead a force of 6,000 hoplites and 8,000 skirmishers north. The fleet, meanwhile, blockaded the Boeotian ports and disrupted their lines of maritime communication.

The war was terrible yet swift. The Athenian force under Philokrates crushed the Boeotians and their cities surrendered one by one. Over two years he burned the lands of Athens’ enemies while leaving her allies’ land untouched. Eventually in 446 the cities agreed to surrender. Thebes too surrendered the following year after two serious defeats on land. The Delphic League was reformed, but under the leadership of Platea, an ally of Athens and, as of 445 BC, a democracy in the Athenian form. Despite Athens’ enlightened means of self governance, she had no problem with installing kings and tyrants in each of the subjugated cities. Overnight, the people of Leuktra, Oinophyta, Tanagra, Haliartos, Aulis, Thespia and dozens of other, smaller polities found Scythian mercenaries on their street corners, their tall cloth caps and curved bows completely alien to the Greek heartland. Their tyrants ruled purely through the support of these mercenaries and through Athenian aid. Platea, meanwhile, made a further alliance with Athens that gave all Athenians the rights of metics within Platea-the right to do business, own property and expect legal protection in return for a fixed monthly tax.

The Second Boeotian War cemented Athens as the local hegemon; Greece was broken, and Sparta consumed by internecine struggle. King Pleistoanax was being investigated by the ephors because of irregular behaviour during the war with Athens, and for three years the state was paralysed as his partner in royalty was constantly supervised by the Spartans, who feared one man rule (Pleistoanax was relieved of all his political duties throughout the inquisition). In 445 Pleistoanax was forced to commit suicide and Sparta’s influence throughout the Peloponnese, already strong, became even more visible. The oligarchies that she had supported for decades were under fire from democratic and tyrannical factions and only the application of Spartan arms kept them stable. Thereby both Greek powers conducted themselves in a blatantly imperialistic manner while mollifying their populace with talks of virtue, duty and freedom.
 
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