Pericles strategy was working, even after the plague and before Sphacteria. It was aimed to force a peace based on the statu quo ante bellum by showing Sparta it couldn't touch the base of Athens power while Athens could gnag at hers. Sphacteria lead Athens to adopt a new, more offensive strategy, which failed but nearly succeded.
Oh it was failing. Periclean strategy damaged Athens without damaging Sparta much, and it failed in its goal to force Sparta to an early peace. Before Sphacteria, Sparta was not damaged much, while Athens was damaged immensely.
It failed even without the plague.
Attica was as much part of Athens power as the Empire, and losing it was a blow to Athens.
Spartan strategy also failed, in that it failed to force Athens to seek peace based on ravaging Attica, but that did not make the Periclean strategy any more of a success since both strategies aimed at an early peace.
Simply put, both Periclean and Archimadean strategies failed. That was why Athens abandoned it for a more aggressive strategy, and Sparta also abandoned it by taking to the sea.
After Sphacteria Athens was able to made rather heavy handed demands which, had they come to pass they would have essentially brought the political map to where it was during the peak of Athens land power dominance during the First Peloponesian War and Sparta was essentially willing to accept them. Only when Athens tried to force them to negociate in public did the Spartan envoys refuse, as the territories where under the control of their allies and openly throwing them under the buse as opposed to simply privately abandoning would have left her completely isolated in Greece. Sparta fought on because she had to and it took two massive victory at Delion and Amphipolis to save her bacon, and even then not completely as Mantinea still occured afterward.
Perhaps. That only meant that Sphacteria wasn't that a big a physical blow than a psychological blow. If it was that decisive, Sparta would have accepted even the dismantling of the Peloponessian League in order to have peace in 425. Sparta would have been compelled to accept even the most humiliating terms like AThens did in 404. It would accept being totally and publicly humiliated. And it would have meant that even if Sparta had to fight, it could not have done so. But Sparta had a choice, so Sphacteria was not that decisive in damaging Spartan war capability.
If Sphacteria was so decisive, the Spartans wouldn't even be capable of capturing Amphipolis!
It doesn't matter if the crews are not really Spartan. The Spartan fleet was commanded by Spartan officers, and served Spartan purposes. It's existence was commanded by Spartans by levying the maritime members of the League, like Corinth, by Spartans levying revolted cities, and by approaching the Persians. And the revolts was brought about by appearance of Spartan ships on the revolting cities. And of course, you cannot simply will the Persian gold to disappear even with Syracusan victory. The Persians wanted to recover the cities of Ionia, and would be willing to fund any power that would help it.Sparta sea power, or apparent sea power since it wasn't really spartan, in the last phase of the war was based on two things: revolted athenian allies and Persian financial support. Without the Sicilian Disaster both are butterflied and Sparta has neither the seamans nor the funds needed to seriously sustain a war at sea for any significant amount of time, not in a way that can seriously threaten the existence of the athenian empire as a whole at any rate. In contrast, Athens had some serious chomps on lands and her hoplites where a serious threat to Sparta.
And the Athenian hoplites were not a serious threat to Sparta. If it was, it would not hide under its walls, and confront the Spartan Army in 431 BC when it invaded Attica. But it hid, and let Attica be ravaged. Even Pericles admitted that Spartan hoplites were the equal to all of Greece. When Spartans ravaged the land and cut off the vines and olive trees which was such a big part of the Athenian Economy, Athens merely hid and let the lands be ravaged. They did not even try to defeat the main Spartan army on land during the times when Athens and Sparta were actually at war.
That is a strategy of an city that knows that they are inferior in land to Sparta.
The fort at Pylos played a key role in bringing about Mantinea, where Sparta really stood on the brink of utter disaster, and the slow bleeding of its hilote population touched Spartan power at his core in a way Sparta didn't with Athenian until after the Sicilian Expedition.
During the Archidamian War, the fort at Pylos did not actually bring Sparta to its knees. During the war in 413 BC until its capture, it did not affect the war at all. Compare it to the effect of Decelea. Decelea actually hindered Athenian war effort and led to the exhaustion of the Athenian treasure, and thus contributed directly to Spartan victory. Pylos, not so much. Otherwise, Sparta would have accepted any humiliation in 425 just to have peace. It only had an effect during peace time, yet Athens could not do much to exploit it since they were formally at peace with Sparta, so they had to bring only a minimal contingent at Mantinea.
REmember, at Mantinea, Athens and Sparta are at peace, and are allies.
Saying that if the Corcyrian hadn't happened the war wouldn't have happened is a bit like saying that WWI wouldn't have to come to pass if Franz Ferdinand had survived. Its confusing the root causes of the war for the spark that launching it. Ods are something else would have happened if not for Corcyra and Corinth having a feud that drew Athens and Sparta in. An Athens victorious at Syracuse would for herself with a massive boost in her ressources and that would probably gonna give more arguments to those saying that the time had come to go for unilateral hegemony over Greece while also strenghten the case of those in Sparta thinking that if things where allowed to continue the way they where going Athens would eventually be able overwhelm them.
Well, without the Franz Ferdinand assassination, the odds are that there would not World War at all. There were very many crisis before the assassination, like the Morocco crisis, the Balkan Wars, the Bosnia Annexation crisis, with all the ingredients for war present, yet no World War occurred. It took a specific set of events in 1914, each of which was necessary, to ignite war. And if there was no war in 1914, Russia would grow stronger every year that Germany would not risk war in the future.
So yeah, the Corcyran affair is like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Without it, there would probably be no Great Peloponessian War. Sparta was satisfied with the way things were in 432 BC, yet had to deal with the complaints of League members like Corinth and Megara. And Sparta would not heed those complaints if AThens did not interfere in Corcyra or Megera.
Simply put, the Thirty Years Peace of 446 BC was a stable peace that both Athens and Sparta could live with. Sparta recognized the Athenian Empire and Athenian Supremacy at sea, while Athens gave up all pretensions on land and gave up Boetia and all its conquests in the mainland, and recognized Spartan supremacy at land. It was a basis of lasting peace, that was derailed by a specific set of events, that were not inevitable.
As for Syracusan victory, it depends. If it happens after the disgrace of Alcibiades, then Nicias would be unchallenged, and he would keep the peace of Nicias. Sparta would not go to war again without the defeat at Sicily. If Alcibiades was not disgraced, they could go to war against Sparta, but they could also not. And no, no Athenian actually had serious plans of Athens being total hegemon of Greece. Not even Pericles was that ambitious. All it wanted was that AThenian Empire to be recognized and that Sparta treat it as an equal.
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