Section A:
The Peloponnesian war (431 BC-404 BC) was a 30-year war between the Greek states of Athens and Sparta, both of which were supported by other states. As the war raged, Athens seemed to be the victor in this conflict with just minor setbacks. One of the major strikes that the Athenians launched against Sparta was the Sicilian expedition which turned into a massive catastrophe and it was not the last. This leads me to my essay question: To what extent did the Sicilian Expedition mark the end of Athens supremacy in Ancient Greece? I am going to focus on two works where one is a primary source and one is a secondary source. My primary source will be “History of the Peloponnesian war” by Thucydides, a leading general in the Athenian army who took part in a majority of the battles of the Peloponnesian war until he was exiled with the other generals. Even though this is a primary source there are some issues to keep in mind; one is that it is likely to be highly biased against Sparta, so the Athenians will always be the heroes and certain people will be seen from the Athenian point of such as Alcibiades who holds a rather important role in the events of the Sicilian expedition. Furthermore, this source is more than 1000 years old which means that over the years and due to translation from old Greek to modern English there is a possibility that some information and details have been lost and therefor the account that I have access to may be a different to what Thucydides originally documented.
My secondary source is “The Peloponnesian war” by Donald Kagan, which is considered a secondary source since he was not present at the time of the war despite of how accurate it may be. Furthermore, Kagan will probably have gotten information from Thucydides account so the bias that can be found there could maybe also found in Kagans work.
Section B:
The main reason for the Peloponnesian war was that Athens power over the other Greek states grew to a scary scale and when one of Athens old allies appealed for help, they engaged in a conflict with an old ally of Sparta.
After the Persian Wars the city of Athens became the most powerful city in Ancient Greece. Athenian officials oversaw the treasury of the Delian League, which was a voluntary unity between the Greek states created in the Persian wars to defeat the Persian invasion, which made the city of Athens the wealthiest city in the Aegean and Ionian Sea. This in combination with the fact that the Athenians had the most powerful navy in the ancient Greek world, allowed them to claim the authority role and be a superior force over the other Greek states (Marcovitz 55). In The Story of Civilization vol. 2 Will Durant elucidates “Athens allowed free trade there in time of peace (but) no vessel might sail the sea without her consent… Athenian agents decided the destination of every vessel that left the grain ports” which shows how much authority the Athenians had over the rest of the Greek states and also shows us a reason for the conflicts that ensued between Athens and its allies especially the Greek state of Sparta.
Sparta and Athens had a rivalry that dated back to the beginning of the Persian wars. Even though both states agreed to work together to fight the invaders they still were as different as two Greek states could be at that time (Kagan 3). Both states mistrusted each other and accused each other of lying and theft. Furthermore, before the Persian wars there had already been two sets of alliances of which the Peloponnesus (Spartan) alliance was the eldest. The whole Greek international system was built upon the “Great Rivalry”. This conflict worsened after the Persian wars when Athens leached its full superiority over the Ancient Greek world, which Kagan vividly describes as “first its leader, then its master” (Kagan 7). One big reason for an anti-Athens formation in Spartan politics was due to Pericles wanting to use the funds of the Delian League to build a new wall that completely surrounded Athens and went straight to the harbour. This suspicion was of course rejected by Athens and Sparta did not further issue a formal complaint, but the anti-Athens coalition stayed in Spartan politics. In later years this coalition rose to power fuelled by events that followed which eventually led to the 30-year war that became known as the Peloponnesian war which should end Athens supreme reign in the Ancient world.
In 431 BC the city Corcyra declared independence from Corinth which had been a colony of Corinth up to that point. This sparked a Naval conflict where Athens aided Corcyra and Sparta supported Corinth who has been a long-time ally. Soon the war escalated between Sparta and Athens and became known as the Peloponnesian war At first the Athenian and Spartan government wanted to solve the conflict by diplomacy despite their mistrust of each other. This attempt failed due to armies to which Thucydides writes: “The Peloponnesus and Athens were both full of young men whose inexperience made them eager to take up arms (Thucydides 93).”
The Sicilian Expedition was a result of the city of Leontini complaining to Athens about Syracuse’s attempt to conquer Sicily in 416 BC. Leontini was an old ally of Athens and needed Athenian support to defeat Syracusan invasion. As the war raged all cities in the Peloponnesus joined the Spartans and Syracuse was a colony of Corinth, this suggested that Syracuse is trying to dominate the island so that Sparta has an unlimited grain support in close proximity of Athens. This would give Sparta the means to start a long-term invasion of Athens. Should this be possible the Athenians would be on the run. In Athens the decision was made that Nicias and Alcibiades were to be in charge of Commanding the military expedition to Sicily. This was already a questionable decision since Nicias and Alcibiades were known for being unable to agree with each other since they had a completely different view on warfare. Then to further worsen the situation, Alcibiades caused is superstitious shock throughout the whole of Greece when he was accused of mutilating the statues of Hermes in the Agora. This made Alcibiades abandon the Athenians and joined the spartan forces and told them everything about the Athenian plans, the expedition only lasted from 415 BC to 413 BC. This could be one of the reasons why the Athenian army suffered such a devastating defeat; the spartan army had inside knowledge from a former high-ranking Athenian General in the army.
At the beginning of the expedition the Athenians were very confident due to their powerful navy and their strength in numbers. Pericles came up with an “Ill-Advised strategy” which was to order all Athenian citizens behind Athens walls and solemnly use the Navy to wage war and it worked initially but after the Sicilian expedition this strategy turned out to be a disastrous mistake. Since Athens lost Sicily with its farms to Sparta and all citizens were behind the walls there were not enough people to tend to the farms and soon a famine swept over Attica followed by a plague which killed a fourth of all soldiers stationed there. As a result, Pericles was chased from office who died of the plague just a couple months later. After his death a series of Archons took control of Athenian leadership of which Cleon was the most notorious. He ordered the slaughter of the people on the island Mytilene who did not want to pick a side in this war. This was the first time the Athenian assembly defied its ruler and sent ships to stop the massacre, but it was too late.
A big problem that all Archons had was that due to the plague and the defeat on Sicily, the army now consisted of recruits and inexperienced soldiers who lacked vital training and discipline. In addition to most of the good generals were exiled for their failure and now generals lacking leadership experience had to lead these recruits.
This always ended with almost the entire fleets being destroyed. A good example for that is the Battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC which were the Spartan Commander Lysander observed Athenian soldiers camping on the beach. After five days he ordered to attack the Athenians who were just relaxing on the beach and destroyed, disabled or Captured 170 of 180 Triremes and had 3000 to 4000 Athenians executed. This was the last major battle of the Peloponnesian war.
This lack of discipline and experience is possibly the reason for the ultimate failure of Athens since this is what made to Athenian so powerful: their army was well organized, the soldiers were well trained, and their generals were the best of their time. Another point is that the betrayal of Alcibiades was the first domino to fall since this caused a chain reaction. When he deserted an went to the Spartans, they had the perfect insider, and could their fore humiliate the Athenians. Due to the defeat all experienced soldiers were killed, and the skilled generals were all exiled. This then led to Athens lacking an organized army and the dominos kept falling to the inevitable end of the Athenian empire.
On the other hand, the Athenians would have to deal will a massive uprising, even if the Peloponnesian War never happened, due to multiple factors. One is that Athens had the corruptest officials in the Ancient world, therefor sooner or later a Greek state would have risen and confronted the Athenian government. This links the Athens having total control of everything happening in the Ionian and Aegean Sea, their power went as far as Byzantium which is modern day Istanbul and they controlled every merchant ship that left the ports. The city of Byzantium was already back then a centre of culture and trade due to the merchants coming from the Orient and the Occident and ships arriving from eastern Asia. This meant that if Athens should decide to increase taxes on certain products such as frankincense or not allow ships with frankincense to leave the harbour there would have been an uprising because it was one of the most expensive trading goods in the world apart from silk and other spices.
This would have sparked a bitter conflict since that meant that Athens basically controlled the wealth of the other Greek states and no state likes that another state controls their wealth and there for their power in the ancient world. Another important thing to remember is that it was not only Sparta who mistrusted Athens but also the other states started to mistrust one another, it was just that Sparta and Athens were the two most prominent states to quarrel. This means that there could have been an uprising just due to simple mistrust amongst the states.
Despite these possibilities if the Athenians would have won the Peloponnesian war there would have definitely been following conflicts due to what the Athenian army has done, which would have mostly been due to Cleon’s mad orders. The Mytilene massacre would have sparked fury among the states and another conflict would have broken out and the Athenians would lost since they were so weakened by the war that they would not have survived another war. It is safe to say that either way the Athenan empire would have collapsed despite of what could have happened, the era of Athens was desitned to end sooner or later.
Section C:
Historians will have a problem to accurately study the vents of the Peloponnesian war since many sources have been lost the most descriptive source is written by an Athenian historian who was also a leading general in the war so there is a certain degree of biased against Sparta. Then all other sources wre written by people after the war so they are secondary sources and over the 2 millennia certain details or bits of information must have been lost in translation of simple bias of historians towards either Athens or Sparta.
Bibliography
Editors, History.com. “Classical Greece.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 4 Feb. 2010, www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/classical-greece.
Kagan, Donald. The Peloponnesian War: Athens and Sparta in Savage Conflict 431-404 Bc. Harper Perennial, 2005.