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The History of the Peloponnesian War
Book 1 - Chapter I
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The State of Greece from the earliest Times to the
Commencement of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between
the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment
that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war
and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.
This belief was not without its grounds. The preparations of
both the combatants were in every department in the last state
of perfection; and he could see the rest of the Hellenic race
taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once
having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the greatest movement
yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large
part of the barbarian world--I had almost said of mankind. For
though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more
immediately preceded the war, could not from lapse of time be
clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried
as far back as was practicable leads me to trust, all point to
the conclusion that there was nothing on a great scale, either in
war or in other matters.
For instance, it is evident that the country now called Hellas
had in ancient times no settled population; on the contrary,
migrations were of frequent occurrence, the several tribes
readily abandoning their homes under the pressure of superior
numbers. Without commerce, without freedom of communication
either by land or sea, cultivating no more of their territory
than the exigencies of life required, destitute of capital,
never planting their land (for they could not tell when an invader
might not come and take it all away, and when he did come they
had no walls to stop him), thinking that the necessities of
daily sustenance could be supplied at one place as well as
another, they cared little for shifting their habitation, and
consequently
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neither built large cities nor attained to any other form of
greatness. The richest soils were always most subject to this change
of masters; such as the district now called Thessaly, Boeotia, most
of the Peloponnese, Arcadia excepted, and the most fertile parts of
the rest of Hellas. The goodness of the land favoured the aggrandizement of particular individuals,
and thus created faction which proved a fertile source of ruin.
It also invited invasion. Accordingly Attica, from the poverty
of its soil enjoying from a very remote period freedom from
faction, never changed its inhabitants. And here is no
inconsiderable exemplification of my assertion that the migrations
were the cause of there being no correspondent growth in other
parts. The most powerful victims of war or faction from
the rest of Hellas took refuge with the Athenians as a safe
retreat; and at an early period, becoming naturalized,
swelled the already large population of the city to such a
height that Attica became at last too small to hold them, and
they had to send out colonies to Ionia.
There is also another circumstance that contributes not a little
to my conviction of the weakness of ancient times. Before the Trojan
war there is no indication of any common action in Hellas, nor
indeed of the universal prevalence of the name; on the contrary,
before the time of Hellen, son of Deucalion, no such appellation
existed, but the country went by the names of the different tribes, in
particular of the Pelasgian. It was not till Hellen and his sons
grew strong in Phthiotis, and were invited as allies into the other
cities, that one by one they gradually acquired from the connection
the name of Hellenes; though a long time elapsed before that name
could fasten itself upon all. The best proof of this is furnished by
Homer. Born long after the Trojan War, he nowhere calls all of them by
that name, nor indeed any of them except the followers of Achilles
from Phthiotis, who were the original Hellenes: in his poems they
are called Danaans, Argives, and Achaeans. He does not even use the
term barbarian, probably because the Hellenes had not yet been
marked off from the rest of the world by one distinctive
appellation. It appears therefore that the several Hellenic
communities, comprising not only those who first acquired the name,
city by city, as they came to understand each other, but also those
who assumed it afterwards as the name of the whole people, were before
the Trojan war prevented by their want of strength and the absence
of mutual intercourse from displaying any collective action.
Indeed, they could not unite for this expedition till they had
gained increased familiarity with the sea. And the first person
known to us by tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He
made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic sea, and
ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent the first
colonies, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors;
and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters, a
necessary step to secure the revenues for his own use.
For in early times the Hellenes and the barbarians of the coast
and islands, as communication by sea became more common, were
tempted to turn pirates, under the conduct of their most powerful men;
the motives being to serve their own cupidity and to support the
needy. They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls, and
consisting of a mere collection of villages, and would plunder it;
indeed, this came to be the main source of their livelihood, no
disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some
glory. An illustration of this is furnished by the honour with which
some of the inhabitants of the continent still regard a successful
marauder, and by the question we find the old poets everywhere
representing the people as asking of voyagers--"Are they pirates?"--as
if those who are asked the question would have no idea of
disclaiming the imputation, or their interrogators of reproaching them
for it. The same rapine prevailed also by land.
And even at the present day many of Hellas still follow the old
fashion, the Ozolian Locrians for instance, the Aetolians, the
Acarnanians, and that region of the continent; and the custom of
carrying arms is still kept up among these continentals, from the
old piratical habits. The whole of Hellas used once to carry arms,
their habitations being unprotected and their communication with
each other unsafe; indeed, to wear arms was as much a part of everyday
life with them as with the barbarians. And the fact that the people in
these parts of Hellas are still living in the old way points to a time
when the same mode of life was once equally common to all. The
Athenians were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an
easier and more luxurious mode of life; indeed, it is only lately that
their rich old men left off the luxury of wearing undergarments of
linen, and fastening a knot of their hair with a tie of golden
grasshoppers, a fashion which spread to their Ionian kindred and
long prevailed among the old men there. On the contrary, a modest
style of dressing, more in conformity with modern ideas, was first
adopted by the Lacedaemonians, the rich doing their best to assimilate
their way of life to that of the common people. They also set the
example of contending naked, publicly stripping and anointing
themselves with oil in their gymnastic exercises. Formerly, even in
the Olympic contests, the athletes who contended wore belts across
their middles; and it is but a few years since that the practice
ceased. To this day among some of the barbarians, especially in
Asia, when prizes for boxing and wrestling are offered, belts are worn
by the combatants. And there are many other points in which a likeness
might be shown between the life of the Hellenic world of old and the
barbarian of to-day.
With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased
facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find
the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses
being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defence against a
neighbour. But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of
piracy, were built away from the sea, whether on the islands or the
continent, and still remain in their old sites. For the pirates used
to plunder one another, and indeed all coast populations, whether
seafaring or not.
The islanders, too, were great pirates. These islanders were Carians
and Phoenicians, by whom most of the islands were colonized, as was
proved by the following fact. During the purification of Delos by
Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and
it was found that above half their inmates were Carians: they were
identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the
method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow.
But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea
became easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus
expelled the malefactors. The coast population now began to apply
themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life
became more settled; some even began to build themselves walls on
the strength of their newly acquired riches. For the love of gain
would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the
possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the
smaller towns to subjection. And it was at a somewhat later stage of
this development that they went on the expedition against Troy.
What enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my
opinion, his superiority in strength, than the oaths of Tyndareus,
which bound the suitors to follow him. Indeed, the account given by
those Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most credible
tradition is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy
population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that,
stranger though he was, the country was called after him; and this
power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his
descendants. Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids.
Atreus was his mother's brother; and to the hands of his relation, who
had left his father on account of the death of Chrysippus, Eurystheus,
when he set out on his expedition, had committed Mycenae and the
government. As time went on and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus
complied with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were influenced by
fear of the Heraclids--besides, his power seemed considerable, and he
had not neglected to court the favour of the populace--and assumed
the sceptre of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus.
And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater
than that of the descendants of Perseus. To all this Agamemnon
succeeded. He had also a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so
that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in
the formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his
navy is shown by the fact that his own was the largest contingent, and
that of the Arcadians was furnished by him; this at least is what
Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient. Besides, in his
account of the transmission of the sceptre, he calls him
Of many an isle, and of all Argos king.
Now Agamemnon's was a continental power; and he could not have been
master of any except the adjacent islands (and these would not be
many), but through the possession of a fleet.
And from this expedition we may infer the character of earlier
enterprises. Now Mycenae may have been a small place, and many of
the towns of that age may appear comparatively insignificant, but no
exact observer would therefore feel justified in rejecting the
estimate given by the poets and by tradition of the magnitude of the
armament. For I suppose if Lacedaemon were to become desolate, and the
temples and the foundations of the public buildings were left, that as
time went on there would be a strong disposition with posterity to
refuse to accept her fame as a true exponent of her power. And yet
they occupy two-fifths of Peloponnese and lead the whole, not to speak
of their numerous allies without. Still, as the city is neither
built in a compact form nor adorned with magnificent temples and
public edifices, but composed of villages after the old fashion of
Hellas, there would be an impression of inadequacy. Whereas, if Athens
were to suffer the same misfortune, I suppose that any inference
from the appearance presented to the eye would make her power to
have been twice as great as it is. We have therefore no right to be
sceptical, nor to content ourselves with an inspection of a town to
the exclusion of a consideration of its power; but we may safely
conclude that the armament in question surpassed all before it, as
it fell short of modern efforts; if we can here also accept the
testimony of Homer's poems, in which, without allowing for the
exaggeration which a poet would feel himself licensed to employ, we
can see that it was far from equalling ours. He has represented it
as consisting of twelve hundred vessels; the Boeotian complement of
each ship being a hundred and twenty men, that of the ships of
Philoctetes fifty. By this, I conceive, he meant to convey the maximum
and the minimum complement: at any rate, he does not specify the
amount of any others in his catalogue of the ships. That they were all
rowers as well as warriors we see from his account of the ships of
Philoctetes, in which all the men at the oar are bowmen. Now it is
improbable that many supernumeraries sailed, if we except the kings
and high officers; especially as they had to cross the open sea with
munitions of war, in ships, moreover, that had no decks, but were
equipped in the old piratical fashion. So that if we strike the
average of the largest and smallest ships, the number of those who
sailed will appear inconsiderable, representing, as they did, the
whole force of Hellas. And this was due not so much to scarcity of men
as of money. Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce the
numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the country
during the prosecution of the war. Even after the victory they
obtained on their arrival--and a victory there must have been, or the
fortifications of the naval camp could never have been built--there
is no indication of their whole force having been employed; on the
contrary, they seem to have turned to cultivation of the Chersonese
and to piracy from want of supplies. This was what really enabled
the Trojans to keep the field for ten years against them; the
dispersion of the enemy making them always a match for the
detachment left behind. If they had brought plenty of supplies with
them, and had persevered in the war without scattering for piracy
and agriculture, they would have easily defeated the Trojans in the
field, since they could hold their own against them with the
division on service. In short, if they had stuck to the siege, the
capture of Troy would have cost them less time and less trouble. But
as want of money proved the weakness of earlier expeditions, so from
the same cause even the one in question, more famous than its
predecessors, may be pronounced on the evidence of what it effected to
have been inferior to its renown and to the current opinion about it
formed under the tuition of the poets.
Even after the Trojan War, Hellas was still engaged in removing
and settling, and thus could not attain to the quiet which must
precede growth. The late return of the Hellenes from Ilium caused many
revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the
citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty years
after the capture of Ilium, the modern Boeotians were driven out of
Arne by the Thessalians, and settled in the present Boeotia, the
former Cadmeis; though there was a division of them there before, some
of whom joined the expedition to Ilium. Twenty years later, the
Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of Peloponnese; so that
much had to be done and many years had to elapse before Hellas could
attain to a durable tranquillity undisturbed by removals, and could
begin to send out colonies, as Athens did to Ionia and most of the
islands, and the Peloponnesians to most of Italy and Sicily and some
places in the rest of Hellas. All these places were founded
subsequently to the war with Troy.
But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth
became more an object, the revenues of the states increasing,
tyrannies were by their means established almost everywhere--the old
form of government being hereditary monarchy with definite
prerogatives--and Hellas began to fit out fleets and apply herself
more closely to the sea. It is said that the Corinthians were the
first to approach the modern style of naval architecture, and that
Corinth was the first place in Hellas where galleys were built; and
we have Ameinocles, a Corinthian shipwright, making four ships for
the Samians. Dating from the end of this war, it is nearly three
hundred years ago that Ameinocles went to Samos. Again, the earliest
sea-fight in history was between the Corinthians and Corcyraeans; this
was about two hundred and sixty years ago, dating from the same time.
Planted on an isthmus, Corinth had from time out of mind been a
commercial emporium; as formerly almost all communication between the
Hellenes within and without Peloponnese was carried on overland, and
the Corinthian territory was the highway through which it travelled.
She had consequently great money resources, as is shown by the epithet
"wealthy" bestowed by the old poets on the place, and this enabled
her, when traffic by sea became more common, to procure her navy and
put down piracy; and as she could offer a mart for both branches of
the trade, she acquired for herself all the power which a large
revenue affords. Subsequently the Ionians attained to great naval
strength in the reign of Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, and of
his son Cambyses, and while they were at war with the former commanded
for a while the Ionian sea. Polycrates also, the tyrant of Samos,
had a powerful navy in the reign of Cambyses, with which he reduced
many of the islands, and among them Rhenea, which he consecrated to
the Delian Apollo. About this time also the Phocaeans, while they were
founding Marseilles, defeated the Carthaginians in a sea-fight.
These were the most powerful navies. And even these, although so
many generations had elapsed since the Trojan war, seem to have been
principally composed of the old fifty-oars and long-boats, and to have
counted few galleys among their ranks. Indeed it was only shortly
the Persian war, and the death of Darius the successor of Cambyses,
that the Sicilian tyrants and the Corcyraeans acquired any large
number of galleys. For after these there were no navies of any account
in Hellas till the expedition of Xerxes; Aegina, Athens, and others
may have possessed a few vessels, but they were principally
fifty-oars. It was quite at the end of this period that the war with
Aegina and the prospect of the barbarian invasion enabled Themistocles
to persuade the Athenians to build the fleet with which they fought at
Salamis; and even these vessels had not complete decks.
The navies, then, of the Hellenes during the period we have
traversed were what I have described. All their insignificance did not
prevent their being an element of the greatest power to those who
cultivated them, alike in revenue and in dominion. They were the means
by which the islands were reached and reduced, those of the smallest
area falling the easiest prey. Wars by land there were none, none at
least by which power was acquired; we have the usual border
contests, but of distant expeditions with conquest for object we
hear nothing among the Hellenes. There was no union of subject
cities round a great state, no spontaneous combination of equals for
confederate expeditions; what fighting there was consisted merely of
local warfare between rival neighbours. The nearest approach to a
coalition took place in the old war between Chalcis and Eretria;
this was a quarrel in which the rest of the Hellenic name did to
some extent take sides.
Various, too, were the obstacles which the national growth
encountered in various localities. The power of the Ionians was
advancing with rapid strides, when it came into collision with Persia,
under King Cyrus, who, after having dethroned Croesus and overrun
everything between the Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had
reduced the cities of the coast; the islands being only left to be
subdued by Darius and the Phoenician navy.
Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing
simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and
family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy,
and prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would
each have their affairs with their immediate neighbours. All this is
only true of the mother country, for in Sicily they attained to very
great power. Thus for a long time everywhere in Hellas do we find
causes which make the states alike incapable of combination for
great and national ends, or of any vigorous action of their own.
But at last a time came when the tyrants of Athens and the far older
tyrannies of the rest of Hellas were, with the exception of those in
Sicily, once and for all put down by Lacedaemon; for this city, though
after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants, it
suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, still at
a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a freedom from
tyrants which was unbroken; it has possessed the same form of
government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of
the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs
of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the
tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the
Athenians. Ten years afterwards, the barbarian returned with the
armada for the subjugation of Hellas. In the face of this great
danger, the command of the confederate Hellenes was assumed by the
Lacedaemonians in virtue of their superior power; and the Athenians,
having made up their minds to abandon their city, broke up their
homes, threw themselves into their ships, and became a naval people.
This coalition, after repulsing the barbarian, soon afterwards split
into two sections, which included the Hellenes who had revolted from
the King, as well as those who had aided him in the war. At the end of
the one stood Athens, at the head of the other Lacedaemon, one the
first naval, the other the first military power in Hellas. For a short
time the league held together, till the Lacedaemonians and Athenians
quarrelled and made war upon each other with their allies, a duel into
which all the Hellenes sooner or later were drawn, though some might
at first remain neutral. So that the whole period from the Median
war to this, with some peaceful intervals, was spent by each power
in war, either with its rival, or with its own revolted allies, and
consequently afforded them constant practice in military matters,
and that experience which is learnt in the school of danger.
The policy of Lacedaemon was not to exact tribute from her allies,
but merely to secure their subservience to her interests by
establishing oligarchies among them; Athens, on the contrary, had by
degrees deprived hers of their ships, and imposed instead
contributions in money on all except Chios and Lesbos. Both found
their resources for this war separately to exceed the sum of their
strength when the alliance flourished intact.
Having now given the result of my inquiries into early times, I
grant that there will be a difficulty in believing every particular
detail. The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of
their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered,
without applying any critical test whatever. The general Athenian
public fancy that Hipparchus was tyrant when he fell by the hands of
Harmodius and Aristogiton, not knowing that Hippias, the eldest of the
sons of Pisistratus, was really supreme, and that Hipparchus and
Thessalus were his brothers; and that Harmodius and Aristogiton
suspecting, on the very day, nay at the very moment fixed on for the
deed, that information had been conveyed to Hippias by their
accomplices, concluded that he had been warned, and did not attack
him, yet, not liking to be apprehended and risk their lives for
nothing, fell upon Hipparchus near the temple of the daughters of
Leos, and slew him as he was arranging the Panathenaic procession.
There are many other unfounded ideas current among the rest of the
Hellenes, even on matters of contemporary history, which have not been
obscured by time. For instance, there is the notion that the
Lacedaemonian kings have two votes each, the fact being that they have
only one; and that there is a company of Pitane, there being simply no
such thing. So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of
truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand. On the
whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted
may, I believe, safely be relied on. Assuredly they will not be
disturbed either by the lays of a poet displaying the exaggeration
of his craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers that are
attractive at truth's expense; the subjects they treat of being out of
the reach of evidence, and time having robbed most of them of
historical value by enthroning them in the region of legend. Turning
from these, we can rest satisfied with having proceeded upon the
clearest data, and having arrived at conclusions as exact as can be
expected in matters of such antiquity. To come to this war: despite
the known disposition of the actors in a struggle to overrate its
importance, and when it is over to return to their admiration of
earlier events, yet an examination of the facts will show that it
was much greater than the wars which preceded it.
With reference to the speeches in this history, some were
delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I
heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all
cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my
habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion
demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as
closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said. And
with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting
myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not
even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw
myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report
being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible.
My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence
between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses,
arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue
partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my
history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be
judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of
the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the
course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I
shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay
which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for
all time.
The Median War, the greatest achievement of past times, yet found
a speedy decision in two actions by sea and two by land. The
Peloponnesian War was prolonged to an immense length, and, long as
it was, it was short without parallel for the misfortunes that it
brought upon Hellas. Never had so many cities been taken and laid
desolate, here by the barbarians, here by the parties contending
(the old inhabitants being sometimes removed to make room for others);
never was there so much banishing and blood-shedding, now on the field
of battle, now in the strife of faction. Old stories of occurrences
handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience,
suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of
unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with
a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great
droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most
calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came
upon them with the late war, which was begun by the Athenians and
Peloponnesians by the dissolution of the thirty years' truce made
after the conquest of Euboea. To the question why they broke the
treaty, I answer by placing first an account of their grounds of
complaint and points of difference, that no one may ever have to ask
the immediate cause which plunged the Hellenes into a war of such
magnitude. The real cause I consider to be the one which was
formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens,
and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war
inevitable. Still it is well to give the grounds alleged by either
side which led to the dissolution of the treaty and the breaking out
of the war.
More History
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