The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War

Donald Kagan

• Editorial: Cornell University Press
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780801467202
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: Military & Maritime History

The first volume of Donald Kagan's acclaimed four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War offers a new evaluation of the origins and causes of the conflict, based on evidence produced by modern scholarship and on a careful reconsideration of the ancient texts. He focuses his study on the question: Was the war inevitable, or could it have been avoided?Kagan takes issue with Thucydides' view that the war was inevitable, that the rise of the Athenian Empire in a world with an existing rival power made a clash between the two a certainty. Asserting instead that the origin of the war "cannot, without serious distortion, be treated in isolation from the internal history of the states involved, " Kagan traces the connections between domestic politics, constitutional organization, and foreign affairs. He further examines the evidence to see what decisions were made that led to war, at each point asking whether a different decision would have been possible.

Part One

The Alliance System and the Division of the Greek World

1. The Spartan Alliance

The Peloponnesian War was not fought by individual Greek states but by two great coalitions, the Peloponnesian League and the Athenian Empire. In some important ways the two were similar, each providing an example of what has been called an “Alliance Under a Hegemon.”1 Each was “an alliance of a leading state with a number of others, not limited in time or by any specific aim, implying a leading position of the one state in war, and soon also in politics, loosely organized at first, but clearly an attempt at a unit transcending the single state.”2 But in many crucial ways they were different, and the differences affected their capacities both to wage war and to keep the peace. The two alliances, moreover, were historically related and not always at odds. If we are to understand the coming of the great war, we must have a clear picture of the nature of the two leagues and of how they came into conflict.

Historians with a taste for paradox are accustomed, with Voltaire, to say of the Holy Roman Empire that it was not holy, neither was it Roman, nor was it an empire. Similarly, it is tempting to say of the Peloponnesian League that it was not really a league, nor, strictly speaking, was it altogether Peloponnesian. It included states to the north of the Isthmus of Corinth, and relationships among its members were loose enough to make such terms as league or confederation inappropriate. The term most frequently used in antiquity was symmachia, which we may translate as “alliance,” a term as ambiguous in English as it is in Greek. The ancients usually called the group the “Lacedaemonians and their Allies,”3 a term that modern historians would do well to adopt, had not the title Peloponnesian League already gained universal currency.

The evidence for the nature of the Spartan alliance, its history and development, is scanty and difficult to interpret, giving rise to a great diversity of opinion. The Spartan alliance was not a response to an external threat, like the Hellenic League, formed to fight the Persians in 481, or like the Delian League, formed to prosecute a war of revenge and liberation against Persia in 478/7. It was instead the product of a Spartan policy aimed at guaranteeing the security of Sparta and its domination of the Peloponnese.4 By the beginning of the sixth century, Sparta’s persistent problem—the suppression of her helots—was well under control, and she could turn to the northern Peloponnese.5 Up to that time Sparta had followed the obvious policy pursued by a strong state toward her weaker neighbors. After defeating them, she incorporated their territory, treating some, the perioikoi, as subject freemen, and others, the helots, as something very much like serfs. In this way the southern and western regions of the Peloponnese had become Spartan territories without autonomy. The Spartans were now free to turn to their northern neighbor, Tegea. Not until the middle of the sixth century were the Spartans able to conquer this Arcadian city, for the Tegeans were tough fighters who put up a long and fierce resistance. At last the Spartans sought the advice of the oracle at Delphi and were told that they must acquire the bones of Orestes in order to take Tegea. A clever Spartan discovered the bones of a giant buried at Tegea, so we are told, and took them home. Shortly thereafter the Spartans took Tegea.6

The victory over Tegea was a turning point in Spartan policy. Instead of annexing the territory of the Tegeans, the Spartans concluded an alliance that was to prove lasting.7 Among other things, the treaty provided that the Tegeans were not to harbor Messenian refugees and that Tegean supporters of Sparta would not be harmed. The major provisions are not mentioned, probably because they were so well known. They surely must have included the formula that was the basic ingredient of all future treaties between Sparta and her allies and that established the nature of Spartan hegemony: the allied states promised to “have the same friends and enemies and to follow the Lacedaemonians on land and on sea wherever they might lead.”8 Soon the rest of Arcadia came under Spartan control.9 By 525 their influence extended to the Isthmus of Corinth, including all the Peloponnesians, with the exception of Argos and Achaea.10 Each extension of the Spartan alliance meant that one more state had agreed to a treaty that turned control of its foreign policy over to Sparta. This was obviously agreeable to Sparta, but why were their allies willing to enter upon such agreements?

The Tegean experience, of course, offers one explanation. Beaten in the field, the Tegeans must have been glad to accept comparatively generous terms, for they retained their land, their freedom, and some degree of autonomy. Possibly other Arcadian states had a similar experience, but we know that not all the allies had first been defeated in combat, and many must have been glad to enter the alliance. To the conservative cities of the Peloponnese, Sparta’s military might offered protection against enemies from within as well as from without. Fear of Argos, the other great Peloponnesian power, and fear of popular unrest which might result in the expulsion of oligarchies and the establishment of tyrannies provided these cities with a strong motive for accepting Spartan leadership.

In the seventh century the Argives had dominated the Peloponnese, and even in the sixth they tried to control its northeastern section. To such states as Phlius, Sicyon, and Corinth they posed a continual threat. In 546 the Spartans defeated Argos in battle, gained control of the Thyreatis, a disputed area on the border between Laconia and the Argolid, and the island of Cythera off the southeastern Peloponnese.11 The victory was important, for it extended Spartan influence to the northeastern Peloponnese and showed that the leadership of the entire Peloponnese had shifted from the Argolid to Laconia. It is important to notice, however, that from necessity or by design, Argos was neither captured or destroyed. For the time being she was weakened, but she remained a possible menace. The enemies of Argos were loyal to their Spartan allies not only from gratitude but perhaps from apprehension as well.

The sixth century was a period of tumultuous domestic strife in the Greek city-states. The growth of commerce, industry, and population had severely strained the political and social stability of the aristocratic republican governments of Greece. In the seventh century tyrannies had appeared in Argos, Sicyon, Corinth, and Megara, as well as in other cities outside the Peloponnese. Some of these persisted into the sixth century, but most had begun to outlive their popularity, while the upper classes had at last begun to regroup their forces and try to restore oligarchic rule. By the middle of the century, Sparta had taken the lead in the struggle against tyranny and in defense of oligarchy. Plutarch records a list of tyrants supposedly removed by the Spartans.12 It includes tyrannies at Corinth, Ambracia, Naxos, Athens, Sicyon, Thasos, Miletus, Phocis, and in Thessaly. The list is not in chronological order, and some of the interventions are implausible, if not impossible. Still, Plutarch is surely reporting a reliable tradition when he says, “We know of no city of that time so zealous in the pursuit of honor and so hostile to tyrants as the city of the Lacedaemonians.”13 Sparta, like all ancient states with a “mixed constitution,” was really an oligarchy, the natural refuge for exiled aristocrats and oligarchs. She did not merely destroy the tyrannies, step aside, and let nature take its course.14 Her policy was to promote oligarchy and defend it against its enemies. “The Lacedaemonians did not lead by holding their allies subject by the payment of tribute; instead they took care that they were governed by oligarchies in a manner conformable to Spartan interests.”15

The alliance that Sparta led into the fifth century, the nucleus of the grand coalition that turned back the Persian invasion, was founded on Spartan military might and bound together by a mutual distrust of Argos as well as a common interest in defending oligarchy. But were there no other ties binding the members of the alliance, more formal and lasting than Spartan power or shared interests, both of which might be transitory? Were the members tied to one another or merely to Sparta? What were the rights and duties of Sparta and of the subsidiary allies? In short, what was the constitution of the Peloponnesian League? To this apparently simple question scholars have returned widely diverging answers. At one extreme is the view of Ulrich Kahrstedt:

Membership in the league was based on perpetual treaties and indeed only with Sparta; there was no entry into the league by a decree of admission of all previous members, as in a federal union [Verein]. The league originated through the fact that Sparta made a pact with Tegea and grew because it did the same each time with almost every state of the neighboring territory. It is logical that, even later, states could not enter except by making a treaty of alliance with Sparta whose content either copied or was similar to that of the others which had been concluded earlier. The constitution of the league consisted merely of ties which ran from Sparta to the individual poleis; there were no ties that bound these to one another, no regulation of constitutional relations at all…. Thus, it is really wrong to apply modern terms like league, confederation, or confederacy to this political structure.16

At the other end of the spectrum stands Jacob Larsen, who believes that some time about 505 the equivalent of a constitutional convention of the allies of Sparta met to found the Peloponnesian League.17 The purpose of that convention, he says, was to adopt two principles: Sparta must consult a league assembly before demandi...