Thucydides’ twin plots of the growth of Athenian power and of Spartan fear are intertwined. The founding act of Athenian imperialism, in Thucydides’ account, is the rebuilding of the walls of Athens after their destruction (1.89-93; cf. 1.143; Andokides 3.37-8; [Xenophon] Ath. Pol. 2.14-16). Themistokles had argued that, if the Athenians became a seafaring people, they would have every advantage in adding to their power, and that they could go down to the Piraeus (the walls of which were completed) and take to their ships to defend themselves (1.93; cf. Spartan fears, 1.90). (Athenian leadership was later consolidated by the building of the Long Walls joining Athens and the Piraeus, beginning 1.106, seen as crucial by the Korinthians, 1.69.) The initial building of the city walls takes place, however, in the face of Sparta’s (and Sparta’s allies’) opposition: the professed reason for their opposition was a concern for the defence of Greece in the event of another Persian invasion, so that the Persians would have no defensible base; their real reason (mirroring Themistokles’ advice to the Athenians, 1.93) was fear of Athenian enterprise (1.90). The Spartans showed no open displeasure in the event, we are told; their request to the Athenians not to rebuild their walls had been ‘friendly advice’, no more; they were friendly to Athens because of her role in the Persian wars; and yet, ‘the Spartans had not got their own way and secretly felt aggrieved because of it’ (1.92). We might add that, the Athenians’ hurried construction of the wall, Themistokles’ filibustering in Sparta, or his instruction to keep the Spartan ambassadors in Athens (even, if necessary, by constraint) until the walls had reached a defensible height, all suggest at least a suspicion that Sparta might have sought to prevent the building of the walls. Themistokles’ eventual revelation to the Spartans of the extent of the walls is accompanied by a rousing statement of Athenian independence, and (ironically in the light of the later Athenian empire) of how alliances must be on the ‘basis of equal strength’ (1.91).
This account of early tensions between Athens and Sparta can be supplemented a little from other sources. Competition between the two leading cities in Greece is a recurrent subplot throughout Herodotos’ Histories (esp. Moles 1996, 2002), climaxing in their competition for Ionian defections at the battle of Mykale (9.102) or the testy debate on the future of the lonians (9.105-6; see above). Diodoros records a debate in Sparta (early in the 470s) at which a member of the council of elders, the gerousia, narrowly persuaded his fellow Spartans not to go to war to fight for leadership of the naval alliance; ‘it was not in Sparta’s interests, he declared, to lay claim to the sea’ (Diodoros 11.50; cf. [Aristotle] Ath. Pol. 23.2; for scepticism, see Lewis 1992a: 100). This tentative status quo whereby the Greek world was divided into two spheres of influence seems to have held, albeit tentatively, for much of the 470s and 460s, reinforced by the dominance of the pro-Spartan Kimon in Athens and a rash of conflict between Sparta and her Peloponnesian allies (see below). Tension erupts again, at least into our sources, at the time of the secession of Thasos from the Athenian alliance (464/3): the Spartans had promised the Thasians (secretly from the Athenians) that they would invade Attika, Thucydides tells us, and they would indeed have done so had it not been for the major earthquake and the subsequent revolt of the helots at Ithome (1.101). Even so Athens gave help to Sparta in the suppression of the helots, but their help was met with Spartan distrust (possibly because of the contemporary political changes at home, the reforms of Ephialtes: the relative chronology is uncertain): the Spartans grew afraid of the enterprise and unorthodoxy of the Athenians, thought that ‘they might listen to the people in Ithome and become the sponsors of some revolutionary policy’ (1.102), and so dismissed them from the Peloponnese - a snub that sealed the division, may well (depending on the chronology) have hastened democratic reforms in Athens, and led to Athens’ forming an alternative alliance with Sparta’s enemy, Argos (Thuc. 1.102).
There follows a complex phase of muted hostilities between Athens, on the one hand, and Sparta and her allies on the other, sometimes known (and referred to above) as the First Peloponnesian War. Though it may, in a number of the causes of conflict, foreshadow the later Peloponnesian War (itself arguably a more complex series of conflicts; Thucydides makes the case for seeing the whole period of 27 years as one war, 5.26), it is not comparable either in character or in intensity (Holladay 1977). It is a war mainly carried on between Athens and Sparta’s Peloponnesian allies, the main focus being the expansion of Athens’ sphere of influence on the Greek mainland (in particular, her 461 alliance with Megara, Thuc. 1.42), an apparent attempt to create a territorial block to the Korinthian Gulf in the west and preventing Spartan intervention north of the Peloponnese (Davies 1993: 82-3 on 1.107). Spartan intervention is selective. Their ostensible reason for sending fifteen hundred of their own hoplites in 458 was to support the Dorians against the Phokians. On their return, however, they hesitated in Boiotia, in part to coincide with an abortive oligarchic coup in Athens (1.107). The Athenians, conscious of the planned coup, marched out to fight at Tanagra; their defeat was not so conclusive as to give further momentum to any plotting; it also did not prevent the Athenians from marching out, only 62 days later, to subjugate Boiotia at the battle of Oinophyta. Further hostilities between Athenians and Spartans took place without any direct contact: in 448, in the so-called Sacred War, the Spartans gave Delphi back to the Delphians, and the Athenians promptly returned it to the Phokians (Thuc. 1.112). The Spartans’ final intervention was more decisive: an invasion of Attika under the leadership of Pleis-toanax. (The Spartans took their time, however: Thucydides tells us intriguingly of a Persian attempt to encourage an invasion of Attika through bribery: 1.109.) Unlike those of the first phase of the Peloponnesian War (the so-called Archidamian war), this invasion was effective in extracting a quick settlement, in large part due to the circumstances in which it was fought: in the light of the revolt from Athens of Boiotia, Euboia and Megara (1.114-15). The Thirty Years’ Peace brought about the return of all the remaining ‘places which they had seized from the Peloponnesians’ (Nisaia, Pagai, Troizen, Achaia), in return for an implicit acceptance of the two parties’ different spheres of influence (cf. Lewis 1992a: 137).
Tension scarcely abated in the aftermath of this settlement. The Peloponnesians seem to have come close to war with the Athenians at the time of Athens’ intervention in Samos; Thucydides’ Korinthians claim that they had openly opposed war, arguing that Athens should be left alone to discipline her allies (1.40). By the middle of the 430s we find ourselves embroiled in the ‘causes of complaint’ and ‘specific instances where their interests clashed’ of Thucydides 1.23: in particular, the disputes over Kerkyra and Poteidaia (1.24-65). What these disputes have in common is that both take place at points of overlap between the Peloponnesian and Athenian alliances, and that both involve Korinth: Kerkyra was a disenchanted colony of Korinth before Athens, mindful of her naval strength and of the inevitability of a war (cf. M&L 58, the Kallias decree, putting Athenian finances on a war footing from 434/3), formed a defensive alliance with her; Poteidaia was again a colony of Korinth and a member of the Athenian league. Thucydides’ selection of these two episodes for detailed treatment fits with his foregrounding of Korinth throughout Book 1; it is Korinth’s threat to find other allies that finally galvanizes Sparta into war (1.33, 42, 68-71; 118). Other cities’ grievances are, conversely, downplayed: in particular, Aiginetan complaints that their promised independence was being infringed by the Athenians (Thucydides adds that the Aiginetans worked behind the scenes to foment war, 1.67, and the Athenians are later said to have blamed the Aiginetans for starting the war, Thuc. 2.27; cf. Andokides 3.6), and those of the Megarians, in particular (they are said to have listed ‘a number ofother grievances’) at their exclusion from the harbours of Athens and her allies.
The precise meaning and significance of this exclusion, and of the ‘Megarian Decrees’ (most probably a trade ban) that Perikles insists adamantly that Athens should not repeal, has been the subject of heated debate (e. g., de Ste. Croix 1972: ch. vii). Other sources, mostly with a tendentious focus on the discreditable motives of Perikles, have been cited in support of the importance of Megara as a cause of war (Plutarch Perikles 29-31, Aristophanes Acharnians 524-39, Peace 606-9; Dio-doros 12.39; Andokides 3.8). None of these, however, gives us reason to doubt Thucydides’ conviction that the Megarian Decrees (though they may have been a significant grievance) were significant as a cause of war primarily as a diplomatic line in the sand.
World History
