In the year 431, as the wheat ripened for the harvest in the spring, King Archida-mus II of Sparta (from whom this phase of the war receives its name) led a Lacedaemonian army into Attica (Thuc. II 19). The Lacedaemonians expected a standard hoplite battle, but the Athenians, on Pericles’ advice, refused. The Lacedaemonians had demonstrated their military skill at Plataea (479) and more recently at Tanagra (456), and Pericles may reasonably have viewed them as the probable victors in a battle. At Mt. Ithome, on the other hand, the Lacedaemonians had shown their ineptitude at siege warfare (465-456) - and in the end had negotiated a settlement there. Athens was heavily fortified; the so-called Long Walls connected the city itself to its port, the Peiraeus, which had its own fortifications. As long as the Athenian fleet retained control of the Aegean, Athens could supply itself by sea. In principle Pericles’ plan was nothing other than the time-honored tactic of retreating behind one’s city’s walls before an invader whom one could not reasonably expect to beat. So the Athenians evacuated the Attic countryside and brought everyone into the city of Athens itself (Thuc. II 14). Faced with the prospect of an interminable siege, the Lacedaemonians torched the Athenians’ fields and left (Thuc. II 23).
Meanwhile, an Athenian fleet of a hundred ships sailed around the Pelopon-nese to carry out raids. The tactic again was based on experience: Tolmides’ successful periplus or circumnavigation in 456. The Athenian fleet in 431 almost succeeded in capturing the city of Methone in the southwestern Pelo-ponnese. The officer who managed to save Methone, Brasidas, would go on to a spectacular career (Thuc. II 23 and 25). Finally, the Athenians, led personally by Pericles, unsuccessfully invaded Megara with the largest Athenian land force up to that time. Had the invasion succeeded, the Athenians could have warded off any future Lacedaemonian army at the Isthmus (Thuc. II 31).
The first year of the war had a sobering effect on the Lacedaemonians, who in the second year of the war altered their tactics to respond to the Athenians’ strategy of refusing battles by land. Granted, the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica again with the same results as last time (Thuc. II 47). But they also put together a fleet of one hundred ships, collected from their allies, and attacked the island of Zacynthos (Thuc. II 66) which the Athenians in 431 had used as a base for naval operations. The Lacedaemonians were trying to deprive the Athenian fleet of way-stations for its annual periplus (which took place in 430 as well). Second, the Lacedaemonians had realized that without a fleet with which they could challenge Athens’ supremacy in the Aegean, they could not win the war. However, they lacked the financial resources to construct and to maintain a fleet of adequate size. Accordingly, they did the unthinkable: they sent an embassy to Persia, the putative enemy of all Greeks, to negotiate for money. The Athenians by chance intercepted the embassy when it arrived at the court of the Thracian king Sitalces whom it had additionally hoped to persuade to support the ongoing revolts against Athens in the Chalcidice (Thuc. II 67). The Lacedaemonians, in sum, engaged in three innovative tactics already in the war’s second year: deprive the Athenian fleet of bases from which to raid Laconia; weaken Athens by helping its allies to revolt; and negotiate for money from Persia. The latter two strategies in particular would bear fruit in the end.
The year 430 in Athens, on the other hand, was marked by the outbreak of the Plague (see Box 13.2). Despite the Plague Pericles, after the Lacedaemonian invasion of Attica had ended, led out a major sea-borne expedition to Epidaurus opposite Athens on the Saronic Gulf, just to the southeast of the Isthmus. As with the previous year’s invasion of Megara, the expedition presumably had a defensive aim ultimately - control of the isthmus (Thuc. II 56). Another fleet circumnavigated the Peloponnese and carried out raids. Also, in the winter of 430 to 429 Potidaea finally surrendered to Athens (Thuc. II 69-70).
When the third year (429) of the war began, King Archidamus once again led out the Lacedaemonian army - past Attica and into Boeotia to attack Plataea (Thuc. II 71). Boeotia was a league-state (see Box 4.1) - granted, one which the largest Boeotian city, Thebes, was gradually coming to dominate - to which Plataea belonged. But Plataea, relying on support from Athens, had left the league and had been at war against troops from Thebes since 431 (Thuc. II 2-6). Archidamus had given up on futile invasions of Attica and concentrated instead on eliminating a nearby Athenian ally. The Plataeans prepared for a siege; and even if Plataea was a small city and its fortifications makeshift (Thuc. II 75-76), the Lacedaemonians’ clumsiness at sieges showed. They would not take Plataea until 427 (Thuc. III 52).
Meanwhile, the Athenians settled down to the business of suppressing the revolts in the Chalcidice (Thuc. II 79). The Lacedaemonians, having left a small force to besiege Plataea, began a major expedition in the west. They sought to conquer Acarnania as part of a wider plan to deprive the Athenians of bases in the west (Thuc. II 80). Yet the Acarnanians fought the Lacedaemonians to a standstill. Meanwhile, the Athenian commander at Naupactus, Phormio, succeeded in defeating the supporting fleet which the Lacedaemonians had sent into the Corinthian Gulf (Thuc. II 81-92). One other significant event occurred in the course of this year: Pericles, the leading statesman in Athens for the past three decades or so, died (Thuc. II 65).
In 428 Mytilene and most of the island of Lesbos, with the exception of Methymna, revolted against Athens (Thuc. III 2). Suppression of the revolt - as at Samos in 440 and Thasos in 465 - proved difficult; not until 427 did the Athenians manage to put the revolt down (Thuc. III 27).
World History
