The Peloponnesian War took place precisely in the middle of the Classical Period. to the nature of the conflict, the phase which preceded and the one which followed the war appear at the same time to be connected with and yet separated by it. The war meant a serious blow for many Greek states. For instance, it could come about that a small polis could lose its entire citizen levy in a single battle (Thuc. 3.113.6: Ambrakia in Epeiros). Thucydides gives vivid examples of the process of moral decay precipitated by the war, which became particularly evident in the civil wars (Thuc. 3.69-85, especially 82-3: Kerkyra). Immediately after the end of the war the Thirty Tyrants established their despotic rule in Athens: ‘For the sake of their private gain [they] have killed in eight months more Athenians, almost, than all the Peloponnesians in ten years of war’ (Xenophon Hellenika 2.4.21; trans. C. L. Brownson (Loeb)) - i. e., about 1,500 citizens (Aristotle Ath. Pol. 35.4). Nor was any mercy shown in conducting war. For instance, in the summer of 414 a force of 1,300 Thracian mercenaries under an Athenian general struck down the undefended Boiotian city of Mykalessos:
The Thracians bursting into Mycalessus sacked the houses and temples, and butchered the inhabitants, sparing neither youth nor age but killing all they fell in with, one after the other, children and women, and even beasts of burden, and whatever other living creatures they saw.. .Everywhere confusion reigned and death in all its shapes; and in particular they attacked a boys’ school, the largest that there was in the place, into which the children had just gone, and massacred them all. In short, the disaster falling upon the whole town was unsurpassed in magnitude, and unapproached by any in suddenness and in horror. (Thuc. 7.29.4-5; trans. R. Crawley)
Fighting with light armed troops, and no longer exclusively with hoplites; mercenaries alongside traditional citizen levies; virtually continuous warfare, which all but totally feeds on itself, in place of short-term warfare, in which it was possible for even the vanquished to survive - these developments, alongside increasing professionalism, were the most noteworthy ones in the wake of this great conflict, triggering what was perhaps the most significant transformation in the conduct of war. Mercenaries were roving about everywhere. The first manuals on strategy and tactics appeared. Even commanders of a citizen levy often acted like warlords, i. e., largely independent of instruction and control by political panels of their poleis (Hornblower 2002: 189-97). Their model was the Spartan Lysander. The individual who destroyed the Athenian fleet in the final battle of Aigospotamoi (405) had a sculptural group erected at Delphi as a victory monument. In contradistinction to the other naval commanders, on this monument he alone appeared amongst the gods, in the act of being crowned by Poseidon (Pausanias 10.9.7). The inscription on the base illustrates a mentality of victory and power which forms an essential prerequisite for such a thirty-year war: ‘He dedicated his statue [upon] this monument, when, victorious with his swift ships, he had destroyed the power of the sons of Ke[k]rops (i. e., Athens), Lysandros (is his name), having crowned unsacked Lacedaemon, his fatherland with its beautiful dancing-grounds, the acropolis of Greece’ (Harding 4).
World History
