The way in which it had come into being meant that the Peace of Nicias stood on shaky foundations. After ten hard years of war, bad feelings lingered on both sides. The chief wish of the Athenians had been that they should receive
A History of Greece: 1300 to 30 BC, First Edition. Victor Parker.
© 2014 Victor Parker. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Amphipolis back - yet they had not and, rightly or wrongly, blamed Lacedaemonian recalcitrance. The Lacedaemonians for their part cast a worried eye on the presence of Athenian bases around Laconia, especially Cythera and Pylos.
Moreover, in many ways the diplomatic situation in Greece was, precisely because of its lack of clarity, far more dangerous than it had been in the period before the war. Many members of the Peloponnesian League (in particular Corinth) had deserted Sparta in the aftermath of Sparta’s unilateral swearing of an alliance with Athens. The Corinthians along with other states on the Peloponnese - e. g., Mantinea - began negotiations with Argos, which hitherto had stood aloof from the war (Thuc. V 27 and 29). These negotiations might have led to a fundamental realignment of alliances in Greece which could have shunted both Athens and Sparta to one side. Neither Athens nor Sparta could have watched these negotiations with equanimity.
In 420 the Lacedaemonians added to the atmosphere of suspicion by the way in which they fulfilled a minor condition in the Peace of Nicias (the handing over of a fortification in Boeotia along with the release of Athenian prisoners held by the Boeotians). On the Athenian view of events the Lacedaemonians had not quite upheld the spirit of the treaty, while the Lacedaemonians for their part felt that they had indeed carried out the letter. To make matters worse, the Lacedaemonians had also negotiated an alliance with the Boeotians (Thuc. V 42). Since the Boeotians and the Athenians were enemies of long standing, the latter viewed this alliance with deep suspicion.
Shortly thereafter, the Athenians began to negotiate with Argos. According to Thucydides, Alcibiades, a rising politician in Athens, drove these negotiations for personal reasons (Thuc. V 43) though one can easily suggest others - in particular, the way in which Argos appeared to be putting together a large alliance could have made some in Athens wish for good terms with this rising power. The negotiations between Athens and Argos, on the other hand, cannot have failed to alarm the Lacedaemonians. Still, nothing in the text of either the Peace of Nicias or in the alliance between Athens and Sparta prevented either party from swearing an alliance with a neutral third party, and in the end Athens made an alliance with Argos and two Argive allies, Mantinea and Elis (Thuc. V 47). All main parties had negotiated on behalf of any allies under their control as well. This move left Sparta perilously isolated diplomatically and probably increased the likelihood of a renewal of the war.
The affair which would cause the Peace of Nicias to break apart was comparatively trivial. Argos and Epidaurus, Argos’ neighbor to the north, had a long-standing quarrel concerning a temple of Apollo Pythiaeus on the border between the two states (Thuc. V 53). Athens’ treaty with Argos obligated it to render the Argives assistance in case of war. Epidaurus, for its part, had remained within the Peloponnesian League. What was bound to happen, did, and soon enough Athens and Sparta were at war again.
As this second phase of the war began, the Athenians gave up entirely on Pericles’ strategy of never meeting the Lacedaemonians in the field. This time, relying on their alliance with Argos, Mantinea, and Elis, the Athenians marched to the Peloponnese. The two sides met at Mantinea in 418. The result bore out the wisdom of Pericles’ strategic judgment. Although the Athenians nearly won, in the end Lacedaemonian experience and training paid off. With the Lacedaemonian victory (Thuc. V 66-74), the entire diplomatic landscape shifted dramatically. The chastened Argives quickly concluded a treaty with Sparta whereby they for the first time ever entered the Peloponnesian League (Thuc. V 77-79). Various other states hastened to join or rejoin the Peloponnesian League, which now stood in a far stronger position than at the beginning of the Archidamian War.
For the remainder of 418 and all of 417 Thucydides has practically nothing to record of Athenian activities. The loss at Mantinea seems to have demoralized the Athenians completely. In 416, however, they made a minor expedition to the small Cycladic island of Melos. This island was one of the very few in the Aegean which had remained outside of their empire. A place of no real consequence, the Athenians had never bothered with it much in the decades preceding the Peloponnesian War. During the war itself, there had been raids on Melos, but, again, the island was too insignificant to become the target of a major expedition. Until now.
Having failed at Mantinea, the Athenian military leadership, desperately in need of a victory to boost morale, planned an expedition against Melos. The Melians had no chance of withstanding such an attack and succumbed rapidly enough. Thucydides, however, used this occasion as the subject of one of the most intriguing sections of his work, the so-called Melian Dialogue.
This fictional debate takes place between anonymous Athenians and anonymous Melians. The Athenians advance purely pragmatic reasons both for why the Melians should surrender and for why the Athenians should force them so to do. The Melians respond with considerations of justice - considerations which the Athenians brusquely push aside. The dialogue revolves around the same major issue as the Mytilenaean Debate (see chap. 13), only this time the Athenians had no change of heart; after they conquered Melos, they put the men there to death and enslaved the women and children (Thuc. V 84-116).
The campaign on Melos, if its purpose was to restore Athenian morale, succeeded admirably. In 415 the Athenians voted in favor of the biggest expedition which they had ever undertaken. It had nothing to do with Sparta. Instead, the Athenians planned to conquer the island of Sicily.
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