Peloponnesian League

“ The population forming the Peloponnesian league were authorised to navigate the waters surrounding their own coasts and those of their allies, but they were forbidden the use of war-galleys. The signers of the treaty must guarantee to all free access to the temple and oracle of Pythian Apollo, must harbour no refugees, free or slave, must protect all heralds and deputies journeying by land or sea, must, in a word, aid by every means in their power the conclusion of permanent peace. ”

“ Private citizens shall have their disputes decided according to the laws of their several countries.
The treaty and above alliance concluded, each party at once released everything whether acquired by war or otherwise, and thenceforth acting in common voted to receive neither herald nor embassy from the Athenians unless they evacuated their forts and withdrew from Peloponnese, and also to make neither peace nor war with any, except jointly. Zeal was not wanting: both parties sent envoys to the Thracian places and to Perdiccas, and persuaded the latter to join their league. ”

“ He was a young man full of the violent and aggressive spirit of the Aetolians and was sent on a public mission to Phigalea, a city in the Peloponnese near the Messenian border and at that time in alliance with the Aetolian League; professedly to guard the city and its territory, but really to act as a spy on Peloponnesian affairs. ”

“ Feeling against Sparta in Peloponnese - League of the Mantineans, Eleans, Argives, and Athenians - Battle of Mantinea and breaking up of the League 25After the treaty and the alliance between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians, concluded after the ten years' war, in the ephorate of Pleistolas at Lacedaemon, and the archonship of Alcaeus at Athens, the states which had accepted them were at peace; but the Corinthians and some of the cities in Peloponnese trying to disturb the settlement, a fresh agitation was instantly commenced by the allies against Lacedaemon. ”

“ We have to remark here, as on former occasions of revolts among the dependent allies of Athens, that the general population of the allied city manifests no previous discontent, nor any spontaneous disposition to revolt. The powerful men of the island—those who, if the government was democratical, formed the oligarchical minority, but who formed the government itself, if oligarchical—conspire and bring in the Peloponnesian force, unknown to the body of the citizens, and thus leave to the latter no free choice. ”

“ This oligarchy was overthrown again in June, and the new democracy having vainly sought an agreement with Sparta rejoined Athens. It was thus left to Athens to expend men and money on protecting a democracy by the aid of which she had hoped practically to control the Peloponnesus. All this time, however, the alliance between her and Sparta was not officially broken.
The unsatisfactory character of the Athenian Peloponnesian coalition was one of the negative causes which led up to the Sicilian Expedition of 415. ”

“ In a single battle the Peloponnesians and their allies may be able to defy all Hellas, but they are incapacitated from carrying on a war against a power different in character from their own, by the want of the single council-chamber requisite to prompt and vigorous action, and the substitution of a diet composed of various races, in which every state possesses an equal vote, and each presses its own ends, a condition of things which generally results in no action at all. The great wish of some is to avenge themselves on some particular enemy, the great wish of others to save their own pocket. ”

“ After this, Thrasybulus, son of Lycus, and Thrasyllus, the chief leaders in the revolution, now wishing in the most public manner to change the government at Samos to a democracy, bound all the soldiers by the most tremendous oaths, and those of the oligarchical party more than any, to accept a democratic government, to be united, to prosecute actively the war with the Peloponnesians, and to be enemies of the Four Hundred, and to hold no communication with them. ”

“ For though many statesmen had tried in past times to induce the Peloponnesians to join in a league for the common interests of all, and had always failed, because every one was working to secure his own power rather than the freedom of the whole; yet in our day this policy has made such progress, and been carried out with such completeness, that not only is there in the Peloponnese a community of interests such as exists between allies or friends, but an absolute identity of laws, weights, measures, and currency.155 All the States have the same magistrates, senate, and judges. ”

“ If each separately governed territory were inhabited by a people so organised within itself, there would be nothing to lead to the association of the public spirit of the good citizen with military aggressiveness,—an association which belongs properly not to the πολιτεία [1] , but to the δυναστεία. The Greek states, however complete might be the equality of their citizens among themselves, were all δυναστείαι in relation to some subject populations, and, as such, jealous of each other. The Peloponnesian war was eminently a war of rival δυναστείαι. ”

“ In a struggle with Peloponnesians and neighbours our strength is of the same character, and it is possible to move swiftly on the different points. But a struggle with a people who live in a distant land, who have also an extraordinary familiarity with the sea, and who are in the highest state of preparation in every other department; with wealth private and public, with ships, and horses, and heavy infantry, and a population such as no one other Hellenic place can equal, and lastly a number of tributary allies—what can justify us in rashly beginning such a struggle? ”

“ In the face of the fact that the Peloponnesians had as many ships as their own confronting them at sea, more cities in alliance with them, and the King and Tissaphernes to supply them with money, of which the Athenians had none left, had he any hope of saving the state, unless someone could induce the King to come over to their side? ”

“ As to the war and the resources of either party, a detailed comparison will not show you the inferiority of Athens. Personally engaged in the cultivation of their land, without funds either private or public, the Peloponnesians are also without experience in long wars across sea, from the strict limit which poverty imposes on their attacks upon each other. Powers of this description are quite incapable of often manning a fleet or often sending out an army: they cannot afford the absence from their homes, the expenditure from their own funds ”

“ And no one can quarrel with a people for making, in matters of tremendous risk, the best provision that it can for its interest.
“You, at all events, Lacedaemonians, have used your supremacy to settle the states in Peloponnese as is agreeable to you. And if at the period of which we were speaking you had persevered to the end of the matter, and had incurred hatred in your command, we are sure that you would have made yourselves just as galling to the allies, and would have been forced to choose between a strong government and danger to yourselves. ”

“ Peloponnesians and allies, our fathers made many campaigns both within and without Peloponnese, and the elder men among us here are not without experience in war. Yet we have never set out with a larger force than the present; and if our numbers and efficiency are remarkable, so also is the power of the state against which we march. We ought not then to show ourselves inferior to our ancestors, or unequal to our own reputation. For the hopes and attention of all Hellas are bent upon the present effort, and its sympathy is with the enemy of the hated Athens. ”

“ Eurybiades still retained the chief command. A council of war was held. The greater number of the more influential allies were composed of Peloponnesians, and, with the countenance of the Spartan chief, it was proposed to retire from Salamis and fix the station in the isthmus near the land-forces of Peloponnesus. This was highly consonant to the interested policy of the Peloponnesian states, and especially to that of Sparta; Attica was considered already lost, and the fate of that territory they were therefore indisposed to consider. ”

“ These things give us some light into Pelopidas's life. Now when Alexander, the tyrant of Pherae, made open war against some of the Thessalians, and had designs against all, the cities sent an embassy to Thebes, to desire succors and a general; and Pelopidas, knowing that Epaminondas was detained by the Peloponnesian affairs, offered himself to lead the Thessalians, being unwilling to let his courage and skill lie idle, and thinking it unfit that Epaminondas should be withdrawn from his present duties. ”

“ Alcibiades, he rightly thought, cared no more for an oligarchy than for a democracy, and only sought to change the institutions of his country in order to get himself recalled by his associates; while for themselves their one object should be to avoid civil discord. It was not the King's interest, when the Peloponnesians were now their equals at sea, and in possession of some of the chief cities in his empire, to go out of his way to side with the Athenians whom he did not trust, when he might make friends of the Peloponnesians who had never injured him. ”

“ Later on, one may say, the whole Hellenic world was convulsed; struggles being every, where made by the popular chiefs to bring in the Athenians, and by the oligarchs to introduce the Lacedaemonians. In peace there would have been neither the pretext nor the wish to make such an invitation; but in war, with an alliance always at the command of either faction for the hurt of their adversaries and their own corresponding advantage, opportunities for bringing in the foreigner were never wanting to the revolutionary parties. ”

“ After the Median War we had a fleet, and so got rid of the empire and supremacy of the Lacedaemonians, who had no right to give orders to us more than we to them, except that of being the strongest at that moment; and being appointed leaders of the King’s former subjects, we continue to be so, thinking that we are least likely to fall under the dominion of the Peloponnesians, if we have a force to defend ourselves with, and in strict truth having done nothing unfair in reducing to subjection the Ionians and islanders, the kinsfolk whom the Syracusans say we have enslaved. ”

“ The sense of a common peril and a common triumph brought with it the need of a common union; it was Athens, however, instead of Sparta, by whom the first conscious effort was made to transcend the isolation of the Greek political system and to bring the units into combination. The league thus founded (the Delian League, established in 477 B.C.) was under the presidency of Athens, but it included hardly any other state besides those that had conducted the defence of Greece. ”

“ In this war a new confederacy was formed, which was extended beyond the Peloponnese; the community of danger and of victory having, besides a momentary combination, also produced a union destined for some duration. It was the assembly of this league—a fixed congress at Corinth during, and at Sparta after, the war—that settled the internal differences of Greece, that invited Argos, Corcyra, and Gelo to join the league, and afterwards called upon Themistocles to answer for his proceedings. ”

“ The old Spartan life had to be stamped out, the new citizens must be strangled, because the old Sparta and the strong Sparta would not join the Achæans and so the Peloponnese remained divided. With the idea that the unity of the Peloponnese was gained at last, and that the bond was solid and complete, Philopœmen and his friends may have rested from the festival of murder in Sparta, which now found herself once more forced into the Achæan League. ”

“ You it was who first allowed them to fortify their city after the Median war, and afterwards to erect the long walls—you who, then and now, are always depriving of freedom not only those whom they have enslaved, but also those who have as yet been your allies. For the true author of the subjugation of a people is not so much the immediate agent, as the power which permits it having the means to prevent it; particularly if that power aspires to the glory of being the liberator of Hellas. ”

“ It was to this dispute that the real origin of the Peloponnesian war is to be traced. And though most people thought Athens quite justified in holding what she had obtained, and not surrendering the empire which had cost such labour and returned in exchange such great glory, yet the general feeling of the Greek world was distinctly in favour of the seceder,—in favour of the inalienable right of every city to reassert its autonomy as a separate State [180:1] , not only with communal independence, but with perfect liberty to treat as it chose with neighbouring States. ”

“ But do not lay down the principle that defection is to be patronized. Did we on the defection of the Samians record our vote against you, when the rest of the Peloponnesian powers were equally divided on the question whether they should assist them? No, we told them to their face that every power has a right to punish its own allies. Why, if you make it your policy to receive and assist all offenders, you will find that just as many of your dependencies will come over to us, and the principle that you establish will press less heavily on us than on yourselves. ”

“ Next, in regard to education, while the Lacedæmonians, even from their earliest youth, subject themselves to an irksome exercise for the attainment of courage, we, with our easy habits of life, are not less prepared than they, to encounter all perils within the measure of our strength. The proof of this is, that the Peloponnesian confederates do not attack us one by one, but with their whole united force; while we, when we attack them at home, overpower for the most part all of them who try to defend their own territory. None of our enemies has ever met and contended with our entire force ”