Today we will learn and reflect on the history of the Peloponnesian Wars
after the death of Pericles, through the Peace of Nicias that lasted half a
dozen years before Athens embarked on the disastrous Sicilian
Expedition.
This period of history includes many of the most memorable stories told
by Thucydides that reveal much of Greek culture and history, and how
the enemies of the Athenian democracy fought for the freedom of the
Greeks from the tyranny of the Athenian Empire. We will also reflect on
how the battlefield deaths of the Athenian leader Cleon, and the Spartan
leader Brasidas at the Battle of Amphipolis, led to the Peace of Nicias. We
will also reflect on Plutarch’s Life of Nicias.

The Platonic dialogues were written soon after the
Peloponnesian Wars; you cannot understand the dialogues
without understanding the history of these wars.
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used for
this video. Please feel free to follow along our PowerPoint
script posted to SlideShare. Please, we welcome
interesting questions in the comments. Let us learn and
reflect together!

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This video is part of a series of videos on the Peloponnesian Wars. After
the Greco-Persian Wars, for which Herodotus is the main source, the
Greek cities in Ionia, what is today western Turkey, requested that the
Athenian generals Aristides and Cimon organize the Delian League as an
alliance preventing Persian domination. Eventually, this alliance evolved
into the Athenian Empire, which was the ancient equivalent of the British
Empire.
Sparta and her allies became concerned and suspicious as the Athenian
Empire grew in power and influence. Conflicts between Athens and the
Spartan allies led to the start of the Peloponnesian Wars under the
Athenian general and statesman Pericles, who had also helped found the
Radical Democracy of Athens.

https://youtu.be/QabwtFANCDc
https://youtu.be/uhtGzfxVdzk
https://youtu.be/1ra58mg33nM
Aristides and Cimon were two Athenian generals who were
asked by the Ionic Greek colonies to lead the defensive Delian
League against Persia, that evolved into the Athenian Empire.
The rise of Pericles and the reforms leading
to the Radical Democracy of Athens before
the start of the Peloponnesian Wars.
Pericles as general and statesman before and
at the start of the Peloponnesian Wars. He died
in the second year of the war from the Plague.

In this current video, we examine the first phase of the Peloponnesian
Wars, or the Archidamian War, from the death of Pericles, through the
Peace of Nicias.

https://youtu.be/1ra58mg33nM
The play by Aristophanes on the Peace of Nicias,
showing popular opinion of the war. We ponder
whether Pericles started the war needlessly.
The Peace of Nicias, and why it was not so
peaceful, ending the Archidamian War,
the first phase of the Peloponnesian Wars.
Comparing and contrasting:
Pericles’ Funeral Oration
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
Churchill’s speech, Battle of Britain
CURRENT VIDEO

Thucydides admired the policies of Pericles. Pericles was indeed a
formidable statesman, who was a skilled politician who sought to
persuade his citizens to promote the interests of the state rather than
seeking to always please the electorate with popular decisions. Pericles
had the misfortune to die from the plague in the second year of the
thirty-year Peloponnesian Wars, so we cannot say whether his reputation
would have suffered had he fought the war for another decade or two.
Like John F Kennedy, who was assassinated during his first term, the
perceived wisdom of Pericles was enhanced by his early passing. Perhaps
Thucydides would have been more critical of Pericles had he lived longer.

Plague of Athens,
by François
Perrier, circa 1640

As Professor Kenneth Harl points out, Pericles’ strategy of permitting the
Spartans ravage the Athenian countryside while the Athenians boarded
their ships and ravaged the countryside and food supply of the
Peloponnese allies lead to a deadlock that could not be broken. Perhaps
Pericles thought that after half a dozen years of such constant suffering
the Spartans would simply sue for peace, but this would not happen as
the citizens of both sides would deepen their anger for their enemies,
guaranteeing that this war would indeed, as the Spartan King Archidamus
warned, be a war that they would pass down to their children.

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)
ARCHIDAMIAN WAR, FIRST PHASE OF THE
PELOPONNESIAN WARS
• Pericles strategy ensured deadlock,
continuous war with no end in sight.

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)
ARCHIDAMIAN WAR, FIRST PHASE OF THE
PELOPONNESIAN WARS
• Pericles strategy ensured deadlock,
continuous war with no end in sight.
• As the Athenian and Spartan citizens
suffered, their hatred for the other side
grew, standing the way of a lasting
armistice.

Cimon takes command of the Greek Fleet, illustration
from 'Hutchinson's History of the Nations', 1915

After the death of Pericles, no popular leader arose that was able to
dominate the Assembly like Pericles, which meant that it was impossible
to follow a consistently stable wartime policy. Instead, Thucydides
described a series of orators call demagogues. Pericles was elected to be
a general for a dozen yearlong terms, in this war generals had to fight
long campaigns and were unable to constantly address the Assembly,
which led to the rise of the demagogue orators, who were often more
interested in promoting polices that were popular with the people, rather
than promoting policies that would benefit the state.

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)
ARCHIDAMIAN WAR, FIRST PHASE OF THE
PELOPONNESIAN WARS
• Pericles strategy ensured deadlock,
continuous war with no end in sight.
• As the Athenian and Spartan citizens
suffered, their hatred for the other side
grew, standing the way of a lasting
armistice.
• After Pericles, no leader was able to
dominate the Assembly, leading to the
rise of demagogues, which made a
consistent wartime policy impossible.

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)
ARCHIDAMIAN WAR, FIRST PHASE OF THE
PELOPONNESIAN WARS
• Pericles strategy ensured deadlock,
continuous war with no end in sight.
• As the Athenian and Spartan citizens
suffered, their hatred for the other side
grew, standing the way of a lasting
armistice.
• After Pericles, no leader was able to
dominate the Assembly, leading to the
rise of demagogues, which made a
consistent wartime policy impossible.
• Generals had to fight the war full-time
without addressing the Assembly, which
lead to the rise of the demagogue orators.

We meet the first and most infamous demagogue,
Cleon, during the last years of Pericles when many
Athenians were dying from the plague behind the walls
of Athens while the Spartan hoplites were ravaging
their fields and their homes. We cannot improve on
Will Durant’s choice of words, so we will quote him
directly:
“The Athenians, desperate with the combined
sufferings of epidemic and war, accused Pericles of
responsibility for both. Cleon and others indicted him
on the charge of misusing public funds; since he had
apparently employed state money to bribe the Spartan
kings to peace, he was unable to provide a satisfactory
accounting; Pericles was convicted, deposed from
office, and fined an enormous sum.”

In our prior video, we discussed the memorable
passages from Thucydides that describe how the
Athenians suffered from the plague, and how the
Athenians had a change of heart, rehabilitating
Pericles to his former position of prominence, but as
Pericles himself was suffering from the effects of the
plague, he died soon thereafter.

https://youtu.be/wyjWBAG6xrc

Will Durant said that “Pericles’
successors were too impatient to carry
out a program that required a proud
self-control. The new masters of the
democracy were merchants like Cleon
the leather dealer, Eucrates the rope
seller, Hyperbolus the lamp maker; and
these men demanded an active war on
land and on sea. Cleon was the ablest
of them, the most eloquent,
unscrupulous, and corrupt.”

This was truly a world war of the ancient world, and like World
War I and World War II, there are many small and large battles in
many theaters of war, we will look at only a few of these
struggles in detail to learn how the first phase of the
Peloponnesian Wars, the Archidamian War, was fought.
Updating our list of trends of the Peloponnesian Wars, we will
add that Greek generals were typically in charge of both land and
sea operations.
We can also add to this list from the lessons we learned from the
conflicts we described in our video, Thucydides’ Moral Lessons of
the Peloponnesian Wars,

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)
TRENDS IN PELOPONNESIAN WARS
• Pericles strategy ensured deadlock,
continuous war with no end in sight.
• As the Athenian and Spartan citizens
suffered, their hatred for the other side
grew, standing the way of a lasting
armistice.
• After Pericles, no leader was able to
dominate the Assembly, leading to the
rise of demagogues, which made a
consistent wartime policy impossible.
• Generals had to fight the war full-time
without addressing the Assembly, which
lead to the rise of the demagogue orators.
• Greek generals were in charge of both
land and sea operations.

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)
TRENDS IN PELOPONNESIAN WARS
• REVOLT OF MYTILENE
Often allegiances were determined not by
love or distaste for radical democracy, but
local politics, where weaker states sought
alliances to protect them against stronger
neighbors.
• City-state representatives were often
permitted to address the assemblies of
their enemies.
• MELIAN DEBATE
In the ancient world, often when hostile
city-states were utterly defeated, the men
were slain, or sometimes condemned to
be worked to death in the mines, and the
women and children were enslaved.

LEADERS AND GENERALS OF THE WAR
We have already met Cleon, the demagogue who was disdained by Thucydides
because he was likely instrumental in his exile after his military misfortune in
Amphipolis. Cleon’s counterpart was the Spartan general Brasidas, who led a daring
campaign against the Athenian colonies on the East Coast of Greece.
Plutarch no doubt would have written a history of the life of the general
Demosthenes, had he not been massacred in the Battle of Syracuse due to the
bumbling of Nicias. He is not to be confused with the orator Demosthenes, who a
century later warned of the dangers of tolerating the Macedonians under King
Philip, father of Alexander the Great. Demosthenes was a brilliant general, always
willing to try unorthodox strategies in addition to the set hoplite infantry battles,
also using tactics of skirmishing and surprise attacks, often at night. Victories are
victories, no matter how they are won.

In our next video we will see how the indecisiveness of Nicias in the Battle of
Syracuse weakened the Athenian Empire, leading to its eventual defeat. But he will
be somewhat of a hero in this video, as he negotiated the Peace of Nicias, which
gave Athens a respite for half a dozen years from the annual invasions of the
Spartans into Attica, razing their fields and their homes outside the walls.
Plutarch did write a biography for Nicias, the only biography of a man famous for his
ultimate failures rather than his earlier successes. You can argue that Nicias did not
gain his immense wealth honestly, unless you can call working slaves to death in his
silver mines honest, but it was not against the laws of the day, and he was not
suspected of corruption in the offices he held. His greatest failing was not a moral
failing, but rather fatal indecision, indecision which assisted in his early perceived
successes and ultimate spectacular failure at the Battle of Syracuse, where hundreds
of triremes were destroyed, and nearly all the Athenian rowers and hoplites were
either slain or enslaved, and they were a large portion of the citizenry of Athens .

Plutarch is kinder towards Nicias than
Thucydides, he quotes Aristotle as saying
that Nicias was one of the “best citizens
of Athens, demonstrating goodwill and
affection of a father towards the general
populace.” Many Athenians could see
through “Cleon’s attempts to flatter
them, sensing his self-seeking ambition,
arrogance and effrontery, and they
tended to back Nicias. The lofty manner
of Nicias was blended with a certain
caution, rather than being harsh or
overbearing. His apparent fear of the
people made him a popular leader.”

Nicias did not have the political acumen of Pericles,
but he was enormously wealthy, so “he used his
wealth to win the leadership of the people. Since he
lacked the confidence to match Cleon’s tactic of
using unscrupulous and flattering trickery to handle
the Athenian people, he tried to win them over by
paying for extravaganzas such as dramatic and
athletic competitions, which he made more stylish,
and on which he spent more money, than any of his
predecessors and contemporaries.” “Nicias was
surrounded by people asking for handouts.” “He
gave money who could do him harm just as much as
he did to people who deserved his benevolence,
which meant that bad men made money from his
timidity and good men from his generosity.”

Nicias’ timidity both ensured his early
military successes as it doomed his
largest expedition. Plutarch tells us,
“Nicias tried to evade problematic or
lengthy commands, and whenever he
went on an expedition himself, he
made safety his primary concern;
consequently, he was usually
successful.” Whenever he
commanded a fleet that was sent as
reinforcement, Nicias nearly always
arrived after the battle was fought to
congratulate the Athenian victors.

Socrates in Battle of Potidaea protecting Alcibiades, by PV Basin, 1828
PROGRESS OF THE WAR
There are many battles Thucydides
discusses at length:
• The Athenians won the Battle of
Potidaea, notable because in this
battle Socrates saved the life of his
student, Alcibiades.
• The Athenian generals Demosthenes
and Phormio score many military
victories in northwest Greece.
• The Athenians successfully
campaigned in Sicily. Syracuse was a
Spartan ally, so many smaller Sicilian
cities allied with Athens. Sicily was a
breadbasket for the Peloponnese.

DEMOSTHENES ESTABLISHES AN ATHENIAN BASE AT PYLOS
One of the most remarkable stories of the war was how
Demosthenes establishes an Athenian base at Pylos,
scarcely forty-five miles from Sparta itself. When they
heard news of the Revolution of Corcyra, the Athenian
fleet were off the Laconian coast.

Demosthenes wanted to first stop and establish a
base at Pylos, at the southwest of the Peloponnese,
the other generals objected, but as Thucydides tells
us, “a storm brewed, and the ships were forced to
land at Pylos. Demosthenes immediately proposed
fortifying the place, since this was the reason why he
joined the expedition. He pointed out there was
plenty of timber and stone available, that it was in a
naturally strong defensible position, and together
with most of the surrounding country, was mostly
uninhabited.” The other generals were opposed, but
since the bad weather persisted, Demosthenes
convinced the men to start building fortifications.

Why didn’t the Spartans immediately oppose them?
Thucydides tells us, “the Spartans were celebrating a
religious festival, and they did not take the news of the
occupation of Pylos seriously, being sure that, once they
marched against it, either the Athenians would
withdraw, or else they would easily storm the position.
The fact that their main army was still attacking Attica
played a part in their holding back.”
Thucydides continues, “the Athenians spent six days
fortifying the place on the side facing the land and in
other necessary parts. They then left Demosthenes in
charge with five ships as a garrison and hurried on their
way to Corcyra and Sicily with the main body of their
fleet. When the Peloponnesians in Attica heard of the
capture of Pylos, they immediately withdrew and
returned home,” after spending only fifteen days
ravaging Attica.

Why did Demosthenes imagine that the heavily outnumbered Athenians defend
the hastily constructed fortifications of Pylos, with only five triremes, so close to
Sparta? Certainly, more triremes would be on their way, and the ancient sources
do not mention this, but Demosthenes must have previously thoroughly scouted
this area, studying the terrain and shorelines, pondering how best to defend a
quickly assembled garrison. The Athenian camp at Pylos was located on a narrow
peninsula, its geography was ideally suited for defense. This was one of the most
amazing battles of the Peloponnesian Wars.
The Spartans planned their attack on the fortifications at Pylos. Since the only
place to easily land ships was on the nearby island of Sphacteria, which also was
uninhabited, heavily wooded, and one and a half miles long, they garrisoned the
island with four hundred hoplites plus supporting helots. The Athenians only had
only second-class arms they purchased from an arms merchant sailing by, in
addition to their small number of fitted hoplite forces.

We read Thucydides as much for the speeches as
we do the action, and he does not disappoint us
when Demosthenes encourages his troops: “The
odds are on our side, as long as we are determined
to hold our ground and do not throw away our
very real advantages through being frightened by
our enemy’s numbers. One factor in our favor is
that this is a difficult place for a ship landing, but
this is an advantage to us only if we stand firm.
Once we give way, the going, however difficult it is,
will become easy for them, since there will be no
one to resist them.” He concludes his speech with,
“stand firm, meet the enemy right down on the
water’s edge, and preserve this position and our
own lives.”
Greek hoplite reenactor on the Areopagus.

The small contingent of Athenians
did indeed stand firm against the
Spartan attacks for two days.
Thucydides tells us, “the Spartans
could not force a landing because
of the difficulty of the ground and
because the Athenians stood firm
and did not yield an inch. It was
indeed a strange altercation for
Athenians to be fighting a battle
on land, Spartan land, against
Spartans attacking from the sea,
and for Spartans to be trying to
make a naval landing on their own
shores, now hostile to them,
against Athenian opposition.”
A spartan woman giving a shield to her son, by Jean-Jacques-François
Le Barbier, painted 1826

Late on the second day fifty Athenian triremes
appeared. The Athenian fleet engaged the Spartan
triremes from both entrances into the bay, defeating
them. Then the Spartans panicked when they realized
their precious army of four hundred hoplites was
stranded on the island of Sphacteria. They panicked
because many of these trapped hoplites were from
the leading families of Sparta.

Thucydides describes this
surprising change of events, “the
Spartans decided to conclude an
armistice at Pylos with the
Athenian generals, if they would
agree to it, and also to send
ambassadors to Athens with a
view to ending the war and so
getting back their men as quickly
as possible.”
Three Spartan Boys Practising Archery,
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, circa 1812

Acropolis, by Leo von Klenze, painted 1846
The terms of the armistice were:
• The Spartans were permitted to send to their men a healthy daily
ration of food and wine, under Athenian supervision.
• The Athenians would not land on the island, and attacks would cease.
• The Spartans surrendered their sixty ships until the peace was
negotiated, Spartan ambassadors would sail to Athens on Athenian
triremes to negotiate the peace.

Thucydides provides more moral
lessons from the speeches of these
Spartan ambassadors to the Athenian
Assembly:
“Sparta calls upon you to make a treaty
to end the war. She offers you peace,
alliance, friendly and neighborly
relations. In return she asks for the
men on the island, since it is better for
both sides that this war not proceed to
the bitter end.” “In our view, where
great hatreds exist, no lasting
settlement can be made in a spirit of
revenge, when one side gets the better
of things in war and forces its
opponent to swear to carry out the
terms of an unequal treaty.”
Allegory of War and Peace, by Victor Wolfvoet II, 1630

A treaty of the type that Thucydides warns
against is the punitive Treaty of Versailles ending
World War I, where the war guilt clause and
punishing reparations help pave the way for the
Nazis to spark World War II.

Treaty of Versailles : German delegate Johannes Bell signing the treaty in the Hall of
Mirrors, with various Allied delegations sitting and standing in front of him
The Germans were shocked by the draconian terms of the Versailles Treaty, restrictions were
placed on German industry and military, German colonies were distributed among the Allies,
Germany had to pay heavy reparations, and were forced to accept a humiliating war guilt clause.

The Spartans continued, “As for
Sparta and Athens, if ever there was
a good time for making peace it is
now, before some irremediable
event overtakes us, something
which would force us into an
unending hatred of you, personal as
well as political, and would deprive
you of the hope of what we are
offering you at this moment.”
Allegory of Peace: Peace is being crowned by a woman in armor, while
trampling the allegory of War under her feet, by Jan Lievens, 1652

The Athenians thought they
had the upper hand; the
Athenians were not ready for
peace. Thucydides tells us,
“the Athenians aimed at
winning still more, and, as
for making peace, they
considered that while they
had the men on the island
they could do so whenever
they liked. The man who,
more than others,
encouraged them in this
attitude was Cleon,” the
demagogue Thucydides
hated so intensely.
An Allegory of War, by Jan Breughel the Younger

The Combat of Ares and Athena, by Jacques-Louis David, 1771
Thucydides tells us, “At
Pylos the war was waged
vigorously by both sides.”
More Athenian triremes
arrived. The Spartans
continued their attack on
the palisades. Food was
smuggled to the Spartan
contingent on the island.
But winter was
approaching, there was
only a small spring and
brackish water on Pylos,
the Athenians were
restless, what to do?

CLEON, WITH HELP FROM DEMOSTHENES,
TRIUMPHANT AT SPHACTERIA
We will switch to Plutarch and his life of Nicias, since
he has a more entertaining account of the upcoming
battle, and Thucydides is only one of his sources.

Plutarch accuses Cleon of having nefarious motives,
when he states that “the Athenians regretted
dismissing a Lacedaemonian delegation which had
come to them to discuss a truce and terms for
peace. They had rejected the offer as a result of
Cleon’s opposition, and Cleon had opposed it mainly
because of Nicias. Cleon was Nicias’ political enemy
and when he saw how enthusiastic Nicias was in his
dealings with the Lacedaemonians, he persuaded
the Athenian people to vote against the truce. So,
when the blockade at Pylos was starting to drag on,
and they heard about the terrible difficulties their
troops were operating, they were angry with Cleon.”

Plutarch continues, “Cleon tried to divert the
blame on to Nicias. He accused him of being
so timid and irresolute that he was letting
the Spartans slip out of his grasp and
claimed that, if he had been in command,
they would not have slipped out of his grasp.
At this point it occurred to the Athenians to
say, ‘It’s not too late. Why don’t you take a
fleet and get the men yourself?”
Another surprise: “Nicias then stood up and
resigned his command of the expedition to
Pylos in Cleon’s favor; he suggested that
Cleon take as large a force as he liked, rather
than boasting in mere words which involved
no risk, actually achieve something
significant for Athens.”

Cleon was merely making an argument, he
did not expect the debate to proceed like
this, he had never served as a general. “At
first, in his confusion, he tried to draw
back, but provoked by the Athenians’
insistence and Nicias’ taunts, he became
fired by ambition: he accepted the
command and also declared that within
twenty days of setting sail he would either
kill the Spartans there or bring them back
alive to Athens. The Athenians were more
likely to laugh long and loud at this than
believe him, because they had learnt from
other occasions to treat his capricious
impetuosity as a rather good joke.”

Plutarch states that “Cleon was lucky, he
did an excellent job as commander of the
operation, along with Demosthenes, and
within the specified time he brought back
as prisoners of war the Spartans who had
surrendered and survived the battle.”
Professor Kenneth Harl says this was not
luck, Cleon knew his limitations, and relied
heavily on the advice of Demosthenes to
achieve his objectives, he had already
formulated a plan to achieve this objective.

Plutarch observes, “Nicias’ reputation
suffered dreadfully as a result of Cleon’s
success. For a soldier to abandon his shield is
bad enough, but it seemed somehow worse,
more disgraceful, for Nicias to have
voluntarily resigned his command out of
timidity, and to have handed over to his
political enemy the opportunity to achieve
such an important success by voting himself
out of an office. Aristophanes mocks Nicias
for this in the Birds:
Right, yes, it’s certainly time for us to stop,
Drowsing and procrastinating!”

No doubt Nicias would have frittered away victory had he led the expedition, but by resigning he
encourages the hubris and arrogance of Cleon, which would hurt future endeavors.
The battle continued at Pylos, there was deadlock, until the Messenians asked for light archers to
accompany them to the Spartan rear through the rugged countryside, trapping the Spartans in a
hopeless position. For the first time in memory a Spartan force surrendered, increasing the
number of prisoners of war sent to Athens.
CLEON AND BRASIDIS PERISH AT BATTLE OF AMPHIPOLIS
The Spartan commander Brasidas decided to counterpunch the Athenians by attacking their
colonies and valuable possessions while the Athenians were ravaging the Peloponnese from Pylos.
Brasidas marched to Thrace in northeast Greece, avoiding conflicts with neutral powers who had
not consented to passage of his armies, and later he captured Amphipolis, which controlled the
valuable Athenian silver mines. Cleon was assigned an army, and marched to meet him, fancying
that he was now an experienced general. Cleon’s incompetence exposed the Athenian army to
attack by Brasidas, and Cleon broke and ran, but did not outrun the soldier’s spear.

Cimon takes command of the Greek Fleet, illustration from
'Hutchinson's History of the Nations', 1915

Will Durant says that “Cleon redeemed himself
by dying in battle against the Spartan hero
Brasidas, who had been capturing one after
another of the cities subject or allied to Athens
in the mainland north.” “It was in this campaign
that Thucydides lost his naval commission and
his Athenian residence by coming up too tardily
to the relief of Amphipolis, which commanded
the gold mines of Thrace. Brasidas having died in
the same campaign, Sparta, left leaderless in the
face of a threatened Helot revolt, offered peace
again; and Athens, for once taking the advice of
the oligarchic leader, signed the Peace of Nicias.”
Assault by Brasidis, by Walter Crane, 1900’s

Here we want to update Trends of the Peloponnesian
Wars. When he was relieved of his command and
exiled, Thucydides was given refuge by Sparta, and
unlike Alcibiades after him, he did not turn traitor,
but rather started gathering material for his History
of the Peloponnesian War. Which reveals that, in
ancient Greece, aristocrats could freely move
between city-states even in the midst of war.

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)
ARCHIDAMIAN WAR, FIRST PHASE OF THE
PELOPONNESIAN WARS
• Pericles strategy ensured deadlock,
continuous war with no end in sight.
• As the Athenian and Spartan citizens
suffered, their hatred for the other side
grew, standing the way of a lasting
armistice.
• After Pericles, no leader was able to
dominate the Assembly, leading to the
rise of demagogues, which made a
consistent wartime policy impossible.
• Generals had to fight the war full-time
without addressing the Assembly, which
lead to the rise of the demagogue orators.
• Greek generals were in charge of both
land and sea operations.

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)
ARCHIDAMIAN WAR, FIRST PHASE OF THE
PELOPONNESIAN WARS
• Often allegiances were determined not
by love or distaste for radical democracy,
but local politics, where weaker states
feared their stronger neighbors.
• City-state representatives were often
permitted to address the assemblies of
their enemies.
• Often when hostile city-states were
utterly defeated, the men were slain, and
the women and children were enslaved.
• The Peloponnesian Wars sparked class
tensions and revolutions.
• In ancient Greece, aristocrats could freely
move between city-states even in the
midst of war.

PEACE OF NICIAS
Plutarch praises Nicias for the peace, he says
that as soon as “Cleon and Brasidas had both
fallen at Amphipolis in a single battle, Nicias
ascertained that the Spartans had desired
peace for a long time, and that the Athenians
were no longer so confident about their
prospects in the war,” “so he set in motion
actions designed to bring the two cities
together in friendship, to free and relieve the
rest of Greece from its troubles, so to secure for
the future his reputation for success.”

Plutarch continues, “The Spartans knew Nicias
as a decent man, especially since he had shown
concern for the welfare of the men who had
been captured at Pylos and imprisoned at
Athens, and had lightened their misfortune by
treating them humanely, so they trusted him.”
They established an armistice for a year, during
with time there were visits by mutual guest-
friends and low-level contacts. The Greeks
“regarded the peace as the work of Nicias, just
as they considered the war the work of Pericles.
Pericles was held to involve the Greeks in
calamitous disasters, for no very good reason,
while the other managed to persuade them to
forget all their terrible injuries and become
friends. That is why even today this peace is
called the ‘Peace of Nicias.’”

Plutarch continues, “Under the terms of the treaty,
each side was to restore the land and communities
they held which belonged to the other side, and also
return their prisoners of war,” which the Spartans
earnestly desired, because many of the hoplites
belonged to the leading families of Sparta.
The allies of Sparta were not happy with the Peace of
Nicias. When they threatened to rekindle the war,
Plutarch tells us that “Nicias persuaded the Athenians
and Lacedaemonians to supplement the peace treaty
with their famous alliance, authoritatively bonding
together the two states, to deter rebellions and
encourage confidence in each other.”

Thucydides adds that the treaty was for fifty years, though no Greek treaty lasted
that long. The Spartans and Athenians could deal with their allies as they wished,
but that Athens could not move against an ally that paid their tribute. All Greeks
could sacrifice at the Panhellenic temples, and Delphi, where the famous oracle was
located, was to be an independent state with its own law and judges.
This was a fragile peace, threatened by both quarrelsome Spartan allies and by
Athenian demagogues. This was as favorable a treaty as Athens and Sparta could
hope for, but giving up Megara was hard for Athens, and nobody was satisfied with
the treaty. The peace was challenged immediately, the chapters of each year of the
peace in Thucydides have many incidents challenging the peace, and eventually the
military ambitions of Alcibiades and Athens lead to foolish and costly decisions by
all.

Priestess of Delphi, by John Collier, 1891
Heinrich Leutemann's The Oracle of Delphi Entranced

We will continue our discussion of the Peace of Nicias with a video on the
play by Aristophanes on the Peace, which gives us a glimpse into the
antiwar sentiment of some Athenians. We will also reflect on whether
Pericles started the war needlessly.
The uneasy Peace of Nicias is broken by the Athenian attack and her
disastrous defeat at Syracuse in Sicily, where much of the Athenian fleet
was destroyed and her rowers and hoplites slaughtered, leading to
revolts of allies and her eventual defeat by the Spartan general Lysander,
ending the Peloponnesian Wars.

Moral lessons, Thucydides History:
Revolt at Mytilene
Revolution at Corcyra
Melian Dialogue
Plutarch and Thucydides on the role of
Alcibiades in the Peloponnesian Wars,
History of the Wars after Syracuse
Disastrous Defeat of Athens at Syracuse,
much of the Athenian fleet were slaughtered,
leading to revolts of allies and her eventual
defeat in the Peloponnesian Wars.

Later antiwar plays by Aristophanes on the role
of women in Greek society, we will reflect
whether these plays influence Plato’s Republic.
Plutarch’s Life of Lysander, why he showed mercy
on Athens when she lost the Peloponnesian Wars,
consulting Xenophon’s History
Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus,
Lawgiver of Sparta,
The Unique Warrior Culture of Sparta

DISCUSSING THE SOURCES
Since all of our videos on the Peloponnesian War
access many of the same multiple sources, we cut
another video reviewing these sources.

When scanning the footnotes in Will Durant, we
discovered the works of Pausanias, who wrote a tour
guide several centuries after the wars. He was not
highly regarded in either ancient or medieval
historians, but modern archeologists find his guide
accurate and helpful when they are doing
archeological digs. He often provides historical
snippets; we could not find anything not recorded by
other sources, and this work is on the internet.

https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias3B.html
The historian Pausanias provides information about
Pausanias the general, they are not the same person.

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