Summary of Peloponnesian Wars: Reflecting on Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch

Today we will learn and reflect on the history of the Peloponnesian Wars
Why study the Peloponnesian wars? One main reason is: You cannot
understand the Platonic dialogues without first understanding the history
of the Peloponnesian Wars, because so many of the leading figures of
this period are referenced in the Platonic dialogues, and we can learn
many moral lessons from the war, which changed the Greek city-states
forever.
These wars pitted Sparta, Corinth, and her allies against Athens and her
sometimes unwilling allies in the Delian League, which was originally
formed as a defensive league against Persian encroachment. These wars
were fought in roughly two phases lasting over three decades, many
historians say they are the World Wars of the ancient world.

The history of the war includes many interesting personalities,
including Pericles, the founder of the radical democracy of Athens
who died in the first years of the war, and Alcibiades, the ladies’
man and charismatic personality who was a leader of all three
sides of the antagonists of the war, and we have the Spartan
general Lysander who spared Athens from destruction when she
lost the war.
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!

YouTube Channel (please subscribe):
Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqDkfFbWhXOnzdjp__YZtg
© Copyright 2021 Become a patron:
https://www.patreon.com/seekingvirtueandwisdom
https://amzn.to/3pIMbti
The Life of
Greece, by
Will Durant
https://amzn.to/32nUYaz
Summary of Peloponnesian Wars
https://amzn.to/3FF1w3T
https://youtu.be/SW9Zq4IiLF0
https://amzn.to/3w5sUFe
https://amzn.to/3EQAHID

The root causes of the Peloponnesian Wars originated in the
politics after the Greco-Persian Wars, in which the underdog
Greeks defeated the mighty Persian Empire. Although this could
not have been predicted at the time, the Greek forces won due to
excellent generalship, bravery and persistence, the excellence of
the Greek infantry hoplite formations, the excellence of the
Athenian navy, along with good fortune and luck, or as the
Greeks would say, the favor of the gods.
The main source for the Greco-Persian Wars is Herodotus, Father
of History, and according to some scholars, also the Father of
Lies, or at least tall tales.

But an excellent secondary source is Aeschylus’ play,
the Persians, which was likely an eyewitness account
of the Athenian naval Battle of Salamis, which was
one of the two battles that won the war for Greece.
Plutarch also has an excellent Life of Themistocles,
whose wily and deceptive tactics compelled the
Greeks to victory in the naval Battle of Salamis.

Stages of the Peloponnesian Wars

The Peloponnesian Wars followed the Greco-Persian Wars by
about fifty years, or as Thucydides describes it, the
Pentecontaetia.
In addition to Thucydides, the other major source is Plutarch’s
Lives of the Noble Greeks, Aristides and Cimon. These two
Athenian generals who were asked by the Greek colonies of Ionia
near the western shores of Asia Minor, today Turkey, to organize
and lead the defensive Delian League against Persia, because the
Ionians were wary of the bullying ways of the Spartan general
Pausanius. The Delian League evolved into the Athenian Empire,
which was the ancient equivalent of the British Empire.

.
479 BC: Xerxes
retreats to Persia

Many victories were won against the Persian Empire,
and some colonies questioned whether they needed
to continue paying tribute to the Delian League, since
Persia had been defeated. Under the Athenian leader
Pericles, this League developed into a politically
oppressive Athenian Empire, although many Athenian
allies benefitted commercially from the expanded
trade opportunities.

Pericles was the general and statesman of Athens before
and at the start of the Peloponnesian Wars. The decades
between these wars saw the rise of Pericles and the
reforms leading to the Radical Democracy of Athens before
the start of the Peloponnesian Wars. In these years, the
mandatory tribute paid by the allies of Athens funded the
massive building program of Athens on the Acropolis,
including the Parthenon, which tourists admire up to the
present day.

Sparta and her allies became concerned and suspicious as the Athenian
Empire grew in power and influence, and conflict was inevitable.
Although the Cold War historians distorted their interpretation of these
wars by comparing Athens to America and Sparta to Russia. This
interpretation was problematic: since all Greek city-states had popular
Assemblies, they were more alike than they were different. The
difference was that the Spartan Assembly was dominated by aristocrats,
while the common citizen and trireme rowers dominated the Athenian
Assembly. Ideology did play a role, Sparta encouraged her allies to a
adopt an aristocratic government, while the Athenians encouraged her
allies to adopt a radical democracy with broader representation.

Plutarch writes that the Spartans,
“invaded Attica, laying waste to the
land. They assumed that the Athenians
would not let them get away with this
but would be prompted by anger and
pride to fight them. But the idea that
they should join battle in defense of
their city with sixty thousand
Peloponnesian hoplites struck Pericles
as outrageous. He proceeded to pacify
those who were spoiling for a fight and
were upset by what was happening,
arguing that the (olive) trees soon
grow again even when they've been
hacked and chopped, but that it is not
as easy to recover men once they
have been killed.” A spartan woman giving a shield to her son,
by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier, painted 1826
ANNUAL INVASIONS OF ATTICA BY SPARTA

Why was Pericles successful in selling the citizens of Athens on the
strategy that, when the Spartans raid Attica, the Athenians retreat
behind their walls, with the city providing them grain shipped in
through their ports, watching helplessly as the Spartans torched
their fields and smashed their houses, year after year after year?
Indeed, many Athenians were itching to put on their hoplite
armor and confront the Spartans, and they had defeated the
Spartans in prior hoplite engagements, and it was the Athenian
hoplites that routed the Persian infantry in the Battle of
Marathon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoplite

Battle of
Marathon,
Georges
Rochegrosse
1859

When the Spartans invaded Attica, although the
Athenian hoplites did not face them in direct combat,
the Athenian cavalry did harass them. While the
Spartans ravaged the Athenian countryside, the
Athenian hoplites simply marched between the long
walls that connected Athens to its ports, and boarded
triremes to ravage the Peloponnese lands near the
coast, and harassed shipping and the navies of
Corinth and the other Spartan allies.

Long Walls connecting Athens
with her port cities.

Many historians agree with Thucydides, that Pericles was a
strategic genius, that one reason why his successors lost the
Peloponnesian Wars was that they strayed from his strategy. But
some modern historians speculate that this strategy, by increasing
both the brutality of the fighting and the suffering of the ordinary
citizens, lengthened the war, hardening hatreds and ensuring
there would be opposition to any attempts to settle their
differences diplomatically, seeking peace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trireme
The Olympias,
a modern-day
reconstruction
of a trireme.

Pericles was a skilled orator, and Thucydides’ rendering of his Funeral
Oration has often been compared by scholars to Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address in the American Civil War. We also compare these speeches to
Churchill’s speech honoring those RAF airmen who fought the Luftwaffe
bombers in the Battle of Britain, which prevented the invasion of England
by Hitler in the beginning of World War II, who can forget his stirring
words, “never before in history have so many owed so much to so few.”
The core of this famous ancient oration was no doubt delivered by
Pericles, but how much is elaboration by the historian Thucydides we will
never know, as he himself admits that many of his speeches include what
the orator must have said.
Pericles died of the plague in the second year of the Archidamian War, the
first phase of the Peloponnesian Wars.

Both Sparta and Athens tired of the constant warfare, and the Athenians
had captured Spartan hoplites who were members of the leading families
of Sparta, so Sparta was eager for an exchange of prisoners of war. After
the leaders who were eager to continue the war, the Demagogue Cleon of
Athens and general Brasidas of Sparta, both died in the Battle of
Amphipolis, the Athenian general Nicias was able to negotiate a peace
that held for six years between Athens and Sparta, called the Peace of
Nicias. This was a fragile peace where low-level hostilities continued,
particularly by the Spartan allies. The up and coming relative of Pericles,
Alcibiades, was jealous of Nicias, and this clouded his judgment, and
hastened the restarting of the wars.

The comic Aristophanes performed an anti-war play
“Peace” on the Peace of Nicias, showing that this
peace had popular support in Athens. We also
pondered whether Pericles started the war
needlessly.

https://youtu.be/szi7-9QQWI0
https://youtu.be/UHRzKH-asoo

The Peace of Nicias was broken when the up-and-coming Alcibiades, who
was raised in the household of Pericles, agitated for Athens to send out a
large portion of its triremes, plus thousands of hoplites, in the doomed
Sicilian Expedition. The talented general Alcibiades was indicted on
trumped up charges and went into exile in Sparta when his conviction
appeared certain. When the Syracusans defeated the dilatory and timid
Nicias, who was serving as the other general of the expedition, the
Athenians lost everything, triremes, hoplites, rowers, even generals,
including Nicias, were destroyed and slain, very few escaped, and Sparta
restarted the war in response to Athenian aggression and taking
advantage of her loss in Sicily. This led to eventual defeat of Athens in
these wars many years later.

Thucydides is concerned with the moral lessons that can be learned from history. Three battles
from this general period of the history of the wars stand out.
• In the Revolt at Mytilene, in the early years of these wars, the Athenians voted for harsh
measures, calling for the men to be slaughtered and the women and children to be enslaved,
but calmer tempers prevailed, and the next day the Assembly reversed its position. This more
merciful message was dispatched on a trireme where the men rowed throughout the night,
eating their meals on the boat rather than on the beach, and reached Mytilene in the nick of
time, saving these citizens.
• In the Revolution at Corcyra, we are reminded that war often brings simmering conflicts to the
surface, and during these conflicts there were several civil wars between the aristocrats and the
ancient equivalent of the middle classes.
• After the Melian Dialogue, in the latter years of these wars, the Athenians voted for harsh
measures, but due to the moral decay during the course of these long wars, the men of Melos
were slaughtered, and the women and children were enslaved. When Athens lost the war, they
were chewing their nails hoping that the Melian outrage would not be held against them by the
victorious Spartans.

In the ancient world, the brutality of a conquering
hostile state massacring military age men and
enslaving the women and children was all too
common, this and piracy was the source of slaves in
the ancient world. This was the fate of Troy when she
was conquered by the Greeks in the Trojan War.

https://youtu.be/DpmuhZJUJn0
https://youtu.be/7lI2ZQ50wRc
https://youtu.be/bGHHD7XTvr0
https://youtu.be/ynIx-AVI2f8

After the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, Athens slowly recovered over the next few years, though
many of her allies rebelled. What happened to Alcibiades after he fled the Athenian fleet to avoid
facing a hostile jury in Athens on trumped up charges?
Alcibiades talked his way into the good graces of the Spartans in speeches at their Assembly,
became the pro-typical Spartan, exercising like a Spartan and eating the course Spartan gruel, and
offering valuable military advice that helped Sparta gain the edge in the war.
But Alcibiades being Alcibiades, he could not resist sleeping with the king’s wife. After she gave
birth to their son, the outrageous Alcibiades fled to the court of the Persian satrap, Tissaphernes,
who was allied to Sparta. He advised Tissaphernes that he should not decisively support either
Athens or Sparta but keep them evenly matched so they could wear each other out, so Persia
could then swoop in and take over.
But he was not done with his double-dealing: Alcibiades maneuvered to be reappointed as
general of the Athenian forces, who were camped nearby, and likely could have won the war for
Athens if the Athenian Assembly were not so judgmental and hyper-critical of his efforts and his
mistakes.

Which means that Alcibiades first led the Athenians, until
they indicted him on trumped-up charges, then he was an
advisor to the Spartan king, until he slept with his wife,
then he was an advisor to the Persian satrap, until he
managed to be elected as maritime general for the
Athenian fleet at the island of Samos. How did he manage
this? You will need to listen to the longer videos for more
clues. Alcibiades continues to amaze historians.
You see from the painting that Alcibiades was a favored
student of Socrates.

Socrates finds
his student
Alcibiades at
heterai, by
Henryk
Siemiradzki,
circa 1873

Alcibades being taught by Socrates, by François-André Vincent, 1776
Alcibiades was close
to Socrates. Plutarch
comments, “the fact
that Socrates was in
love with him strongly
suggests that the boy
was endowed with a
natural aptitude for
virtue. Socrates saw
Alcibiades’ good looks
as the brilliant
external manifestation
of this excellence.”

Alcibiades had a remarkable run of victories over Sparta and her
allies for five victorious years. But after a minor tactical defeat,
Alcibiades was deprived of his command for the second time,
choosing to go into exile. The Athenians continued to be
victorious. Sometime afterwards, the Athenian generals won
great victory in the Battle of Arginusae, but in the chaos of battle,
they failed to expeditiously to rescue many Athenians rowers
who were clinging to the wreckage of their triremes.
Suddenly, a fierce storm arose, and not only were the men
drowned, but their bodies were swept out to sea and were not
recovered.

Sea storm with
shipwrecks, by
Joseph Vernet,
1770

This was traumatic to the Athenians, for they believed that if you
were not properly buried when you died, your soul would never
come to rest in the Underworld but would forever wander the
earth as a forlorn ghost.
Acting in haste, the Athenian Assembly, executed six of the ten
generals for failing to save these rowers or recover their bodies,
even though they had won a great victory. These proceedings
were illegal because the generals were tried simultaneously by
the Assembly, not in individual jury trials, and were denied
sufficient time to defend themselves.

Pieter Brueghel el Joven, Museum El Prado, Greek Underworld

The inexperienced generals replacing them lost the war to the Spartan
general Lysander when their carelessness permitted the enemy to
destroy the Athenian fleet of two hundred triremes on the beaches.
Ironically, Alcibiades’ castle was not too far from the Athenian fleet, and
he tried to warn the Athenian generals that the fleet was exposed to
attack, that they should move the fleet to a protected harbor, but the
generals ignored his wise advice.
Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars halted mid-chapter, mid-
sentence, and was resumed by Xenophon’s History of Our Times. Plutarch
and Xenophon explores why Lysander and the Spartans showed mercy on
Athens when she lost the Peloponnesian Wars.

Xenophon tells us the worries of the
Athenians, “As news of the disaster was told,
one man passed it on to another, and a sound
of wailing arose, first from the Piraeus,” the
port of Athens, “then all along the Long Walls
until it reached the city. That night no one
slept. They mourned for the lost, but more
still for their own fate. They thought that they
themselves would now be dealt with as they
had dealt with others, with the Melians,
colonists of Sparta, after they had besieged
and conquered Melos,” and he then lists
several other atrocities the Athenians
regretted committing.
Lysander outside the walls of Athens

Scholars generally say that the “crisis of the Athenian polis” happened
after the end of the Peloponnesian Wars, when the victorious Spartan
commander Lysander insisted that, as part of the terms of peace, the
Athenians set up an aristocracy under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants.
Although the previous tyrants in the sixth century BC were benevolent
tyrants, the Thirty were Tyrants of the worst kind, dominated by the
vicious Critias, a tyranny that quickly descended into an orgy of
bloodshed directed first against their enemies, and then against their
fellow aristocrats so they could seize their property. This misrule
preceded the reestablishment of the Radical Democracy of Athens, and
the events of the Thirty Tyrants cast a long shadow over Athenian history
and the Platonic dialogues.

https://youtu.be/rrcwdHyvIEg
Crisis of Athenian Polis, Platonic Dialogues

Alcibiades and Critias, who was the leader among the
Thirty Tyrants, were both students of Socrates, and
this fact harmed the reputation of Socrates, and
contributed to his trial and execution shortly after
the democracy was reestablished after the Thirty
Tyrants were overthrown.

There are no prisons in the ancient world, only jails, and often jails are filled
simply by those who irritate the authorities. If you break a law in the ancient
world, you are either fined, exiled, or executed, there are no long prison
sentences. The state does not have the resources to run a prison, so when
you are thrown in jail awaiting a hearing the government expects you to
visit and bring food with you to feed the prisoner, and maybe the jailers
too. We see in our video on the death and execution of Socrates how his
friends were able to come and stay with Socrates for his entire last day on
earth.
How should we interpret his advice in his epistles to the various churches?
Let us ponder the opinions of two leading scholars, one Anglican, one
Orthodox.
https://youtu.be/Mip1vgRKH1E

The rule of the Thirty Tyrants devolved into a civil
war. Both Plato’s and Xenophon’s Symposium have
guests who were part of the tyranny, and guests who
were victims of the tyranny of the Thirty Tyrants. The
Platonic dialogues were written soon after the
Peloponnesian Wars.

Our first video on the Symposium includes the
discussions on Romantic Love, and in the second
video Socrates tells us what the entrancing Diotima
taught him about Divine Love. Plato’s Symposium
ends with Alcibiades crashing the party as a living
example of Romantic Lust that is not divine, as he
tells the guests how Socrates declined his advances,
and how much he respects and admires Socrates for
his higher moral values and higher love.

Socrates Tears
Alcibiades from the
Embrace of Sensual
Pleasure, by Jean-
Baptiste Regnault,
circa 1791

How Did Peloponnesian Wars Affect Athens?

The most drastic consequence of the wars on Athens was the casualty rates, The
total casualty rate must have exceeded fifty percent of the Athenian hoplites and
rowers, and civilian casualties were also high. After the war, Athens must have been
a city mostly populated by widows and orphans. Historians don’t often discuss the
effects of these massive casualties that easily dwarfed the American casualties of
the Civil War as a percentage of the population, and probably even the Russian and
German casualties of World War II. We can estimate the casualties best for Athens,
in addition to the casualties of decades of heavy fighting, we can estimate that a
quarter of the armies were wiped out in the Plague, maybe another quarter in the
doomed Sicilian Expedition, maybe another quarter were slaughtered when
Lysander captured the Athenian fleet due to their carelessness, plus those whom
the Thirty Tyrants executed afterwards.

Rough Estimate of Athenian Battlefield
Casualties in Peloponnesian Wars
• 25% Athenian Plague behind the walls
• 25% Doomed Sicilian Expedition
• 25% Slaughter of captured fleet by Lysander
• Plus, casualties in decades of heavy fighting.
• Plus, executions by the Thirty Tyrants.
Afterwards, after a decade of uneasy peace,
another three decades of wars.

These perpetual large-scale wars did not end. The peace once again
simmers for a decade, but then the Corinthian War, and then the
Boeotian Wars erupt. The account of these wars dominates Xenophon’s
Hellenica, History of My Times, that begins by documenting the end of
the Peloponnesian Wars and the Thirty Tyrants. Though perhaps not as
destructive as the Peloponnesian Wars, large-scale wars are waged for
another three decades. Sparta is eventually defeated by Thebes, who
frees her Mycenean helot slave populations. These perpetual wars left all
Greek city-states in a weakened state, vulnerable to takeover by the
expansionist Macedonia under King Philip and his son Alexander the
Great in a later generation.

The ancient historians we rely on for this history is Herodotus, for the history of the Greco-Persian
Wars, and in the next generation, the Athenian general Thucydides, who became an historian
after the Athenian Assembly voted to exile him after a military defeat, which was likely not
justified.
Although Thucydides lived through the war, his account drops off in mid-paragraph and mid-
sentence soon after the Oligarchic Coup, after Alcibiades was recalled as general, and Xenophon
literally begins his history, “After those events.” Xenophon was known in antiquity as an historian,
a general, and a philosopher, a moral philosopher in the Stoic mold, and was highly regarded by
both ancient and medieval scholars, although is deprecated by many modern scholars, but not by
this channel!
The Roman historian Plutarch, in his Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans, writing four centuries
later, is a valued source, as he consulted many sources that have since been lost in the sands of
history, and we also consulted the modern history of Will Durant.

Since all our videos on the Peloponnesian Wars use
many of the same sources, we have a video on Book
Reviews of ancient Greek history.

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
YouTube Description has links for:
• Script PDF file
• Blog
• Amazon Bookstore
© Copyright 2022
Blog and YouTube Description
include links for Amazon books
and lectures mentioned, please
support our channel with these
affiliate commissions.
Link to blog: https://wp.me/pachSU-KC

https://www.meetup.com/Reflections/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqDkfFbWhXOnzdjp__YZtg/

Summary of Peloponnesian Wars: Reflecting on Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Summary of Peloponnesian Wars: Reflecting on Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch

Similar to Summary of Peloponnesian Wars: Reflecting on Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch (15)

More from Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History

More from Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Summary of Peloponnesian Wars: Reflecting on Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch