The Ancients - Sparta vs Athens: The Greek World War

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

Marked by shifting alliances, chaotic power struggles, and devastating consequences - the Peloponnesian War was a conflict for the ages. Fought between Athens and Sparta, along with their begrudging allies, the conflict changed the course of Ancient History as we know it. Lasting for nearly three decades, it ultimately ended Athenian supremacy - and ushered in an age of Spartan Hegemony on the mainland. But what caused such a devastating conflict to happen, and could it have been avoided?In the third episode of our Sparta series, Tristan welcomes back Owen Reese to give us a whistle stop tour through this gigantic ancient conflict. Looking at the causes, key players, and the consequences - what caused these great city states to go to war? And what do the sources actually tell us about what happened?Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS sign up now for your 14-day free trial HERE.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's episode, we are continuing our special Sparta miniseries this December with an epic retelling of the Peloponnesian War.

Sparta versus Athens, one of those titanic showdowns of the ancient Mediterranean world. Over the next hour, we'll cover the whole story of this ancient Greek world war, from opening moves to the final clashes. Our expert is Dr. Owen Rees from Birmingham Newman University. Now, Owen's a regular name on the podcast. Last time, he retold Xenophon's March of the 10,000, one of the greatest adventure stories of ancient history. And this time, it's the Peloponnesian War. I really do hope you enjoy. And here's Owen. Owen, good to have you back on the podcast, my friend. Thanks so much for having me back, Tristan. You're more than welcome. Are you ready

for this? Last time we went through the whole of Xenophon's Anabasis, the March of the 10,000, in 40, 50 minutes. Yes, we did. We've got you back for another one to plough through in that same amount of time. The Peloponnesian War athens versus sparta are you ready well to be fair the analysis was only two year period we were trying to cover and now we're looking at what just over 25 years in 50 what's that two minutes a year i think we can do it i think we can do it absolutely come on let's give it a go so let's set the scene and we're going to go from the spartan perspective largely so fifth century roughly about 432 433 bc we're going to go from the Spartan perspective largely. So 5th century, roughly about 432, 433 BC we're talking about. What's the

situation in the Greek mainland before war begins? Well I suppose the main things to kind of set the scene with are the Persian wars have come and gone. Both Athens and Sparta have taken quite strong leadership roles within that and what we see for almost the next 50 years

are Athens in particular, pushing that leadership role further and further and taking a much more assertive role over other Greek city-states and creating what is very generously referred to as an alliance of city-states, what's called the Delian League. I say generously because over time, Athens manipulates the position and decides that because they are generally the wealthiest of the states who signed up, the most militarily powerful, and in particular, the strongest naval power. So with the agreement to join the League, smaller city-states have committed to trying to provide men for military defence against the Persians and things like that.

And they can't live up to that. So Athens makes the rather wise decision, shall we say, go, well, don't worry about that. Just pay us the money and we will build the ships and we will provide the men and we will do that. And of course, what they're doing is building a stronger and stronger military base and turning what are allies into tribute-paying members of an empire, fundamentally. Now, it doesn't happen to every single city-state, but it happens to an awful lot of them in the Delian League. So over this period, Athens' power is growing further and further. Their income is increasing more and more. And so they're becoming the Athens that we're kind of used to, that classical period of Athens where they're building the Parthenon and, you know, all the great works of art are being produced.

And that's what's going on in Athens itself. Sparta, on the other hand, after their leadership role during the Persian Wars, starts to take a bit more of a backseat. Sparta always has this problem of not wanting to overstretch itself. And the main reason for that is because they have this servile population or what we call helots. Spartans always have a problem, which is if they send armies out of Sparta, the helots are more likely to revolt, more likely to cause problems. And so Sparta becomes almost isolationist in its approach. Okay. So the Spartans actually turned down a lot of leadership roles after the Persian Wars. You know, they're told, you know, take the lead of the Delian League and, you know, let's take the fight

to the Persians. And Sparta's like, I don't really want to do that because of stuff at home. So they do create their own alliance, often called the Peloponnesian League. But the difference between that and the Delian League is it's less set in stone, it's less formal, there's less tribute paying. Sparta doesn't build itself an empire like that. It just has a group of allied forces in the Peloponnese, in that southern bit of Greece. So that's the kind of the building blocks of what we're about to see with the conflict of the Peloponnesian Wars. The other thing to kind of note is the Peloponnesian War that we're going to talk about is actually the second one. There was an earlier one in sort of

the mid-century where the allies of Athens and the allies of Sparta do go head to head. Our sources for it are a lot poorer. So it's often not talked about as much, or it's not recreated as much for that kind of reason. But the kind of main things to come out of that is the war comes to an abrupt end in sort of around 445 BC. And it is ended by what's called the 30 year peace. So with the outbreak of war that we're about to talk about in 433, 432, and really 431 when it starts, is an abrupt end to a peace that was supposed to have lasted for 30 years from 445 to what? 415. And in reality, it doesn't last anywhere near that long. So this is the kind of context of it. Of course, we're going to talk a lot about Sparta and Athens as the rivals, but it's not as simple as that. There are other big

players involved in these two sets of alliances as well. And it is a world war of the Greek world. Everyone is somehow involved in what this becomes. And so how does this world war of ancient Greece, how does it begin? What's the trigger? Ultimately, it begins around the beginning of 433 BC, and it's not between Sparta and Athens. And this is the big misconception. The Peloponnesian War is not a war between Sparta and Athens to begin with. It is conflict between Athens and a major ally of Sparta, Corinth. OK, so around 433, Athens is really flexing its might all over around the Aegean and around the Greek mainland and the islands just off it as well. And they set their eyes on the island of Corsaira. It's called Fugite, isn't it?

That's right, yeah. And there are many reasons why. But we're not taking the Athenian approach today. So from the Spartan perspective and from the Peloponnesian League perspective, Athens has targeted one of the only naval forces that comes close to the Athenian numbers. that comes close to the Athenian numbers. So Athens' intention here isn't to invade Corsaira, it's to bring them into the alliance, bring their naval force into the alliance, and then create a navy that no Greek city-state has ever seen, in terms of size. It would be unstoppable in the Greek world. Corinth, particularly concerned about this for numerous reasons. One of those reasons is Corinth also has quite a strong navy and they themselves would quite like

that the joining of those two forces with Corsaira as well. So Corinth basically goes off to Corsaira to try and assert its own dominance. Athens wants to prevent this from happening. Problem is that peace treaty I mentioned. So Greek peace treaties are made with a lot of oaths to the gods. To break a peace treaty is a big problem. So they can't break this peace treaty. However, they don't want this to happen. They don't want Corinth to be able to do what they're going to do. So basically, Athens has to somehow support Corsaira in resisting Corinth without getting involved. They send a small detachment fleet to kind of help.

And unfortunately for the Athenians, that fleet got involved. A naval battle just off Corsaira. And the Corinthians end up retreating. So the sort of strategic aims of the Athenians are fulfilled, but they have now caused a massive problem. And Corinth is not happy. Because to Corinth, Athens has broken a treaty that they have vowed to the Greek world. And that, you know, the Spartans are upholding, and the Athenians are not.

Because the Spartans are continuously seen as being very pious, aren't they? Yes, they are. So that's perhaps one of the perceptions, that if the Athenians break the treaty, then the Spartans are just like, you broke something sacred, we're coming for you. And this is something you see throughout Greek warfare, is not only the fact that war is inevitable. We also have it kind of written into their peace treaties. I mentioned it's called the 30-year peace because it has an end date. You don't find many military or political cultures who give an end date to a peace treaty. You know, the idea being that once that peace treaty ends, gloves are off,

we can kick off again. So this is a very different way of doing international relations and these kind of diplomatic agreements between them. So anyway, going back to Corsaira, so that has immediately caused a friction between Corinth and Athens. OK. And of course, Corinth is immediately going to their big friend in the corner, Sparta, and moaning. And Sparta, for all of its presentation as this warlike, war-loving culture, doesn't really like getting involved in wars. It's a common thread in its history. It doesn't like to get involved. So they're constantly pestering them about that. And then Athens decides to do something else, rather annoyingly, to the Corinthians. So there is a small city called Potidaea in the north of Greece, around Chalcidice. And rather

confusingly, Potidaea is a member of the Delian League. It's a member of Athens's empire, really. of the Delene League. It's a member of Athens' empire, really. But it's a colony of Corinth. Athens decides this is a problem. We've got this growing animosity with Corinth. We've got a city state that owes us loyalty, but has an innate loyalty to its metropolis, its mother city. So it goes and basically demands that they take down part of their walls and almost make themselves vulnerable. This doesn't go down particularly well. If Corinth are not happy with this, and we end up with, this is 432 now. So this is rapidly escalating. We have the Battle of Potidaea, which then ends in a siege, the siege of Potidaea. And for me, this is the catalyst, because now there's no hiding. This is a direct attempt to undermine Corinth's position in an area

and Athens has become ingrained in a conflict in the region. As an aside, Potidaea is not the most significant of battles other than the fact that it is catalyst, but it is possibly famous for it's one of the first battles we know Socrates was at. So Socrates, the great philosopher, was a military veteran, as all Athenian citizen men were. And this is one of the battles he talks about in his defense speech, recited by Plato later on. So the siege of Potidaea lasts for a couple of years. Athens loses a lot of money waging it very quickly, and ultimately is the cause of the outbreak of the war. Now, of course, Sparta hasn't directly been attacked yet.

But when do we start seeing Spartan forces almost reluctantly move out of Sparta, out of Laconia and decide to take the fight to Athens? So from the traditional date of the beginning of the Peloponnesian Wars, 431. All right. And you have, it's called the Arcadamian War. So the Peloponnesian War is actually broken up by a peace treaty, and we'll cover that later. But so the first section is called the Arcadamian War, named after the Spartan king, Archidamus, who ironically didn't want to go to war. This was not his idea of a good time. He was very reluctant to do it. And actually, he was sort of overruled by the democratic system of Sparta and the ethos and powerful political

players like that, people who wanted the war as opposed to himself. So like a good Spartan king, he accepted the will of the people. And then he decided to create his strategy. His main strategy was quite a common one in Greek warfare, is to create a series of raids, basically. So we'll go and raid the lands of Attica, the lands around Athens, and cause trouble and basically force them to come out and confront us or just accept that their olive groves and their farms and everything are going to be burnt and they can just watch. What he hadn't necessarily considered is that the Athenian commander, well, one of the Athenian commanders, a guy called Pericles, came up with his own plan, which was to turn Athens into almost like an island.

So he brought everyone into the city, and just the decision was we were just going to watch, and they will destroy the lands. That's fine. We've got Athens had what are called the long walls. So these are big walls that connect to the city walls of Athens and they go all the way down to the harbour, the Piraeus. So ultimately, if a ship lands at the Piraeus, unloads its cargo, it is protected by walls all the way to the city of Athens. So in Pericles' mind, they can burn our farms as long as we can keep trade coming in, as long as we can keep the grain coming in from abroad, we can survive. And of course, they've got their own massive naval force, they've got their own army, they can send forces out elsewhere, cause trouble around Greece, and force Sparta

to have to adapt and force them to move, force them to change what they're doing. That was the plan. So oddly enough, with these two strategies, there are skirmishes, there are sort of campaigns here, there and everywhere, as everyone's almost trying to, it's almost like boxers jabbing at each other, trying to gauge what's going on, gauge the reactions, you know, who's prioritising what. until like 425. Not really. So there's a lot of siege warfare. So I mentioned Potidaea, the city of Plataea, which is just in Boeotia, so quite near to Athens, the land of Athens.

That's put under siege. The Spartans helped the Thebans do that. But again, that's not a Spartan army doing it. We have battles. We have a small battle at Olpai, which is sort of north-central Greece, well, more central Greece. And again,

Spartan led, but not a Spartan army. And I suppose this is the thing that's easy to forget when we talk about Spartan leading forces, the Peloponnesian League. How rarely is it a Spartan army? Because as I said earlier, the Spartans don't like to send armies out. They don't like to do it if they can help it. So one thing the Spartans have over everyone else is strong military leaders, whether it be kings, whether it be what we will call a general commander, strategos. The Spartans produce very good ones. They produce good officers. So quite often what we see is the Spartans, their way of helping the allies is to lead them, as opposed to make up the masses, make up the numbers. This is ultimately where it is. This is not a war of lots of pitched battles. This is almost a game

of chess a lot of the times. It's about moving troops around. It's about redirecting attention. It's about trying to stretch the enemy thin. And Athens finds this quite a comfortable game to play because of its navy. And Sparta, of course, its own navy is tiny. It's appalling. It relies on Corinth. And Corinth cannot match the Athenians with this. It's also quite interesting.

Do the Spartans live also in almost a perpetual fear, with Athens being so dominant on the waves, on the sea at this early period, that the Athenians, whilst the Spartan or this army is in Attica near Athens, the Athenians sail around and almost try and incur revolt within Spartan territories? Is there that perpetual fear that almost the Athenians can emerge from the sea and cause problems almost behind them? Yes, is the simple answer. They are terrified of it. Absolutely terrified of it.

Because ultimately, if you want to defeat the Spartans in war, you just need the helots to revolt. That's all you need to happen. Because then Sparta cannot commit men anywhere to do anything. They need to deal with that. So we actually see this by accident. It wasn't even necessarily a plan. But we see Athens send some ships around the Peloponnese. The idea being to circumnavigate the Peloponnese and continue on to the islands in the northwest.

But because of a storm and bad weather, one of the Athenian commanders goes, look, this is silly. We need to take haven in that cove. And that cove happened to be on Spartan land at a place called Pylos. And in a rather amusing series of events, the commander says to his men, look, we're in enemy territory. This is ridiculous. We need to fortify whilst we're here and then we can leave when we're done. And the men say, no, they don't want to. They don't want to do any work like that. So they actually say they just refuse it. And he's quite disgruntled by this and quite annoyed, but he can't make his men do this. Athenian military hierarchy is one in name, but the idea that a fellow citizen who

has exactly the same sort of social rank as you, or in terms of democratic rank, like everyone's equal. So how do you force these people to do anything? It's a problem for Athenian armies. So the men say no, and you can't make them do it. But then a few days pass, and the men get bored. And then these bored men decide, oh, we'll just build a fort. And they actually fortify the position. So in this weird moment, the commander got what he wanted, just not the way he wanted it. So you have now a small fortified area with really a small Athenian force in it, but in Spartan territory. The Spartans panic, absolutely panic,

because that is a massive beacon to any heller, to any enslaved person in Spartan territory who doesn't want to be an enslaved person anymore and wants freedom. Very interesting. Well, it's made worse by the fact that Athens then actually creates a policy of trying to rehome them. So there is this kind of, you know, Athens can save you from this. So, you know, think of the kind of hearts and minds approach of warfare, and it's very cleverly done. So Sparta redirects its attention immediately

to dealing with that problem. And they attempt to basically take the fortified position, and they fail. They then end up putting a Spartan force, with some allies, but a Spartan force, on an island just off of Pelos called Sphacteria. And in doing so, end up creating a situation that no one had ever anticipated happening. So the Athenians suddenly realized, if we can reinforce Pelos, if we can get a naval force there, we can cut that island off, and we can actually defeat the Spartans on Spartan land. And they ultimately achieved their aim. So they successfully cut the island off. They successfully land forces of light-armed troops, They successfully cut the island off. They successfully land forces of light-armed troops.

And they end up basically forcing the Spartans back, forcing the Spartans back, killing many of them as they go. And they end with this last stand at the northern part of the island. They end with this last stand. And the Spartans do something that no one had ever anticipated. If you think of like the fictional obsession we have with the Spartans at Thermopylae, you know, these great warriors never surrender, never give up, will die to the end. And on the island of Sphacteria, they surrender. I have a lot of sympathy for the commander who did it, because he wasn't even the commander of the force initially. He wasn't even the second in command. He was like third, fourth, you know, because they lost so many men. And this person asked for a ceasefire to decide, what should I do?

And he sends off to Sparta and gets this kind of weird response that ultimately says, you're a Spartan, do what needs to be done. So he's like, all right, I'll surrender. Which wasn't necessarily what was intended with that instruction, but he does. And this sent shockwaves through the Greek world. The Spartans surrendered. And so not only do you have this dispelling of this kind of myth that had built up around the Spartans, a myth the Spartans used a lot and kind of built this aura around themselves. They actually, it's 290, 292 survive and surrender. And of those 292, 120 of them were not only Spartan, they were what we call Spartiates. And a Spartiate are actual Spartan

citizens. These are the people who go through the agogia, the educational system of Sparta. These are the people who actually get to vote in all these things that go on in Sparta. These are your actual citizen body. These aren't perioikoi who don't have all the same rights. These aren't helots who are ultimately enslaved. These aren't allies. These are a dwindling population, Spartans, and you just lost 192. You've not only lost them because you've lost more to that being killed, you have lost them to your enemy who now have them as prisoners of war, waiting for whatever they deem a good use of them. It's quite interesting talking about prisoners in ancient history. But it almost seems as if in this case, because it is so special,

the Athenians, they realised the use they can be in deterring Sparta in the future. Does it succeed in that way of deterring Sparta from going almost full steam ahead in attacks on Athens? It blooming works! It blooming works! Athens has, oddly enough, found a perfect chess move that it hadn't anticipated. Because some Spartans immediately started arguing they should sue for peace. It's like, no, this has come too close to home. Think of the Heller problem. Think of the loss of Spartan numbers. Whichever way you will look at it, this is a terrible idea. We need peace now. And they start to push for it. You can't think of a better outcome for the Athenians. And the

Spartans are so desperate for bringing this to an end. There is still a group in Sparta that want the war to continue. They want the Spartans to go back on the offensive. And the general consensus, they can't agree, peace, war, peace, war. But one thing they can agree is we're not committing too much outside of Sparta. Our allies can do things, we can get everything that's going on, but we're not committing too much outside of Sparta. Our allies can do things, you know, we can get everything's going on, but we're not committing too much. One of the voices for war and for continuing it was actually quite a young Spartan by the name of Brasidas, who rather audaciously goes to the Spartan sort of council, to the air force and the Garutia, the old senate, if you want to think of it like that, and basically argues that

he should be given an army and he will lead a counter-offensive. He comes up with a plan, which is that he will basically create a counter-offensive in the north of Greece, redirect Athenian attention north, up and around Chalcidicia, up around Potidaea, but also further east as well. There's a lot of athenian attention up there financially they rely uh there's various mines up there and things like that and also the timber they get a lot of timber from that region which obviously helps with their fleet so he's like i will wage a campaign up there give me an army and the spartans loved the idea of him going and trying something they didn't like the idea of giving him an army so they gave him him 700 helots instead. And went, there you go. Go and wage a war against the military powerhouse of Athens with 700 men.

Brasidas was no fool. So his first aim was to build that army up. So he obviously goes around his allies and he goes north with a force and ultimately does exactly what he said he was going to achieve. He creates chaos in the north, absolute chaos in the north. Athens panics, not only loses various regions and allies and things like that, it also loses important cities. One of the important cities is the city of Amphipolis, really important for controlling the region as it's just along from the Hellespont, the Black Sea trade routes, as well as Thrace and the timber trade I was talking about, as well as the mines. The loss

of Amphipolis was a big deal to the Athenians and it was the real bloody nose given by the Brasidas. Interestingly as historians, not necessarily for the story itself, but as historians, it's particularly interesting because Amphipolis was under the command of an Athenian, an experienced Athenian commander. And that experienced Athenian commander was a man called Thucydides, who obviously wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War up to about 411. He is our main source. So the account we have of the fall of Amphipolis, the account we have of Brasidas achieving all this, is from the man he beat. So rather unsurprisingly, Brasidas comes off as this like military genius to kind of validate and justify why Thucydides failed. But Thucydides is exiled, you know, as a result of all these things. And, you know, he writes his history in exile.

So Amphipolis and Brasidas' activities in Am amphipolis is kind of a sparta's last attempt to try anything and it is ridiculously successful and it's around this time so we're sort of 424 423 442 is when brasidas finally dies himself in another battle for amphipolis this is around the time athens also has a battle with Thebans, the Battle of Delium, and has quite a catastrophic defeat as well. So Athens is getting a lot of setbacks. And Sparta is really on an ascendancy here. And the Spartan allies are really starting to dominate in their own way.

So, of course, they sued for peace for some reason. in their own way. So of course, they sued for peace for some reason. But this kind of sums up how conflicted Sparta was about the whole thing. The fact that Athens at its strongest was offered peace and said, no. Sparta, okay, it hasn't won the war. It's not entirely destroyed Athenian capabilities, but it is on an ascendancy. And the conversation for peace comes up and they say yes. And what do they want in return for this peace? Is it the return of these Spartiates, of these Spartans that the Athenians still had in captivity? That's part of the negotiations. I mean, ultimately, there's a lot of wrangling about should people be giving back the land they've taken during the war as well. It's an attempt to create a status quo that

everyone's happy enough with. Ultimately, a peace is agreed. And it's known as the Peace of Nicias, named after the Athenian politician who kind of was one of the spearheads in negotiating it. Now, I remember all peace treaties are supposed to have a time limit. And the Peace of Nicias was like 50 years. So this is supposed to be a big treaty, and it doesn't last more than six. And before we even get to that, during this peace, I don't know what you think when I talk about a peace treaty,

but during this peace of Nicias, Sparta and Athens end up in a battle together against each other. So how can that happen if the peace is officially still standing? I mean, talk us through, and this is also one of the biggest battles in classical Greek history, isn't it? So if it was a bit odd, you need to unpack this for us.

It's the first battle of Mantine. There we go. Right. Where are we? 418. And really, it's not Athens that's causing the problem for Sparta. It is Sparta's actual rival. So I know we create this kind of dichotomy of Sparta versus Athens. Athens is not Sparta's biggest long-standing rival. That is actually another city-state in the

Peloponnese. I think I know who it is. It's Argos, isn't it? It's Argos. The Argives. It's Argos, yes. So Argos is one of the few powerful Peloponnesian players who doesn't join the Peloponnesian League, because the Peloponnesian League is the Spartan alliance, and they can't have that. So ultimately, Argos decides to cause trouble, as the Argives always do, and creates an alliance of sort of democratic forces, shall we say, to try and entice the Spartans into a battle in the Peloponnese, so within their own sort of backyard. And this results in the Battle of Mantine, first Battle of Mantine. There's another one much later in Greek history. Athens sort of gets

involved. It sends a force, sort of. Not enough to cause problems. Doesn't really lead. It's almost like both Sparta and Athens can pretend it wasn't them fighting each other. It was all really about Argos. It always reminds me of the Cold War in modern terms. You know, the amount of times the USSR and the USA get involved in wars, and they never technically are at war with each other. Vietnam or something like that. This is kind of, I think,

the furthest you can stretch it. Ultimately, Sparta wins this quite conclusively. It wins the battle. That mini alliance falls apart immediately. Absolutely just falls apart. So this kind of brings it to an end before it really starts, shall we say. But you're right, this is considered the biggest land battle in classical Greek

warfare. There's remarkable numbers involved, and it was considerably important that the Spartans won it. It's also notable the Spartans sent a lot of Spartans in that army. That kind of gives you an idea of how seriously they took it. But ultimately, after that battle, everything kind of ticks along in the peace, sort of. And actually, Athens has its own problems. It's starting to see dissent in its own empire, in its own alliance. And in 416, so what's that like? Two years later, it's not occupied in thinking about Argos. It's not, and you know, the issues of Sparta and things like that. It's worried about its own allies, the main one being a small island of Melos. So Melos is kind of causing dissent. It's

refusing to get involved as much as Athens wants it to be involved and things like that. And Athens ends up massacring it and destroying it in what is, has been argued by some historians, is probably the first real historical account of genocide, where they kill all the men, remove all the women and children, and supplant the population with a completely new one. And it's the eradication of the Melians entirely. So Athens is a bit distracted. Sparta is quite happy that wars aren't continuing. It's quite happy it's not having to send armies out. It's comfortable with what's going on. Then ultimately, if you think of it as a Spartan perspective, what happens next is just the weirdest thing, where Athens decides to just invade Sicily and go on the Sicilian expedition, the famous Sicilian expeditions in 415.

It decides to send a force ultimately to go and besiege the city of Syracuse. It has allies in Sicily. They've complained to the Athenians. The Athenians send a force out. That's ultimately why. But from the Spartan perspective, this is just weird. You have Athens committing a, not an enormous force, but a sizable chunk of its resources to an island miles away that has nothing really to do with Greece itself. Although, of course, they themselves are the so-called Western Greeks in Sicily and Italy. But from a Spartan perspective, let's just see what develops and see what they end up doing. They haven't breached their oaths as such, but this is odd. Interestingly, the Syracusans do ask the Spartans for help. They ask for assistance because the Athenians actually start their expedition in Sicily quite

strongly. And the city of Syracuse is struggling. They ask the Spartans for help. And the Spartans are thinking, if we can get the Athenians stuck in a war in Sicily, this is a brilliant, this is a war brilliantly for us. If we can support the Syracusans and either damage the naval force of Athens, damage the military force of Athens, or even just make them spend loads of money trying to get this done. This is brilliant. And the Spartans do that in the most Spartan way possible. They send one man. They send one man. Because remember what I said, the Spartans, what Spartans have as an advantage is leadership.

That's their advantage over everyone else. They have good leaders and they know that. So they send a man called Galippus to help, you know, almost as a consultant, a military consultant to tell them how to do it. And he goes over. Rather interestingly, in terms of just how little the Spartans are committing to this, he, Galippus, isn't actually a fully bona fide Spartiot. He's not a full citizen as such. That is someone from the Spartan mother, Spartan father, gone through the Agoge, everything. He, according to some of our sources, he's what's called a Mothax, which is someone who was born to a helot mother or a non-Spartan

mother. So, you know, they obviously have a lot of faith in him. They have a lot of appreciation for what he can achieve. They think he can do the job, but he's not actually a Spartan. And in the back of my mind, that's just like, it's not quite the same commitment as we see elsewhere. But he does. He goes over and he assists them in what becomes a catastrophic expedition for the Athenians. And they lose remarkable numbers of men. And they have wasted a couple of years of committing money, committing citizens of their own, and committing goodwill of the Athenian

people themselves. So they've basically shot themselves in the foot. And this is where Sparta goes, oh, by the way, I think you've broken the oaths and the war is on. And we enter the second part of the Peloponnesian War, what is sometimes referred to as the Decalayan War, or just the second bit of the Peloponnesian War, where Sparta has learned a little from what it did in the first section of the war and realised, OK, raiding's fine, but it doesn't seem to be having an impact. What if we could permanently have a force in the lands of Attica, the lands around Athens? And so they fortify a place in the region

of Decalais, which is in Attica, hence Decalayan War. Because what Sparta now has is a base to raid and it never leaves. Whereas in the first part of the war, it would raid and go home. Seasonally, raid, go home. Now it never leaves. Athens has a new problem. There is an enemy force, not always full of Spartans. There is an enemy force permanently in our land. So for it to survive that at all, it has to hope, beyond hope, that its idea of trade and food coming in from sea never fails it. So the second part of the Peloponnesian War is not a lot of land battles. It is fought almost predominantly at sea. So you would think automatically, from what we've been discussing, that this is therefore an advantage for the Athenians. However, what is this new massive power that almost now

enters the fray to help give the Spartans a bit more of an advantage at sea? Yeah, you're spot on with that. The looming power that has just been watching so far as its nemesis, but very much the annoying neighbor, the noisy neighbor for the Manchester analogy, the noisy neighbor next door. Yeah. So Sparta's problem is exactly what you mentioned. It's caused this issue in Attica. It now needs to be able to match Athens at sea. It has never been able to do that. Its allies have never been able to do that.

And of course, throughout this war, it has constantly been being defeated at sea in naval battles. We focused a little bit on land battles, and we're kind of rushing through this. 50 minutes isn't able to cover everything. There were a lot of naval battles going on as well. Corinth is losing its naval force. It's just being chipped away at by expert naval prowess by athens who has had its own bloody nose in sicily it lost a lot of ships in sicily but still it clearly holds the advantage as you say sparta needs ships sparta can't get ships of its own it's not very good at building them first of all you can't do that you need other cities to other problem ships cost a lot of. So you need a rich player to come in. There aren't many rich players in the world.

So the Spartans look to the one place you would think Sparta would never look. They look to the Persians, the richest, most powerful imperial force in the Mediterranean, who, of course, the Spartans famously stood against more than once during the Persian wars. They go to Persia and go, we need money. And the Persians see a potential here. There are two things Persia can achieve by giving the Spartans money to help build a fleet. One, they can hamstring Athenian power, which is useful for their interest in the Aegean. They're useful for Persian interest in what's called Ionia in Asia Minor, what is now Western Turkey. That's a good idea.

Second thing, if you give Sparta enough money to build a fleet to do this, but not too much money to build a really good fleet, you can end up with the Greeks themselves almost neutralizing themselves as a threat. Now that is a brilliant outcome for the Persians. Don't get me wrong, the Greeks are not a massive problem to the Persians. They're a minor annoyance. But if you can get them to implode, that's a minor annoyance dealt with. So the Persians do exactly that. They give the Spartans money to invest in a fleet and, you know, and kind of give them that support. It's not easy to get hold of. The Persians are not always forthcoming in giving the money. It requires a bit of diplomacy. You know, the Spartans are often sending men out, commanders or diplomats to go out and convince individual rich satraps, as they're called.

convince individual rich satraps, as they're called. So these are sort of local governors in the Persian Empire, convincing them individually, if you give us some money, we can help with this problem that's affecting you. You know, that's the way they sell it. And they certainly do. So Persian funds backs a resurgence of Peloponnesian League fleet, and they can attempt to stand against the Athenians,

where the Athenians are traditionally strongest. Okay, so got this powerful backer in the Persian Empire. How does this affect the quality of the Spartans at sea when they finally do face off against the Athenians? Sparta doesn't immediately see loads of victories. Athens is still dominant. But what the Spartans are able to do is keep putting a fleet out, keep testing the Athenians, and keep testing their ability to control the region of the Eastern Aegean, the region around Ionia that I was talking about earlier. There's a couple of reasons why testing that area is so important. The first one is that's where a lot of Athenian allies are. So if you can show the Athenian allies Athens does not have control of this area,

or Athens cannot ensure your safety, that will encourage allies to leave the Athenian Empire, basically. This is why Athens had to go in so hard. I'm not justifying genocide, but this is why Athens had to go in so hard against a lot of its allies, like Melos that I mentioned. Because if one goes, everyone will go. Another example comes earlier. They did it with the island of Mytilene as well. They had to decide how hard they were going to deal with that island as well. What they don't want is a domino effect. And this can be with allies and non-allies, a kind of descent of Athens isn't here. Athens can't be

here as much as it needs to be. So this is a good strategy for Sparta, even though it can't necessarily always win these battles. It can sow dissent by constantly challenging. So that's one reason. The other reason is this is where a lot of Athenian food comes from, this region and up to the Black Sea. So if you can actually disrupt the naval control of this area, if you can disrupt the cities along the region who are ultimately stop off points for many of these ships, are ultimately stop-off points for many of these ships, who are pivotal to controlling the trade routes, you isolate the island of Athens itself, that city island that I talked about earlier. You cut off the food coming in, and now Athens will starve. So this is why Sparta is constantly doing it. This is why the Spartan allies are constantly doing it. I wouldn't say they were greatly successful in winning battles and tactically but they are very successful strategically

and the other thing which sparta has and i'll keep banging on about it is leadership i was going to ask about that yeah so you've been seeing their great generals but does that also transform into great admirals too not to begin with but by point, we start to see Sparta has worked out that its naval tradition basically is that a naval commander has control for a year and then loses that control. And this is not a way to create a good naval force and a good naval leadership. It maintains this, but it's worked out it can find a loophole. So the naval commander, okay, can't hold control after a certain amount of time, but can become second in command and stay. So that's one of the ways they kind of get around

this. And so what we start to see is the building of expertise. And the classic example of the Spartans is a man called Lysander. So Lysander is starting to learn. Lysander is starting to understand the importance of the Persians and their money and Lysander is starting to understand the importance of challenging the Athenians time and again and he starts to see more and more success. One area which of course Sparta has no control over but works again ridiculously in their favour. Athens decides to shoot itself in the foot again. So many of these battles are going on and the Athenians have a particularly good victory.

By good I mean conclusive and they take out a lot of Persian paid for Spartan ships. and they take out a lot of Persian paid for Spartan ships. This is the Battle of Argonusa. It was an important battle to win, and they won it. It was a college of commanders who did it, because that's Athenian expertise. They have so many commanders to call upon. It was a college of commanders that won the battle conclusively. The Spartan allies lost over 100 ships, and the Athenians lost like 20. Remarkably successful.

After that battle, the Spartans regroup. After that battle, the Athenians kill the commanders. It's just ridiculous. It is just ridiculous. Come on then, it's not actually true. Who in their right mind kills their most experienced, successful commanders after a victory? Nobody. The reason they did it, it's actually quite hard to answer, but the reason we're given that they did it was because they contravened an important role of the commander. So to the Athenians, a commander's role isn't just about winning a battle. It is about ensuring the religious sensibilities of everything about a campaign. The Spartan commanders also have the exact same responsibility. To be fair, this isn't just an Athenian thing. But one thing that is uniquely Athenian is that the Athenian

commanders, the strategoi, they have to ensure that the bodies of the dead are retrieved. Something particularly difficult in a naval battle, I will admit, but it is their job to at least try. And the Athenian commanders are accused of not trying. There was supposed to be a storm straight after the battle. So by the time they're back, many of the bodies have sunk. They're still in quite a dangerous situation, even though they have one, and the storm went on for quite a while. So they made the decision, we can't do this. We can't potentially open ourselves to a counterattack or open ourselves to something going wrong for bodies that aren't

there. When they were recalled, all that was heard is that the bodies weren't retrieved. We actually have two sources that talk about this. It's Xenophon, who was taken over from Thucydides as our historian of the Peloponnesian War, and also a much later writer called Diodorus of Sicily. And one talks about the bodies of the dead, which is the most logical reason this happened. Another one actually changed the story to survivors aren't collected. So either way, for me, it's the bodies because it's the religious sensibilities that's the problem. And so whichever way it is, that's the reason the Athenian people

were given. And that's the reason the Athenian people decide to kill their most experienced commanders. So when Sparta has just worked out how to match the Athenians at sea numerically, just worked out that they need continuity of command in some way. And every time they broke that rule, they lost. So they've worked out all these things. And Athens has now fallen foul of that. They've decided to get rid of continuity of command, continuity of knowledge, continuity of skill sets. And this opens up Sparta to its most important victory, which is in 405. And it's the Battle of Agospotimoe. Again, same sort of region. And the Spartans dominate. And that has never been able to set foot of a naval battle between

Sparta and Athens, Spartan forces, allied forces in Athens. So with this crushing naval victory of the Spartans, and I repeat, crushing naval victory of the Spartans, it's funny how things have changed, isn't it? 405 BC, how quickly after this do things wrap up for the Athenians and the Spartans finally claim total victory? They become the top dog in the Greek world. It is rapid because Athens knows exactly what situation it's in. It knows exactly what's happening. It knows exactly the repercussions of what's just happened.

To kind of like sum it up, Xenophon, as I say, Xenophon's our main source for this. And Xenophon actually describes the aftermath and the news of the defeat entering Athens. And he basically describes, like his own words, he says, like the sound of wailing runs through the Piraeus, you know, from the ships announcing the defeat, you know, whether it be by messenger, whether it be by survivors, we're not 100% sure. It goes through the Piraeus, these wails, through the long walls, all the way to the city itself. One man passing the news on to another. So we get this relaying of just the catastrophe that's happened. And he tells us, during the night, no one sleeps in Athens. Everyone is in mourning, not just for the loss and the defeat, but specifically they are mourning themselves. They know exactly what is now happening.

So that is, what, days after the battle. Athens knows what is coming. Athens knows how many city-states it has annoyed. Athens knows how many city-states it has dominated in an aggressive manner. Athens knows how many city-states it has dominated in an aggressive manner. Athens knows the reputation it's held for its ruthless subjugation of dissent. Athens knows how much Sparta wants Athens to go. Athens knows how much Spartan allies in Thebes, in particular Corinth, which of course started this whole thing.

Athens knows exactly what all of them should want. And it is petrified. And by 404, less than a year, Athens has to surrender and basically go, do what you will. Do what you will. And how do the Spartans react? Also, do we see then Spartan armies marching through the streets of Athens into the Agora. I mean, how does this peace unfold? Ultimately, as so often happens, these things unfold in envoys and meetings and discussions and negotiations. Athens obviously tries to defend itself in some way, often calling upon its old traditions and what it's achieved for Greece, obviously harking back to the beginning of the Persian Wars and all these kinds of things. But it knows it's just clutching at straws. What's interesting is that Sparta actually has no intention of destroying Athens. Now, Thebes,

a traditional enemy of Athens, wants Athens destroyed. It wants it basically razed to the ground. It wants it to be dealt with like Milos was dealt with, and the way they think Athens should be replicated in that way. Corinth wants it destroyed. How dare they have caused this world war within our world? How dare they have done what they did? They do not deserve to be here anymore. We should enslave the lot. Sparta had no intention of that happening. Now we can speculate about why. Is it Sparta wants the pedestal Athens is on? Is it Sparta basically wants the money and the empire that Athens has, and Athens has the means of kind of facilitating that? Does it want the wealth that Athens itself already has? For whatever reason, Spartans had in the decision-making process, they decide not to destroy Athens.

However, Athens couldn't be allowed to remain as capable as it has been as a political and military force. So what they do is they do tear down the walls. Athens cannot really defend itself. They destroy the fleet and leave it like a nominal number of ships. Athens now cannot create an island. Athens now cannot be the naval power it's always been. And they also obviously take their overseas territories as well. So Sparta does that in an almost magnanimous way and goes, there you go. Oh, and just to top it all off, they go, you can't be a democracy anymore. So they install a oligarchic, pro-Spartan, but Athenian group of tyrants known as the 30 Tyrants.

So what they do is ultimately they neutralize Athens and ensure that Athenian decision-making is in Spartan favor from then on. As we start to wrap up, and it's also just, I think it's quite interesting how Thebes and Corinth, they're the ones really demanding for Athens to be raised to the ground. And yet within 200, 300 years of this, Athens is still standing. Sparta is kind of still standing. What are the cities that have been raised to the ground? It's Thebes, it's Corinth. So them being so demanding of it,

and ultimately they get their comeuppance in the end. But going back to this, so the Spartans have imposed all of these conditions on Athens, including them losing their precious democracy. Is this the real start of Sparta being the supreme force on the Greek mainland? Yes. Yeah, this is it. So this is the beginning of a period often called the Spartan hegemony. So up until now, there hasn't really been a hegemon, like a leader of Greece. Some people like to think it had been Athens, but as you can quite clearly see in just this podcast, they never had dominant control over the Greeks, really. over the Greeks, really. Sparta now does. So if Sparta decides, I want to wage a war in Persia,

it can rely on many Greek states supporting it in doing that. If Sparta decides it wants to enforce a status quo, it will. So yeah, this is the beginning of that hegemonic period for Sparta, kind of the height of it. But oddly enough, it is also the beginning of its demise, where the impact of the Peloponnesian War, in particular on its population, its Spartan population, its citizen population, is now going to cause it more and more and more problems. So yes, this is now the height, the pinnacle of Spartan power and authority. But at the same time, it is the beginning of the end. and power and authority, but at the same time, it is the beginning of the end. There we go. That's a nice way to end it. A little bit extra very, very quickly. I know we have done this very quickly to do the whole of the Greek World War, Sparta versus Athens.

I feel we must briefly mention the name Alcibiades. I know he's- I've tried to avoid many people. But we should mention this figure, shouldn't we? Athenian general, but he also helps the Spartans. What do the Spartans think of Alcibiades as a figure during this whole struggle? That's a really interesting question, because you're right. This is a whistle-stop tour. I've mentioned we haven't been able to go into any of the naval battles.

We haven't touched any battles in detail. We've missed loads of big names, and I understand that. But Alcibiades is probably the biggest. Alcibiades is this turncoat, but he just flip-flops. So one minute he's leading the Athenian expedition to Sicily. It's his idea. The next minute he's being recalled to Athens to face prosecution, so runs away to Sparta. Then in Sparta, he's like, I've got a really good idea. And he is sort of part of the conversations for the strategy in Decalere. But at the same time, there's rumours that he's shacking up, shall we say, with the Spartan queen. Shacking the king's wife. Yes, absolutely. So that's another rumor floating about. And you've

got to think, who's spreading that rumor? My money's on that. That's going around Sparta. Those are Spartan rumors. All right. So who is this Athenian turncoat? Do they really ever trust him? That's an interesting... I just don't think they would. I think they'd always be wary of him. Listen to him. And ultimately, the advice he gives is often proven to be right. But then he immediately turns again and tries to help the Athenians in the sort of naval battles in sort of around like 411, you know, that kind of period, because he's trying to get the Athenian good books again. And then he upsets the Athenians again. And then he tries to deal with the Persians. And then he's just ridiculous. His story is the most romantic, ridiculous, fantastic story of the classical Greek world. It's got to be him and I would argue a Spartan king that comes later, a guy called Giselaus. These two.

like it. So Alcibiades, I mean, it even goes to him as a young man. You know, his relationship with Socrates, who was his tutor. And there's works by Plato that talk about Socrates' erotic infatuation with him and things like this. So he's clearly a fascinating guy, fascinating story. From the spy on perspective, he is a useful tool and he arrives at the right time. But I don't think they ever really expect him to stay. So they will use him for what they can. And ultimately, he's involved in the big strategic shift in Spartan policies against Athens. And you could argue, is part of the reason Sparta is even able to win this war. Well, as you've hinted at there, Alcibiades is a figure for a podcast episode or two.

He absolutely is. in his own right. But it was good to mention him at the end as we've now wrapped up Sparta versus Athens in this Greek world war and how Sparta ends up on top. But also, as you hinted at, that ultimately it also triggers Sparta's own decline in the fourth century that we will revisit in a future podcast episode. Owen, this has been awesome. in a future podcast episode. Owen, this has been awesome. Last but certainly not least, you have written more than one book on the Peloponnesian War in detail. Yes, yes.

So my first book was on the land battles of Greek warfare, great battles of the ancient Greek world, which covers a lot of these battles and narratives, but also the political machinations behind them and contextualises them. And then as you kind of noticed throughout this podcast naval warfare has its own place so i followed up with another book of great naval battles of the ancient greek world which again covers a very similar time period but specifically

at sea so if you're really interested in how sparta is able to match the athenians by the end of this war that's the book that covers that for me check out out the book and check out the name, Dr. Owen Rees. Owen, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today. No, no, no, thanks for having me again, mate. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Owen Rees talking you through the Peloponnesian War from the Spartan perspective.

A huge topic to cover in just one hour, but I hope you enjoyed the episode. Always a pleasure having Owen on the podcast. Last things from me, if you are enjoying The Ancient so far, then please make sure that you are following, that you are subscribed so that you don't miss an episode as we release them twice every week. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.