Professor Donald
Kagan: The oaths establishing the thirty-years
peace was sworn in the year 445. That leaves,
as we know, of course they didn't about fourteen years
before the Great Peloponnesian War will break out,
and although we only know a little bit about the events
between the two wars, what we do know,
I think, is interesting although not easy to interpret
evidence about the character of that peace,
which we've been talking about. One way to determine whether
the peace was a true peace with a real chance of lasting and
controlling international affairs for a good long time,
or whether it was really a truce that merely interrupted a
conclusion to a war that was inevitable,
I think that can be tested to some degree by the events that
took place in those fourteen years or so.
I think we can--one critical question of course is
quite apart from the objective elements of the peace,
maybe more important than those are the intentions of the two
sides and I think it is possible to arrive at some sense of what
those intentions were. There is little doubt that
Pericles still in the position of the leading politician in
Athens, clearly the man who was,
I think, the negotiator for peace on the Athenian side.
If I'm right about his invention of the arbitration
clause that would suggest he was very much personally involved in
shaping the character of that peace.
It seems plain that he really was sincerely committed to a
policy of preserving peace for the future, for as far as it
could possibly go. One reason is that several
years before the peace--indeed before this war had broken out,
the Athenians had made a peace with the King of Persia.
The negotiator on the Athenian side was a man named Callias and
so it goes down in the books as the Peace of Callias.
This is about as debated a subject as there is in the
history of ancient Greece. Was there really a Peace of
Callias or not? Was it a formal peace or not?
Even in ancient times, some writers question whether
this was a historical fact. I won't trouble you with all
the arguments both ways, but let me indicate--my own
opinion is that there actually was a formal peace.
But it doesn't matter whether that's true or false,
because nobody doubts that there was a de facto
peace between the Athenians and their allies on the one hand and
the Persians for a good long time,
and that it is not broken until well into the Great
Peloponnesian War when in the year 412 there is a treaty made
between Sparta and Persia, which brings Persia into the
war against the Athenians. So, there's this considerable
stretch of time when there is peace with Persia.
Now, about the same time--the traditional date for
Peace of Callias is 449, and about the same time,
we are told only by Plutarch, so some scholars have
questioned the historicity of this too,
that Pericles called for a great Pan Hellenic Congress to
discuss a variety of questions, but one of them was how shall
we keep the promises we made after the Persian War to rebuild
the temples to the gods that had been destroyed by the Persians
in that war, and how shall we see to the
freedom of the seas? Now, the question,
of course, the temples of the gods that had been destroyed in
the Persian War were essentially all in Attica.
So, here was an occasion where the Athenians were apparently
hoping to bring all the Greeks into the picture to help pay the
costs of restoring those temples.
It was the Athenians, who had benefited from it most,
but also maintaining the freedom of the seas meant
providing for a fleet that would keep the Persians out and keep
pirates out and so on. The Athenians obviously had
that fleet. The result of having--If the
Greeks had all in fact participated in this activity it
would have been a way of legitimizing both the Athenian
Empire and of course a navy that made it great,
but also it would have legitimized the plan that
Pericles had in mind and which we know he carried out to the
best of his ability immediately to rebuild those temples,
and indeed, to build some new ones as well on the Acropolis
and elsewhere in Attica as evidence of the greatness and
the glory of Athens. This building program was going
to be at the center of his domestic concerns for the rest
of the period we're talking about.
He invited all the Greeks, but as it turned out,
the Spartans and their friends chose not to show up.
You can see why for the reasons that I in fact have just given
you as to why this would be attractive to Athens;
that's why it would not be attractive to Sparta.
There is some debate. Did Pericles ever expect that
the Spartans would accept or was this just his way of making it
clear that since the Spartans and the other Greeks would not
participate in these activities Athens was right in going about
it unilaterally? One of the things that it would
do, if the Athenians were now to say well, when the Spartans
didn't show up and their allies didn't show up--and they said if
they won't keep their promises to the gods,
we will. That provides justification for
building the first of the great temples he was going to put up
on the Acropolis, the Parthenon,
which was going to be the great marvel of the Greek world
thereafter, and which was going to be very
expensive, and which he was going to use league money for.
This would legitimize it, he hoped, and it would be an
argument for doing that. As for the claim that they
needed to preserve the freedom of the seas, that would give
legitimacy to the existence of the great fleet of the league,
which was paid for by league money.
In other words, it would give legitimacy to the
Athenian Empire. No doubt he thought that was
necessary because having made--that's why I like the idea
that he did make a formal peace with the Persians,
but in either case, with it being obvious that
there would be no more attacks on the Persians and that the
Persians were out and that they were not a threat anymore,
why should the allies contribute their ships and
money, and by the way, by this time most of them were
not contributing money and the Athenians were manning all of
the fleet. Why should this continue if the
war with the Persians was over? Pericles never imagined
that the Athenians would give up their fleet, their empire,
the tribute that supported all of that.
So, he needed to have a reason for doing that.
So, my view, and that of many other scholars
is that the Congress decree, as it is called,
certainly had that as a motive. Was he serious?
What would he have done if the Spartans had said,
"sure we'll do that." I think he expected that they
wouldn't, but he was prepared to have them do that,
because if they would they would contribute the money
presumably that was necessary and they would also grant
legitimacy to what the Athenians were doing with their navy at
sea, and, of course,
it would be a wonderful situation because it would
create a kind of unity between the two that would help keep war
away and Pericles' plan for using all of that money from the
treasury for his building program required peace.If
the Athenians were going to be at war,
that money would not be available.
So for all of these reasons he did what he did.
My guess is he anticipated the likely outcome,
but it doesn't mean that he was unprepared to deal with the
situation if it had been otherwise.
There I think we see the first bit of evidence that leads to my
opinion that Pericles was very sincere about preserving the
thirty-years peace, that he saw that and hoped it
would be the instrument by which there would be--who can talk
about perpetual peace, but at least peace for the
foreseeable future. Another event,
a much debated one, that cast some light on what's
going on occurs in the year 443. In that year,
the Athenians agreed to help establish a colony in southern
Italy at a place that they called Thurii.
Now, there are several things about this colony that are
interesting and perhaps as interesting as any,
is that it was different from any other colony we ever heard
of in the Greek world before this time.
You know the picture of what a typical apoikia is like.
It is the colony of a city and that city is its mother city,
and you know all about those relationships.
There were rare occasions where a couple of cities might get
together and jointly be the mother cities of the town,
but that's all. This colony was established
from the first as a panhellenic colony.
In other words, it was not an Athenian colony
even though the Athenians took the lead in establishing the
colony, even though the Athenians
appointed the critical players in establishing the colony.
The founder, the oikos was an
Athenian; Pericles sent along the leading
seer, the leading religious figure in all of Athens to be
helpful in the founding of that city.
Herodotus, a good friend of Pericles, who also of course was
the father of history went out there presumably to be the
historian of the new city. Hippodamus, the great city
planner of the fifth century B.C.
who was famous--you might not think this is such a big deal
but it is; he applied simply right angled
streets in founding the new city, when of course,
all the old cities had been founded as I described Athens
itself with streets that just developed out of old cow paths
that just wound all over the place,
so the modern grid structure was the work of Hippodamus.
All of these guys were friends and associates,
part of the brains trust you might say of Athens under
Pericles and these guys went out and established the colony of
Thurii; all of these elements are
interesting. Why a panhellenic colony?
Well, for one thing I should point out too,
that Pericles had seen to it that the membership of the
colony consisted of people from a variety of places,
and it's interesting to point out that although the Athenians
had the greatest single number of people in this new colony,
when that colony's constitution was drawn up--I forgot what's
the name of the sophist. Protagoras laid out the
constitution for this new city; again, he was a friend of
Pericles. It was divided up into ten
tribes, just like Athens. It was a democracy.
The constitution was very much influenced by the Athenian
model. And as I said one of the ten
tribes, and remember the ten tribes have to be equal in order
for them to present the necessary regiments in the army.
Only one tenth of the people were Athenians,
even though there were more Athenians than anybody else,
but there were several tribes made up of Peloponnesians,
not from one particular city but all from the Peloponnesus.
I make those points, because I want to make it clear
that if you just look at the percentage of the population
occupied by Athenians it will not allow them to dominate the
city. This really is a panellenic
colony. Why?
My view is that Pericles was attempting to make a very
significant point here. After all, this colony was
established in reaction to a request made by some Italian
Greeks, who were having trouble in
their own city, needed to found a new one,
needed more people in order to make it viable,
went to Sparta, the Spartans said we're not
interested, went to Athens and the Athenians said "yes,"
we'll help you do this. Now, the Athenians could have
said "no," or they could have done the normal thing if they
wanted to say "yes." Make it an Athenian colony.
Why did they come up with this brand new idea that nobody had
ever seen? In my view it was because
Pericles was glad to have an opportunity to demonstrate
something about Athens' intentions now and in the
future. That was the best way to
advertise the fact that the Athenians were not interested in
expanding their power out to the west,
because if they had been they would have made it an Athenian
colony. Other scholars have taken the
opposite view, and think it is the sign of
Athenian imperial interests, which would have said
practically the day after the treaty was signed;
Pericles and the Athenians were already violating the spirit of
that treaty, but I think that is easily demonstrated to be wrong.
All we have to do--well, first of all what I've done
already is to look at the internal character of the state
and you want to argue, that is not the way to start an
imperial venture in the west, set up a colony that's not your
colony, and that has only got a tenth
of its population being Athenian, but other evidence I
think makes it all the clearer. Only a year after the
foundation of the city, it went to war against a
neighboring town, the town of Taras,
which became the Roman town of Tarentum, modern Taranto.
Taras was one of the only Spartan colonies.
So, here you have a Spartan colony fighting against a
Thurii, whatever that is. Imagine for a moment though it
were an Athenian colony, as the people of a different
view say. What does Athens do?
I think that's really critical. The answer is nothing.
Taras defeats Thurii. Then to rub it in they take
some of the spoils of victory and place them at Olympia where
the games are held, where all the Greeks can come
and see, in which they boast about their victory over Thurii.
What do the Athenians do about all this?
Nothing; this is not the way to behave,
if you're planning to start an empire in Sicily and southern
Italy. So, I think that's a very
serious blow to the theory of imperialism out there.
Then a few years down the road, we get to the year 434 - 433,
the crisis which will produce the Great Peloponnesian War has
already begun. So, everybody is looking ahead
to the coming war between Athens and Sparta.
At that time, there is a big argument that
breaks out within Thurii. Whose colony are we?
Once again, a terrific indication that nobody thinks
it's an Athenian colony right off the bat,
although in the argument, the Athenians claim well it's
an Athenian colony--I mean the Athenians in Thurii say,
we're an Athenian colony because there are more Athenians
than anybody else. Whereupon,
the Peloponnesians say, yes there are more Athenians
than anybody else but there are more Peloponnesians than there
are Athenians. So, we are a Peloponnesian
colony, we are a Spartan colony. Well, they couldn't agree,
and so they came to the decision that they would allow
Apollo, through his oracle at Delphi, to decide.
Well, that's an interesting thing too.
Who does the oracle at Delphi lean towards?
We've had very clear evidence of it in the 440s.
They are pro-Spartan. The Spartans have been the
defenders of the priests as against the Phocians from the
outside. There's every reason to believe
a decision made by the priest of Apollo will favor Sparta and
that's not what happens though. What the priest says,
you are not an Athenian colony, you're not a Spartan colony,
you are my colony, says Apollo.
A very nice way out of the fix. But one thing they're not is an
Athenian colony. Now, what do those imperialist
Athenians do about it? Nothing.
To my mind that absolutely undercuts any claim that
Athenian imperialism in the west explains what's going on out
there. But why--what's going on out
there altogether? Why did he establish it at all?
Why did he establish it in the way that he did and why did he
react, or not react in the way that he did?
My suggestion for which there is no ancient direct evidence is
it was meant specifically to use current modern terms,
this was a diplomatic signal. Pericles wanted the rest of
the world, and most especially, the Spartans and their
Peloponnesians allies to know that Athens did not have
ambitions of expanding their empire onto the mainland or out
west. I think what was understood by
the thirty-years peace is the Athenian Empire as it exists in
the Aegean and its front boundaries and to the east in
the direction of Persia, that's the Athenian sphere of
influence, again to use a modern term.
Everything to the west of that the Athenians are going to
say out of and leave alone. My view is, Pericles delivered
that message in his behavior concerning Thurii and he would
have known, I believe, that the number one
state who would be concerned about what was happening out
west would be Corinth, because the Corinthian chain of
colonies and the Corinthian major area of commerce was in
the west; Italy, Sicily and such.
So, it was the Corinthians I think to whom he meant to send
this message, and in a little while we'll how
that works out, whether it worked or it did not.
But it seems to me that is the only way to understand these
events that I have been putting together,
but having said that, I remind you that other
scholars don't understand it that way. This takes us to the year
440, when another critical event tests the peace. The Island of Samos has been an
oligarchic regime. It has been one of the biggest
states in the empire; it has been autonomous,
that is to say it has its own fleet, its own government,
which is again oligarchic not democratic, the way most of the
states are when the Athenians conquer them.
In that state there is as rebellion.
It comes about because of a quarrel between the Samians,
an island I remind you very close to the coast of Asia
Minor, and the town of Miletus,
that famous city of philosophers,
which is just across from Samos,
and in between the two on the mainland is a very small town
called Priene and each town, each one of these states claims
Priene. So, it's a classic quarrel
between Greek poleis about territory that's between
them. Now, this presents a very
special problem for the Athenians when you think about
it. On the one hand,
the Athenians hardly want to get into a fight with Samos,
an island of great power and importance with whom they have
been associated for a very long time.
On the other hand, how can the hegemonal power of
an alliance allow the big fish in the alliance to eat the
little fish, which is what would be
happening here? That is unacceptable if you're
going to have a proper hegemonal relationship with these folks.
So, the Athenians try to sort of split the difference as best
they could; they offered to serve as
arbitrators in this dispute and thereby to avoid war.
Samos would not hear of it. The Samians of course expected
to beat Miletus and they would have done that.
They were in the process of doing what they were doing,
asserting true autonomy as against the Athenian version of
it in the past, but the Athenians couldn't
permit that. It's, again,
one of these confrontations in which each side,
from its own perspective, has right on its side but these
two concepts of right are inevitably in conflict and
problems occur. Well, the Athenians win.
They are told that the Samians are turning down the arbitrators
and they're fighting against the Milesians.
Pericles immediately puts a fleet together and sails across
the sea and puts down the rebellion by force,
and then he takes the steps that the Athenians have
typically taken against rebellious states over the last
decades. That is, he establishes a
democracy, put an end to the previous regime.
He takes hostages from the rebellious aristocrats or
oligarchs and settles them on a nearby island to be sure that
these people will behave. Other than that,
he imposes on them an easy settlement.
He does not do any great--does not do any harm to anybody,
doesn't execute anybody, doesn't take away people's
land, doesn't exile all kinds of folks, he doesn't do that and so
his expectation, and I guess his hope,
would have been that that would be that.
From now on Samos would be a democracy, and therefore
reliable and friendly and there would be no further trouble.
The hostages would help make that secure.
But the defeated oligarchs did not accept defeat.
They went to the Persian satrap inland from Ionia,
his name was Pissuthnes, and asked for his help and he
gave it. He sent a force and the first
they did was to go to the island where the hostages were kept,
take those hostages back and return them to their friends and
families, and thereby took away this restraint against further
trouble and now the Samians overthrew the democratic regime
that had just been placed in power and started an oligarchic
revolution. Now, that's very serious right
away but more serious than that is on the news that this had
happened, the city of Byzantium,
which became Constantinople, which became Istanbul,
located at this vital strategic place on the Bostras,
also rebelled. We are told later on in
Thucydides that at some time, and he doesn't date it,
the island of Mitilini, another one of these big
independent, important states with a navy,
also was thinking about rebellion, and I go along with
those scholars who suggest this is the time when they were doing
their thinking. So, Athens is suddenly
confronted by a danger that they have really not faced before.
On the one hand, their empire may be in general
rebellion soon if this thing spreads.
Secondly, the Persians have actually taken an aggressive
step against the Athenian Empire by assisting the Samians in
their rebellion.Now, we don't know,
and the Athenians couldn't know, whether Pissuthnes had
acted in accordance with the instructions of the great king,
or at least the wishes of the great king, or he was just
running an independent operation.
The first would be a very, very serious problem indeed.
It would mean a major threat from Persia;
the second would still be moderately serious.
I think we can't be sure because there was no time for
Pissuthnes to consult the king and everything is happening
bang, bang, bang and it takes months
to get a message back to Susa where the great king lives.
So, in the first instance Pissuthnes is certainly acting
on his own. The question is,
does he really know how the king will react or not.
We can only guess about that. But here we go;
there are two parts of the trinity that will mean disaster
for Athens. If we look ahead to the
Peloponnesian War and examine what was it that defeated Athens
and put an end to their empire, it was the combination of
rebellion in the empire, assistance to the rebellions by
the Persians, and the third critical step of
course, was that the Spartans were also in the war and ready
to, and in fact they did,
invade Attica and fight against the Athenians on land and it's
that third critical element that is decisive right now here in
440. The Spartans call a meeting
of the Peloponnesian League to discuss the question of should
we make war on the Athenians at this time and that would consist
of invading Attica, and had they done so we would
have had, as I say, what was necessary to defeat
Athens in the Great War. Now, we know later on,
when the final crisis in 432 and 431,433 actually is when the
speech I'm referring to takes place,
a critical part of the story of bringing on that war was the
attitude of the Corinthians. As we shall see,
the Corinthians starting in 433 at least began agitating for
war, and their agitation,
I will argue, played a critical role in
bringing the Spartans to fight. What do they do now?
On that occasion, when they were on the brink of
war, the Corinthians went to Athens and tried to argue the
Athenians out of taking steps that the Corinthians thought
would push the war into reality and they said this,
"When the Samians revolted from you and the other Peloponnesians
were divided in their votes on the question of aiding them,
we on our part did not vote against you.
On the contrary, we openly maintain that each
one should discipline his own allies without interference."
Now, that's critical. What they're saying is there
would have been an agreement to go and attack Athens;
"we stopped it," was their assertion.
Now, that statement cannot be a simple outright lie,
because the Athenians and everybody else in the Greek
world by now would have known what happened in that meeting.
Possibly, they're exaggerating their role, but what they cannot
be doing is misrepresenting the position they took against the
war with Sparta. My question is,
why were the Corinthians, who were so annoyed by the
Athenians--remember it was their--the Athenian alliance
with Megara against Corinth in about 461,
460 that started the first Peloponnesian War,
and as Thucydides tells us, was the source of the hatred of
the Corinthians for the Athenians and yet here we are in
440, and they are making a critical
position against the war. My answer to that question is
Thurii. I believe that when
Pericles and the Athenians sent that diplomatic message,
the Corinthians received it, thought they understood it,
and it changed their policies. So long as the Athenians stayed
out of their bailiwick, they were prepared to preserve
the peace, so I think that's a very
important story if you agree with that analogy.
Peace was very rigorously tested in 440,
and peace won out over a tremendous temptation to go to
war. That leads me to believe that
peace was possible, and I would argue still further
that having passed this great crisis,
having passed this test, chances of peace were better
than ever, because the two sides had acquired reason to trust the
other, to behave by the rules as they
had been established. There is one small point
but--which turns out not to be so small, which I'll come back
to, which is the Corinthians'
interpretation of precisely what that peace meant,
I think will turn out to be not exactly what the Athenians
thought that it meant and that would be serious when we get
down to the final crisis. By in 440, my assertion is,
the Samian rebellion demonstrates that war is still
not necessary. What has been established in
the minds of both sides, this I think is perfectly
clear, is what we would call in the
modern world a balance of power in which the two sides recognize
the other really as equals, where each has established a
sphere of influence out of which the other is to stay and that
this is satisfactory. The issue about the
Spartans and the argument about their behavior at this time
comes down to this. One scholar wants to emphasize
the fact that the Spartans even thought about going to war
against the Athenians, and if that hadn't been true
there never would have been a meeting of the Peloponnesian
League; that's true.
He takes their decision to call the league as evidence that they
had decided to go to war, and were talked out of by the
Corinthians and their allies; that's not the way I see it.
I think that the Spartans in 440 were in the same position
they were in, or I will argue they were in at
the beginning of the Peloponnesian War,
divided, uncertain. The more aggressive
Spartans were tempted by the terrific opportunity the Samian
War presented. The more conservative and
traditional Spartans were reluctant to start another big
war against the Athenians, and the hawks had enough power
to compel them to consult their allies, but how their allies
reacted was going to be decisive and so I think that--my reading
of it is that the conservative Spartans were normally the
majority of the Spartans and it took a very special set of
circumstances, a special set of conditions to
move the Spartans to war and the Corinthians saw to it that that
was not going to happen. Be warned, all of this is a
matter of interpretation. There is no certainty about it
and Thucydides himself, who I think and most people
would agree, thinks that the war was going
to come anyway regardless. He doesn't express opinions
about these actions that I'm talking about as to whether they
did or did not influence the course of events,
but we have that evidence and we have to use it and think
about it. My conclusion then,
is after the Athenians are now free to put down the rebellions
at Samos and at Byzantium, to restore their empire,
and they will use the remaining years before the final crisis to
strengthen their control of the Aegean Sea and of their empire
in the east. Again, some scholars who think
the war inevitable will say this strengthening of the empire was
in fact itself a growth of Athenian power and that seems to
me to be a great stretch of the understanding of that word.
What it is is a consolidation of what they
already have, and there's no evidence that
these actions that I'm talking about frighten the Spartans or
upset them, and that's worth a lot,
because we hear plenty of complaints about what the
Athenians are doing in the final crisis,
but nobody makes any reference to these events that some
scholars think show Athenian growth.
So, there we are; again, a crisis has been
overcome. My argument is,
no reason in the world why the two sides should fight each
other in the absence of some new thing that changes
circumstances. That brings us down precisely
to the final crisis. So, I've been telling you the
war is not inevitable. So, now I have to tell you why
did it happen and that's what I'll try to do.
It starts where Thucydides of course surely begins the
story, having told you the story of how Athens came to be an
empire, how Athens and Sparta came to
divide Greece between them in that first portion of his
history in Book I. We get to what I think is
chapter 24 in the first book where he suddenly moves to where
the crisis begins. Where does it begin?
It begins in a town called Epidamnus, which is located on
the western shore of the Greek peninsula on the Ionian Sea. In Roman times it was called
Dyrrachium. It was an important road system
that they had, but in Greek times it was out
nowhere is what I'm trying to suggest to you.
It was not even on the way to anything very important. I always am reminded of the
term that Neville Chamberlain used when suddenly war
threatened about a place in the middle of Europe called
Czechoslovakia and Chamberlain said about it a faraway place of
which we know nothing. I would have been embarrassed
to say that even in 1937, but it's really something about
Epidamnus, I mean it's way out there in
the middle of nowhere as far as the Greeks are concerned.
Nothing is important about Epidamnus itself.
This is one of the many occasions in which great wars
start in places that are inherently insignificant but
certain aspects of the situation make them significant.
In this case, the most important aspect was
that Epidamnus had been founded by Corcyra,
the modern island of Corfu, located not too far to the
south of Epidamnus. By the way,
I should have told you that the town of ancient Epidamnus today
is in Albania and I can't pronounce.
I don't know how Albanians pronounce things but my best
attempt is Durrės, but I'm not sure that's right.
Anyway, the Corcyrians established the colony there
centuries ago, but Corcyra was a colony itself
of Corinth, but as I told you earlier in
the semester it was a very unusual colony.
Its relations with the mother city were most unusual.
Thucydides reports that the first trireme battle in all of
history was fought between Corinth and Corcyra in the
seventh century and there are repeated wars between Corinth
and Corcyra just about one a century sometimes more
frequently, and it's very clear that by the
time we are into the 430s, these two cities hate each
other and they hate each other with a traditional hatred handed
on down from century to century. This is a very critical
part of comprehending what takes place here.
Anyway, sometime maybe around 436, a civil war breaks out
within the city of Epidamnus in what is not unusual by now in
the Greek world. It's about democrats versus
oligarchs and one side has control of the city,
the other side is driven into exile.
The exiles get help from the barbarian tribes in the
neighborhood, because we're really talking
about the frontier of the Greek world.
They are not surrounded by fellow Greeks;
they are surrounded by non-Greeks.
So, there they are when the people, who are besieged,
send a delegation to their mother city,
Corcyra, asking for help from Corcyra in bringing peace to the
city and in putting an end to the siege which they are
experiencing in. Well, the Corcyraeans are not
interested; their answer is "no."
We don't want to help you. There's no evidence they care
about which side wins; they see no point in getting
involved themselves. An important part of the
story of Corcyra and its significance in the coming of
the war is that it was neutral towards everybody.
It was not a part of the Peloponnesian confederation.
It was not part of the Athenian League, and it wasn't associated
with anybody else. In fact, it had a reputation if
you can believe the Corinthians of being terribly uppity and
unassociating with anybody. I guess if you asked a
Corcyrian he might have used Lord Salsbury's term for Great
Britain late in the nineteenth century as enjoying splendid
isolation. It wasn't too many years before
Lord Salisbury and others realized that isolation wasn't
so splendid as they thought and so it was with Corcyra.
But for the moment the Corcyraeans are saying who the
hell cares who wins your stupid civil war, take a walk.
So, they did. Well, I should say they took a
boat ride. They went to Corinth.
Now, this demonstrates an incredibly important principle
of human behavior. What do you do if you go to
mother and you ask her, "can I have the keys to the
car," or whatever it is you need and
she says, "no, you go to grandma," you know
what grandma will say, right?
You know the old story about the grandmother.
Somebody rushes up, tells the grandmother,
"your grandson has just taken a neighbor's child and thrown him
out of a third-floor window." Grandmother says,
"bless him, such strong hands." So, the Corinthians react as
grandmother might; that is to say,
they agree to send help to the besieged Epidamnians.
They also agree to send an army; first they'd end a fleet,
then they'll send an army which will go there as well,
and they also are willing to re-colonize the city,
because, of course, the city is now divided between
two sides. So, if the people inside are
going to win the war ultimately they're going to need new
citizens; they're not going to want to
take back those people trying to kill them.
So, the Corinthians organize a new colony to join them.
In other words, they give them every kind of
help that anybody can imagine. Now, if we look for a
reason why the Corinthians should have been willing to make
this enormous contribution to this far away argument,
scholars have had a field day for centuries trying to figure
out what the tangible benefits are with absolutely no luck.
There is no evidence that is persuasive at all that there are
economic benefits to Corinth that are significant,
if they somehow have control, no matter what style control,
of Epidamnus and so I think we are driven back,
as we should have been driven in the first place,
to Thucydides' explanation whom himself asks the question and
answers it about the whole quarrel between Corinth and
Corcyra. He refers simply to the hatred
that the Corinthians felt towards the Corcyraeans.
When you get to that passage take a good look at it,
because Thucydides understands that we're all going to raise
our eyebrows a bit and so he tells us the tale.
Why is that so? He says,
because every year the Corinthian hold a religious
festival in their city to which all of their allies send
delegates. This is very normal and all the
other delegates treat them as you should treat a mother city,
with deference, with respect,
with gratitude, with kindness.
What do the Corcyraeans do? They abuse them publicly,
they call them names, they treat them like dirt,
they insult them in front of the family so to speak.
Therefore, the Corinthians hate them, and out of this furious
dislike, that is what their actions are about.
This has made scholars in the modern world very nervous.
They understand that there are only two things that make people
fight one another. One of--yeah that's pretty much
what they used to say now that I think of it, and many of them
still do in the face of what we see in the world today.
One is money, that is economic gain,
and we can thank Marx for that and for a whole century or more
people couldn't understand that people would ever do anything
for any reason except for monetary gain.
There isn't anything in this to explain it;
it just won't do. Scholars have failed in
attempting to show how that might be true.
The other has to do with power. Relationships,
if you this state on your side it will give the balance of
power to you and so on, but the truth of the matter is
Epidamnus is essentially irrelevant to the ordinary
struggles of power between these two states,
Corinth and Corcyra. Corcyra won't be poorer,
it won't be weaker if the Corinthians have Epidamnus nor
is there some kind of a tremendous strategic edge if you
can launch your attack from Epidamnus rather than from
someplace else. No, no, there's no reason to
doubt Thucydides about this. This is about honor and it's
about dishonor. Now, does that sound very
remote? Who cares about honor in the
twentieth century, twenty-first century?
What kind of nonsense is this? I will tell you that you and
everybody around you, and everything you see in the
world today is motivated more frequently--especially conflict,
but other things too, the way you lead your life is
influenced more by considerations of honor than of
anything else. Let me put it in the way that's
most helpful in this context. It's really the negative that's
important. More important than honor is
dishonor; people hate to be dishonored.
They hate--there is a wonderful slang word that now tells the
story. It wasn't available when I was
a kid. The thing was available,
but the word wasn't available. If I say to you, he dissed me;
do you know what I mean? Do you think there's a danger
to your teeth if you dissed the wrong guy?
Do you doubt that that sort of thing motivates individual
people constantly? I can show you,
and I've already shown the world that it motivates nations
constantly today, not only twenty years ago or
500 years ago, 2000 years ago;
that's what Thucydides is showing us here.
This is a very important permanent truth.
This is why Thucydides is so superior to modern political
scientists studying international relations.
They don't understand these things and Thucydides did.
So, that I think is what is happening and when it becomes
clear to Corcyra that Corinth is involved,
that they are looking for a fight, and that they have
dishonored Corcyra by taking over one of their colonies,
the Corcyraeans are on the one hand angered,
but on the other hand they're frightened because Corinth is a
great powerful state, and more important than that,
Corinth is one of the most significant allies of Sparta.
If the Corinthians are giving us grief the Corcyraeans
could think this is a prelude to having the Peloponnesian League
come after us and that is not something you want to happen.
So, the Corcyrians ask for a conference with the Corinthians,
and they come and say, let us find a way to make peace
over this issue, let's see how we can negotiate
a peace. Corinthians are adamant.
They say you want peace; this is what you got to do.
You have got to withdraw your forces from the city;
here you are besieging the city, because the Corcyraeans
have come with their fleet, they have defeated--I always
get this so backwards, let me see if I've got this
right. What are the Corcyrians doing? Their armies are in the field
and their navy is at sea against the opposition to the folks who
are inside the city, and so the Corinthians say,
you were fighting these people and you're asking us to talk
peace while you're fighting these people,
you withdraw your people and then we'll talk peace.
Well, of course, that would give the advantage
to the other side, and the Corcyraeans said no
way, and said tell you what we'll
withdraw our people, if you withdraw your people.
Corinthians said no way. I think what comes out of this
back and forth is important; it is that the Corcyraeans are
not looking to expand this fight;
they want to end it. Not because they are peaceful
and loveable fellows, but because they're afraid of
where this thing will go. We are now dealing with another
term that came into fruition in the twentieth century;
escalation is what these guys were afraid of.
We got this little fight going on here but next thing you know
we may find the Peloponnesian League involved.
But the Corinthians clearly aren't worried about that and
that's going to be a point we have to cope with. The Corcyraeans say,
look if you don't work this out with us now, we may have to seek
allies, other allies besides those we already have.
Well, Thucydides has told us they don't have any other
allies. But who are these allies that
they're going to seek? That's a real question;
somebody tell me. Athens, of course,
I wanted you to tell me, because I want to emphasize how
obvious it is. Nobody could have missed the
signal. This is a threat.
We know you Corinthians are playing as tough as you are
because you're counting on the Spartans to assist you.
Well, if you do, we will ask the Athenians to
help us and then what. And so the situation goes
forward. The Corinthians are not
bluffed, if it was really a bluff and on they go.
I should point out that at this meeting, the Corcyraeans said
they were willing to submit this quarrel to arbitration.
I remind you again, not mediation,
to turn it over to a third party and have them settle the
question, but the Corinthians turned that down.
I think that alone indicates who wanted war and who wanted
peace at this point. The other thing is that it
should be remembered that the thirty-years peace provided that
neutrals were free to join either side that had signed the
thirty-years peace. So that, when they were
implying and threatening an alliance with Athens,
they understood that the Athenians were free to accept
them into the alliance without breaking the thirty-years peace.
That would be a considerable issue as the problem grows more
difficult. Well, there is no peace and
so the two sides organized their navies.
The Corinthians did not have a large standing navy in peace
time and they set to work to put one together.
In 435 there is the Battle of Leucimne which takes place
between the Corinthians and the Corcyraeans and the Corcyraeans
win. Corinth is not deterred;
now they really go to work and they build for them a vast
fleet, consisting of ninety ships,
unprecedented outside of Athens and they do turn,
not in an official way, but unofficially to their
Peloponnesian allies asking them to contribute help too and their
Peloponnesian allies send another sixty ships,
and so the Corinthians have available a total of one hundred
fifty ships. The Corcyrian fleet consisted
of one hundred and twenty ships; they did have a fleet that they
kept at all times and that had given them the confidence in
advance to do what they had done,
but here was Corinth suddenly outnumbering them in this way.
Corcyra was now thoroughly frightened.
They knew that Corinthians would be coming after them again
with a fleet that was bigger than theirs, so they went to
Athens in September of 433. Now, I ask you again to imagine
yourself sitting there on the Pynx in Athens,
in September of 433 as the Corcyraean ambassadors have come
to your town. They're going to ask you to
join in an alliance with them for the purpose of fighting the
Corinthians and their friends. The Corinthians who have heard
about this sent ambassadors of their own to Athens,
they are present on that same hill, and they will make their
case as to why the Athenians should say "no" to that request.
Thucydides reports his version of both speeches.
There is every reason to think he was sitting there in the
Athenian assembly on the days in which these discussions took
place. The essence of the
Corcyraean argument is that--well, here are the points
they make. Corinth is wrong,
it is not a breach of the thirty-years peace for Athens to
accept the Corcyraeans into their alliance because neutrals
are permitted. Then they go through a lot of
stuff to show that the Corinthians are bad guys,
making arguments on the grounds of morality and virtue and
decency and obeying the law and all kinds of stuff,
but it's clear that that's not what's on their minds.
They are talking about--basically they try to
convince the Athenians on the grounds of the significance of
their decision for the balance of power,
and essentially the balance of naval power in the Greek world. In passing,
they make the point that Corcyra is very well situated
for a naval--I should--for a sea voyage to Sicily and Italy,
where the Athenians and others are always wanting to go.
So, you want to be on our side. That's not really a very potent
argument, because no town, no polis shuts its ports
to any other polis except in war time.
So, it's only when they mention it, they only have to be talking
about why it's valuable to be allied with Corcyra,
because and this is their most powerful underlying argument,
there's going to be a war. Don't kid yourself Athenians is
what they are saying, and when that war comes you're
going to want to be us. You're going to want to have us
on your side, in part because of our
convenience, our strategic location.
On the other hand, more powerful is the fact--we
have a hundred twenty ships. If we lose, if you let the
Corinthians beat us, our ships will fall into their
hands, and then they will have a much
mightier fleet than even the one they have put together,
and now your unquestioned dominance of the sea will be
challenged. That's what's at issue.
Don't imagine that this is just anybody's imagination.
This is going to happen. The war is coming;
an enormous amount of what's happening here has to do with
your perception of whether the war is now inevitable or whether
by restraint you can preserve the peace.
That's the problem that the Athenians face.
It's a terribly interesting one, because it happened so very
often on the brinks of wars, when that's the issue that
determines what people will do and how they react.
If they don't think that taking a certain action--I'm sorry,
if they don't think the war is coming anyway,
they may very well decide to refrain from an action that
might provoke a war. If, on the other hand,
they think war is coming they feel that it's too dangerous not
to make our capacity to win the war more likely and so they may
well take a step which makes the war more likely,
and they're both gambles. Nobody knows for sure one way
or another; you have to make an estimate
and that's always the way it is, unless you are simply an
aggressive state and all you want to do is conquer,
and you don't care about anything else.
You're always trying to figure out will it be safer to fight or
not to fight, will it be safer to try to make
a concession or will that make it more dangerous.
Those are always the issues, always the problems.
One of the great imbecilities that I discovered
all through my life is people will contemplate going to war at
different times in our time, is the quiet assumption,
unquestioned, unexamined that restraint,
the failure to take action is safe;
taking action is dangerous. Whereas, our experience,
even in my lifetime, has demonstrated that's often
wrong. Nothing could be clearer to me
and I think to most people who studied the subject that not
acting against Hitler as he took one step after another to rip up
a piece of Europe was the most dangerous thing they could
possibly do, far more dangerous than
confronting him as early as 1936 when he invaded the Rhineland.
That's not the only case of it. There's no simple rule.
Sometimes it's wiser not to act and sometimes it's wiser to
act, but it's never clear which one is more likely to produce
peace and safety, and that's what the Athenians
had to wrestle with on that day. The Corinthians responded to
the argument of the Corcyraeans denying their picture of things.
They said, in fact if you sign up with the Corcyraeans now,
you will be in violation of the thirty-years peace.
What they were saying I guess in the abstract was,
don't worry about the letter of the law of the treaty;
because that clearly permits an alliance;
it's the spirit that counts. They said, surely nobody
imagined that this decision would be made at a time when the
neutral is asking you to join in was already at war with one of
us; surely nobody had that in mind.
They're certainly right. Nobody did.
The question is, on the legal point,
my guess is the Athenians had the better of the argument.
It says in black letter law; it says you may take a neutral
if a neutral asks you for an alliance.
There's nothing that says, except that when that neutral's
attacking us; it doesn't say that.
On the other hand, who in his right mind could
imagine it would be okay to do that?
So, that was one issue that the Corinthians spoke to.
But they made another point that was legalistic as well and
this one I think in the case of the Corinthians is much worse.
They said the principle established in the thirty-years
peace was that each side could punish its own allies without
the interference of the other side.
Now, as a matter of fact, it didn't say that,
but the other thing that's wrong with that statement is,
it's one thing for Athens to punish Samos,
which is an ally and the Corinthians saying fine,
that's your business, we won't intervene.
But Corcyra is not the ally of Corinth.
In fact, they are bitter enemies of yester year.
There's no part of that treaty that protects the Corinthian
right to attack Corcyra. So, it's a great argument if
you don't look at the validity of the facts that are alleged.
Corinth has got a very bad case here.
But their really important argument is this.
The Corcyraeans say the war is inevitable;
well, it isn't. The fact is they tell the
Athenians, if you were smart the thing you would do would be to
join us, and together we'll smash the
Corcyraeans and then there's no more problem.
But if you don't do that, at the very least,
refrain from joining them because then we will be friends,
and then we will have peace in the future.
But make no mistake about it, if you do accept the
Corcyraeans into your alliance now, then there will be war.
War is not inevitable, but your action can make it
inevitable. So, that's what the Athenians
confront when they have to make their decision.
Again, the drama of this is so striking I want to be sure you
conceive of it. They are sitting there;
everything I've told you so far has been said on the same day
and now the Athenians start talking about what should we do;
it's the same day. The people who are sitting
on the Pnyx, if the day is clear as they used to be in Athens
just about everyday, can look out across Attica to
the north and they can see that area into which the Spartan and
Peloponnesian army will march and start destroying their farms
three days from now possibly, if a war starts.
Who is going to be doing that fighting out there?
We will; those of us who are sitting
here voting whether to go to war or not.
I'm always struck by the immediacy and the significance
of what these guys are doing. Somebody tell me this is not a
democracy, please. So, it is of course the same
kind of thing they faced back in 461, when they had to decide
whether to take Megara into the alliance, again.
There are significant differences, but the issue is
very much the same. They can't be sure.
Maybe if they back off and refuse the alliance,
maybe that will be the end of the problem and they'll live
happily ever after. On the other hand,
if they're wrong about that and the Corinthians take over this
fleet, suddenly they will find
themselves vulnerable in a way they have not been,
since they put their empire together.
I always find it illuminating to me anyway,
and I hope to you as well, to make an analogy to Great
Britain at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of
the twentieth century. Great Britain,
at the beginning of the nineteenth, sort of the middle
and after the nineteenth century came--had the greatest navy in
the world without question. It was the greatest power in
the world. It had this enormous empire
that it ruled and its vulnerabilities were mainly
against France and Russia, who were two imperial rivals in
the areas that the British cared about most.
At a certain point they decided to make their fleet to be the
size of the next two fleets put together,
in order to feel secure in case a war broke out,
and that's what they did. Everything was fine until
Kaiser William becomes the Emperor of Germany and towards
the end of the nineteenth century decides that Germany
must be a great naval power. It must be a world empire,
it must challenge Britain for that opportunity and they begin
to build a fleet of battleships whose only purpose can be to
destroy the British fleet and to allow the Germans to invade
Britain, or best of all to intimidate
the British into stepping aside and allowing the Germans to do
what they want to do. As soon as this becomes clear
to the British, as soon as the Germans start
building that fleet, it is not yet strong enough to
defeat the British fleet, and the British enter into a
naval race to see to it that they don't get to be big enough
to take out the British fleet. But it's very costly,
the British don't like it, they try to find every way,
and what they do is completely flip their diplomacy which has
dominated their behavior for over a hundred years and they
make an alliance with France and Russia to see to it that the
Germans are checked and prevented from doing what
they're planning to do. I think that does help to
understand what the Athenians are doing.
When you are, as in the case of Britain,
an island state and as in the case of Athens you might as well
be an island state, because you are dependent on
imports for your food supply and the command of the sea is
essential for acquiring that, in such a case it is not a
light thing to permit a change in the naval balance of power,
which may make you seriously vulnerable in case of war.
The point I want to make is that the British didn't wait
until the Germans had equaled their force;
they changed their policy and ultimately moved into war to
prevent it and that's where the Athenians I think found
themselves. It was something they were not
willing to do, but it was a very hard call,
and we are told that they argued so long that it got dark
before the decision could be made.
Thucydides says, it was thought that they were
inclining against the alliance when it got dark.
They met again the next day and this time they voted for
something a bit different from what they had been talking about
the day before. What the Corcyrians had been
requesting was a typical alliance, the only kind we know
of between Greeks, a symmachia,
an offensive and defensive alliance.
It would have required the Athenians to go out and fight
the Corinthians, even if the Corinthians didn't
attack Corcyra. It would have put them fully at
war against the Corinthians. That's not what the Athenians
voted. On the second day they voted on
the proposition that they established something called an
epimachia, which means a defensive
alliance only. They would only fight against
an enemy, if that enemy had attacked Corcyra and was in the
process of landing on their territory,
and so that's finally what the Athenians did.
That was the vote they took. Once again, we have something
unheard of before, a device which is in a way
largely a diplomatic device meant to have consequences on
thinking rather than immediate military results.
So, I say it's got to be Pericles, but I feel better this
time, because Plutarch says, it was Pericles even though
Thucydides doesn't say who made that proposal.
It was clearly what Pericles wanted because he holds to it
very, very firmly, in both directions,
both in terms of the limits that this puts on Athenian
action, but on the determination to
take that action no matter what. What I suggest to you is that
we are going to be dealing from here on in--we have been dealing
with in a general way anyway, but now it's very clear,
this is Pericles' policy. I assert it is a policy
intended to keep the peace, and here again,
we run into a problem in our own time in which sort of the
normal reaction of people is, if you want to keep the peace
,what you want to do is to be a nice guy.
What you want to do is to make concessions, you want not to
frighten the potential enemy, you want to show that you have
no ill-will towards him, and then reason will prevail
and you can all have a nice chat and go off for tea.
Of course, that's not the way it is at
all. One way always that has been
used by nations in the hope of keeping peace is through the
opposite device, of deterrence where there isn't
any hope of coming to a happy agreement.
Of course, if there had been you wouldn't be in the spot
you're in now. All you can do is try to
indicate to your opponent that he will not achieve the goals he
seeks, if he launches a war against
you, and so that requires that you be very strong,
militarily strong and strong in the way in which you negotiate.
On the other hand, if that is your goal,
deterrence, then you also want to be very careful not to behave
in such a way that it's too frightening.
That indicates to your opponent that you are likely to defeat
him, if he allows you to be as strong as you would like to be.
You want to avoid taking an action that will make him lose
his rationality, that will make him so angry
that he will forget about these questions of success and
failure, he'll just say I'm going to get
that son of a gun and that, I argue, is the policy that
Pericles pursued. An attempt at deterrence
and moderation at the same time, to frighten the opponent by his
determination out of thinking they can do what they want
without a danger of war, but also to avoid inflaming his
anger. In the short run,
what happens is that the Athenians send to assist their
Corcyrian allies a fleet of only ten triremes.
This is inexplicable in my view, except in terms of the
strategy that I have suggested. What he's doing is sending
really not a force but a diplomatic message.
He is telling the Corinthians, you have been counting on the
fact that we would stay out of this, well you were wrong.
We will not allow you to defeat the Corcyraean navy,
because we find that unacceptable and dangerous.
So, we're sending this force to help the Corcyraeans not because
we want to fight you but because we want you to see that we're
serious about this; don't start the fight.
Well, the Corinthians sail their fleet against Corcyra and
there follows a battle at sea called the Battle of Sybota,
and Thucydides describes the battle itself,
very tough battle. The Athenians are--I'm sorry I
haven't told you one thing you need to know.
The Athenians will line up at one end of the Corcyraean line
with their ten ships. The commanders of that fleet
are determined as well. Those ten ships are commanded
by three generals; that's a lot of generals for
ten ships, but one of them who is the chief figure there is
Lacedaemonius, the son of Cimon.
Well, of course, he is clearly seen by everybody
else as not one of the Pericles' boys, not a stooge of Pericles.
He's an independent and what's his name mean?
Mr. Spartan. Now, if the Athenians get
drawn into that battle and the command that we should do so is
done by Lacedaemonius then, of course, that will not have
the effect of dividing the Athenians but it will make it
much harder to divide the Athenians.
It would be much easier to say all Athenians,
even those who have the kindest attitude towards Sparta thought
that this was a necessary step, which I think was aimed not at
Corinthians so much. It was aimed,
of course, at Athenian politics, but I think it was
aimed at the Spartans too because then if the Spartans
were then asked by the Corinthians,
so look what happened, come in and help us against the
Athenians, they would have to face the fact that even
Lacedaemonius thought this was necessary.
It's the same game. All of these are cagey moves by
Pericles to pursue his extremely complicated, tricky,
kind of a strategy, and I see that I have run over
my time. So I'll pick up the tale next
time.
