CHAPTER I
The
State of Greece from the earliest Times to the Commencement of the
Peloponnesian WarThucydides,
an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians
and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and
believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation
than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without its
grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every
department in the last state of perfection; and he could see the rest
of the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed
doing so at once having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the
greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but
of a large part of the barbarian world—I had almost said of
mankind. For though the events of remote antiquity, and even those
that more immediately preceded the war, could not from lapse of time
be clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as
far back as was practicable leads me to trust, all point to the
conclusion that there was nothing on a great scale, either in war or
in other matters.For
instance, it is evident that the country now called Hellas had in
ancient times no settled population; on the contrary, migrations were
of frequent occurrence, the several tribes readily abandoning their
homes under the pressure of superior numbers. Without commerce,
without freedom of communication either by land or sea, cultivating
no more of their territory than the exigencies of life required,
destitute of capital, never planting their land (for they could not
tell when an invader might not come and take it all away, and when he
did come they had no walls to stop him), thinking that the
necessities of daily sustenance could be supplied at one place as
well as another, they cared little for shifting their habitation, and
consequently neither built large cities nor attained to any other
form of greatness. The richest soils were always most subject to this
change of masters; such as the district now called Thessaly, Boeotia,
most of the Peloponnese, Arcadia excepted, and the most fertile parts
of the rest of Hellas. The goodness of the land favoured the
aggrandizement of particular individuals, and thus created faction
which proved a fertile source of ruin. It also invited invasion.
Accordingly Attica, from the poverty of its soil enjoying from a very
remote period freedom from faction, never changed its inhabitants.
And here is no inconsiderable exemplification of my assertion that
the migrations were the cause of there being no correspondent growth
in other parts. The most powerful victims of war or faction from the
rest of Hellas took refuge with the Athenians as a safe retreat; and
at an early period, becoming naturalized, swelled the already large
population of the city to such a height that Attica became at last
too small to hold them, and they had to send out colonies to Ionia.There
is also another circumstance that contributes not a little to my
conviction of the weakness of ancient times. Before the Trojan war
there is no indication of any common action in Hellas, nor indeed of
the universal prevalence of the name; on the contrary, before the
time of Hellen, son of Deucalion, no such appellation existed, but
the country went by the names of the different tribes, in particular
of the Pelasgian. It was not till Hellen and his sons grew strong in
Phthiotis, and were invited as allies into the other cities, that one
by one they gradually acquired from the connection the name of
Hellenes; though a long time elapsed before that name could fasten
itself upon all. The best proof of this is furnished by Homer. Born
long after the Trojan War, he nowhere calls all of them by that name,
nor indeed any of them except the followers of Achilles from
Phthiotis, who were the original Hellenes: in his poems they are
called Danaans, Argives, and Achaeans. He does not even use the term
barbarian, probably because the Hellenes had not yet been marked off
from the rest of the world by one distinctive appellation. It appears
therefore that the several Hellenic communities, comprising not only
those who first acquired the name, city by city, as they came to
understand each other, but also those who assumed it afterwards as
the name of the whole people, were before the Trojan war prevented by
their want of strength and the absence of mutual intercourse from
displaying any collective action.Indeed,
they could not unite for this expedition till they had gained
increased familiarity with the sea. And the first person known to us
by tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He made himself
master of what is now called the Hellenic sea, and ruled over the
Cyclades, into most of which he sent the first colonies, expelling
the Carians and appointing his own sons governors; and thus did his
best to put down piracy in those waters, a necessary step to secure
the revenues for his own use.For
in early times the Hellenes and the barbarians of the coast and
islands, as communication by sea became more common, were tempted to
turn pirates, under the conduct of their most powerful men; the
motives being to serve their own cupidity and to support the needy.
They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls, and consisting of a
mere collection of villages, and would plunder it; indeed, this came
to be the main source of their livelihood, no disgrace being yet
attached to such an achievement, but even some glory. An illustration
of this is furnished by the honour with which some of the inhabitants
of the continent still regard a successful marauder, and by the
question we find the old poets everywhere representing the people as
asking of voyagers—"Are they pirates?"—as if those who
are asked the question would have no idea of disclaiming the
imputation, or their interrogators of reproaching them for it. The
same rapine prevailed also by land.And
even at the present day many of Hellas still follow the old fashion,
the Ozolian Locrians for instance, the Aetolians, the Acarnanians,
and that region of the continent; and the custom of carrying arms is
still kept up among these continentals, from the old piratical
habits. The whole of Hellas used once to carry arms, their
habitations being unprotected and their communication with each other
unsafe; indeed, to wear arms was as much a part of everyday life with
them as with the barbarians. And the fact that the people in these
parts of Hellas are still living in the old way points to a time when
the same mode of life was once equally common to all. The Athenians
were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an easier and
more luxurious mode of life; indeed, it is only lately that their
rich old men left off the luxury of wearing undergarments of linen,
and fastening a knot of their hair with a tie of golden grasshoppers,
a fashion which spread to their Ionian kindred and long prevailed
among the old men there. On the contrary, a modest style of dressing,
more in conformity with modern ideas, was first adopted by the
Lacedaemonians, the rich doing their best to assimilate their way of
life to that of the common people. They also set the example of
contending naked, publicly stripping and anointing themselves with
oil in their gymnastic exercises. Formerly, even in the Olympic
contests, the athletes who contended wore belts across their middles;
and it is but a few years since that the practice ceased. To this day
among some of the barbarians, especially in Asia, when prizes for
boxing and wrestling are offered, belts are worn by the combatants.
And there are many other points in which a likeness might be shown
between the life of the Hellenic world of old and the barbarian of
to-day.With
respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased facilities
of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find the shores
becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses being occupied
for the purposes of commerce and defence against a neighbour. But the
old towns, on account of the great prevalence of piracy, were built
away from the sea, whether on the islands or the continent, and still
remain in their old sites. For the pirates used to plunder one
another, and indeed all coast populations, whether seafaring or not.The
islanders, too, were great pirates. These islanders were Carians and
Phoenicians, by whom most of the islands were colonized, as was
proved by the following fact. During the purification of Delos by
Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and it
was found that above half their inmates were Carians: they were
identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the
method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow.
But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea became
easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus expelled the
malefactors. The coast population now began to apply themselves more
closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life became more
settled; some even began to build themselves walls on the strength of
their newly acquired riches. For the love of gain would reconcile the
weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital
enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller towns to subjection.
And it was at a somewhat later stage of this development that they
went on the expedition against Troy.What
enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my opinion, his
superiority in strength, than the oaths of Tyndareus, which bound the
suitors to follow him. Indeed, the account given by those
Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most credible
tradition is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy
population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that,
stranger though he was, the country was called after him; and this
power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his
descendants. Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids.
Atreus was his mother's brother; and to the hands of his relation,
who had left his father on account of the death of Chrysippus,
Eurystheus, when he set out on his expedition, had committed Mycenae
and the government. As time went on and Eurystheus did not return,
Atreus complied with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were
influenced by fear of the Heraclids—besides, his power seemed
considerable, and he had not neglected to court the favour of the
populace—and assumed the sceptre of Mycenae and the rest of the
dominions of Eurystheus. And so the power of the descendants of
Pelops came to be greater than that of the descendants of Perseus. To
all this Agamemnon succeeded. He had also a navy far stronger than
his contemporaries, so that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong
an element as love in the formation of the confederate expedition.
The strength of his navy is shown by the fact that his own was the
largest contingent, and that of the Arcadians was furnished by him;
this at least is what Homer says, if his testimony is deemed
sufficient. Besides, in his account of the transmission of the
sceptre, he calls himOf
many an isle, and of all Argos king.Now
Agamemnon's was a continental power; and he could not have been
master of any except the adjacent islands (and these would not be
many), but through the possession of a fleet.And
from this expedition we may infer the character of earlier
enterprises. Now Mycenae may have been a small place, and many of the
towns of that age may appear comparatively insignificant, but no
exact observer would therefore feel justified in rejecting the
estimate given by the poets and by tradition of the magnitude of the
armament. For I suppose if Lacedaemon were to become desolate, and
the temples and the foundations of the public buildings were left,
that as time went on there would be a strong disposition with
posterity to refuse to accept her fame as a true exponent of her
power. And yet they occupy two-fifths of Peloponnese and lead the
whole, not to speak of their numerous allies without. Still, as the
city is neither built in a compact form nor adorned with magnificent
temples and public edifices, but composed of villages after the old
fashion of Hellas, there would be an impression of inadequacy.
Whereas, if Athens were to suffer the same misfortune, I suppose that
any inference from the appearance presented to the eye would make her
power to have been twice as great as it is. We have therefore no
right to be sceptical, nor to content ourselves with an inspection of
a town to the exclusion of a consideration of its power; but we may
safely conclude that the armament in question surpassed all before
it, as it fell short of modern efforts; if we can here also accept
the testimony of Homer's poems, in which, without allowing for the
exaggeration which a poet would feel himself licensed to employ, we
can see that it was far from equalling ours. He has represented it as
consisting of twelve hundred vessels; the Boeotian complement of each
ship being a hundred and twenty men, that of the ships of Philoctetes
fifty. By this, I conceive, he meant to convey the maximum and the
minimum complement: at any rate, he does not specify the amount of
any others in his catalogue of the ships. That they were all rowers
as well as warriors we see from his account of the ships of
Philoctetes, in which all the men at the oar are bowmen. Now it is
improbable that many supernumeraries sailed, if we except the kings
and high officers; especially as they had to cross the open sea with
munitions of war, in ships, moreover, that had no decks, but were
equipped in the old piratical fashion. So that if we strike the
average of the largest and smallest ships, the number of those who
sailed will appear inconsiderable, representing, as they did, the
whole force of Hellas. And this was due not so much to scarcity of
men as of money. Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce
the numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the
country during the prosecution of the war. Even after the victory
they obtained on their arrival—and a victory there must have been,
or the fortifications of the naval camp could never have been
built—there is no indication of their whole force having been
employed; on the contrary, they seem to have turned to cultivation of
the Chersonese and to piracy from want of supplies. This was what
really enabled the Trojans to keep the field for ten years against
them; the dispersion of the enemy making them always a match for the
detachment left behind. If they had brought plenty of supplies with
them, and had persevered in the war without scattering for piracy and
agriculture, they would have easily defeated the Trojans in the
field, since they could hold their own against them with the division
on service. In short, if they had stuck to the siege, the capture of
Troy would have cost them less time and less trouble. But as want of
money proved the weakness of earlier expeditions, so from the same
cause even the one in question, more famous than its predecessors,
may be pronounced on the evidence of what it effected to have been
inferior to its renown and to the current opinion about it formed
under the tuition of the poets.Even
after the Trojan War, Hellas was still engaged in removing and
settling, and thus could not attain to the quiet which must precede
growth. The late return of the Hellenes from Ilium caused many
revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the
citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty years
after the capture of Ilium, the modern Boeotians were driven out of
Arne by the Thessalians, and settled in the present Boeotia, the
former Cadmeis; though there was a division of them there before,
some of whom joined the expedition to Ilium. Twenty years later, the
Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of Peloponnese; so that much
had to be done and many years had to elapse before Hellas could
attain to a durable tranquillity undisturbed by removals, and could
begin to send out colonies, as Athens did to Ionia and most of the
islands, and the Peloponnesians to most of Italy and Sicily and some
places in the rest of Hellas. All these places were founded
subsequently to the war with Troy.But
as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth became
more an object, the revenues of the states increasing, tyrannies were
by their means established almost everywhere—the old form of
government being hereditary monarchy with definite prerogatives—and
Hellas began to fit out fleets and apply herself more closely to the
sea. It is said that the Corinthians were the first to approach the
modern style of naval architecture, and that Corinth was the first
place in Hellas where galleys were built; and we have Ameinocles, a
Corinthian shipwright, making four ships for the Samians. Dating from
the end of this war, it is nearly three hundred years ago that
Ameinocles went to Samos. Again, the earliest sea-fight in history
was between the Corinthians and Corcyraeans; this was about two
hundred and sixty years ago, dating from the same time. Planted on an
isthmus, Corinth had from time out of mind been a commercial
emporium; as formerly almost all communication between the Hellenes
within and without Peloponnese was carried on overland, and the
Corinthian territory was the highway through which it travelled. She
had consequently great money resources, as is shown by the epithet
"wealthy" bestowed by the old poets on the place, and this
enabled her, when traffic by sea became more common, to procure her
navy and put down piracy; and as she could offer a mart for both
branches of the trade, she acquired for herself all the power which a
large revenue affords. Subsequently the Ionians attained to great
naval strength in the reign of Cyrus, the first king of the Persians,
and of his son Cambyses, and while they were at war with the former
commanded for a while the Ionian sea. Polycrates also, the tyrant of
Samos, had a powerful navy in the reign of Cambyses, with which he
reduced many of the islands, and among them Rhenea, which he
consecrated to the Delian Apollo. About this time also the Phocaeans,
while they were founding Marseilles, defeated the Carthaginians in a
sea-fight. These were the most powerful navies. And even these,
although so many generations had elapsed since the Trojan war, seem
to have been principally composed of the old fifty-oars and
long-boats, and to have counted few galleys among their ranks. Indeed
it was only shortly the Persian war, and the death of Darius the
successor of Cambyses, that the Sicilian tyrants and the Corcyraeans
acquired any large number of galleys. For after these there were no
navies of any account in Hellas till the expedition of Xerxes;
Aegina, Athens, and others may have possessed a few vessels, but they
were principally fifty-oars. It was quite at the end of this period
that the war with Aegina and the prospect of the barbarian invasion
enabled Themistocles to persuade the Athenians to build the fleet
with which they fought at Salamis; and even these vessels had not
complete decks.The
navies, then, of the Hellenes during the period we have traversed
were what I have described. All their insignificance did not prevent
their being an element of the greatest power to those who cultivated
them, alike in revenue and in dominion. They were the means by which
the islands were reached and reduced, those of the smallest area
falling the easiest prey. Wars by land there were none, none at least
by which power was acquired; we have the usual border contests, but
of distant expeditions with conquest for object we hear nothing among
the Hellenes. There was no union of subject cities round a great
state, no spontaneous combination of equals for confederate
expeditions; what fighting there was consisted merely of local
warfare between rival neighbours. The nearest approach to a coalition
took place in the old war between Chalcis and Eretria; this was a
quarrel in which the rest of the Hellenic name did to some extent
take sides.Various,
too, were the obstacles which the national growth encountered in
various localities. The power of the Ionians was advancing with rapid
strides, when it came into collision with Persia, under King Cyrus,
who, after having dethroned Croesus and overrun everything between
the Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had reduced the cities of
the coast; the islands being only left to be subdued by Darius and
the Phoenician navy.Again,
wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing simply for
themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and family
aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy, and
prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would each
have their affairs with their immediate neighbours. All this is only
true of the mother country, for in Sicily they attained to very great
power. Thus for a long time everywhere in Hellas do we find causes
which make the states alike incapable of combination for great and
national ends, or of any vigorous action of their own.But
at last a time came when the tyrants of Athens and the far older
tyrannies of the rest of Hellas were, with the exception of those in
Sicily, once and for all put down by Lacedaemon; for this city,
though after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants,
it suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, still
at a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a freedom from
tyrants which was unbroken; it has possessed the same form of
government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of
the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs
of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the
tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the
Athenians. Ten years afterwards, the barbarian returned with the
armada for the subjugation of Hellas. In the face of this great
danger, the command of the confederate Hellenes was assumed by the
Lacedaemonians in virtue of their superior power; and the Athenians,
having made up their minds to abandon their city, broke up their
homes, threw themselves into their ships, and became a naval people.
This coalition, after repulsing the barbarian, soon afterwards split
into two sections, which included the Hellenes who had revolted from
the King, as well as those who had aided him in the war. At the end
of the one stood Athens, at the head of the other Lacedaemon, one the
first naval, the other the first military power in Hellas. For a
short time the league held together, till the Lacedaemonians and
Athenians quarrelled and made war upon each other with their allies,
a duel into which all the Hellenes sooner or later were drawn, though
some might at first remain neutral. So that the whole period from the
Median war to this, with some peaceful intervals, was spent by each
power in war, either with its rival, or with its own revolted allies,
and consequently afforded them constant practice in military matters,
and that experience which is learnt in the school of danger.The
policy of Lacedaemon was not to exact tribute from her allies, but
merely to secure their subservience to her interests by establishing
oligarchies among them; Athens, on the contrary, had by degrees
deprived hers of their ships, and imposed instead contributions in
money on all except Chios and Lesbos. Both found their resources for
this war separately to exceed the sum of their strength when the
alliance flourished intact.Having
now given the result of my inquiries into early times, I grant that
there will be a difficulty in believing every particular detail. The
way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of their own
country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered, without
applying any critical test whatever. The general Athenian public
fancy that Hipparchus was tyrant when he fell by the hands of
Harmodius and Aristogiton, not knowing that Hippias, the eldest of
the sons of Pisistratus, was really supreme, and that Hipparchus and
Thessalus were his brothers; and that Harmodius and Aristogiton
suspecting, on the very day, nay at the very moment fixed on for the
deed, that information had been conveyed to Hippias by their
accomplices, concluded that he had been warned, and did not attack
him, yet, not liking to be apprehended and risk their lives for
nothing, fell upon Hipparchus near the temple of the daughters of
Leos, and slew him as he was arranging the Panathenaic procession.There
are many other unfounded ideas current among the rest of the
Hellenes, even on matters of contemporary history, which have not
been obscured by time. For instance, there is the notion that the
Lacedaemonian kings have two votes each, the fact being that they
have only one; and that there is a company of Pitane, there being
simply no such thing. So little pains do the vulgar take in the
investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes
to hand. On the whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the
proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on. Assuredly they
will not be disturbed either by the lays of a poet displaying the
exaggeration of his craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers
that are attractive at truth's expense; the subjects they treat of
being out of the reach of evidence, and time having robbed most of
them of historical value by enthroning them in the region of legend.
Turning from these, we can rest satisfied with having proceeded upon
the clearest data, and having arrived at conclusions as exact as can
be expected in matters of such antiquity. To come to this war:
despite the known disposition of the actors in a struggle to overrate
its importance, and when it is over to return to their admiration of
earlier events, yet an examination of the facts will show that it was
much greater than the wars which preceded it.With
reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before
the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself,
others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to
carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to
make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the
various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the
general sense of what they really said. And with reference to the
narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the
first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own
impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what
others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by
the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost
me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the
same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from
imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the
other. The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract
somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those
inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the
interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things
must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine,
I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause
of the moment, but as a possession for all time.The
Median War, the greatest achievement of past times, yet found a
speedy decision in two actions by sea and two by land. The
Peloponnesian War was prolonged to an immense length, and, long as it
was, it was short without parallel for the misfortunes that it
brought upon Hellas. Never had so many cities been taken and laid
desolate, here by the barbarians, here by the parties contending (the
old inhabitants being sometimes removed to make room for others);
never was there so much banishing and blood-shedding, now on the
field of battle, now in the strife of faction. Old stories of
occurrences handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by
experience, suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes
of unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred
with a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great
droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most
calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came
upon them with the late war, which was begun by the Athenians and
Peloponnesians by the dissolution of the thirty years' truce made
after the conquest of Euboea. To the question why they broke the
treaty, I answer by placing first an account of their grounds of
complaint and points of difference, that no one may ever have to ask
the immediate cause which plunged the Hellenes into a war of such
magnitude. The real cause I consider to be the one which was formally
most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the
alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable. Still
it is well to give the grounds alleged by either side which led to
the dissolution of the treaty and the breaking out of the war.
