Was Spartan victory in the Peloponnesian War mainly due to Athenian mistakes?

The Peloponnesian war finished with the surrender of Athens in 404BC. A number of both Athenian mistakes in its strategy and internal affairs, combined with Spartan prowess and other factors lead to the eventual defeat of Athens at the hands of its enemies. In 430, the first year of the war, a plague struck Athens. It is believed to have entered the city through Piraeus and subsequently wiped a sizeable portion of the people living in Athens and its port. This put an immediate strain on Athens resources right at the beginning of the war, with both the strong and the weak contracting the illness1. This meant that Athens was militarily and domestically weakened before any decisive engagements were fought. Evidence for the impact of the plague on Athens military is shown in Thucydides work where a force of men fighting at Potidaea were all but crippled by the illness2 The Athenians could also be construed to have made a mistake here too. The refugees from Atticas countryside who were encouraged to shelter behind the walls that surrounded Athens and its port were housed, as Thucydides tells us, in hastily built cabins and tents where the mortality raged without restraint3. This apparently poorly planned method of housing would have allowed the disease to spread very quickly and easily, infecting fighting men, childbearing women, and even politicians. Such losses would have a huge effect later on in the war and would have contributed the eventual defeat of the Athenians. In the early sages of the war, a period that would become known as the Archidamian War, the Spartan strategy was one of denying the city of Athens its income and resources from Attica by beginning to ravage the surrounding countryside. Another mistake on the Athenians part arose here. According to I. G. Spence one of the reasons that Athens was successful in this stage of the war was their usage of an effective mobile defence4. The Athenians however after the death of Pericles in 429 began to divert away from his effective tactics, that is staying within the walls of the city, employing mobile defence to secure Attica and relying on their superior navy to wait out the war5. After his death his successors were regarded as being more obsessed with being popular rather than being beneficial to the city and produced a host of blunders6 This lead to a decline in the effectiveness of Athenian war policy and ultimately lead them, according to Thucydides, to commit to such mistakes such as the Sicilian invasion7, which will be examined in detail later. This knock-on effect could be

Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 2.51 Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 2.58 3 Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 2.52 4 I. G. Spence (1990: 96) 5 Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 2.65 6 Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 2.65 7 Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 2.65
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and has therefore been viewed as one of the most important factors in Athenian surrender in 404. In addition to this, other internal mistakes within the Athenian Empire as a whole also contributed to their defeat in 404. Athens Empire shows some evidence of poor relations with the city itself and many of its so-called allies. The mistake the Athenians made in this instance was the poor treatment of its allies, in particular some of the poleis in the north of Greece and Thrace. Between 424 and 422, Brasidas launched a campaign into the Thrace, with the intention of turning the polies here against Athens. Thucydides tells us how he both persuaded and coerced Acanthus into joining what he describes as the Hellenic rebellion8 He was successful in his mission and managed to turn much of Thrace against the Athenian Empire, thus removing a source of Athenian revenue in the form of tribute. Had the Athenians offered more support or goodwill to these members of the Empire then perhaps they might have been more difficult to persuade to leave. The problem of discontented allies was even more crucial during the final stage of the war. Despite these issues the Athenians, as I. G. Spence points out9 were fairly successful in war with the Peloponnesians due to their reliance on their navy, and effective mobile defence in Attica. During this period then, it is therefore more than likely that during the Archidamian War, Spartan success was a more important factor than Athenian mistakes. T. Kelly informs us that Sparta set out to use two different strategies, described by Cawkwell as conventional and adventurous, which would involve both the ravaging of Attica and the promotion of open revolt against Athens around Greece respectively.10 The policy of ravaging Attica was a Spartan success, despite a fairly effective resistance from the Athenians, because not only did it ruin morale in Athens as their countryside was destroyed but it also forced the Athenians to be dependent on their navy. This enabled the Spartans to focus on defeating their enemy at sea, whilst having control of the land, something that by strengthening their own navy11 and with the aid of their allies navies they were able to do later on in the war. This also draws out another argument for an Athenian mistake, in that they failed to build up a land army that could stand up to the Peloponnesians, to work this strategy the opposite way by containing them by sea and then overwhelming them by land. Spartas adventurous tactic of turning Athens allies against also worked in conjunction with their invasions of Attica and the surrounding area, for example the invasion in 427 of Attica coincided with an attempt to turn some of the poleis on the island of Lesbos. This leads Kelly to describe this strategy as using confusion and unrest around the Empire as a means of dividing and weakening

Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 4.85-87 I. G. Spence (1990: 91-109) 10 T. Kelly (1982: 28) 11 T. Kelly (1982: 31)
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the Athenian forces12, another tactic which enabled Sparta to still be dominant, even at this point in the war. By 421 and the Peace of Nicias, the war was a relative stalemate, with neither side being able to force a pitched battle, whether on land for the Peloponnesians, or at sea for the Athenians, that would decide the war. Despite conflicts with Sparta while allied to Argos, Mantinea and Elis, Athens was still unable to beat Sparta on the land. With the loss of much of its resources and tribute due to defeats and revolts, Athens made what could be argued to be their greatest mistake of the war in the form of the Sicilian invasion. The idea that was presented to the Athenian assembly was that the conquest of all of Sicily, under the pretence that they were coming to the aid of the Ionian poleis that were under attack by Syracuse. The first invasion took place in the form of around 5100 hoplites and 134 triremes, according to Thucydides13 and was lead by Nicias, Alcibiades and Lamachos, all distinguished public and military figures. The invasion was complete failure and even with arrival of an additional 5000 hoplites later on in the conflict, the Syracusan forces, with Spartan backing, still managed to completely rout the Athenian forces. This loss was disastrous for Athens and marked a turning point in the war. Thucydides describes its failure and its impact in the following quote: though this failed not so much through a miscalculation of the power of those against whom it was sent, as through a fault in the senders in not taking the best measures afterwards to assist those who had gone out, but choosing rather to occupy themselves with private squabbles for the leadership of The People, by which they not only paralyzed operations in the field, but also first introduced civil discord at home.14 This perfectly summarises the state of affairs in Athens, which lead to their eventual defeat. As mentioned before, the political leaders hindered military progress by being more concerned with their careers than the defense of the city and military organization. This led to deterioration in Athens military effectiveness and ultimately damaged their ability to respond to the issues that occurred in the following decade. In 413, Sparta also made another decisive move and invaded Attica once more with the intention of taking and fortifying Decelea, under the advice of Alcibiades, to form another front to pressurize the Athenians. 15 This capitalizing on Athenian mistakes was characteristic of Sparta and its allies effective tactics throughout the war and, with essentially 10,000 less hoplites and a greatly depleted navy, Athens was now ripe for the picking. Here the war moved into a new phase, known as the Ionian war, due to much of the fighting taking place in the eastern Aegean, and for the role that some of Athens allies played in the war.

T. Kelly (1982: 29) Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 7 14 Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 2.65 15 Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War 7.18
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It begins in 412, where Alcibiades, now in the service of the Peloponnesians, travels to the island of Lesbos, and manages to persuade three poleis there to break away from Athens16. This can be viewed as another turning point in the war, as Sparta now had control of Chios navy. This along with encouragement to its allies to build up navies17 gave Sparta an advantage at sea as well as on land and spelled imminent defeat for Athens. This is clearly Spartan initiative to encourage shipbuilding to help negate the advantage Athens had, however again the mistake Athens made here was the poor management of its Empire. Whether it was through bullying or exacting an extortionate amount of tribute from the poleis on Lesbos, the cities appear to have changed sides with little hesitation or persuasion and this mismanagement could be argued to have effectively ended the war for Athens. For this moment on the war seems to have been a lost cause for Athens as allies as close as Euboea began to revolt. The impact of this could have been a dangerous loss of morale for both Athenian soldiers and inhabitants of the city, especially with the new threat of a strong Peloponnesian navy as well. The last two mistakes the Athenians made both weakened their navy even further. After winning a victory over the Peloponnesian navy at Arginoussai, the Athenians appear to have been incensed that they had allowed the men who had died to maintain their supremacy to go unburied18 the result was the trial and subsequent execution of all of the generals. This was a clear mistake on the Athenians part, as the loss of collective experience, especially at sea warfare, was clearly detrimental to the Athenian war effort as a whole. Athens second naval mistake, and the one that effectively forced their surrender in 404 was the battle at Aegospotami. Although Diodorus and Xenophon disagree on the course of the battle, with the former arguing that both sides were engaged in a sea battle19 and the latter that the Athenian ships had been caught beached by the Spartan fleet20. Regardless, their conclusions are the same, the Athenian feet was completely gutted, with only a handful of vessels surviving. This gave the Peloponnesians the undisputed dominion of the seas that they had been planning for and were thus able to cut of Athens grain supplies from the Black Sea with impunity and therefore force a surrender from the now starved and impoverished city. Whether this final event was due to Athenian mistakes or Spartan prowess is open to interpretation, although both accounts from Xenophon and Diodorus suggest a combination of both. It is however clear that this was the final figurative nail in the coffin for the Athenians and what finally forced them to submit in 404.

Thucydides A History of the Peloponnesian War T. Kelly (1982: 31) 18 Diodorus Library 13. 101. [1] 19 Diodorus Library 13. 105 [1] 20 Xenophon Hellenica 2.2.1
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Overall, it appears that both a combination of Athenian mistakes and Spartan prowess were crucial in bringing about Athenian defeat in 404. However, the stand out cause throughout the war seems to be the failed Sicilian expedition. Through this huge mistake, Athens not only lost around 10,000 hoplites, 3 talented generals but possibly most crucially a large percentage of its fleet. This loss meant that Sparta could now begin to dominate the sea as well as the land and began to tighten its grasp on victory. With the rebellion of the poleis on Lesbos, Athens finally lost its domination of the sea and Sparta with a newly augmented navy was able thereafter to crush the Athenian navy (possibly through another Athenian mistake) and force surrender. It was these two last events that clearly show that, because of their damaging effects of Athens navy, that Spartan victory in the Peloponnesian war was mainly due to Athenian mistakes.

Bibliography Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica Kelly, T. (1982). Thucydides and Spartan Strategy in the Archidamian War The American Historical Review, Vol. 87, No. 1, pp. 25-54 Spence, I. G. (1990). Perikles and the Defense of Attika during the Peloponnesian War The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 110, pp. 91-109 Thucydides, A History of the Peloponnesian War Xenophon, Hellenica