The History Doctor

This is part of a larger project I am working on. These are just raw reactions to the text as I read it. For the final discussion, check out my Substack.

In the summer of 431, the war between Athens and Sparta finally broke out following a Theban attempt to take Platea, a Boeotian city near the border to Attica, by surprise. The Peloponnesians followed this up with an invasion of Attica itself. Their plan was to burn and pillage Athenian land and lure the outraged Athenians out from the city and get them to fight an open battle. However, Pericles convinced the Athenians to stay behind their city walls. By that fall, the Spartans and their allies had to turn around and dismiss their troops so that they could bring in the annual harvest. At the same time, the Athenians sortied their fleet and sent raiding forces both to the far side of the Peloponnese, on the Adriatic coast, and to the northern Aegean to try and harass Corinthian-sympathetic cities there.

The above description could apply as a general concept of operations for every year of the war, and it played to all of Athens’ strengths. Despite the Peloponnesian insistence on attacking Athenian land in Attica, Athens did not draw its strength from its own soil, but from its island colonies in the Aegean. If Athens could keep her maritime supply lines open, she would be fed. Conversely, Athens was free to strike wherever it wanted on the Peloponnese at a time and place of her choosing, and if she could secure a foothold, she could provide material aid to Sparta’s large, enslaved population.

However, Athens’ plan certainly was not “sexy.” It offered no hope of an immediate victory, no chance for a “decisive engagement;” and in Athens, a democracy, leaders had to put effort into public relations and combating those that would offer up “easy” solutions. Pericles experienced this early in the war as public sentiment waned after Sparta’s early incursions, especially since they coincided with an outbreak of the plague in Athens. He implored the Athenians to trust the process, and Thucydides points out that the Athenian plan worked right up until the moment the Athenians turned their backs on his previous advice and tried to expand their empire significantly, but that is a story for another day.

If you’re interested in the final discussion of the book, check out my Substack.