CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
BOOK II
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
BOOK III
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
BOOK IV
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
BOOK V
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
BOOK VI
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
BOOK VII
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
BOOK VIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
The State of Greece from the earliest Times to the Commencement of the
Peloponnesian War
Thucydides, 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 Mycenæ and the
government. As time went on and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus
complied with the wishes of the Mycenæans, 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 Mycenæ 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 him
Of 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 Mycenæ 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.