Congress of the Peloponnesian Confederacy at Lacedaemon
The Athenians and Peloponnesians had these antecedent grounds of
complaint against each other: the complaint of Corinth was that her
colony of Potidæa, and Corinthian and Peloponnesian citizens within it,
were being besieged; that of Athens against the Peloponnesians that
they had incited a town of hers, a member of her alliance and a
contributor to her revenue, to revolt, and had come and were openly
fighting against her on the side of the Potidæans. For all this, war
had not yet broken out: there was still truce for a while; for this was
a private enterprise on the part of Corinth.
But the siege of Potidæa put an end to her inaction; she had men inside
it: besides, she feared for the place. Immediately summoning the allies
to Lacedaemon, she came and loudly accused Athens of breach of the
treaty and aggression on the rights of Peloponnese. With her, the
Aeginetans, formally unrepresented from fear of Athens, in secret
proved not the least urgent of the advocates for war, asserting that
they had not the independence guaranteed to them by the treaty. After
extending the summons to any of their allies and others who might have
complaints to make of Athenian aggression, the Lacedaemonians held
their ordinary assembly, and invited them to speak. There were many who
came forward and made their several accusations; among them the
Megarians, in a long list of grievances, called special attention to
the fact of their exclusion from the ports of the Athenian empire and
the market of Athens, in defiance of the treaty. Last of all the
Corinthians came forward, and having let those who preceded them
inflame the Lacedaemonians, now followed with a speech to this effect:
“Lacedaemonians! the confidence which you feel in your constitution and
social order, inclines you to receive any reflections of ours on other
powers with a certain scepticism. Hence springs your moderation, but
hence also the rather limited knowledge which you betray in dealing
with foreign politics. Time after time was our voice raised to warn you
of the blows about to be dealt us by Athens, and time after time,
instead of taking the trouble to ascertain the worth of our
communications, you contented yourselves with suspecting the speakers
of being inspired by private interest. And so, instead of calling these
allies together before the blow fell, you have delayed to do so till we
are smarting under it; allies among whom we have not the worst title to
speak, as having the greatest complaints to make, complaints of
Athenian outrage and Lacedaemonian neglect. Now if these assaults on
the rights of Hellas had been made in the dark, you might be
unacquainted with the facts, and it would be our duty to enlighten you.
As it is, long speeches are not needed where you see servitude
accomplished for some of us, meditated for others—in particular for our
allies—and prolonged preparations in the aggressor against the hour of
war. Or what, pray, is the meaning of their reception of Corcyra by
fraud, and their holding it against us by force? what of the siege of
Potidæa?—places one of which lies most conveniently for any action
against the Thracian towns; while the other would have contributed a
very large navy to the Peloponnesians?
“For all this you are responsible. You it was who first allowed them to
fortify their city after the Median war, and afterwards to erect the
long walls—you who, then and now, are always depriving of freedom not
only those whom they have enslaved, but also those who have as yet been
your allies. For the true author of the subjugation of a people is not
so much the immediate agent, as the power which permits it having the
means to prevent it; particularly if that power aspires to the glory of
being the liberator of Hellas. We are at last assembled. It has not
been easy to assemble, nor even now are our objects defined. We ought
not to be still inquiring into the fact of our wrongs, but into the
means of our defence. For the aggressors with matured plans to oppose
to our indecision have cast threats aside and betaken themselves to
action. And we know what are the paths by which Athenian aggression
travels, and how insidious is its progress. A degree of confidence she
may feel from the idea that your bluntness of perception prevents your
noticing her; but it is nothing to the impulse which her advance will
receive from the knowledge that you see, but do not care to interfere.
You, Lacedaemonians, of all the Hellenes are alone inactive, and defend
yourselves not by doing anything but by looking as if you would do
something; you alone wait till the power of an enemy is becoming twice
its original size, instead of crushing it in its infancy. And yet the
world used to say that you were to be depended upon; but in your case,
we fear, it said more than the truth. The Mede, we ourselves know, had
time to come from the ends of the earth to Peloponnese, without any
force of yours worthy of the name advancing to meet him. But this was a
distant enemy. Well, Athens at all events is a near neighbour, and yet
Athens you utterly disregard; against Athens you prefer to act on the
defensive instead of on the offensive, and to make it an affair of
chances by deferring the struggle till she has grown far stronger than
at first. And yet you know that on the whole the rock on which the
barbarian was wrecked was himself, and that if our present enemy Athens
has not again and again annihilated us, we owe it more to her blunders
than to your protection; Indeed, expectations from you have before now
been the ruin of some, whose faith induced them to omit preparation.
“We hope that none of you will consider these words of remonstrance to
be rather words of hostility; men remonstrate with friends who are in
error, accusations they reserve for enemies who have wronged them.
Besides, we consider that we have as good a right as any one to point
out a neighbour’s faults, particularly when we contemplate the great
contrast between the two national characters; a contrast of which, as
far as we can see, you have little perception, having never yet
considered what sort of antagonists you will encounter in the
Athenians, how widely, how absolutely different from yourselves. The
Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are
characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution; you have
a genius for keeping what you have got, accompanied by a total want of
invention, and when forced to act you never go far enough. Again, they
are adventurous beyond their power, and daring beyond their judgment,
and in danger they are sanguine; your wont is to attempt less than is
justified by your power, to mistrust even what is sanctioned by your
judgment, and to fancy that from danger there is no release. Further,
there is promptitude on their side against procrastination on yours;
they are never at home, you are never from it: for they hope by their
absence to extend their acquisitions, you fear by your advance to
endanger what you have left behind. They are swift to follow up a
success, and slow to recoil from a reverse. Their bodies they spend
ungrudgingly in their country’s cause; their intellect they jealously
husband to be employed in her service. A scheme unexecuted is with them
a positive loss, a successful enterprise a comparative failure. The
deficiency created by the miscarriage of an undertaking is soon filled
up by fresh hopes; for they alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for
a thing got, by the speed with which they act upon their resolutions.
Thus they toil on in trouble and danger all the days of their life,
with little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting:
their only idea of a holiday is to do what the occasion demands, and to
them laborious occupation is less of a misfortune than the peace of a
quiet life. To describe their character in a word, one might truly say
that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to
give none to others.
“Such is Athens, your antagonist. And yet, Lacedaemonians, you still
delay, and fail to see that peace stays longest with those, who are not
more careful to use their power justly than to show their determination
not to submit to injustice. On the contrary, your ideal of fair dealing
is based on the principle that, if you do not injure others, you need
not risk your own fortunes in preventing others from injuring you. Now
you could scarcely have succeeded in such a policy even with a
neighbour like yourselves; but in the present instance, as we have just
shown, your habits are old-fashioned as compared with theirs. It is the
law as in art, so in politics, that improvements ever prevail; and
though fixed usages may be best for undisturbed communities, constant
necessities of action must be accompanied by the constant improvement
of methods. Thus it happens that the vast experience of Athens has
carried her further than you on the path of innovation.
“Here, at least, let your procrastination end. For the present, assist
your allies and Potidæa in particular, as you promised, by a speedy
invasion of Attica, and do not sacrifice friends and kindred to their
bitterest enemies, and drive the rest of us in despair to some other
alliance. Such a step would not be condemned either by the Gods who
received our oaths, or by the men who witnessed them. The breach of a
treaty cannot be laid to the people whom desertion compels to seek new
relations, but to the power that fails to assist its confederate. But
if you will only act, we will stand by you; it would be unnatural for
us to change, and never should we meet with such a congenial ally. For
these reasons choose the right course, and endeavour not to let
Peloponnese under your supremacy degenerate from the prestige that it
enjoyed under that of your ancestors.”
Such were the words of the Corinthians. There happened to be Athenian
envoys present at Lacedaemon on other business. On hearing the speeches
they thought themselves called upon to come before the Lacedaemonians.
Their intention was not to offer a defence on any of the charges which
the cities brought against them, but to show on a comprehensive view
that it was not a matter to be hastily decided on, but one that
demanded further consideration. There was also a wish to call attention
to the great power of Athens, and to refresh the memory of the old and
enlighten the ignorance of the young, from a notion that their words
might have the effect of inducing them to prefer tranquillity to war.
So they came to the Lacedaemonians and said that they too, if there was
no objection, wished to speak to their assembly. They replied by
inviting them to come forward. The Athenians advanced, and spoke as
follows:
“The object of our mission here was not to argue with your allies, but
to attend to the matters on which our state dispatched us. However, the
vehemence of the outcry that we hear against us has prevailed on us to
come forward. It is not to combat the accusations of the cities (indeed
you are not the judges before whom either we or they can plead), but to
prevent your taking the wrong course on matters of great importance by
yielding too readily to the persuasions of your allies. We also wish to
show on a review of the whole indictment that we have a fair title to
our possessions, and that our country has claims to consideration. We
need not refer to remote antiquity: there we could appeal to the voice
of tradition, but not to the experience of our audience. But to the
Median War and contemporary history we must refer, although we are
rather tired of continually bringing this subject forward. In our
action during that war we ran great risk to obtain certain advantages:
you had your share in the solid results, do not try to rob us of all
share in the good that the glory may do us. However, the story shall be
told not so much to deprecate hostility as to testify against it, and
to show, if you are so ill advised as to enter into a struggle with
Athens, what sort of an antagonist she is likely to prove. We assert
that at Marathon we were at the front, and faced the barbarian
single-handed. That when he came the second time, unable to cope with
him by land we went on board our ships with all our people, and joined
in the action at Salamis. This prevented his taking the Peloponnesian
states in detail, and ravaging them with his fleet; when the multitude
of his vessels would have made any combination for self-defence
impossible. The best proof of this was furnished by the invader
himself. Defeated at sea, he considered his power to be no longer what
it had been, and retired as speedily as possible with the greater part
of his army.
“Such, then, was the result of the matter, and it was clearly proved
that it was on the fleet of Hellas that her cause depended. Well, to
this result we contributed three very useful elements, viz., the
largest number of ships, the ablest commander, and the most
unhesitating patriotism. Our contingent of ships was little less than
two-thirds of the whole four hundred; the commander was Themistocles,
through whom chiefly it was that the battle took place in the straits,
the acknowledged salvation of our cause. Indeed, this was the reason of
your receiving him with honours such as had never been accorded to any
foreign visitor. While for daring patriotism we had no competitors.
Receiving no reinforcements from behind, seeing everything in front of
us already subjugated, we had the spirit, after abandoning our city,
after sacrificing our property (instead of deserting the remainder of
the league or depriving them of our services by dispersing), to throw
ourselves into our ships and meet the danger, without a thought of
resenting your neglect to assist us. We assert, therefore, that we
conferred on you quite as much as we received. For you had a stake to
fight for; the cities which you had left were still filled with your
homes, and you had the prospect of enjoying them again; and your coming
was prompted quite as much by fear for yourselves as for us; at all
events, you never appeared till we had nothing left to lose. But we
left behind us a city that was a city no longer, and staked our lives
for a city that had an existence only in desperate hope, and so bore
our full share in your deliverance and in ours. But if we had copied
others, and allowed fears for our territory to make us give in our
adhesion to the Mede before you came, or if we had suffered our ruin to
break our spirit and prevent us embarking in our ships, your naval
inferiority would have made a sea-fight unnecessary, and his objects
would have been peaceably attained.
“Surely, Lacedaemonians, neither by the patriotism that we displayed at
that crisis, nor by the wisdom of our counsels, do we merit our extreme
unpopularity with the Hellenes, not at least unpopularity for our
empire. That empire we acquired by no violent means, but because you
were unwilling to prosecute to its conclusion the war against the
barbarian, and because the allies attached themselves to us and
spontaneously asked us to assume the command. And the nature of the
case first compelled us to advance our empire to its present height;
fear being our principal motive, though honour and interest afterwards
came in. And at last, when almost all hated us, when some had already
revolted and had been subdued, when you had ceased to be the friends
that you once were, and had become objects of suspicion and dislike, it
appeared no longer safe to give up our empire; especially as all who
left us would fall to you. And no one can quarrel with a people for
making, in matters of tremendous risk, the best provision that it can
for its interest.
“You, at all events, Lacedaemonians, have used your supremacy to settle
the states in Peloponnese as is agreeable to you. And if at the period
of which we were speaking you had persevered to the end of the matter,
and had incurred hatred in your command, we are sure that you would
have made yourselves just as galling to the allies, and would have been
forced to choose between a strong government and danger to yourselves.
It follows that it was not a very wonderful action, or contrary to the
common practice of mankind, if we did accept an empire that was offered
to us, and refused to give it up under the pressure of three of the
strongest motives, fear, honour, and interest. And it was not we who
set the example, for it has always been law that the weaker should be
subject to the stronger. Besides, we believed ourselves to be worthy of
our position, and so you thought us till now, when calculations of
interest have made you take up the cry of justice—a consideration which
no one ever yet brought forward to hinder his ambition when he had a
chance of gaining anything by might. And praise is due to all who, if
not so superior to human nature as to refuse dominion, yet respect
justice more than their position compels them to do.
“We imagine that our moderation would be best demonstrated by the
conduct of others who should be placed in our position; but even our
equity has very unreasonably subjected us to condemnation instead of
approval. Our abatement of our rights in the contract trials with our
allies, and our causing them to be decided by impartial laws at Athens,
have gained us the character of being litigious. And none care to
inquire why this reproach is not brought against other imperial powers,
who treat their subjects with less moderation than we do; the secret
being that where force can be used, law is not needed. But our subjects
are so habituated to associate with us as equals that any defeat
whatever that clashes with their notions of justice, whether it
proceeds from a legal judgment or from the power which our empire gives
us, makes them forget to be grateful for being allowed to retain most
of their possessions, and more vexed at a part being taken, than if we
had from the first cast law aside and openly gratified our
covetousness. If we had done so, not even would they have disputed that
the weaker must give way to the stronger. Men’s indignation, it seems,
is more excited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks
like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a
superior. At all events they contrived to put up with much worse
treatment than this from the Mede, yet they think our rule severe, and
this is to be expected, for the present always weighs heavy on the
conquered. This at least is certain. If you were to succeed in
overthrowing us and in taking our place, you would speedily lose the
popularity with which fear of us has invested you, if your policy of
to-day is at all to tally with the sample that you gave of it during
the brief period of your command against the Mede. Not only is your
life at home regulated by rules and institutions incompatible with
those of others, but your citizens abroad act neither on these rules
nor on those which are recognized by the rest of Hellas.
“Take time then in forming your resolution, as the matter is of great
importance; and do not be persuaded by the opinions and complaints of
others to bring trouble on yourselves, but consider the vast influence
of accident in war, before you are engaged in it. As it continues, it
generally becomes an affair of chances, chances from which neither of
us is exempt, and whose event we must risk in the dark. It is a common
mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and
wait for disaster to discuss the matter. But we are not yet by any
means so misguided, nor, so far as we can see, are you; accordingly,
while it is still open to us both to choose aright, we bid you not to
dissolve the treaty, or to break your oaths, but to have our
differences settled by arbitration according to our agreement. Or else
we take the gods who heard the oaths to witness, and if you begin
hostilities, whatever line of action you choose, we will try not to be
behindhand in repelling you.”
Such were the words of the Athenians. After the Lacedaemonians had
heard the complaints of the allies against the Athenians, and the
observations of the latter, they made all withdraw, and consulted by
themselves on the question before them. The opinions of the majority
all led to the same conclusion; the Athenians were open aggressors, and
war must be declared at once. But Archidamus, the Lacedaemonian king,
came forward, who had the reputation of being at once a wise and a
moderate man, and made the following speech:
“I have not lived so long, Lacedaemonians, without having had the
experience of many wars, and I see those among you of the same age as
myself, who will not fall into the common misfortune of longing for war
from inexperience or from a belief in its advantage and its safety.
This, the war on which you are now debating, would be one of the
greatest magnitude, on a sober consideration of the matter. In a
struggle with Peloponnesians and neighbours our strength is of the same
character, and it is possible to move swiftly on the different points.
But a struggle with a people who live in a distant land, who have also
an extraordinary familiarity with the sea, and who are in the highest
state of preparation in every other department; with wealth private and
public, with ships, and horses, and heavy infantry, and a population
such as no one other Hellenic place can equal, and lastly a number of
tributary allies—what can justify us in rashly beginning such a
struggle? wherein is our trust that we should rush on it unprepared? Is
it in our ships? There we are inferior; while if we are to practise and
become a match for them, time must intervene. Is it in our money? There
we have a far greater deficiency. We neither have it in our treasury,
nor are we ready to contribute it from our private funds. Confidence
might possibly be felt in our superiority in heavy infantry and
population, which will enable us to invade and devastate their lands.
But the Athenians have plenty of other land in their empire, and can
import what they want by sea. Again, if we are to attempt an
insurrection of their allies, these will have to be supported with a
fleet, most of them being islanders. What then is to be our war? For
unless we can either beat them at sea, or deprive them of the revenues
which feed their navy, we shall meet with little but disaster.
Meanwhile our honour will be pledged to keeping on, particularly if it
be the opinion that we began the quarrel. For let us never be elated by
the fatal hope of the war being quickly ended by the devastation of
their lands. I fear rather that we may leave it as a legacy to our
children; so improbable is it that the Athenian spirit will be the
slave of their land, or Athenian experience be cowed by war.
“Not that I would bid you be so unfeeling as to suffer them to injure
your allies, and to refrain from unmasking their intrigues; but I do
bid you not to take up arms at once, but to send and remonstrate with
them in a tone not too suggestive of war, nor again too suggestive of
submission, and to employ the interval in perfecting our own
preparations. The means will be, first, the acquisition of allies,
Hellenic or barbarian it matters not, so long as they are an accession
to our strength naval or pecuniary—I say Hellenic or barbarian, because
the odium of such an accession to all who like us are the objects of
the designs of the Athenians is taken away by the law of
self-preservation—and secondly the development of our home resources.
If they listen to our embassy, so much the better; but if not, after
the lapse of two or three years our position will have become
materially strengthened, and we can then attack them if we think
proper. Perhaps by that time the sight of our preparations, backed by
language equally significant, will have disposed them to submission,
while their land is still untouched, and while their counsels may be
directed to the retention of advantages as yet undestroyed. For the
only light in which you can view their land is that of a hostage in
your hands, a hostage the more valuable the better it is cultivated.
This you ought to spare as long as possible, and not make them
desperate, and so increase the difficulty of dealing with them. For if
while still unprepared, hurried away by the complaints of our allies,
we are induced to lay it waste, have a care that we do not bring deep
disgrace and deep perplexity upon Peloponnese. Complaints, whether of
communities or individuals, it is possible to adjust; but war
undertaken by a coalition for sectional interests, whose progress there
is no means of foreseeing, does not easily admit of creditable
settlement.
“And none need think it cowardice for a number of confederates to pause
before they attack a single city. The Athenians have allies as numerous
as our own, and allies that pay tribute, and war is a matter not so
much of arms as of money, which makes arms of use. And this is more
than ever true in a struggle between a continental and a maritime
power. First, then, let us provide money, and not allow ourselves to be
carried away by the talk of our allies before we have done so: as we
shall have the largest share of responsibility for the consequences be
they good or bad, we have also a right to a tranquil inquiry respecting
them.
“And the slowness and procrastination, the parts of our character that
are most assailed by their criticism, need not make you blush. If we
undertake the war without preparation, we should by hastening its
commencement only delay its conclusion: further, a free and a famous
city has through all time been ours. The quality which they condemn is
really nothing but a wise moderation; thanks to its possession, we
alone do not become insolent in success and give way less than others
in misfortune; we are not carried away by the pleasure of hearing
ourselves cheered on to risks which our judgment condemns; nor, if
annoyed, are we any the more convinced by attempts to exasperate us by
accusation. We are both warlike and wise, and it is our sense of order
that makes us so. We are warlike, because self-control contains honour
as a chief constituent, and honour bravery. And we are wise, because we
are educated with too little learning to despise the laws, and with too
severe a self-control to disobey them, and are brought up not to be too
knowing in useless matters—such as the knowledge which can give a
specious criticism of an enemy’s plans in theory, but fails to assail
them with equal success in practice—but are taught to consider that the
schemes of our enemies are not dissimilar to our own, and that the
freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation. In practice we
always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that
his plans are good; indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a
belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions. Nor
ought we to believe that there is much difference between man and man,
but to think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the
severest school. These practices, then, which our ancestors have
delivered to us, and by whose maintenance we have always profited, must
not be given up. And we must not be hurried into deciding in a day’s
brief space a question which concerns many lives and fortunes and many
cities, and in which honour is deeply involved—but we must decide
calmly. This our strength peculiarly enables us to do. As for the
Athenians, send to them on the matter of Potidæa, send on the matter of
the alleged wrongs of the allies, particularly as they are prepared
with legal satisfaction; and to proceed against one who offers
arbitration as against a wrongdoer, law forbids. Meanwhile do not omit
preparation for war. This decision will be the best for yourselves, the
most terrible to your opponents.”
Such were the words of Archidamus. Last came forward Sthenelaidas, one
of the ephors for that year, and spoke to the Lacedaemonians as
follows:
“The long speech of the Athenians I do not pretend to understand. They
said a good deal in praise of themselves, but nowhere denied that they
are injuring our allies and Peloponnese. And yet if they behaved well
against the Mede then, but ill towards us now, they deserve double
punishment for having ceased to be good and for having become bad. We
meanwhile are the same then and now, and shall not, if we are wise,
disregard the wrongs of our allies, or put off till to-morrow the duty
of assisting those who must suffer to-day. Others have much money and
ships and horses, but we have good allies whom we must not give up to
the Athenians, nor by lawsuits and words decide the matter, as it is
anything but in word that we are harmed, but render instant and
powerful help. And let us not be told that it is fitting for us to
deliberate under injustice; long deliberation is rather fitting for
those who have injustice in contemplation. Vote therefore,
Lacedaemonians, for war, as the honour of Sparta demands, and neither
allow the further aggrandizement of Athens, nor betray our allies to
ruin, but with the gods let us advance against the aggressors.”
With these words he, as ephor, himself put the question to the assembly
of the Lacedaemonians. He said that he could not determine which was
the loudest acclamation (their mode of decision is by acclamation not
by voting); the fact being that he wished to make them declare their
opinion openly and thus to increase their ardour for war. Accordingly
he said: “All Lacedaemonians who are of opinion that the treaty has
been broken, and that Athens is guilty, leave your seats and go there,”
pointing out a certain place; “all who are of the opposite opinion,
there.” They accordingly stood up and divided; and those who held that
the treaty had been broken were in a decided majority. Summoning the
allies, they told them that their opinion was that Athens had been
guilty of injustice, but that they wished to convoke all the allies and
put it to the vote; in order that they might make war, if they decided
to do so, on a common resolution. Having thus gained their point, the
delegates returned home at once; the Athenian envoys a little later,
when they had dispatched the objects of their mission. This decision of
the assembly, judging that the treaty had been broken, was made in the
fourteenth year of the thirty years’ truce, which was entered into
after the affair of Euboea.
The Lacedaemonians voted that the treaty had been broken, and that the
war must be declared, not so much because they were persuaded by the
arguments of the allies, as because they feared the growth of the power
of the Athenians, seeing most of Hellas already subject to them.