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QuarterlyJournal

of MilitaryHistory

Spring 1993, Volume 5 N b, urn er 3

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The Peloponnesian War marked the endofthe Greek 11we call strategy, the combining ofnationalpolicy ,

and to answer the ever-important ques­tion, Who is most powerful?

Hoplite battle was extremely violent,but the violence was limited to an after­noon's battle. For the rest of the year,the citizen-soldiers could go about livingtheir ordinary lives. The rituals of theagon (literally "contest") precludedrational strategic thought. When war isa contest fought according to set rules,there is no place for innovation.

The agon of hoplite conflict alloweddisputes between states to be decidedwithout destroying the material ordemographic base of either side. Fur­thermore, it served to integrate the citi­zen society of each Greek polis. The dis­cipline of the phalanx was a counter­weight to the strong Greek culturalnorm of individual competition. Withinthe phalanx the aim was cooperation,and the competition fought by thehoplites was a communal action againstan external enemy. Steadiness and cohe­sion were more valued than individualweapons skills, so the phalanx tended toteach lessons in the value of acting asequals when faced with a common dan­ger. These lessons were eventually trans­lated into the political realm. It is hardlyan accident that democracy was a Greekinvention. Yet for all its value in reduc­ing the carnage of intra-Greek warfareand in stabilizing internal order, the no­strategy system of the agon was fragile.It required acquiescence to the rules of

ing out of their walled city, forming uptheir phalanx, and charging. Thestronger side won the battle, and hencethe war. The stakes were generally low,frequently the control of a tract of graz­ing ground, and the result was that onlya few men died.

To the modern strategist, the moststriking aspect of the hoplite battle wasits voluntary nature. Southern and cen­tral Greece is mountainous, and thereare generally only a few ways beyondpasses into the territory of any givencity-state. These passes could be held byrelatively inferior forces against heavilyencumbered invading armies, as shownby campaigns of the fourth century B.C.

Yet there are remarkably few examplesof Greek defenders holding passesagainst Greek aggressors before the latefifth century. Moreover, by the fifth cen­tury most Greek towns were well forti­fied, and Greek siegecraft remained rela­tively primitive until the mid-fourthcentury. Those inside the city wall didnot have to worry overmuch about anenemy assault. Why, then, did defenderscome out to fight in the first place? Whynot simply ignore the challenge?

The answer is that hoplite battle wasnot based on rational calculation ofshort-term economic interest. Rather, it·was a form of dispute resolution. It pro­vided a way for a highly competitive cul­ture divided into hundreds of indepen­dent states to resolve territorial disputes

THE ORIGINC

In the summer of431 B.C., the hoplitearmy of Sparta'sPeloponnesianLeague mustered atthe Isthmus of Cor­

inth. Although the warriors dreaded thehorrors of battle, the overall mood of thearmy was confident-after all, Spartanhoplites were the best fighters in theworld, and the Peloponnesian landforces considerably outnumbered theirAthenian enemies. They knew thatAthens was a powerful city-state, butthey thought that a few humiliatingdefeats in the open plains of Attica (theprovince of Athens) would put the Athe­nians in their place. As the Pelopon­nesians marched north to the cheerfulmusic of pipes, few of them could havehad any inkling of what was to come: adevastating war that would drag on for afull generation, shatter state economies,and exterminate whole populations.

The duration and violence of the Pelo­ponnesian War, unique in the Greekexperience, can be attributed, at least inpart, to a new level of long-range plan­ning on the part of the Athenian highcommand. Modern military analysts,who tend to assume that strategicthought and war are inseparable, mayfind it a peculiar notion that strategyhad to be invented. Yet the city-states ofarchaic and early classical Greecelaunched many wars without the kind ofanalytic forethought about the relation­ship between policy-political decisionmaking-and military force that is thebasis of strategic planning. It was only inthe fifth century B.C. that long-rangestrategy became an integral part ofGreek combat, and its development wasone of the most important-and, as wewill see, ominous-innovations in thehistory of Western warfare.

By the late seventh century B.C.,

Greek warfare had achieved its classicform: a voluntary contest between twophalanxes of heavy infantry, fought byformal, if unwritten, rules in the openplains. The hoplite conflict was, in itsessence, war without strategy. Theinvading force of citizen-soldiers mus­tered, marched into the territory of thedefenders, and offered battle by a ritualchallenge. The defending citizen­soldiers accepted the challenge by com-

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agon, or ritualized battle-and the beginning ofwhatgoals with operationalplans. by Josiah Ober

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The allied Greek states could not pos­sibly meet this powerful force as if itwere the army of another city-state.Because the traditional "no-strategy"response was self-evidently unworkable,the Greeks were constrained to come upwith a defensive strategy or face oblitera­tion. The high command finally decidedon the simple expedient of holding thepass of Thermopylae just south of Thes­saly, a narrow strip of beach betweenmountain and sea. The decision todefend Thermopylae was based on whatcan legitimately be called strategicanalysis: the recognition that the Per­sians would have to stay near the coastfor logistical reasons. Tactically, the nar­row pass would neutralize the over­whelming Persian numerical advantage.But it was naive to hope that Xerxeswould go home as soon as he ran into anobstacle. The pass-holding tactic failedwhen Xerxes learned of the existence ofa side track that allowed him to getaround the pass.

Once the Persians were beyond it,there was no hope of excluding themfrom central Greece. The allied Greektrireme navy withdrew to the straits ofSalamis, off the coast of Athens, but theGreek high command was unsure howto proceed. The Spartans argued that thepass-defense approach should be triedagain and advocated making a standbehind a makeshift defensive wall at theIsthmus of Corinth. The Athenians, ledby the politician-general Themistocles,were not eager to try this because itmeant permanently abandoning theirhome territory of Attica to the invader.Moreover, Themistocles saw that, giventhe superior Persian fleet, trying to holdthe isthmus was unworkable. Many inthe Peloponnesus would welcome Per­sian "liberation," and the Persian shipswould have little difficulty finding safebeaches. Spartan hegemony wouldcrumble under the strain of Persiannaval raids. Once Sparta's PeloponnesianLeague fell apart, Greek resistance wouldcollapse. Time was on the Persian side.

Themistocles saw one ray of hope: thevulnerability of the invaders' interdepen­dence of army, merchant marine, and

EGYnortheastern coast of Attica. Theinvaders thought (wrongly) that thepopulation in that area would supportthe overthrow of the democratic Athe­nian government. The Persians estab­lished a beachhead and prepared for bat­tle. The Athenians responded typically.Some 9,000 hoplites marched the twen­ty-six miles north to Marathon, formedup their phalanx, and charged the Per­sians. To everyone's surprise, thenumerically inferior Athenians madeshort work of their opponents. The Per­sians had made the fatal error of meet­ing the defenders on their ownground-the open plain, where theirmore heavily armored phalanx couldmarch shield to shield. However,although the Athenian victory atMarathon was spectacular, it can hardlybe attributed to strategic insight.

In 480 B.C. King Xerxes of Persialaunched a massive second invasion, thistime with an expeditionary force thatwas an interdependent triad of army,merchant marine, and navy. The armyalone numbered several hundred thou­sand infantrymen and cavalry, accordingto conservative modern estimates. As itadvanced across the Hellespont, throughThrace, and into Greece, it stuck to thecoast. Being far too large to live off theland, it depended on resupply from themerchant marine's grain ships. The mer­chant marine was defended by the navy,which in turn was defended by the army.

war by all participants, even by statesthat usually lost. Eventually, someGreek general would realize the advan­tages of breaking the rules.

But meanwhile, there were otherchallenges to face, and events wouldsoon lead to the "invention" of strategy.By the early fifth century B.C., theaggressive, expansionist Persian Empirewas unquestionably the greatest powerin the Mediterranean world, and Greecewas an attractive prize. Persia was theheir to over two millennia of Near East­ern imperial states. While the long-termmilitary success and great territorialextent of these early empires may pointto a strategic tradition, fragmentary con­temporary sources make a reconstruc­tion of it extremely difficult. In anyevent, deep strategic reasoning seemedconspicuous by its absence when thePersians confronted Western opponentsin the early fifth century B.C. There waslittle evidence of flexibility or long-termplanning. Everything was predicated onthe success of all-or-nothing assaults.The goal of war was simply to find theenemy army, challenge it, and defeat itdecisively. The trouble was that even atemporary setback was unthinkable. Aloss in battle would leave the Persianswith no choice but to retreat, and one~nce of strategy is the ability to fightanother day.

In ~90 B.C., a Persian naval expeditionLmdt.'d at Marathon, a little plain on the

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each of these commitments led Athensinto large-scale and potentially danger­ous confrontations.

The first of these involved the Egypt­ian revolt against Persia in the early450s. The Athenians reasoned that itwould be in their interest to supportEgypt: An independent, pro-AthenianEgypt would fatally weaken Persia's posi­tion in the Mediterranean world, andaccess to Egypt's legendary wealth couldhelp strengthen Athens's position as tha­lassocrat of the Aegean. Accordingly, amassive naval force-totaling some 200ships-was quickly dispatched fromAthens to aid the Egyptian rebels.Despite some initial successes, the ambi­tious expedition ended disastrously.According to Thucydides, all but a hand­ful of the Athenians were wiped out byPersian counterattacks.

The Egyptian debacle demonstratedthe dangers of overly hasty strategicplanning and action: Initiatives thatseem good in theory can be quicklyundone by operational miscalculation.Meanwhile, undeterred, the Athenianswere planning to wrest control of cen­tral mainland Greece from Sparta. Coor­dinated land and sea operations in Boeo­tia and Megara led to some successes,but the Peloponnesian hoplites retainedtheir superiority in pitched battles, andthe Athenians were forced to sign apeace treaty with Sparta in 446.

In 440, Athenian military forces wereagain stretched thin by the revolt of akey ally-the island polis of Samos.Another big expeditionary force was dis­patched, but it took almost a year and amassive expenditure of cash to forceSamos into surrender. The expeditionclearly demonstrated the problemsAthens would face if confronted by sev­eral simultaneous revolts of major city­states within the empire.

With a citizen (native adult male)population of around 40-50,000, fifth­century Athens was a remarkably largepolis. But the military force that such apopulation could sustain was limited. IfAthens failed to maintain its monopoly0( the Aegean Sea, the empire would col­lapse-and with it Athens's status as agreat power. The expeditions to ,Egyptand Samos demonstrated how very cost­I)'. in terms of men and money, main­taining that monopoly could be. The

necessarily large Athenian manpowercommitment to the navy meant thatonly limited numbers of soldiers couldbe detailed for operations on the main­land-which severely limited Athens'sstrategic options in this sphere. ThePeloponnesian infantrymen were simplytoo numerous for Athens to deal with ifthe navy was to be kept up to strength.

Athens's manpower problem was thecontext for one of the most significantstrategic choices of classical Greek histo­ry: the decision to build the "long walls"to connect the fortified city of Athens tothe port town of Piraeus. Their construc­tion, begun probably in the 450s B.C.,

meant that the city-harbor complexcould function as a single fortress thatcould be resupplied by sea. This suggeststhat some Athenians had envisioned thepossibility of a long-term defensive warin which resupply by sea would be essen­tial to the city's survival. This sort of warwould offer new strategic opportunitiesand pose new challenges.

In the mid-430s B.C., Pericles, generaland political leader of democraticAthens, was confronted with a quandary.He believed that a major war with Spartawas inevitable-perhaps even desirable.But how could a navy of triremes beused to humble a land power thatdepended very little on trade? The con­flict Pericles foresaw was that of "ele­phant versus whale"-and on the face ofit, in this case the elephant would seemto hold the advantage. In a traditionalagonistic war, Sparta and her allieswould march into Athenian territory.The smaller, less trained Athenian armywould march out to meet them andprobably be defeated in the first year ofthe conflict. The Athenian navy wouldnever become a factor.

Pericles determined to change thisscenario. His plan was radical: Since theSpartans would win a war that wasfought according to traditional Hellenicrules of engagement, Pericles reasonedthat Athens might be able to win bybreaking the rules. This was a keymoment in the history of Greek strategicthought, the beginning of sophisticated,long-term, strategic analysis. Ratherthan worrying about tactics (how to wina particular battIe), Pericles thoughtthrough the interplay of a variety offorces-military, financial, political, and

psychological-over the COurse of a warthat he knew would take several years atleast. He had invented grand strategy.

The key to success, in Pericles' plan,was for the Athenian army to avoidengagement with the Peloponnesianarmy. When challenged, the Atheniansmust refuse battle and remain withincity walls. The Spartan-Peloponnesianinvaders would not risk assaulting thewalls, nor would they be likely toattempt an investment of theAthens-Piraeus complex. This wouldrequire a huge counterwall, and theycould not spare the manpower to hold it.Finally, the Peloponnesians could nothope to starve the Athenians out.Athens's empire provided the revenues,and her "long walls" and navy the secu­rity, that allowed her merchantmen toresupply the city-fortress from grainmarkets in Egypt and southern Russia.Although the Athenians had by this timeundertaken a few successful sieges, theSpartan-Peloponnesian invaders clearlylacked both the desire and the technicaltraining necessary to undertake anextended siege of the great fortifiedAthenian complex.

Pericles' strategic assessment utilizedwhat can fairly be called a Clausewitziancenter-of-gravity analysis. He realizedthat the Athenian centers lay in theempire, as a source of revenue, and inthe citizen population, as a source ofnaval power. The empire was adequatelydefended by the navy; the citizen popula­tion, by the walls. Since Sparta couldnot, using a traditional approach, endan­ger either empire or city, Athens wassafe; she could not be decisively defeatedin a defensive war. This meant thatAthenian imperial policy must, for theduration of the war, remain conservativerather than expansionistic. Egypt andSamos had shown the potential costs ofmassive overseas campaigns.

Given her superiority and the as­sumption (which seemed reasonable atthe time) that the war would last only afew years, the defensive side of Pericles'strategy was sound. Did he come upwith a workable offensive plan? Theancient texts allow us to reconstruct thethinking of Athenian strategic plannersonly indirectly,

It is difficult to imagine how Athens,using naval power alone, could have

The building ofconnective walls between Athens and the port citg ofPiraeus-to pro­tect supplg bg sea-was part ofa sophisticated strategg ofsurvival.

navy. If it were possible to threaten anyone of the three "legs" of the Persianexpeditionary force, the whole wouldtumble of its own weight. Which leg toattack? The army was too big, and themerchant marine was too well protectedby the navy. The navy itself was the obvi­ous target.

By September of 480 B.C., the Persiannavy had suffered serious storm losses­but it was still much bigger and opera­tionally superior to the Greek navy. In abattle on the open seas, the Persianswould have an overwhelming tacticaladvantage. Themistocles concluded thatthe best hope for a Greek victory was tocatch the Persian fleet in a narrow strait,where numbers and seamanship wouldcount for less. The constricted waters ofthe straits of Salamis, where the Greekwarships then were, would serveadmirably. But how to convince the Per­sians to abandon their open-sea advan­tage? Themistocles hazarded a counter­intelligence ruse: He sent a messengerto Xerxes claiming that he had decidedto switch sides and offering the Persianking the chance to catch the entireGreek fleet by surrounding it in thestraits of Salamis. Xerxes fell for thetrick, and ordered his ships into thestraits-and into the trap. Athenianships disrupted the Persian line as itsailed around the little island of Psyt­taleia in the middle of the straits. Thetwo lines were soon hopelessly log­jammed. Heavily armed Greek boardingparties slaughtered Persian rowers, anda good part of the Persian navy, unableto disengage, was captured or sunk. Thebattle was a great victory for the Greeks,and Xerxes was compelled to withdrawthe bulk of his army to Persia. The rela­tively small force that he left behind wasdefeated at the Battle of Plataea the fol­lowing year.

The Persian Wars were fought outsidethe context of the hoplite agon, but withthe exception of Themistocles' insightinto Persian operational vulnerabilitybefore the Battle of Salamis, there waslittle sophisticated strategic thought oneither side. Xerxes appears to haveassumed that victory would be assuredby a gigantic combined force. Most ofthe Greek commanders were not able tosee beyond the simplistic notion of hold­ing a pass. The war was settled at Plataea

in a set-piece battle on the open plains.Neither side was able consistently tolook beyond the tactical issues of how towin a given battle to the strategic one ofhow to apply force efficiently over timein pursuit of a clearly articulated goal.

After the war the Athenians knew thatthe only hope for continued Greek inde­pendence was the maintenance of navalsuperiority in the Aegean Sea. Xerxeshad been pushed back, but the PersianEmpire was still strong. The formationin about 478 B.C. of the Athenian-led,anti-Persian alliance known as theDelian League was the indirect productof Themistocles' strategic insight: NoPersian navy meant no Persian invadingarmy. The military operations and politi­cal organization of the league subse­quently led to the development of morecomplex types of strategic thinking. Butthe league's initial goal was quitestraightforward: Patrol the Aegean andsink Persian ships. The basic plan wassound, and the Aegean soon became aGreek lake.

Yet the straightforward strategic logicon which the Delian League was found­ed disguised very real political complexi­ties. For one thing, the ongoing militaryoperations of the league required anappreciation of strategic realities consid­erably more sophisticated than the old''win a battle, win a war" point of view.After the first few years, the league navyfound few Persians willing to fight.There were occasional big battles (e.g.,at the Eurymedon River, circa 467 B.C.),

but more often the year's operationswere routine naval patrols. The very ideaof a standing naval force, one that wouldsail every season whether or not there

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we're reports of enemy activity, was for­eign to the agonistic spirit of earlierGreek warfare. The implicit strategy ofthe league was one of containment, andthis too was foreign to the traditionalGreek military mentality.

The Delian League was so successfulmilitarily that within a decade or so ofits founding, many Greeks ceased toregard the Persians as a significantthreat. A few league member-statesdecided that its purpose was fulfilled andattempted to pull out, in order to avoidmaking sizable financial contributionsto the defense effort. Athens, unques­tioned leader of the league since itsfounding, used force to keep it intact. Byabout 450 B.C., the Delian League hadbecome, in effect, the Athenian Empire,and this had major implications forAthenian military policy,

Athens's new position as imperialhegemon required a yet more sophisti­cated strategic stance. Athenian militarypower was now supported by an Aegean­wide economic system, rather than bythe territory of a single city-state. Thismeant that Athens could maintain astanding naval force much larger thanthat of any other Greek polis and couldbuild up a sizable financial reserve-afactor of great importance in the erabefore organized credit and deficitspending. Furthermore, the duties facedby the Athenian armed forces were nowmultiple: to ensure that Persia stuck bythe treaty agreement, to prevent-andwhen necessary to suppress-"libera­tion" movements among the allies, and,finally, to consolidate and extend Athen­ian influence on the mainland. In themiddle decades of the fifth century B.C.,

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hoped to overthrow Sparta. The Spartancenter of gravity was her unique societyof superbly trained citizen-soldiers, andthe Peloponnesian League was thesource of her land power. The Spartansand their Peloponnesian allies wereunlikely to venture out to sea in num­bers large enough to threaten their cen­ter. Pericles may reasonably haveplanned to use the navy to stir up rebel­lion. Sparta's citizenry lived from theagricultural surplus generated by anoppressed, potentially restive lowerclass-the helots of Laconia (Sparta'shome territory) and Messenia (thesouthwestern peninsula of the Pelopon­nesus). With Sparta distracted byrevolts, it may have been argued, thePeloponnesians would be stymied. Butthe Athenians established no base inSpartan territory during the first sixyears of the war. They launched periodiccoastal raids beginning in 430 B.C., but itis unclear these had much effect.

It seems likely thatPericles' offensivegoal was limited: con­trol of Megara, asmall city-state whoseterritory lay north of

the Isthmus of Corinth and west of Atti­ca. Megara was strategically locatedacross the land routes from the Pelopon­nesus into central Greece. The passesthrough the Megarian mountains weredefensible: The Athenians had set up theBattle of Tanagra in 458-457 (whichthey subsequently lost) by occupying theMegarian passes. If Athens could perma­nently control the Megarian passes, theSpartans would be bottled up in thePeloponnesus, and Athens would have afree hand in central and northernGreece. Thus, rather than overthrowing,Pericles aimed at containing Sparta.This would have been an extension tothe mainland of the strategic option thathad worked so well against the Persians.

The Spartans, for their part, probablyhad not adequately thought through theproblems of a war with Athens, and theyshowed little strategic insight in the firstyears of the conflict. In the late 430sSparta had no financial reserves and rel­atively little in the way of a navy.Although some may have had reserva­tions about the war, the consensus

among the high command apparentlywas that the war would be a traditionalone, fought according to the ordinaryrules of agonal combat.

When the Peloponnesian army arrivedin Attica late in the summer of 431 B.C.,

Pericles' war plan was put into effect:The Athenians evacuated the outlyingrural districts of Attica, took up resi­dence in the city, and refused battle.Stymied, the Peloponnesians decampeda few weeks later, having accomplishedvirtually nothing. Once the Spartans andtheir allies were safely back in the Pelo­ponnesus, Pericles sent the Athenianarmy into Megara, where it ravaged thesmall agricultural plain. If this patternhad kept up for a few years, all mighthave gone as Pericles had planned.Eventually the Spartans would havebecome frustrated with their meaning­less incursions, and the Megarians,excluded from Aegean trade by theAthenian fleet and hurt by agriculturallosses, would have submitted to Athens.But, as Thucydides points out, war isfilled with surprises for even the clever­est planner.

Some of the events of the war weretruly unpredictable: In 430 a plaguebroke out in Athens, which within a fewyears had wiped out at least a quarter ofthe population, including Pericles him­self. Other accidents of war seemed tofavor Athens: In 425, some soldiers, sail­ing with an Athenian fleet that hadbeached during bad weather at Pylos, inSpartan-held Messenia, built a perma­nent base there from which to fomenthelot agitation against Sparta. Hundredsof Spartan hoplites who bungled anattack on the stronghold were capturedand used as hostages against furtherincursions into Attica.

Concerned about the fate of thehostages if he should attack Atticadirectly, the Spartan general Brasidasdevised the strategy of striking indirectlyby attacking the Athenian Empire. In424 he led a force into northern Greeceand forced the capitulation of a numberof important Athenian "allies." Brasidas'smove demonstrated how an innovativestrategic action on one side might leadto an innovative reaction on the other.Once the old rules of agonal conflict hadbeen abandoned, the field was open tomaneuver and countermaneuver.

Pericles' grand strategy for winninathe Peloponnesian War had been predI­cated on taking a strong defensive stanefand maintaining strictly limited offen- .'sive goals. But after his death in 429 B.c., '.the Athenians found it difficult to stickto his austere plan. The result of their'~:'_

restlessness was a series of aggressiveoffensive operations, notably to Aetoliain northwestern Greece. This was anoperational nightmare: The Athenianhoplites proved to be helpless in themountains and forests against light­armed Aetolian skirmishers. It failed tocure Athens of the desire to expand, butit did teach an important lesson: Light­armed troops could be deadly in roughterrain. The result was that light-armedmercenaries soon became part of thearsenal of the warring coalitions, anoth-er factor in an increasingly variegatedstrategic situation.

The second stage of the Pelopon­nesian War saw further advances instrategic thought. The first phase hadended in 420 with the signing of thePeace of Nicias, which left both Athens'sempire and Sparta's PeloponnesianLeague more or less intact. Ten years ofwar had resolved nothing, and manyGreeks were dissatisfied.

In 415 a brilliant, erratic, and charis­matic politician-general named Alcibi­ades persuaded the Athenians to launcha massive naval invasion of the Greekcity-state of Syracuse, on the island ofSicily. Syracuse, a colony of Corinth thathad been established in the eighth cen­tury B.C., was the leading city-state ineastern Sicily. Overthrow of Syracusemight allow Athens to take over Sicilyand the Greek towns of southern Italy aswell. But it would be a very difficultundertaking. Thucydides' account of thedebate implies that the Athenian assem­bly had only the vaguest idea of Sicily'ssize and resources. Furthermore, theinvasion was certain to rekindle hostili­ties with Sparta.

The willingness of the Athenians toembark on the ill-fated Sicilian expedi­tion can best be explained in terms oftheir insulation from the reality of Spar­tan power in the first stage of the war, adirect result of Pericles' defensive strate­gy. Although the plague had been devas­tating, the Athenians had been other­wise safe behind their walls, and they

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now saw no reason to fear a resumptionof hostilities with such apparently inef­fectual opponents. Furthermore, theSicilian expedition demonstrates thegrowing Athenian taste for long-range(if muddy) strategic thinking: It markeda clear and irrevocable break with Peri­cles' limited-aims strategy for the war.Total overthow, rather than contain­ment, of the enemy now became the pol­icy goal. Alcibiades convinced the Athe­nians that by expanding the theater ofthe war, by gaining control of Sicily andsouthern Italy with their huge materialand manpower bases, Athens could ulti­mately command enough men andresources to do this.

The Sicilian expedition was as ambi­tious as the Egyptian one that had endedin disaster four decades before: Some5,100 hoplites (and smaller numbers ofcavalry and other arms) were to betransported some 600 miles across thesea, convoyed by a navy of over 130triremes. The target was a huge island,dominated by a city-state that was inmany ways Athens's mirror image: alarge, wealthy, securely walled, demo­cratic, imperialistic Greek polis withdemonstrated abilities in both diploma­cy and military operations. The Atheni­ans were regarded by most westernGreeks-even by many of Syracuse's tra­ditional enemies-as invaders. Athenswould have to fight for every beachheadand could expect little cooperation fromthe Sicilians. Because of the logisticalproblems imposed by distance and bythe scale of operations, the conduct ofthe expedition would have to be flawlessin order for the grandiose strategic goalto be achieved. In the end, the invasionfailed. Whether or not the strategy couldhave worked, given proper follow­through (and even the contemporaryhistorian Thucydides is ambivalent onthis point), in the hands of its comman­der, Nicias, it turned out to be anunprecedented disaster: Virtually themtire Athenian expeditionary force waswiped out.

Meanwhile, Alcibiades turned traitorand adVised the Spartans on Athenianstrategy and how to counter it. TheSpartans were then able to begin toIO/ve the problem of a foe who refusedto tight in the open field, by manning, in413. a permanent base in Attica, trap-

ping most Athenians inside their cityyear-round-except for those who cameand went by ship. With the Athenianseffectively under siege, the Spartanscould focus their energies on defeatingtheir navy.

The Spartans saw that, given theAthenians' dependence on food imports,breaking their sea power would end thewar. Sparta would have to build her ownnavy-an expensive proposition-but awiIling source of cash was available: theking of Persia, who hoped that by break­ing Athens he could regain control ofthe rich towns of Ionia. Once again,Athenian strategic initiative (expandingthe theater of war to Sicily) was matchedby a Spartan counterinitiative (expand­ing their revenue base to include Per­sian coffers). With their Persian-fundedfleet, the Spartans went after the Athen­ian navy and empire; the primary the­ater of combat shifted to the northernAegean. The Athenians managed todefeat a Spartan fleet in 410, but Spar­ta's navy was not her center of gravity.With more Persian money the Spartansrebuilt, and their admirals learned fromprevious operational errors.

In strategic terms, the stakes werenow much higher for Athens than forSparta. If Athens lost a major engage­ment and was (even temporarily) unableto defend her merchant fleet, her civil­ian population would starve and the warwould be over. If Sparta lost an engage­ment at sea, it meant relatively little.Thus, Spartan admirals were able totake the sort of risky tactical initiativesthat their Athenian counterparts nolonger dared.

The resourceful Spartan admiralLysander played on the timidity of thejoint Athenian naval command, nowcentered at Aegospotomi in the northAegean, by constantly threatening battleand then withdrawing his warships. TheAthenians were unwilling either to pur­sue their foe or to abandon their exposeddefensive position, located dangerouslyfar from a good base of supply. In theend Lysander wore down their guardand launched a surprise attack that cap­tured most of the Athenian ships on thebeach. With the Athenian fleet smashed,the all-important maritime supply lineswere cut. Worn down by famine, Athenssurrendered to Sparta in 404 B.C.

The Peloponnesian War opened thePandora's box of war fought according torational strategic calculation. Greek gen­erals of the fourth century, most notablyPhilip II and his son Alexander III ofMacedon, devised sophisticated strategicinitiatives that united diplomaticmaneuvers, employment of spies andtraitors, exploitation of intrastate classdiscord, economic coercion, superiorsiegecraft, and year-round campaigningby professional armies. The long-termresult was Philip's defeat of a city-statecoalition at the Battle of Chaeronea in338 B.C. and the end of the era of city­state dominance in Greece. Strategicinsight (notably his plan to neutralizethe Persian navy by capturing all of Per­sia's Mediterranean ports) allowedAlexander to conquer Persia. After hisdeath, Alexander's generals carvedGreece and western Asia into the em­pires of the Hellenistic period. Theseself-proclaimed kings and their succes­sors were unhampered by either formalrules of war or democratic politicalprocesses and so could secretly deviseand execute plans for mutual subversionand annihilation. Thus, their strategicsophistication contributed to disunityand weakness, paving the way for theRoman conquest of the Greek world.

After the end of the fifth century B.C.,though hoplire battles remained impor­tant tactically, there was no possibility ofa return to the prestrategic forms ofconflict resolution. The PeloponnesianWar showed that engaging in battlecould be a rational decision, rather thana ritual duty, and that an enemy whorefused battle might be decisively defeat­ed by an indirect attack on his economicmeans of survival. In place of the strictlycircumscribed conflict of the agon­which tested national strength but limit­ed casualties to armed warriors andminimized economic and social dam­age-Western culture had embarked ona path soon to be strewn with ruinednational economies, shattered social val­ues, and the bodies of untold numbers ofcombatants and noncombatants alike.

JOSIAH OBER is a professor of classics atPrinceton University and coauthor ofThe Anatomy ofError: Ancient MilitaryDisasters and Their Lessons for ModemStrategists (St. Martin's Press, 1990).

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