by Ober, Josiah
The underlying reasons for the Spartans’ fear are traced in detail by Thucydides through the device of a speech given by “the Corinthians” at a Peloponnesian League assembly held to debate recent Athenian moves against league members (Thucydides 1.68–71). The Corinthians argue, with devastating rhetorical force, that a new Athenian approach to state power and its uses was quickly rendering the Spartan approach to power politics obsolete. The Corinthians portray the Athenians as dynamic risk takers who had recognized that quickness, innovation, and an experimental approach to policy drove the continuous growth of wealth and power. Moreover, individual Athenians eagerly cooperated in collective state ventures because they recognized that their individual interests were bound up in that growth. In the Corinthians’ assessment, the Spartans were, in every sense, the Athenians’ opposites: Slow, conservative, risk-averse, and (contrary to Plutarch’s vision of Lycurgus’ Sparta as a state defined by virtuous common-good seeking) narrowly and selfishly self-interested. Athenian collective dynamism had potential downsides and might collapse under intense pressure, but only if the Spartans pressed the issue by declaring war. The main points of the Corinthians’ argument in Thucydides’ text are summed up in table 8.1.46
Although Thucydides’ Corinthians tended to make their argument in terms of inherent Spartan and Athenian “national characters,” their core argument—that the Athenian system was generative, influential, and capable of indefinite expansion (if not stopped in time)—suggests that Athens’ success was not uniquely a matter of a peculiarly Athenian character. Rather, indirectly mirroring Pericles’ claim in the funeral oration recorded by Thucydides (2.41.1.) that Athens could be “an education to Hellas,” the Corinthians seem to regard the Athenian approach as both attractive to others and, at least in some senses, a model that other communities might successfully emulate. The implication was clear enough: While conservative Sparta stagnated, much of the rest of the Greek world, led by dynamic and aggressive risk-taking Athenians, would continue to grow. At some time, the tipping point would be reached and Sparta’s military specialization would no longer be enough to maintain its superpolis status. And at that time, there would be a cascade of defection from the Peloponnesian League, ultimately leaving Sparta isolated in a world dominated by hostile rivals who had chosen, out of fear or desire, to follow the Athenian path of dynamic growth.
TABLE 8.1 Thucydides’ “Corinthian Assessment”
Growing Athens: Strong Performance
Stagnating Sparta: Weak Performance
Negative Side of Athenian Growth
Agility
• Speed
• Innovation
• Flexibility/versatility across domains
Clumsiness
• Slowness
• Conservatism
• Domain-specific expertise
Decision gridlock, as a result of too much information, conflicting information
Ambition
• Hard work
• Risk-taking
• Future orientation
Complacency
• Laziness
• Risk aversion
• Past orientation
Rashness, failure to calculate downside risk. Overambitious leadership
Common-ends seeking
• Public goods
• Long-term goals
Narrow, short-term self-interest seeking by groups and individuals
Free riding, factionalism
NOTE: Source: Thucydides 1.70.2–71. Adapted from table in Ober 2010b: 74.
If the Corinthians’ arguments were valid, then Sparta certainly did have a lot to worry about. Thucydides’ claim that the ultimate cause of the Peloponnesian War was Sparta’s fear at the growth of Athenian power appears entirely plausible as a rational explanation of a cost–benefit calculation: The Spartans were not afraid of a democratic bogeyman. They were afraid of the consequences of unusually rapid growth by a hostile rival and the prospect that its growth was sustainable into the foreseeable future. Under these circumstances, unless they were willing to abandon the contest for preeminence, the Spartans had no choice but to attack before the power disparity became too great. Whether that would be a matter of months, years, or decades was and still is an open question. The question of how long the attack could be postponed was, according to Thucydides (1.79–87), hotly debated by the Spartans in a closed meeting. But it came down to a question of when, not whether, to attack. In this sense, Thucydides’ claim that the war’s origins must be sought, not in particular incidents, but in deep structural changes in the Greek world, in changes that were caused by what we can now characterize as an extended period of unusually robust efflorescence, seems well supported. And thus, for the first time but not the last, the prospects for an era of Greek efflorescence that might continue indefinitely were put at risk by the considerations of interstate rivalry and the politics of state power.
PELOPONNESIAN WAR TO 416 BCE
Thucydides’ account leads us to believe that Pericles and the Spartans had done the same math and had come to similar conclusions: Pericles realized that war with Sparta was inevitable. But, as he assured the Athenian assembly in the first of his speeches in Thucydides’ text, it was winnable so long as the Athenians did not overreach by seeking to grow the empire before Sparta had given up the attempt to end it. Pericles’ optimism about Athens’ prospects was not universally shared. Many Greeks apparently agreed with the Spartans that, given Sparta’s unquestioned superiority in infantry forces and the fact that Greek wars on the mainland tended to be decided by infantry battles, it would be a relatively short war: Within a few campaigning seasons, at most, the highly trained Spartan hoplites, backed by the Peloponnesian infantry and Boeotian cavalry, would crush the Athenian land forces, deciding the contest decisively in Sparta’s favor (Thucycides 2.8.4, 5.14.3).
Pericles foresaw a very different war: The Peloponnesians would invade Attica annually, but the Athenians would not meet them in the field. Since the Peloponnesian allies had farms of their own to look after, the occupation of the Athenian homeland would be fairly brief. The Athenian cavalry, along with garrison troops at fortified outposts, would harry the invaders, preventing them from dispersing to plunder efficiently, and thus protecting, as well as possible, Athenian extramural assets. The Athenians did not, in any event, need to confront the Spartan–Peloponnesian army on land. Athens’ extramural population would be evacuated from the villages and towns of Attica and housed in the fortified city–Piraeus complex. The entire population could readily be fed for as long as necessary with imported food, paid for by the unimpaired imperial economy. The Athenian fleet would keep order in the Empire and would launch maritime raids on vulnerable targets along the Peloponnesian coasts. Megara would be subjected to biannual invasions and forced back into the Athenian fold. Eventually the Spartans would tire of the fruitless enterprise and retire to their strongholds in Laconia and Messenia, leaving the rest of the Greek world to be integrated into the empire and developed at leisure under Athenian leadership.47
The first year of the war, 431 BCE, went exactly according to Pericles’ policy recommendations and plans. The Peloponnesians marched into Attica, but despite some grumbling by the residents of the very large deme of Acharnai, where the Spartans, not coincidentally, made their camp, there was no break in Athenian discipline. Harrying by Athenian cavalry and garrisons kept the invading forces relatively compact, and the damage done by the invaders was minimal. The counterraids and invasions of Megara went off like clockwork. Pericles’ inspiring funeral oration, given over the bodies of the relatively few Athenian soldiers who fell in the course of the year, was offered at a high point of optimism and enthusiasm. The democratic political order, characterized by skillfully deployed expertise and rational planning, had brought Athens to its acme of wealth and power. Athens appeared to be a whole new kind of superpolis, capable, it seemed, of taking on the Spartans in a new kind of war.
The second year
of the war was starkly different: In the summer of 430 BCE, the Peloponnesians stayed in Attica for longer (40 days) and were able to range more widely and to do more damage. But the real crisis came with the outbreak in Athens, although not among the Peloponnesians, of a highly contagious and usually fatal disease. Within two years, the plague had carried off at least a quarter of Athens’ population, a total of perhaps 75,000 people. Neither scientific medicine in the new Hippocratic style nor old-fashioned prayers to the gods had any effect. This was a staggering blow to Athens’ plans, in every possible sense. Pericles’ second assembly speech in Thucydides’ text was delivered in the aftermath of the first and worst outbreak of the disease. Pericles was indicted on legal charges, fined, and temporarily deposed from his position as general. But the surviving Athenians nonetheless took his advice to stay the imperial course. Meanwhile, democratic political order proved robust: The government continued to function, and military operations continued unabated.48
After Pericles died of plague in 429, his grand strategy for the war was initially adhered to by his political successors. In 428, the Athenians faced their next great test: the revolt of the major subject state of Mytilene (i798: size 4, fame 5) on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos and the threat of a simultaneous Peloponnesian land and sea attack on Athenian territory. Thucydides’ vivid account of the Athenian response demonstrates the depth of Athenian military expertise and also the value of individual Athenians’ adaptive versatility.49
Upon receiving news of the revolt, the Athenians dispatched 40 warships to Lesbos, where they established a naval blockade. The Peloponnesians, meanwhile, were slow to muster, “being both engaged in harvesting their grain and sick of making expeditions” (3.15.2). The Athenians responded to the Peloponnesian naval threat with a devastating show of force, manning 100 ships with which they descended upon the Peloponnesian coast, ravaging at will.50 In order to pay for the necessary operations, the Athenians levied a 200-talent property tax upon themselves while also sending commanders abroad to collect imperial funds. When the discouraged Spartans disbanded their half-assembled invasion force, the Athenians dispatched a general to Mytilene with additional forces.
The Athenian reinforcements came in the form of an army of hoplites, who rowed themselves in triremes to Lesbos. When they arrived, they built a siege wall to complement the naval blockade. Hard pressed by the siege, the Mytilenean oligarchs armed the lower classes, who then demanded distributions of grain. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Mytilenean oligarchs surrendered. More than 1,000 of them were executed. The agricultural land of Mytilene was turned over to Athenian cleruchs.
The Mytilene campaign of 428–427 seemed to confirm the Corinthian portrait of the agile, ambitious, and cooperative Athenians. After an informal intelligence network brought advance warning of hostile intentions, the Athenian military response to the revolt was masterful and multifaceted. The closely coordinated naval blockade of Mytilene, siegeworks, land operations against other Lesbian cities, and naval patrols in the Aegean accomplished Athens’ goals with dispatch. The threat of a Peloponnesian land and sea invasion in late summer 428 failed to panic the Athenians. By digging deep into their reserves of human and material resources, they launched a huge naval force manned by heavy infantry: Athenian hoplites, it turns out, were capable oarsmen, and they took up oars without the foot-dragging that stymied plans for a Peloponnesian expedition.
The operations of 428–427 reveal that the all-important technical expertise of rowing warships at a high Athenian standard was widely dispersed across the Athenian citizen population.51 When the occasion demanded it, there was no resistance on the part of “middling” hoplites to take on the oarsman’s role usually fulfilled by poorer citizens. Neither technical incapacity nor social distaste stood in the way of generating the required level of projectible power at the right moment. There seems to be a clear connection between democratic culture, with its emphasis on basic equality among a socially diverse citizenry, the wide distribution of certain kinds of technical expertise, and Athenian military proficiency. Just as the Athenian hoplite accepted a poorer fellow citizen as an equal when sitting in assembly or on a jury, so too he accepted the “lower class” role of rower when the common good of the state demanded it. And upon arrival at his destination, he proved to be a willing and skilled wall builder in the bargain.52
The capacity of the individual Athenian to acquire a wide range of technical skills and to recombine various of his diverse abilities into new skill sets as the situation demanded meant that the Athenians could be flexible in deploying their manpower reserves. Thucydides’ military narrative gives substance to the boast in Pericles’ funeral oration: “I doubt if the world can produce a man, who where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility as the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but plain matter of fact, the power (dunamis) of the state acquired by these habits proves” (Thucydides 2.41.1).
What is particularly striking about Thucydides’ Mytilene narrative is that the Athenians’ ability to excel is not limited to upward social mobility but implies mobility to any point on the “social status–labor map” that the situation demanded. Athens’ democratic advantage was on full display.53
The Mytilene campaign demonstrated the extent of Athenian potential, but not all military operations went so smoothly; there were serious setbacks in Aetolia, Boeotia, and other theaters. Meanwhile, the Spartans produced in Brasidas a highly competent and strikingly innovative commander who saw that the best hope for breaking the impasse of the war was to take the war to Athens’ imperial subjects. The result was a broadening of the conflict. Brasidas’ new strategy not only put pressure on Athens; it exacerbated latent conflicts between prodemocratic and pro-oligarchic elements in Greek states, resulting in savage civil wars.54
The huge expense of fighting the long war led to a sharp increase in the imperial taxation rate, and in general to a more coercion-intensive approach to imperial control. Because, as we have seen, the nature of the maritime Empire allowed an unusual degree of command and control compared to extensive continental empires with their principal-agent problems, Athens could readily increase tax and coercion rates, and, in the 420s, did so. Direct tribute taxes on states were raised in 425, and new indirect taxes on trade from the Black Sea were imposed. The total tax burden on the subject states of the Empire must have doubled, at the very least. Meanwhile, in 428 the Athenians for the first time imposed substantial internal war taxes on themselves. In sum, the costs to both Athenians and their imperial subjects of imperial centralization were rising sharply, while the benefits were declining.55
After years of seesawing conflict and serious losses for both of the principal competitors and their allies, the rival powers were exhausted. A truce was declared in 421 BCE that reestablished something very like the prewar status quo. But many on each side remained unsatisfied: While Athens had taken a huge demographic hit and had spent down its capital surplus, the structural danger to Sparta of sustained Athenian growth had not gone away. On the Athenian side, the primary goal of reducing Sparta to a regional power incapable of standing in the way of expanding the empire had not been achieved. Ambitious men on both sides, and third-party opportunists, were eager to see hostilities recommenced.56
In 416, Athenian hawks persuaded the citizen assembly to vote for an attack on Melos (i505), a small (size 3), oligarchic, Aegean island polis. Melos was an ostensibly neutral state that had never been part of Athens’ league or empire and may have provided some material support early in the war for Sparta. When an Athenian expeditionary force arrived at Melos, but before the commencement of hostilities, the Athenian commanders sought permission to speak to a full assembly of Melian citizens: Clearly they hoped to persuade the Melians of the rationality of acquiescing to Athenian rule. Melos’ oligarchic leaders refused the request. Thucydides produces the resulting discussion between anonymous
Athenian commanders and the equally anonymous Melian oligarchs in the form of a dialogue.57
In the Melian dialogue, the Athenians make arguments readily identifiable as sophistic in origin: Their premise is that their mission at Melos is entirely motivated by Athens’ perceived interests in eliminating a neutral state in a region otherwise dominated by Athenian subjects. The anticipated benefits to Athens outweigh the cost of the operations that would be necessary to complete the conquest. The Athenians prefer that the Melians submit voluntarily but will eliminate the Melians if necessary. The cost–benefit calculation favoring conquest will not be changed by a Melian choice to resist. The Athenians pointedly refuse to listen to justice-based arguments. The Melians are left to assert that they will place their trust in the admittedly slim hope of succor by the Spartans or by the gods. The outcome, as the Athenians had pointed out, was never seriously in doubt. After the Melian resistance failed, the Athenians killed the male citizens and sold the rest of the population into slavery. The land was then redistributed to Athenian cleruchs.58
Thucydides’ account of the Melian dialogue and its aftermath makes an important point about the limits of human rationality when it is understood in cost–benefit terms. By the strict economic accounting advanced by the Athenian commanders, the Melian leaders made a painfully irrational choice: giving up the opportunity to retain much of what they currently had for a vanishingly small chance of keeping everything by somehow defeating the superior Athenian forces. Yet, and I think this is Thucydides’ point, the Melian choice to take an enormous risk of a catastrophic loss, in the vain hope of maintaining their status quo, followed from an entirely normal human decision process, in which the emotional attachment to what we have outweighs considerations of what we can actually expect. That process, which is described by the behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman in terms of “prospect theory,” is irrational in the economic terms of risk assessment, probability, and cost–benefit payoffs. Yet it is the way most of us make decisions much of the time: Faced with the prospect of a substantial loss and a slight chance to avoid all loss, most people will choose to gamble at odds that no economically rational individual with a basic intuitive conception of mathematical probability would ever accept.59
