a new league, and the recently liberated Thebans needed to acquire
basic security from wanton Spartan encroachment if they were to re-
habilitate their respective poleis.68 The incentive for the smaller Aegean
poleis to join the league would be the grant of collective security that
the newly formed league offered and the restitution of properties
that were in Athenian hands. The stated purpose of the league was to
72 Berkey
protect the autonomy of its members from Sparta. This is somewhat
surprising given that, of the league’s first members (with the excep-
tion of Athens and Thebes), the potential threat to their freedom came
primarily from Persia and not Sparta. Athens was gaining control of
the role of prostates of the King’s Peace from Sparta. The seizure of the
Cadmeia and the raid of Sphodrias demonstrated to all Greek poleis,
however, that Sparta was the violator of the King’s Peace and not its
guarantor. The immediate threat to Athens and mainland Greece was
Sparta, not Persia.
The restoration of Athens as a credible naval power was signifi-
cant for the interstate system in that the poleis of Asia Minor and the
Aegean did not have to rely solely on Sparta for their safety from Persia.
Unless the Athenians were to abandon their city, any strategy empha-
sizing naval power necessitated the maintenance of the Long Walls.
Yet without a substantial fleet, there was little merit in the Athenians
depending on the defenses of Piraeus and the Long Walls to ensure
their survival. In this highly competitive multipolar environment, the
Athenians also decided to invest in the defense of their borders.69 Be-
cause of the problematic nature of dating ancient walls,70 it has not
been possible to date this array of fortifications with any great degree
of precision,71 although they are plausibly dated in general terms to the
fourth century. By enlarging their defensive works, the Athenians dis-
tinguished between their desire to exercise power over others and their
need to control their own territory.
Josiah Ober emphasizes the fourth-century Athenians’ defensive
mentality,72 and yet their fortification of the city and its frontiers co-
incided with a period during which they pursued an aggressive for-
eign policy, particularly given the limitations imposed on them by the
newly configured state system. As a result of their experiences during
the Peloponnesian War, it seems only natural that the defense of Attica
would be of importance to the Athenians.73 They were determined to
resist encroachments on their territory, such as the Spartan devastation
of the countryside of Attica at the outset of the Peloponnesian War,
the subsequent occupation of Decelea in its final phases, and the recent
raid of Sphodrias. Again, adopting an apparently defensive mentality,
the Athenians sought to establish control over their territory, and in so
Why Fortifications Endure 73
doing to position themselves as attractive allies to like-minded poleis in
the struggle first against Spartan hegemony, then that of Thebes.
In order for the Athenians to regain their security and advance their
interests, they fixed on a new strategy that required the fortification of
the polis and its surrounding territory. In this context, Aristotle’s later
description in the Politics of the use of walls and fortifications, while
not necessarily referring to Athens specifically, is pertinent to the men-
tality of fourth-century military planners:
The fortification of cities by walls is a matter of dispute. It is
sometimes argued that states which lay claim to military excel-
lence ought to dispense with any such aids. This is a singularly
antiquated notion—all the more as it is plain to the eye that states
which prided themselves on this point are being refuted by the
logic of fact. When the question at issue is one of coping with an
enemy state of a similar character, which is only slightly superior
in numbers, there is little honour to be got from an attempt to
attain security by the erection of a barrier of walls. But it some-
times happens—and it is always possible—that the superiority of
an assailant may be more than a match for mere courage, human
or superhuman; and then, if a state is to avoid destruction, and
to escape from suffering and humiliation, the securest possible
barrier of walls should be deemed the best of military methods—
especially to-day, when the invention of catapults and other en-
gines for the siege of cities has attained such a high degree of
precision. To demand that a city should be left undefended by
walls is much the same as to want to have the territory of the
state left open to invasion, and to lay every elevation level with
the ground. It is like refusing to have walls for the exterior of a
private house, for fear that they will make its inhabitants cowards.
We have also to remember that a people with a city defended by
walls has a choice of alternatives—to treat its city as walled [and
therefore to act on the defensive], or to treat it as if it were un-
walled [and therefore to take the offensive]—but a people with-
out any walls is a people without any choice. If this argument be
accepted, the conclusion will not only be that a city ought to be
74 Berkey
surrounded by walls; it will also be that the walls should always
be kept in good order, and be made to satisfy both the claims
of beauty and the needs of military utility—especially the needs
revealed by recent military inventions. It is always the concern of
the offensive to discover new methods by which it may seize the
advantage; but it is equally the concern of the defensive, which
has already made some inventions, to search and think out others.
An assailant will not even attempt to make an attack on men who
are well prepared.74
The fortification of the city and its borders was critical to the defense
of their polis not only against foreign enemies but also against those
within the city’s walls who might wish to breach its security through
sedition. In this vein, the fourth-century manual Poliorcetica by Aeneas
the Tactician urges the city’s commanders to be vigilant against treason
from within, thereby demonstrating how a city’s reliance on its walls
also necessitates the use of controls over the local population.75
The walls of Athens, always central to the city’s defense, played a
number of roles throughout the history of the polis. Beginning with
Themistocles, the construction of the city’s walls provided safety from
future invasion. This in turn helped to launch the Athenians’ path to
empire, and allowed the democracy to flourish in a particular fashion
that enhanced sea power and the thousands of poor who were essen-
tial to and benefited from it. Under Pericles, the Athenians continued
to develop their defensive works and secure their imperial power, and
the walls were integral to this strategy. During the Peloponnesian
War, Pericles’ strategy underestimated the devasta
tion that would be
wrought by bringing thousands of its citizens behind these walls in
the abandonment of the Attic countryside, thereby fostering a viru-
lent plague that wrought havoc from within. And he seems to have dis-
counted the consequences of the loss of military deterrence—that by
de facto making it clear that there were no immediate consequences,
through armed infantry resistance, for invading the soil of Attica, a war
was more likely to follow.
After the defeat of Athens and the destruction of the city’s wal s,
these wal s were rebuilt by Conon for practical and symbolic purposes
Why Fortifications Endure 75
as wel . This strategy, however, failed as a result of the changes that had
occurred in the transition of the larger Greek state system. In response
to these changes and fighting during the Corinthian War, the Athenians
realized that their former strategy was insufficient and tried to bolster
their ability to control their territory with the construction of elaborate
border defenses that would expand their options beyond passive infantry
defense. The second half of the fourth century would usher in profound
changes in siege warfare and the use of artil ery, changes that go beyond
the scope of the present discussion.76 In Athens, the wal s of the city
and its frontier defenses were no match for Phil ip and his Macedonian
army, and the Athenians would submit to his rule without ever testing
the strength of their costly and expansive networks of border defense.
For well over a hundred years, Athenian democracy experimented
with a variety of fortifications—urban walls, long walls to the sea, net-
works of border fortifications—both to offer military utility and to ex-
press prevailing political and economic agendas. The single Athenian
constant seems to have been to construct stone ramparts of some sort
to meet almost every diverse need imaginable that arose. And in the
last half-century of the free Greek city-state, even more ambitious and
novel fortifications emerged outside Athens, as the enormous circuits
in the Peloponnese at Mantineia, Megalopolis, and Messene demon-
strate: huge new walled citadels designed to incorporate agricultural
lands inside the city and to offer protection for the consolidation of
scattered towns into new unified democratic states.
Even to this day, in the era of high technology, walls and fortifica-
tions continue to play important if less critical roles in defense and
strategy. While exponential advances in weapons technology and the
advent of air and space power have greatly reduced their effectiveness
as lines of defense, they still perform valuable functions in certain cir-
cumstances, which emphasizes how the challenge-response cycle of
the offensive and defensive is continuous and timeless.
In recent years, the dangerous conditions in Iraq precipitated the con-
struction of security zones and wal s to separate warring communities.77
U.S. forces instal ed barricades in Baghdad to enhance the ability of Iraqi
citizens to conduct their lives with some semblance of normalcy, and
the gradual removal of these huge concrete wal s perhaps indicates an
76 Berkey
easing of tension between these contending groups in that war-torn
city.78 In Israel, an interlinking series of wal s and barriers constructed
to prevent suicide bombers from entering the country has proven an
effective means of limiting terrorist attacks, even as an array of experts
predicted that such an apparently retrograde solution could hardly be
successful. The contemporary Saudi Wal separating Saudi Arabia from
Iraq provides yet another example. To address the threat of foreign fight-
ers flooding across their borders, the Saudis have erected an expensive
network of defenses along this perimeter to alert them to this threat.
The United States is currently constructing a massive, multi-bil ion-
dol ar “fence” of concrete and metal intended to fortify the U.S.- Mexican
border. Its first stage, from San Diego, California, to El Paso, Texas, is
nearly complete, and seems to have drastical y reduced il egal border
crossings —in a manner at least as effective as increased patrols, elec-
tronic sensors, “virtual fences,” and employer sanctions. Apparently con-
current with satel ite communications, aerial drones, and sophisticated
computer-based sensors, metal fences and concrete barriers worldwide
continue to offer protection in a way that other high-tech alternatives
cannot. The more sophisticated the technology to go over, through, and
under wal s, the more sophisticated the counter responses that evolve to
enhance the age-old advantages of fortifications, which continue either
to stop outright entry (and occasional y to stop exit as wel ) or to make
the attackers’ efforts so costly as to be counterproductive.
As with any element of warfare, the functions and purposes of walls
shift with the times, but the notion of material obstacles has not ended.
Unlike moats and drawbridges, however, they remain in ever expanded
and imaginative uses.79 For Athenians in the classical period, walls rep-
resented more than lines of defense; they were also symbols of power
and pride that helped shape the strategic landscape in the interstate
system and, in the case of the Long Walls to Piraeus, enhanced the
autonomy of the lower classes, who were so essential to the vitality of
Athenian democracy and its maritime empire.
These fortifications created strategic opportunity for a rising power;
their destruction signaled unquestionable defeat; and their reconstruc-
tion helped reestablish Athens as a strong potential ally for poleis that
shared a common interest in containing Sparta. Just as British sea power
Why Fortifications Endure 77
served a variety of purposes at different points during the rise and fall
of the British Empire—guarantor of commerce, promoter of colonial
expansion, and enforcer of rough justice on the high seas—so the walls
of Athens had many masters, many builders, and many purposes. All
that is certain in our high-technology future is that the more that walls
and fortifications are dismissed as ossified relics of our military past,
the more they will reappear in new and unique manifestations, and the
more we will need to look to the past for time-honored explanations of
why and how they endure.
Further Reading
For the history of Athens and of its walls, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides
are essential. In addition, the text of the fourth- century BC writer Aeneas the Tactician
has been translated into English and annotated by David Whitehead, Aineias the Tacti-
cian: How to Survive Under Siege, A Historical Commentary, with Translation and introduc-
tion, 2nd ed. (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2001).
Perhaps because of their ubiquity throughout the Greek world, walls and fortifica-
tions have received a great deal of scholarly attention. In addition to numerous articles
and archaeological reports, several major monographs have treated the subject of for-
tifications and c
ivic defense throughout various phases of Greek history. The challenge
of identifying and tracing the chronological development of different masonry tech-
niques and types of construction is discussed in Robert Lorentz Scranton’s Greek Walls
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941). F. E. Winter‘s Greek Fortifications
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971) and A. W. Lawrence‘s Greek Aims in Fortifica-
tion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) each provide a valuable overview of fortifications
in Greece. Y. Garlan’s Recherches de poliocétique greque, fasc. 223, (Paris: Bibliothèque
des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 1974) is vital to understanding the role
of ramparts in classical Greek municipal defense. J.-P. Adam’s L’architecture militaire
Greque (Paris: J. Picard, 1982) provides excellent photographs and detailed drawings
of fortifications throughout the ancient Greek world. The increasing complexity of
these constructions also reflects developments in the offensive tactics used to overcome
them, and on this topic see E. W. Marsden, Greek and Roman Artillery: Historical Develop-
ment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). For the period of the Peloponnesian War, Victor
Davis Hanson devotes a chapter (chap. 6, “Walls [Sieges (431–415)],” pp. 163–99) to the
subject of fortifications and siegecraft in A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and
Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (New York: Random House, 2005).
Turning specifically to Athens, the archaeological remains of the city’s walls are dis-
cussed by R. E. Wycherley, The Stones of Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1978); see especially chapter 1, “The Walls,” pp. 7–26. More recently, John Camp has
published an excellent survey of the archaeology of the Athenian civic construction in
The Archaeology of Athens (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). It is only recently
78 Berkey
that a full-length study of the Long Walls has been undertaken. David H. Conwell
has done an admirable job of compiling all relevant information—literary, epigraphi-
cal, and archaeological—in Connecting a City to the Sea: The History of the Athenian Long
Walls, Mnemosyne Supplements, vol. 293 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Moving beyond the
walls of the urban center to the plains of Attica, three major studies have examined
the history of Athenian rural defenses: J. R. McCredie, Fortified Military Camps in At-
Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome Page 12
