Athens’ treatment of Potidaea
The next ground of complaint, in 432, concerned Potidaea and its inhabitants:
who lived on the isthmus of Pallene and, although colonists of the Corinthians, were phoros-paying allies of the Athenians.
(Thucydides 1.56.2)
The Thraceward region was of immense importance to the Athenians, as the foundation of the colonies of Brea and Amphipolis had confirmed. Apart from its richness in natural resources and its favourable trading position, it was the main bulwark against the eastward expansion of Macedon, which at that time was under the control of King Perdiccas. The relationship between the Athenians and Perdiccas was constantly changing from friendship to enmity, since the motivating force on both sides was expediency. At the time of the Potidaean affair, he was hostile to the Athenians due to their support of his rivals, Philip and Deucas, and consequently played an important supportive role in the revolt of Potidaea (1.57.2–5).
Potidaea became an issue of dispute because of the Athenian demands that the Potidaeans should pull down their wall on the side of Pallene, hand over hostages, and banish and not receive in the future the magistrates that Corinth usually sent each year. Without doubt these were tough demands on a state that had committed no wrong, and this harsh treatment was bound to upset the Corinthians who had retained such warm, close ties with their colony. However, it is important to look at Athenian motives for taking this action against Potidaea, as Thucydides explicitly records:
For the Corinthians were searching for a means to avenge themselves and the Athenians, being fully aware of their hatred towards themselves, gave orders to the Potidaeans … fearing that they, being persuaded by Perdiccas and the Corinthians, would revolt and cause the rest of the allies in the Thraceward region to revolt with themselves.
(Thucydides 1.56.2)
The Athenians’ treatment of Potidaea was directly provoked by the Corinthians’ hatred of Athens and by their determination to find a means of retaliation because they had been prevented from crushing Corcyra; and was influenced by their fear of losing control of the Thraceward region (see Map 5, the Athenian Empire) through Corinthian incitement of the allies there to revolt.
Upon receipt of the Athenian demands, the Potidaeans sent an embassy to Athens to negotiate a retraction of their demands, but the Athenians were not prepared to compromise. At the same time:
The Potidaeans, accompanied by Corinthians, sent an embassy to Sparta in order to gain help from there, if necessary … and the Spartan authorities promised that, if the Athenians attacked Potidaea, they would invade Attica; and so they seized their opportunity, swore oaths of alliance with the Chalcidians and the Bottiaeans, and revolted from Athens.
(Thucydides 1.58.1)
Both Corinth’s and Sparta’s behaviour can be condemned for breaking the terms of the Thirty Year Peace. Although Potidaea was a Corinthian colony, it was also a listed Athenian ally and therefore directly under the control of Athens, which Sparta and Corinth (as part of the Peloponnesian League) had legally accepted when they agreed to the Thirty Year Peace in 446/5 – clause 2: ‘each side should keep what it possessed’. Even if Athens’ behaviour was harsh and unjustified, Sparta and Corinth had no more legal right to intervene directly in Potidaea than they had in Samos. Their main available legal redress was to demand that the issue be submitted to arbitration, but instead the Corinthians actively urged the Potidaeans to seek military help from Sparta, and the Spartans (whether the authorities or the Assembly) promised an invasion of Attica, thus encouraging the Potidaeans to revolt from Athens.
The Athenians had sent out Archestratos with 30 ships and 1,000 hoplites to carry out their demands, but they arrived to find that a full-scale revolt had broken out:
Meanwhile the Corinthians, since the Potidaeans had revolted and that Athenian ships were close to Macedonia, being afraid for the place and thinking that the danger was their own responsibility, sent out volunteers of their own and, by the use of pay, sixteen hundred hoplites and four hundred light-armed troops from the other Peloponnesians.
(Thucydides 1.60.1)
Therefore the Athenians sent out 40 ships and 2,000 hoplites under Callias, and, after making another cynical alliance with Perdiccas, descended upon Potidaea. There the Athenians fought a battle against the Potidaeans, the Corinthian volunteers and the Peloponnesians, resulting in an Athenian victory and the beginning of the siege of Potidaea that lasted to 429 (1.62–64).
The use of Corinthian troops in battle to support an Athenian listed ally exposes Corinth once again to the charge of acting in defiance of the terms of the treaty. However, if these Corinthian fighters were genuine volunteers and were acting independently of the state of Corinth (as many British citizens did in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s), then Corinth can be exonerated on this issue. But the above quotation speaks of ‘the Corinthians’ sending out the volunteers and these ‘Corinthians’ must be the government of the state of Corinth. In addition, when the Peace of Nicias was signed in 421, the Corinthians refused to abide by its conditions:
They made as their excuse the fact that they could not betray their allies in Thrace. For they had independently sworn oaths with them, when they had first revolted with the Potidaeans, and later.
(Thucydides 5.30.2)
It is clear from these words that the oaths had created some form of military alliance between the Corinthians and the Potidaeans and, most probably, the Chalcidians and the Bottiaeans who had revolted together in 432, since Thucydides twice refers to the enemy forces in 432 as ‘the Potidaeans and their allies’ (1.63.3; 1.64.1). Oaths of alliance could not be made ‘unofficially’ but only between states, and therefore the Corinthians had sworn oaths of alliance with three groups of Athenian listed allies and were officially supplying military help against the Athenians – a clear breach of the treaty.
At this point in his History, having dealt with (in his opinion) the two main aitiai (grounds of complaint), Thucydides passes on to the events that culminated in the declaration of war by the Spartans and their allies, in the context of which he mentions the grievances that the Aeginetans and the Megarians expressed in front of the Spartans. However, modern historians believe that these grievances should also be treated as aitiai, as they had a significant bearing on the hardening of opinion on both sides in the build-up to the war.
Aegina
Aegina, situated in the heart of the Saronic Gulf and close to the Piraeus, had been an important naval power and rival of the Athenians. There had been naval clashes in the past, but the defeat of the Aeginetans, the confiscation of their fleet and their forced entry into the Delian League in c.458/7 had confirmed Athenian superiority. In 432, when the Corinthians and others in Sparta were attacking the Athenians’ behaviour, they took advantage of the situation to put their complaints:
The Aeginetans did not openly send an embassy but secretly because they feared the Athenians, and, no less than the Corinthians, played a leading role in fomenting war, claiming that they were no longer autonomous as was laid down in the treaty.
(Thucydides 1.67.2)
Unfortunately Thucydides supplies no evidence as to whether the Aeginetans had a legitimate complaint against the Athenians, and it cannot be said for certain what treaty is being referred to in the above quotation. If Aegina’s autonomy was one of the terms of the Thirty Year Peace, then their autonomy may have been infringed by the imposition of a garrison or by the forced referral of all serious legal cases to Athens for judgement. However, the Aeginetans only paid part of their ‘phoros’ in 432 and the Athenians may have taken action to recover the outstanding amount, which could have led to their complaint. Without full possession of the facts it is impossible to apportion blame to either side.
The Megarian Decree
One of the most contentious grounds of complaint among modern scholarship is the Megarian Decree, passed probably around the middle of 432. In fact, there may have been as many as four Megarian decrees but i
t is the ‘exclusion’ decree in particular, about which the Megarians were protesting to the Spartans at the time of Aegina’s complaint, that is considered the most important:
The Megarians, after stating many other grievances, complained especially about being excluded from the harbours in the Athenian Empire and from the Athenian market (agora) contrary to the terms of the treaty.
(Thucydides 1.67.4)
Many modern historians believe that this was the most important ground of complaint and that the Athenians’ (and Pericles’) intransigence in refusing to repeal this decree makes them culpable for the outbreak of the war. This school of thought (e.g. Robinson, Hornblower) maintains that the effect of the decree was to bring economic ruin to Megara, a listed ally of Sparta, and that the destruction of the Megarian economy was an act of aggression by the Athenians. The main evidence for the economic effects of this decree comes from Aristophanes’ Acharnians, in which Dicaeopolis is reviewing the causes of the war:
Then in anger Olympian Pericles thundered and lightened, and threw Greece into confusion by passing decrees written like drinking songs: ‘that the Megarians must not stay on the land nor in the market (agora) nor on the sea nor on the mainland.’ Then the Megarians, since they were slowly starving, begged the Spartans to get the decree withdrawn.
(Aristophanes, Acharnians ll. 530–37)
The fact that Dicaeopolis’ statement about the starving Megarians comes immediately after the parody of the Megarian Decree argues strongly that there was a direct causal link between the two.
This view of the economic effects of the decree is supported by the clear evidence that the Athenians and their enemies were very aware of the economic stranglehold that the Athenians could exert in the Aegean through the use of their fleet. The Old Oligarch, a right-wing pamphleteer and opponent of Athenian democracy writing probably in the 420s, had said unequivocally that any state that wished to import and export freely must first submit to the rulers of the sea (2.3–11; O.O. pp. 21–23). There were also the regulations for Methone (ML 65; AE121 pp. 58–59), which granted its citizens the right to import a fixed amount of grain after they had registered with the Athenian officials who controlled the shipping through the Hellespont. This privilege could just as easily be withdrawn or withheld by the Athenians, which would have a devastating effect upon the unfortunate state. The Corinthians’ first argument in their attempt to persuade the Peloponnesian League Congress to vote for war concentrated on the Athenians’ ability to operate a ‘closed sea’ policy:
Those of us, who have already had dealings with the Athenians, do not need to be taught to be on our guard against them. But those who live inland and not on the trade-routes must learn that, if they do not help those by the sea, they will experience greater difficulties in the transportation of their own produce to the sea and in the bringing back of imports from the sea.
(Thucydides 1.120.2)
Thus the Athenians were capable of inflicting economic sanctions against their enemies, and the action against Megara should be seen in this context.
The importance of the Megarian decree as an ‘aitia’ can be further seen by the pre-eminence that the Spartans afforded to the issue. In their second embassy to the Athenians in 432/1, the Spartans told them:
to withdraw from Potidaea and to allow Aegina to be autonomous. But most of all they said in the clearest terms that war could be avoided if the Athenians were to repeal the Megarian Decree.
(Thucydides 1.139.1)
The Athenians’ defence for passing the decree and then refusing to revoke it was that the Megarians were guilty of cultivating consecrated ground, cultivating land that did not belong to them and offering a refuge for runaway slaves (1.139). However, those who blame Athens for causing the outbreak of the war argue that this religious motive was merely a convenient pretext to disguise the real purpose of the decree, which was economic; and that, if the primary motive had been religious, then it is surprising that the exclusion decree did not specify the obvious religious meeting-places and events from which the Megarians were to be banned. On the basis of the above evidence the Athenians should be viewed as having acted aggressively against one of Sparta’s allies in the passing of this decree, and their refusal to make any serious attempt to remove its economic effects on Megara made war inevitable. Thucydides’ downgrading of its importance as a major ground of complaint can be explained either by his inability to understand economics or, more likely (according to Rhodes), by his patriotism and his support for Pericles’ policies, which resulted in a full treatment of Corcyra and Potidaea as aitiai where Athens had a good case for intervention, but the playing down of the importance of Aegina and Megara where Athens was open to criticism.
The opposition to this view has been led by de Ste. Croix with a radical reappraisal of the decree and its effects. The cornerstone of his interpretation lies in the nature of trade in the ancient world and the fact that it was the Megarians, i.e. the citizens of Megara, that were specifically excluded. His contention is that very few citizens were involved in trade, the great majority of which was handled by foreigners or resident aliens (‘metics’). These would be bringing imports into Megara for profitable sale and then, after buying Megarian produce, would be able to sell this without restriction in other places including the markets of Athens and its allies, since they were not Megarian citizens; and there is no source evidence anywhere that speaks of produce being specifically banned. The evidence from Dicaeopolis’ speech in Aristophanes’ Acharnians, which is crucial for his opponents’ theory, should be treated with the greatest of caution. The purpose of a comic playwright is to entertain, and he will use every literary device available to achieve this goal including exaggeration, distortion, omission, invention and a disregard of accuracy in historical facts (see Chapter 18 and Aristophanes’ comic invention in the Peace that the cause of the war was Pericles’ fear of losing political power over Pheidias’ disgrace and thus provoking the war to save his political skin). If the whole speech of Dicaeopolis is used as evidence, instead of a passage taken out of context, it will be seen that he puts the main blame for the war on the Spartans, although stating that Athens should bear some responsibility. In addition, the whole speech is a masterpiece of literary parody – the mention of the war being caused by the mutual kidnapping of prostitutes recalls the beginning of Herodotus’ History and his explanation of the original source of enmity between Greece and Persia; the section about the terms of the Megarian Decree plays on the words of a popular drinking song by Timocreon of Rhodes; and the whole speech has many marked similarities with the speeches of Telephus in Euripides’ tragedy of the same name – and it was this literary aim, not historical accuracy, that was the driving force behind Aristophanes’ speech of Dicaeopolis.
De Ste. Croix then provides historical facts as reasons why Aristophanes could refer to the starving Megarians. The Athenians invaded the Megarid twice every year from 431/0 to 425/4 with very large forces in order to ravage their land, and they also maintained a sea blockade. By 425, when the Acharnians was staged, the Megarians had suffered for six years from the effects of being blockaded and their crops destroyed – hence the cause of their starvation. In addition, the decree itself was only in effective operation for less than a year because, once war had broken out in 431, the Megarians and their goods would have no right of entry in a war situation. Pericles’ opinion of the importance of the Megarian Decree is made clear in his last major speech before the war:
‘Let none of you think that we are going to war over a trifle, if we do not repeal the Megarian decree, about which they especially say that there will be no war if it is repealed, and remove from your minds any thought that we have gone to war over a small matter.’
(Thucydides 1.140.4)
If the decree had caused such devastating economic consequences for Megara, Pericles would have severely weakened his argument by calling the issue a ‘trifle’ or ‘small matter’, if the Athenians knew differently. Pe
ricles held the belief that Sparta was deliberately exaggerating the importance of the decree to test the Athenians’ nerve and to see if they would show weakness and give in; if they did appease the Spartans, a greater demand would soon follow as they exploited the Athenians’ perceived fear of themselves (1.140–41). Thucydides shared the same view as Pericles and for that reason did not accord the Megarian Decree the status of being an aitia. Finally, there is supporting evidence that the decree could have been passed for specifically religious motives – in 352–349 the Megarians again cultivated Athenian sacred land, and this led the Athenians to take military action against Megara; once again the cause of the conflict was religious and in this instance there could be no other ulterior motives on the part of the Athenians. This shows that the Athenians considered such behaviour as very impious and were prepared to fight over it. The Megarians, being well aware of Athenian sensitivities over this issue, may even have been urged on by the Corinthians to cultivate the sacred land in order to provoke the Athenians into a hostile reaction, and thus give cause for complaint. For these reasons, de Ste. Croix believes that the Athenians should be absolved from blame, but the Megarians (to a smaller extent) and the Spartans in particular should be blamed for exploiting the issue and making it a pretext for war.
The prelude to the war
Aspects of Greek History (750–323BC) Page 46
