Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (18 page)

city’s resources. His involvement in building the wal s, which involved dumping “vast

quantities of rubble and heavy stones into the swamps” at his own expense, may rep-

resent little more, as Conwel himself writes, than the desperate attempt of a politician

“seeking to stave off political extinction” (49). He was ostracized from Athens in 461 BC.

31 Plato
Gorgas
455d–e. Our written sources only permit us to date this wall to the

years 452–431. Conwell (64–78) conjectures that their construction took place around

443–442.

32 Conwell,
Connecting a City to the Sea
, writes (60):

Given their purpose, the Long Walls (Ia) were at once both conventional and

radical. On the one hand, however impressive their dimensions, the structures

simply secured the maritime orientation typical of cities in classical Greece. On

the other hand, while many fortifications were simply passive barriers defending

an urban zone against invasion, the Long Walls had a more ambitious role. Built

to defend the connection between Athens and its ships, they were land-oriented

structures with a decidedly maritime purpose.

84 Berkey

33 Donald Kagan,
The Peloponnesian War
(New York: Viking, 2003), 51. See also chap-

ter two in this book, in which he delineates the objectives of Athenian foreign policy.

The walls of Athens facilitated the pursuit of a naval strategy designed to achieve these

objectives.

34 Kagan,
The Peloponnesian War
, 52–54. Kagan writes (52):

This plan was much better suited to Athens than the traditional one of con-

frontation between phalanxes of infantry, but it did contain serious flaws, and

reliance on it helped cause the failure of Pericles’ diplomatic strategy of deter-

rence. . . . The Athenians would, for example, have to tolerate the insults and

accusations of cowardice the enemy would hurl at them from beneath their

walls. That would represent a violation of the entire Greek cultural experience,

the heroic tradition that placed bravery in warfare at the peak of Greek virtues.

Most of the Athenians, moreover, lived in the country, and they would have

to watch passively from the protection of the city’s walls while the enemy de-

stroyed their crops, damaged their trees and vines, and looted and burned their

homes. No Greeks who had ever any chance of resisting had been willing to do

that, and little more than a decade earlier the Athenians had come out to fight

rather than allow such devastation.

35 Long walls had also been constructed before the war, most importantly at Megara

and oligarchic Corinth.

36 Thucydides 5.82.1–2.

37 See Xenophon 2.1.17–32; Diodorus 13.104.8–106.8. At the Battle of Aegospotami, the

victorious Spartans, under the leadership of Lysander and Eteonikos, had destroyed or

captured 170 of the 180 Athenian triremes and executed perhaps as many as 3,500 Athe-

nian prisoners. See Barry S. Strauss, “Aegospotami Reexamined,”
AJP
104 (1983): 24–35,

esp. 32–34. Donald Kagan describes the plight of the Athenians (
The Fal of the Athenian

Empire
[Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 1987], 393): “The Athenians’ resources were

exhausted; they could not again build a fleet to replace the one lost at Aegospotami.

Athens had lost the war; the only questions that remained were how long it would hold

out before surrendering and what terms the Athenians could obtain.”

38 Xenophon 2.2.3, 10. Unless otherwise noted, all references to Xenophon are from

the
Hellenica
. The translation used throughout is that of Rex Warner,
A History of My

Times
(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1966).

39 Xenophon 2.2.11.

40 Xenophon (2.2.15) mentions that an earlier Spartan proposal, the origin and date

of which are unclear, brought back by the Athenian ambassador Archestratus, which

required the Athenians to tear down the Long Walls, had been angrily refused in the

Ecclesia. The Ecclesia imprisoned Archestratus and passed a law that forbid further

mention of such a term.

41 Xenophon 2.2.19–20. See also Diodorus 13.107.4, 14.3.2; Plutarch
Lysander
14.4; An-

docides 3.11–12, 39; Lysias 13.14. Against the testimony of Xenophon, the writer of the

Athenaion Politeia
states (34.3):

The peace terms specified that the Athenians should be governed by their ances-

tral constitution (
patrios politeia
); on this basis the democrats tried to preserve

Why Fortifications Endure 85

the democracy, while the nobles who belonged to the political clubs and the

exiles who had returned after the peace wanted an oligarchy. . . . Lysander sided

with the oligarchs, overawed the people, and forced them to vote an oligarchy

into power on the proposal of Dracontides of Aphidna.

The translation is that of J. M. Moore,
Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975). In accord with
Athe-

naion Politeia:
Diodorus 14.3.2–3 and Justine 5.8.5. The Athenians disputed the definition

of “the ancestral constitution,” and the interpretation of the term pitted those favor-

ing democracy against those favoring oligarchy. Lysander, whom the Spartans recalled

from the eastern Aegean to Athens, was instrumental in settling the dispute for the

time being by appointing Theramenes and the Thirty. For an excellent study of Ly-

sander’s policy, see Charles D. Hamilton, “Spartan Politics and Policy, 405–401 BC,”
AJP

91 (1970): 294–314.

42 Xenophon 2.2.23.

43 J. K. Davies (
Democracy and Classical
Greece, 2nd ed. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1993], 129) argues against viewing the end of the Peloponnesian War

as a pivotal moment in the stability of Greek interstate politics: “The first two phases

(i.e. 431–421, 421–413) belong together, but there is a very real break in the years 413–411,

when Athenian superiority had been broken, Persia entered the war, and Sparta be-

came a sea-power. Thereafter the new configuration of international politics remained

stable for a generation till the 370s, and the actual ends of wars in 404 and 386 were

comparatively unimportant.” See also 147: “Greek politics after 413 kept the same con-

figuration for a generation.” In my opinion, Davies’ interpretation fails to acknowledge

that the period extending from the end of the Peloponnesian War to the King’s Peace

(and the treaties that concluded those conflicts) constitutes a transition of the structure

of the interstate system from bipolarity to multipolarity. Furthermore, I find it difficult

to deny the significance of the treaty that ended the war in 404, which brought a formal

end to the Athenian Empire, or the treaty of 387–386 that ushered in the height of the

Spartan hegemony. Kagan,
The Fall of the Athenian Empire
, 416:

In spite of its apparently decisive outcome, the war did not establish a stable

balance of power to replace the uneasy one that had evolved after the end of

the Persian War. The great Peloponnesian War was not the type of war that, for

all its costs, creates a new order that permits general peace for a generation or

more. The peace treaty of 404 reflected a temporary growth of Spartan influ-

ence far beyond its normal strength.

44 The remains of the fortifications along the border of Attica date mainly to the first

half of the fourth century BC; however, it is likely that some defensive structures had

been established earlier in the preceding century.

45 See my 2001 Yale University dissertation, “The Struggle for Hegemony: Greek

Interstate Politics and Foreign Policy, 404–371 BC,” and Arthur Eckstein,
Mediterranean

Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

California Press, 2007), chap. 2.

46 The traditional assumption has been that Athens was utterly devastated after the

war (e.g., H. Bengston,
Griechische Geschichte
[Munich: Beck, 1960], 259, Claude Mossé,

86 Berkey

Athens in Decline: 404–86 b.c.
, trans. Jean Stewart [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

1973], 12–17). More recent scholarship supports the view that Athens’s recovery, both

economic and political, occurred more rapidly than previously believed (e.g., G.E.M.

de Ste. Croix,
The Class Struggle in the Ancient World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Con-

quests
[London: Duckworth, 1981], 291–92). Barry S. Strauss (
Athens After the Pelopon-

nesian War: Class, Faction and Policy, 404–386 b.c.
[London: Croon Helm, 1986], passim)

provides a detailed analysis of social and economic conditions after the Peloponnesian

War. In 395, however, Athens was in a much more compromised position than during

the period of its fifth-century empire.

47 For the collected testimonia of Conon’s activities (397–396 to 394–393), see Harding

12, 22–26. In the second half of the fourth century, Athenians viewed Conon’s military

victories against Sparta as victories for Greece, even though he was an Athenian in the

service of Persia. See, e.g., Dinarchus, 1.14 [dated 323], trans. Ian Worthington,
A His-

torical Commentary on Dinarchus: Rhetoric and Conspiracy in Later Fourth-Century Athens

(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 87:

Athenians, you did not take into account the actions of Timotheus, who sailed

around the Peloponnese and defeated the Spartans in a naval battle off Corcyra.

He was the son of Conon who freed the Greeks, and he took Samos, Methone,

Pydna, Potidaea, and twenty other cities as well. You did not take these deeds

into account either at his trial or for the oaths that affirmed the votes you cast,

but you fined him one hundred talents because Aristophon said he took money

from Chios and Rhodes.

See also 3.17.

48 Xenophon 4.8.7–11; Diodorus 14.84.4ff.

49 Xenophon 4.8.9–10.

50 Isocrates 4.154, 5.63–64, 7.12, 65, 9.52f; Demosthenes 20.68; Dinarchus 1.14, 75, 3.17;

Diodorus 14.39.3; Nepos
Conon
2.1, 5.1f; Justin 6.3.4. An excellent treatment of the issue

of Athenian imperialism during the Corinthian War is Robin Seager’s “Thrasybulus,

Conon and Athenian Imperialism, 396–386
b.c.
,”
JHS
87 (1967): 95–115. In summarizing

the results of his research, Seager writes (115):

Thus it appears that the constant determining factor of Athenian policy be-

tween the restoration of the democracy and the Peace of Antalcidas is the re-

fusal of the mass of Athenians to accept the fact that the empire had been lost

and their desire to attempt to recreate it in fact as soon as or even before the time

was ripe. . . . It was this longing for empire on the part of the people which de-

termined the actions of Athens throughout the period, not the divergent views

of individual statesmen or political groups, who attempted no more than to

restrain or encourage the people in accordance with the dictates of patriotism

or personal advantage.

Seager is right to minimize the effects that politicians in Athens exerted in the debate

about Athenian foreign policy. The issue of empire was of general concern to all Athe-

nians during these years, and the ability to restore Athens to a prominent position was

largely in the hands of outside actors in the interstate arena.

Why Fortifications Endure 87

51 The Athenians, however, remained wary of war with Sparta. The Oxyrhynchus

Historian, in the description of the Damainetos affair of 396, remarks that the fear

of Sparta united the factions of Athenian society that were customarily divided with

regard to foreign policy matters (John Wickersham and Gerald Verbrugghe,
Greek

Historical Documents: The Fourth Century b.c.: Hellenic Oxyrhynchia
[Toronto: Hakkert,

1973], §6):

Launching a ship, he [Demainetos] sailed away from the docks and headed for

Conon. An uproar followed, and the prominent upper-class politicians were en-

raged. They accused the Council of throwing the city into a war with Sparta;

the Councilors were frightened and called an assembly. . . . The respectable

and wealthy Athenians were not inclined to upset matters anyway, but even

the masses and demagogues were on this occasion so frightened as to follow

the advice. They sent to Milon, the harmost in Aigina, telling him to punish

Demainetos, since he was acting without authority. Previously the masses and

demagogues had spent all their time stirring up trouble and crossing the Spar-

tans in many ways.

52
IG
II2 1656–64. In addition, see the commentary on selected inscriptions from Pi-

raeus dated to this period by Franz Georg Maier,
Griechische Mauerbauinschriften
, vol. 1

(Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer, 1959), 15–36. Xenophon 4.8.10. Conwell (
Connecting a

City to the Sea
, 109–22, 130–31) dates this phase of construction to the years 395–390.

53 For a definition and explanation of soft power, see Joseph S. Nye Jr.,
The Paradox