Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (19 page)

of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone
(Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2002), and idem,
Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics
(New

York: Perseus, 2005).

54 Andocides, 3.37, trans. Douglas M. MacDowell,
Antiphon and Andocides
(Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1998), 157: “There was once a time, Athenians, when we

had no walls or ships, but it was when we acquired them that our successes began.

So if you want success again now, those are what you must have. With this founda-

tion our fathers built up greater power for Athens than any city has ever had.” See

also R. Seager, “Thrasybulus, Conon and Athenian Imperialism 396–386 B.C.,”
JHS
87

(1967): 95–115.

55 Prior to the ratification of the King’s Peace, Athens had honored the Klazomeni-

ans for their good will toward them:
IG
II2 28 (Tod 114; Harding 26, 40–41).

56 R. J. Seager and C. J. Tuplin (“The Freedom of the Greeks in Asia: On the Origins

of a Concept and the Creation of a Slogan,”
JHS
100 [1980]: 145f.), maintain that this

provision of the King’s Peace is vital to the establishment of the concept of the Greeks

of Asia Minor as a single community, with subsequent value as a propagandistic slogan.

57 Alfonso Moreno,
Feeding the Democracy: The Athenian Grain Supply in the Fifth and

Fourth Centuries bc
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

58 Simon Hornblower,
OCD
3, s.v. “autonomy” (224):

In internal affairs it means the state of affairs where a community is respon-

sible for its own laws; in this sense it is opposed to tyranny (Hdt. 1.96.1) and

means self-determination, whereas freedom (
eleutheria
) means absence of exter-

nal constraint. But
autonomia
is also regularly used in the context of interstate

88 Berkey

relations, where it indicates a limited independence permitted by a stronger

power to a weaker.

59 The precise terms of the King’s Peace are unknown. For an admittedly specula-

tive reconstruction, see G. L. Cawkwell, “The King’s Peace,”
CQ
31 (1981): 69–83. See

also Robert K. Sinclair, “The King’s Peace and the Employment of Military and Naval

Forces 387–378,”
Chiron
8 (1978): 29–37. In summary, he writes (37):

While the King’s Peace might be criticized for vagueness and in

formulation, these may have been due in part to the novelty of a koine eirene,

but are particularly to be related to the objectives of the Persians and Spartans

who could more effectively exploit a settlement that was not too precisely de-

fined. The other Greek states recognised the realities of the situation and in

particular the dominant position of Sparta, and their reactions in the next de-

cade can be adequately explained in terms of that recognition without invoking

specific provisions in the Peace of 387/6.

60 Xenophon 5.1.36.

61 Robin Seager, “The King’s Peace and the Balance of Power in Greece, 386–362

B.C.,”
Athenaeum
52 (1974): 36–63, esp. 38–39:

The royal prescript did not assign to Sparta or to any other city the rôle of

prostates
of the peace [n. 9, Xenophon
Hellenica
5.1.31]. The King himself ap-

peared as the sole guarantor of the peace and as the self-appointed leader of

those who would fight to bring it into being [n. 10, the emphasis is clearly on

the period before the peace was actually made; see Hampl,
Staatsverträge
, 11].

Yet Persia showed herself ready and willing to let Sparta assume the
prostasia
of

the treaty, for those implications of the peace that came at once to occupy the

foreground and needed a
prostates
to enforce them were of vital importance

to Sparta but of no direct concern to the King, who thus had no reason to be-

come involved [see S. Accame,
La lega ateniese del secolo IV a.C.
, 6]. [. . . ] Sparta

had then succeeded in exploiting the terms of the peace to considerable effect

before the peace was actually concluded. The uses to which she had put it had

been entirely retrospective. Her aim had been to put an end to the revival of

Athenian imperialism, Theban control of Boeotia and Argive dominion over

Corinth—all of which she had been unable to do anything about in the course

of the Corinthian War itself. In this sense it was certainly true, as Xenophon

says, that although Sparta drew the war, she won the peace [n. 16, Xenophon

Hellenica
5.1.36].

62 Ryder,
Koine Eirene: General Peace and Local Independence in Ancient Greece
(Oxford:

Oxford University Press for the University of Hull, 1965).

63 The most glaring exception found in the King’s Peace is in regard to the issue

of autonomy. See J.A.O. Larsen’s review of
Koine Eirene
(
Gnomon
38 [1966]: 256–60):

“Though R[yder] has referred to the fate of the Greek cities in Asia, as well as Lemnos,

Imbros, and Scyros, he, nevertheless, states that ‘for the first time the autonomy of all

cities . . . had been recognized in a treaty ratified by the leading states and by the King’

(41). It was rather all cities
except those which some great power wished to keep in subjection
”

Why Fortifications Endure 89

(my italics). Later Larsen writes, “Yet it should be a warning to anyone tending to ide-

alize the movement, that the treaties sometimes included a clause which limited the

application of the freedom proclaimed in the treaty. This is clearest in the King’s Peace,

where, apparently, the exceptions were listed before the autonomy of the other poleis

was proclaimed (Xen. Hell. 5, 1, 31).”

64 See the criticism of Ryder in W. G. Forrest’s review of
Koine Eirene
,
CR
19/83

(1969): 211–12:

More important, there is a failure to ram home (not to state, for who could fail

to state it) that the Peace of 387 was an arrangement by which Sparta took con-

trol of Greece. Agesilaus said it:
pros ton eiponta tous Lakedaimonious medizein . . .

apekrinato mallon tous Medous lakonizein
, and against the background of Spartan

behaviour in the years that followed, “autonomy” and words like it must be

treated as empty slogans—so too must
koine eirene
.

65 The principal works devoted to the Second Athenian League are F. W. Marshall,

The Second Athenian Confederacy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905); S. Ac-

came,
La lege atheniese del secolo IV a.C
. (Rome: Signorelli, 1940); and Jack Cargill,
The

Second Athenian League: Empire or Free Alliance?
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

California Press, 1981). The relative chronology of the foundation of the Second Athe-

nian League and the raid of Sphodrias is highly controversial. The
communis opinion
—

and the one adopted in this work—is that Athens responded to the raid of Sphodrias

with the formation of the Second Athenian League. This view is held by Ryder,
Koine

Eirene
, 53–55; D. G. Rice, “Xenophon, Diodorus and the Year 379–378 B.C.,”
YCS
24 (1975):

112–27; Robert K. Sinclair, “The King’s Peace and the Employment of Military and Na-

val Forces 387–378,”
Chiron
8 (1978): 52–54; John Buckler,
The Theban Hegemony, 371–362

b.c.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 17; Charles D. Hamilton,
Agesi-

laus and the Failure of Spartan Hegemony
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991),

167–74, esp. 173; Ernst Badian, “The Ghost of Empire,” 89–90, nn. 33–34. Contra: G. L.

Cawkwell, “The Foundation of the Second Athenian Confederacy,”
CQ
23 (1973): 47–60;

Raphael Sealey,
A History of the Greek City-States, ca. 700–338 b.c.
(Berkeley and Los Ange-

les: University of California Press, 1976), 410–412; Cargill,
Second Athenian Empire
; Rob-

ert Morstein Kalet-Marx, “Athens, Thebes, and the Foundation of the Second Athenian

League,”
CA
4 (1985): 127–51; Robin Seager,
CAH
2 6.166f.

66 Diodorus 15.28.2; see Plutarch
Pelopidas
14.1. See
IG
II2 43 (Tod 123, 59–70; Hard-

ing 35, 48–52;
SV
2.257, 207–211), which reiterated the reason for the formation of the

League (ll. 7–12): “Aristoteles
made the motion
: To the good
fortune
of the A|thenians

and
of the allies
of the Athenia|ns, in order that (the) Laced[aemo]nians may allow the

Helle||nes, free and autonomous, to live | in peace, holding in security the [land] (that

is)
the
|
ir
[own].”

67 Callistratus of Aphidna proposed substituting the term “contributions” (
syntaxei
s)

for “tribute” (
phoroi
); see Harpokration,
Lexicon,
s.v. “syntaxis” (Theopompus,
FGrHist
115F98).

68 For Thebes, this entailed enrollment in an alliance whose strategic interests were

vastly different from its own. Buckler maintains that the necessity to strengthen itself

in relation to Sparta overrode all other Theban concerns. It was sufficient for Athens

90 Berkey

and Thebes to share a common enemy. He writes (
The Theban Hegemony, 371–362 b.c.

[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980], 17–18): “Yet the military support of

Athens was so vital to Thebes that submerging itself in the confederacy was a small

price to pay for that support. . . . Once either state had attained a degree of security, the

disparate goals and concerns of the two powers would drive them apart.”

69 For detailed discussions of Attica’s border fortifications, see the major studies

of J. R. McCredie,
Fortified Military Camps in Attica
,
Hesperia
, Suppl. 11 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), Josiah Ober,
Fortress Attica: Defense of the Athenian

Land Frontier, 404–322 b.c.
(Leiden: Brill, 1982), and Mark H. Munn,
The Defense of Attica:

The Dema Wall and the Boiotian War of 378–375 b.c.
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univer-

sity of California Press, 1993). The Athenians’ investment in fortifications likely went

beyond mere economic calculations. Victor Hanson, in a forthcoming review of Jur-

gen Brauer and Hubert Van Tuyll
,
Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains

Military History
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), writes (email to author

in advance of publication):

Did the Athenians invest in Attic border forts in the fourth century BC because

it was the most economical way to protect Athenian territory, and made more

economic sense than hoplite armies, cavalry, light-armed skirmishers, or na-

vies? Or, as losers in a twenty-seven-year-long Peloponnesian War, were they

so traumatized from land invasion that fortifications seemed to be the most

reassuring tactics of keeping out any more armies advancing from Boiotia and

the Peloponnese?

70 For the problems of dating walls in general, see, e.g., the detailed work of Robert

Lorentz Scranton,
Greek Walls
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941).

71 Munn’s attempt at a precise dating of the Dema Wall to the spring of 378 B.C. by

the Athenian general Chabrias is an exception. See the review of Munn by Josiah Ober

in
AJA
98 (1994): 374–75 and by Victor Davis Hanson in
AHR
99 (1994): 1662–63.

72 Josiah Ober,
Fortress Attica: Defense of the Athenian Land Frontier, 404–322 b.c.
(Leiden:

Brill, 1982), 64–65: “Rejection of the Periclean city defense strategy, fear of invasion, de-

termination to protect Attica, and reluctance to send citizen armies to distant theaters

of war are the major components of the defensive mentality which grew up in fourth-

century Athens. It was this mentality that chiefly determined the course of Athens’

defense policy in the period between the Peloponnesian and Lamian Wars.” See also

his fourth chapter, “The Theory of Defense,” 69–86. See the review article of Ober by

P. Harding, “Athenian Defensive Strategy in the Fourth Century,”
Phoenix
42 (1988): 61–

71; Ober’s response,
Phoenix
43 (1989): 294–301; and Harding’s response to Ober,
Phoenix

44 (1990): 377–80. Munn also takes issue with Ober (see esp. 18–25), arguing (25), “Given

the inherent implausibility of the hypothetical system together with the silence of the

orators, the silence of Xenophon, the silence of Plato, and of all other sources, we

must conclude that Ober and his predecessors have created
e silentio
a fabulous struc-

ture. Ober’s ‘preclusive defense system’ never existed except as a modern figment.” See

also his review of
Fortress Attica
in
AJA
90 (1986): 363–65. Victor Davis Hanson, “The

Status of Ancient Military History: Traditional Work, Recent Research, and On-going

Controversies,”
The Journal of Military History
63 (1999), writes (25):