CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Peloponnesian War: Power, Hubris and Tragedy

Death of children in wars. Courtesy Evi Sarantea.

Starting with the Trojan Wat in the early thirteenth century BCE, the Greeks embarked on a gigantic Grexit that lasted for centuries. They migrated to other more prosperous lands than Hellas / Greece.

Expansion of the Greeks to the Mediterranean

The Greeks of the large island of Euboea were pioneers in this political movement: searching and finding better life outside of mainland Greece. In the eighth century BCE, some of them abandoned the island of Euboea for another island in Italy. This was Ischia in the Gulf of Naples. They gave their new polis a strange name: Pithekousa. This is a name derived from the Greek word for monkey: Pithekos.

Three hundred years after the Euboeans established their prosperous monkey kingdom in Italy, by the fifth century BCE, the Greeks had made southern Italy into Great Greece (Megale Hellas, Magna Graecia) and converted the Mediterranean into a Greek lake dotted with hundreds of poleis.

Greek colonies in the Mediterranean and Euxinic Pontos (Black Sea), 4th century BCE – in red. Photo: Gepgepgep Wikipedia.

The Peloponnesian War, 431- 404 BCE

This cultural and imperial expansion of Greece slowed down considerably in late fifth century BCE. War broke out between Athens and Sparta, without doubt the two strongest poleis (city-states) of Hellas. The conflict threatened Greek society and institutions, including Greek society outside of mainland Greece.

We call this war the Peloponnesian War. Sparta started it. Thucydides, an Athenian general and great historian, recorded the war. He tells us that while the Persian Wars were important in Greek history, Greek victories on land and sea ended them relatively soon. But, in contrast, the Peloponnesian War was unprecedented in length, ferocity and destruction. Never before, Thucydides writes, so many Greek cities were captured and depopulated. Never before there were so many exiles, killing, strife, hunger, droughts, earthquakes, solar eclipses and destruction — all over Hellas, including the deadly plague in Athens. Thucydides has no doubt that It was Spartan fear of expanding Athenian power that triggered the calamitous war (The Peloponnesian War 1.23).

Sparta was the Greek military superpower. It was located at the heart of Peloponnesos.

The Peloponnesian War wrecked Greek dreams and triumphs at home and abroad. Centuries of efforts in building a free, prosperous, mostly democratic, and civilized country, the first in the world, never reached completion. Most went up in the smoke of war.

The Peloponnesian War stripped the Greeks naked. It revealed an intensely agonistic and often antagonistic culture. Thucydides became the world’s greatest historian. He wrote in his story of The Peloponnesian War (6.80.3) that the Spartans and the Athenians, like good Dorians and Ionians, were eternal enemies. The two highly contested words are αἰεὶ πολεμίων (aiei polemion) – being in perpetual war or enemies forever.

Now, why should Athens and Sparta be such bitter enemies? Could Thucydides be exaggerating?

Both Ionians and Dorians were Hellenes (Greeks). The Ionians were primarily from Athens and Attica, and the Dorians were primarily from the northern region of Hellas known as Epirus. Dorians settled in Peloponnesos. The Spartans were their chief champions.

Unlike modern scholars’ pet theory of a Dorian invasion of Greece from somewhere in northern Europe or Asia, the Dorians did not “invade” Greece from outside or inside Greece. The Dorians were Greek people who migrated from Epirus to Peloponnesos.

In addition, it was the mingling of the traditions of the Dorians with those of the Ionians that gave birth to Hellenic freedom, science, architecture, art, philosophy, literature and religion.

Ionians and Dorians invented and designed the Olympics and other Panhellenic athletic and religious festivals primarily as patriotic and anti-war institutions. Hostile acts or war ceased during those sacred games. The heroes reputed to have invented the Olympics, Herakles and Pelops, were Panhellenic icons of heroism and virtue.

The Dorians and Ionians were children of the Mycenaean and Minoan civilization that reached its climax in the second millennium BCE.

In late thirteenth century BCE, the Dorians and Ionians, fought and won the Trojan War. The protagonists of that conflict included the Dorian Helen, daughter........

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