The History of Peloponnesian War by Thucydides Book 1 Chapter. 1 Full Audiobook

The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, 431 B.C. Translated by Richard Crawley. CHAPTER I. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. The State of Greece from the Earliest Times to the Commencement of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without its grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every department in the last state of perfection, and he could see the rest of the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel, those who delayed doing so at once having it in contemplation. Indeed, this was the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes but of a large part of the barbarian world. I had almost said of mankind, for though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately preceded the war, could not lapse, of time be clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as far back as was practicable, leads me to trust, all point to the conclusion that there was nothing on a great scale, either in war or in other matters. For instance, it is evident that the country now called Hellas had in ancient times no settled population. On the contrary, migrations were a frequent occurrence, the several tribes readily abandoning their homes under the pressure of superior numbers. Without commerce, without freedom of communication either by land or sea, cultivating no more of their territory than the exigencies of life required, destitute of capital, never planting their land, for they could not tell when an invader might come and take it all away, and when he did come they had no walls to stop him. Thinking that the necessities of daily sustenance could be supplied at one place as well as another, they cared little for shifting their habitation, and consequently neither built large cities nor attained to any other form of greatness. The richest soils were always most subject to this change of masters, such as the district now called Thessaly, Boeotia, most of the Peloponnese, Arcadia accepted, and the most fertile parts of the rest of Hellas. The goodness of the land favored the aggrandizement of particular individuals, and thus created faction which proved a fertile source of ruin. It also invited invasion. Accordingly, Attica, from the poverty of its soil, enjoying from a very remote period freedom from faction, never changed its inhabitants. And here is no inconsiderable exemplification of my assertion that the migrations were the cause of there being no corresponding growth in other parts. The most powerful victims of war or faction from the rest of Hellas took refuge with the Athenians as a safe retreat, and in an early period, becoming naturalized, swelled the already large population of the city to such a height that Attica became at last too small to hold them, and they had to send out colonies to Ionia. There is also another circumstance that contributes not a little to my conviction of the weakness of ancient times. Before the Trojan War there is no indication of any common action in Hellas, nor indeed of the universal prevalence of the name. On the contrary, before the time of Helen, son of Deucalion, no such appellation existed, but the country went by the names of the different tribes, in particular of the Pelasgian. It was not till Helen and his sons grew strong in Amphitheos, and were invited as allies into the other cities, that one by one they gradually acquired from the connection the name of Helenes, though a long time elapsed before that name could fasten itself upon all. The best proof of this is furnished by Homer. Born long after the Trojan War, he nowhere calls all of them by that name, nor indeed any of them except the followers of Achilles, from Pythiotis, who were the original Helenes. In his poems they are called Dananes, Argives, and Achaeans. He does not even use the term barbarian, probably because the Helenes had not yet been marked off from the rest of the world by one distinctive appellation. It appears, therefore, that the several Hellenic communities, comprising not only those who first acquired the name, city by city, as they came to understand each other, but also those who assumed it afterwards as the name of the whole people, were before the Trojan War prevented by their want of strength and the absence of mutual intercourse, from displaying any collective action. Indeed, they could not unite for this expedition till they had again increased familiarity with the sea, and the first person known to us by tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent the first colonies, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons as governors, and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters, a necessary step to secure the revenues for his own use. For in earliest times the Hellenes and the barbarians off the coast and islands, as communication by sea became more common, were tempted to turn pirates, under the conduct of their most powerful men, the motives being to serve their own cupidity and to support the needy. They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls, and consisting of a mere collection of villages, and would plunder it. Indeed, this came to be the main source of their livelihood, no disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some glory. An illustration of this is furnished by the honor with which some of the inhabitants of the continent still regard a successful marauder, and by the question we find the old poets everywhere representing the people as asking of voyagers, are they pirates? As if those who are asked the question would have no idea of disclaiming the imputation, or their interrogators of reproaching them for it. The same rapine prevailed also by land. And even at the present day, many of Hellas still follow the old fashion, the Ozolian, Locrans for instance, the Aetolians, the Icarnians, and that region of the continent, and the custom of carrying arms is still kept up among those continentals, from the old practical habits. The whole of Hellas used to once to carry arms, their habitations being unprotected, and their communications with each other unsafe. Indeed, to wear arms was as much a part of everyday life with them as with the barbarians, and the fact that the people in these parts of Hellas are still living in the old way, points to a time when the same mode of life was once equally common to all. The Athenians were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an easier and more luxurious mode of life. Indeed, it is only lately that their rich old men left off the luxury of wearing undergarments of linen, and fastening a knot of their hair with a tie of golden grasshoppers, a fashion which spread to their Ionian kindred, and long prevailed among the old men there. On the contrary, a modest style of dressing, more in conformity with modern ideas, was first adopted by the lackademonians, the rich doing their best to assimilate their way of life to that of the common people. They also set the example of contending naked, publicly stripping and anointing themselves with oil in their gymnastic exercises. Formerly, even in the Olympic contests, the athletes who contended wore belts across their middles, and it is but a few years since that practice ceased. To this day, among some of the barbarians, especially in Asia, when prizes for boxing and wrestling are offered, belts are worn by the combatants, and there are many other points in which a likeness might be shown between the life of the Hellenic world of old and the barbarian of today. With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defense against a neighbor. But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of piracy, were built away from the sea, whether on the islands or the continent, and still remain in their old sites, for the pirates used to plunder one another, and indeed all coast populations, whether seafaring or not. The islanders, too, were great pirates. These islanders were Carians and Phoenicians, by whom most of the islands were colonized, as was proved by the following fact. During the purification of Delos by Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and it was found that above half their inmates were Carians. They were identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow. But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea became easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus expelled the malefactors. The coast population now began to apply themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life became more settled. Some even began to build themselves walls on the strength of their newly acquired riches, for the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller towns to subjection. And it was at a somewhat later stage of this development that they went on to the expedition against Troy. What enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my opinion, his superiority in strength than the oaths of Tyndareus, which bound the suitors to follow him. Indeed, the account given by those Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most creditable tradition is this. First of all, Pelops, arriving among a needy population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that, stranger though he was, the country was called after him. And this power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his descendants. Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids. Atreus was his mother's brother, and to the hands of his relation, who had left his father on account of the death of Chrysippus. Eurystheus, when he set out on his expedition, had committed Mycenae and the government. As time went on, and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus complied with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were influenced by fear of the Heraclids. Besides, his power seemed considerable, and he had not neglected to court the favor of the populace, and assumed the scepter of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus. And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater than that of the descendants of Perseus. To all this Agamemnon succeeded. He also had a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in the formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his navy is shown by the fact that his own was the largest contingent, and that of the Arcadians was furnished by him. This, at least, is what Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient. Besides, in his account of the transmission of the scepter, he calls him of many an isle, and of all Argos king. Now, Agamemnon's was a continental power, and he could not have been master of any except the adjacent islands, and these would not be many. But through the possession of a fleet, and from this expedition we may infer the character of earlier enterprises. Now, Mycenae may have been a small place, and many of the towns of that age may appear comparatively insignificant. But no exact observer would therefore feel justified in rejecting the estimate given by the poets and by tradition of the magnitude of the armament. For I suppose, if lack of demon were to become desolate, and the temples and foundations of the public buildings were left, that as time went on, there would be a strong disposition with posterity to refuse to accept her fame as a true exponent of her power. And yet they occupy two-fifths of the Peloponnese, and lead the whole, not to speak of their numerous allies without. Still, as the city is neither built in a compact form nor adorned with magnificent temples and public edifices, but composed of villages after the old fashion of Hellas, there would be an impression of inadequacy. Whereas, if Athens were to suffer the same misfortune, I suppose that any inference from the appearance presented to the eye would make her power to be twice as great as it is. We have therefore no right to be skeptical, nor to content ourselves with an inspection of a town to the exclusion of a consideration of its power. But we may safely conclude that the armament in question surpassed all before it, as it fell short of modern efforts. If we can here also accept the testimony of Homer's poems, in which, without allowing for the exaggeration which a poet would feel himself licensed to employ, we can see that it was far from equaling ours. He has represented it as consisting of twelve hundred vessels, the Boetian complement of each ship being a hundred and twenty men, that of the ships of Philoctetes fifty. By this, I conceive, he meant to convey the maximum and the minimum complement. At any rate, he does not specify the amount of any others in his catalogue of the ships. That they were all rowers, as well as warriors, we see from his account of the ships of Philoctetes, in which all the men at the oar are bowmen. Now it is improbable that many supernumeraries sailed, if we accept the kings and high officers, especially as they had to cross the open sea with munitions of war, and ships, moreover, that had no decks, were equipped in the old piratical fashion, so that if we strike the average of the largest and the smallest ships, the number of those who sailed will appear inconsiderable, representing, as they did, the whole force of Hellas. And this was due not so much to scarcity of men as of money. Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce the numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the country during the prosecution of the war. Even after the victory they obtained on their arrival, and a victory there must have been, or the fortifications of the naval camp could never have been built, there is no indication of their whole force having been employed. On the contrary, they seem to have turned to cultivation of the Chersonese, and to piracy from wanton supplies. This was what really enabled the Trojans to keep the field for ten years against them, the dispersion of the enemy making them always a match for the detachment left behind. If they had brought plenty of supplies with them and had persevered in the war without scattering for piracy and agriculture, they would have easily defeated the Trojans in the field, since they could hold their own against them with the division on service. In short, if they had stuck to the siege, the capture of Troy would have cost them less time and less trouble, but as want of money proved the weakness of earlier expeditions, so, from the same cause, even the one in question, more famous than its predecessors, may be pronounced on the evidence of what it affected to have been inferior to its renown, and the current opinion about it formed under the tuition of the poets. Even after the Trojan war, Hullis was still engaged in removing and settling, and thus could not attain to the quiet which must precede growth. The late return of the Hullins from Ilium caused many revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere, and it was the citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty years after the capture of Ilium, the modern Boetians were driven out of Arn by the Thessalians, and settled in the present Boetia. The former Cadmice, though there was a division of them there before, some of whom joined the expedition to Ilium. Twenty years later the Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of the Peloponnese, so that much had to be done and many years had to elapse before Hullis could attain to a durable tranquility, undisturbed by removals, and could begin to send out colonies, as Athens did to Ionia and most of the islands, and the Peloponnesians to most of Italy and Sicily, and some places in the rest of Hullis. All these places were founded subsequently to the war with Troy. But as the power of Hullis grew, and the acquisition of wealth became more an object, the revenues of the states increasing. Tyrannies were by their means established almost everywhere, the old form of government being a hereditary monarchy with definite prerogatives, and Hullis began to fit out fleets and apply herself more closely to the sea. It is said that the Corinthians were the first to approach the modern style of naval architecture, and that Corinth was the first place in Hullis where galleys were built. And we have Ammonicles, a Corinthian shipwright, making four ships for the Samians. Dating from the end of this war, it is nearly three hundred years ago that Ammonicles went to Samos. Again, the earliest sea fight in history was between the Corinthians and Corcyrians. This was about two hundred and sixty years ago, dating from the same time. Planted on an isthmus, Corinth had from time out of mind been a commercial emporium, as formerly almost all communication between the Hellenes within and without Peloponnese was carried on overland, and the Corinthian territory was the highway through which it travelled. She had consequently great money resources, as is shown by the epithet wealthy, bestowed by the old poets on the place. And this enabled her, when traffic by sea became more common, to procure her navy and put down piracy, and as she could offer a mart for both branches of the trade, she acquired for herself all the power which a large revenue affords. Subsequently the Ionians attained to great naval strength in the reign of Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, and of his son Cambyses. And while they were at war with each other, the former commanded for a while the Ionian Sea. Polycrates, also the tyrant of Samos, had a powerful navy in the reign of Cambyses, with which he reduced many of the islands, and among them Rhaenia, which he concentrated to the Delian Apollo. About this time also, the Phocaeans, while they were founding Marseilles, defeated the Carthaginians in a sea fight. These were the most powerful navies, and even these, although so many generations had elapsed since the Trojan War, seem to have been principally composed of the old fifty oars and longboats, and have counted few galleys among their ranks. Indeed, it was only shortly after the Persian War, and the death of Darius, the successor of Cambyses, that the Sicilian tyrants and the Corcyrians acquired any large number of galleys. After these, there were no navies of any account in Hellas, till the expedition of Xerxes, Aegina, Athens, and others may have possessed a few vessels, but they were principally fifty oars. It was quite at the end of this period that the war with Aegina, and the prospect of the barbarian invasion, enabled Themistocles to persuade the Athenians to build the fleet with which they fought at Salamis, and even these vessels had not complete decks. The navy's men, of the Hellenes during the period we have traversed, were what I have described. All their insignificance did not prevent there being an element of the greatest power to those who cultivated them, alike in revenue and in dominion. They were the means by which the islands were reached and reduced, those of the smallest area following the easiest prey. Wars by land, there were none, none at least by which power was acquired. We have the usual border contests, but of distant expeditions with conquest for object, we heard nothing among the Hellenes. There was no union of subject cities round a great state, no spontaneous combination of equals for confederate expeditions. What fighting there was consisted merely of local warfare between rivaled neighbors. The nearest approach to a coalition took place in the old war between Chalcis and Eretria. This was a quarrel in which the rest of the Hellenic name did to some extent take sides. Various, too, were the obstacles which the national growth encountered in various localities. The power of the Ionians was advancing with rapid strides, when it came into collision with Persia, under King Cyrus, who, after having dethroned Croesus and overrun everything between the Halles and the sea, stopped not till he had reduced the cities of the coast, the islands being only left to be subdued by Darius and the Phoenician navy. Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy, and prevented anything great proceeding from them, though they would each have their affairs with their immediate neighbors. All this is only true of the mother country, for in Sicily they attained to very great power. Thus for a long time, everywhere in Hellas, do we find causes which make the states alike incapable of any combination for great national ends, or of any vigorous action of their own. But at last a time came when the tyrants of Athens and the far older tyrannies of the rest of Hellas were, with the exception of those in Sicily, once and for all put down by Lacedaemon. For this city, though after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants, it suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, still at a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a freedom from tyrants which was unbroken. It has possessed the same form of government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the Athenians. Ten years afterwards the barbarian returned with the armada for the subjugation of Hellas. In the face of this great danger the command of the confederate Hellenes was assumed by the Lacedaemons, in virtue of their superior power, and the Athenians, having made up their minds to abandon their city, broke up their homes, threw themselves into their ships, and became a naval people. This coalition, after repulsing the barbarian, soon afterwards split into two sections, which included the Hellenes who had revolted from the king, as well as those who had aided him in the war. At the end of one stood Athens, at the head of the other Lacedaemon, one the first naval, the other the first military power in Hellas. For a short time the league held together, till the Lacedaemons and Athenians quarreled and made war upon each other with their allies, a duel into which all the Hellenes sooner or later were drawn, though some might at first remain neutral. So that the whole period from the Median war to this, with some peaceful intervals, was spent by each power in war, either with its rival or with its own revolted allies, and consequently afforded them constant practice in military matters, and that experience which is learnt in the school of danger. The policy of Lacedaemon was not to exact tribute from her allies, but merely to secure their subservience to her interests, by establishing oligarchies among them. Athens, on the contrary, had by degrees deprived hers of their ships, and imposed instead contributions and money on all except Chios and Lesbos. Both found their resources for this war separately, to exceed the sum of their strength, when the alliance flourished intact. Having now given the result of my inquiries into early times, I grant that there will be a difficulty in believing every particular detail. The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered, without applying any critical test whatever. The general Athenian public fancied that Hipparchus was a tyrant when he fell by the hands of Harmonius and Aristagaton, not knowing that Hippias, the eldest of the sons of Pisistratus, was really supreme, and that Hipparchus and Thessalus were his brothers, and that Harmonius and Aristagaton, suspecting on the very day, nay at the very moment, fixed on for the deed, that information had been conveyed to Hippias by their accomplices, concluding that he had been warned, and did not attack him, yet, not liking to be apprehended and risk their lives for nothing, fell upon Hipparchus near the temple of the daughters of Laos, and slew him as he was arranging the Panathenic procession. There are many other unfounded ideas current among the rest of the Hellenes, even on matters of contemporary history, which have not been obscured by time. For instance, there is the notion that the Lacedaemian kings have two votes each, the fact being that they have only one, and that there is a company of Pataen, there being simply no such thing. So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, excepting readily the first story that comes to hand. On the whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs, quoted may, I believe, safely be relied upon. Assuredly, they will not be disturbed either by the lays of a poet displaying the exaggeration of his craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers that are attractive at truth's expense, the subjects they treat of being out of the reach of evidence, and time having robbed most of them of historical value by enthroning them in the region of legend. Turning from these, we can rest satisfied with having proceeded upon the clearest data, and having arrived at conclusions as exact as can be expected in matters of such antiquity, to come to this war, despite the known disposition of the actors in a struggle to overrate its importance, and when it is over to return to their admiration of the earlier events, yet an examination of the facts will show that it was much greater than the wars which preceded it. With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on, some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters. It was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was, in my opinion, demanded of them, by the various occasions, of course as hearing as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said, and with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labor from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eyewitnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interests, but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time. The Medean War, the greatest achievement of past times, yet found a speedy decision in two actions, by sea and two by land. The Peloponnesian War was prolonged to an immense length, and, long as it was, it was short, without parallel, for the misfortunes that it brought upon Hellas. Never had so many cities been taken and laid desolate, here by the barbarians, here by the parties contending, the old inhabitants being sometimes removed to make room for others. Never was there so much banishing and bloodshedding, now on the field of battle, now in the strife of factions. Old stories of occurrences handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience, suddenly ceased to be credible. There were earthquakes of unparalleled extent and violence. Eclipses of the sun occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history. There were great droughts in sundry places, and consequent famines, and that most calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came upon them with the late war, which was begun by the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, by the dissolution of the thirty years' truce made after the conquest of Euboea. To the question why they broke the treaty, I answer by placing first in account of their grounds of complaint and points of difference, that no one may ever have to ask the immediate cause which plunged the Hellenes into a war of such magnitude. The real cause I consider to be the one which was formerly most kept out of sight, the growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made the war inevitable. Still, it is well to give the grounds alleged by either side which led to the dissolution of the treaty and the breaking out of the war.