429-420BC in Greece

Bust of Pericles, Roman copy of an
original by Kresilas

This post will look at Greece and the wider Greek world from the years 429BC to 420BC. Firstly, a word about our sources. Archaeology can shed some light on this period, but we are primarily reliant on written sources, such as the writings of Thucydides, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, and Pausanias. A more complete list of sources is given at the end of the blog.

In the year 429 Athens was still recovering from the recent plague of the year before. Meanwhile Sparta and her allies having ravaged the territory of Attica for two years and finding that it had no apparent effect on the Athenians, were perhaps looking for a change in tactics.

The land army of Archidamus marched up towards Attica, but instead of attacking Attica, they continued northwards into Boeotia where they besieged the city of Plataea. This was a bitter siege for all concerned, as Plataea had been the site of the great land victory of the Greeks over the Persians during the Persian Wars, in which Sparta had been the leader of the Greek cities and in which the Plataeans had behaved so courageously. Despite this shared history, after some negotiation, the Plataeans were nevertheless besieged.

Siege warfare was not well-understood in Greece at this time and neither the Spartans nor their Theban allies were expert in it. The Spartans did attempt some form of a siege ramp, but the Plataean garrison successfully countermined it. The Spartans then tried to kindle a large fire next to the walls and hoped that the sparks would ignite the city. It might have worked, but the wind was against them. As Plataea was only held by a garrison force anyway, even this might not have had much effect even if it had been successful. After the failure of the ramp and the fire, the Spartans made a wall around the city and attempted to starve out the small garrison.

Ruins in Sparta

The Athenians had sent a force by sea to attack Chalcis on the northern coast of the Aegean. This was a relatively large force by the standards of Athenian expeditions and had 2000 hoplites and 200 cavalry. They had some initial success against the cities of Chalcis, Spartolus and Olynthus, but were actually defeated by the lighter cavalry of the Chalcidians, who were able to throw javelins at the heavy infantry with impunity. The Athenians were defeated and forced to retreat to Potidaea. The casualties were heavy, as their retreating hoplites had been mauled by the cavalry.

Greek warfare was changing during this period. Previously the hoplites had been seen as almost invincible in warfare. In certain circumstances this was true. Thermopylae, Plataea, Mycale, Eurymedon and a host of other battles had proved that in a head-on collision, heavily armed hoplites would mangle lighter infantry in front of them. But what would happen if, while the heavy forces were engaged, the hoplites were attacked by lighter troops who could shower the heavy infantry with javelins and arrows? What about on flat plains where cavalry could circle around behind the phalanx and charge them in the rear?

Modern reconstruction of a trireme

The period of the Peloponnesian War saw many states beginning to use lighter-armed troops to support their hoplites and to harass the enemy. Cavalry, never a Greek strongpoint, would become more important. Archers, particularly from Crete, and slingers, particularly from Rhodes, were given greater prominence. The Athenian defeat near Chalcis was to be a sign of things to come.

Around this time, although the dates are somewhat unclear, Tharrhypas became king of the Molossians, a Greek tribe in Epirus on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. He may have been king previously, but was still a minor at this time. Admetus had been king of this tribe about fifty years earlier but there was probably an intervening king who is not known. The tribe would go on to be of significance in Greek history in later centuries.

To the west of Greece, just to the north of the Corinthian Gulf lay the lands of the Acarnanians, who were in alliance with the Athenians and the Messenians who had been settled by the Athenians at Naupactus. The Ambraciots, inland neighbours of the Acarnanians, were threatening an invasion of Acarnania with Spartan assistance. The Athenian navy was primarily engaged in the expedition to Chalcis and operations elsewhere and the Athenians had only a small force guarding Naupactus. The Spartans and their allies were meanwhile preparing a naval force to strike at Naupactus, so the Athenian garrison could give no assistance to the Acarnanians.

Athenian tetradrachm

The Ambraciots invaded, with some small Spartan assistance, but the Acarnanians beat them back by routing some of their non-Greek allies. The invaders then were harassed in their camp by the Acarnanians slinging a hail of stones down upon them, forcing the invaders to continually don their armour if they didn't want to be killed by sling stones. The Spartans and their allies retreated, finding the invasion tougher than anticipated. This was once more a demonstration of the usefulness of lighter troops against hoplite troops.

Meanwhile the Spartans and their allies had been sending naval reinforcements past the Athenian base at Naupactus. The Athenians had only 20 ships there, under the command of Phormio, while the Peloponnesians had 47 ships and some transport ships. The Spartans had not really understood that commanding at sea required different skills to commanding on land, and didn't realise how dangerous the Athenians really were at sea.

Phormio ambushed the Spartans as they sailed through the Gulf of Corinth. The Spartans, not wanting to leave anything to chance, took up a defensive position, putting their ships in a circular formation, with the rams of the triremes outwards and their transport ships in the centre. The Athenians must have rejoiced to see such foolishness and moved to the attack. Phormio ordered his triremes to circle the Spartan fleet at speed, like a pack of wolves racing around a flock of sheep. Where they spotted a weakness in the line they would lunge inwards, forcing the Spartans to tighten the circle until the ships were nearly touching.

Phormio knew the winds of the gulf and knew that the wind would change at a certain hour, which would foul the lines and oars of the Spartan ships and leave them in confusion. As the winds changed, the Athenians attacked, routing the Peloponnesians and capturing twelve ships. This was a victory known as the Battle of Rhium.

Vase by Aison Painter

Phormio knew that he was outnumbered by the Peloponnesian fleets based at Cyllene and Corinth and that if Naupactus was to be held, the Athenians would have to send reinforcements. 20 additional ships were sent out, but went on a detour to attack Cydonia in Crete.

Meanwhile the regathered Peloponnesian fleet moved against Phormio once more, this time threatening Naupactus itself. Phormio had perhaps 20 ships available to him, as he probably had insufficient crews to man the captured ships from the previous battle. The Peloponnesians, under the command of Cnemus and Brasidas had 77 ships. The Spartans and their allies were concerned about facing the Athenians, whom they now feared on the seas.

After some time the Spartans decided to attack and force the Athenians to defend their port in the narrow waters where they could not use their superior manoeuvrability. Phormio was outnumbered nearly 4:1 and his troops fought as well as they could, but were beaten back, losing 9 ships. It looked as if the Athenians were completely defeated when an Athenian trireme did a daring about turn using an anchored merchant ship to cover its flanks, and rammed one of the pursuing Spartan triremes. The Athenians then turned to the attack and the Spartan navy, which was broken its order in the pursuit, was routed. The Athenians recaptured 8 of their own triremes and captured another 6 of the Peloponnesians. It was a stunning victory and definite proof that the Athenians could dominate the seas even when grossly outnumbered. Naupactus was saved for Athens.

Athenian dominance at sea was not entirely unquestioned however. The defeated Spartan commander Brasidas, who had already made a name for himself with his daring, decided to attack the unguarded Piraeus. The Corinthians and others made an attack, but did not dare to sail to the Piraeus, instead attacking Salamis. The Athenians were alerted to the danger by fire signals and launched a counterattack the next day, forcing the Peloponnesians to retreat at speed. After this near miss, the Athenians resolved to defend the Piraeus much more thoroughly.

Coin of Perdiccas II, king of Macedon

Meanwhile to the north, Sitalces, King of the Odrysian Thracians, made a large expedition with all his forces against Perdiccas II of Macedonia, who had left the Athenian alliance and joined the Spartans. The Thracian invasion was to assist the Athenians in their wars in Chalcis, as well as overthrowing Perdiccas. However, the expected Athenian support never came and the Thracians were even worse at siege warfare than the Greeks. The result of the great expedition of Sitalces was that his army ran short on provisions, after which he made a peace treaty with Perdiccas, and then went home.

Later that year Phormio made some expeditions to Acarnania to strengthen the Athenian allies there, before returning to Naupactus. It might be wondered why the Athenians were not more active this year. Why was the Piraeus left unguarded? Why were so few reinforcements sent out to Phormio? Why was the expedition of Sitalces not properly supported by the Athenian fleet?

I suspect that the reason was lack of manpower and lack of leadership. The plague had returned once more to Athens. Presumably less people died of it in this year than in the year previous and presumably the Athenians were somewhat inured to its horrors, but it must still have been a terrible blow and thousands, probably tens of thousands, must have died.

The legitimate sons of Pericles, Paralus and Xanthippus, died, as did the sister of Pericles. It is said that the Athenian people voted to allow Pericles's son by his mistress Aspasia, named Pericles the Younger, to become an Athenian citizen. This was an honour for the grieving father, but also a slight rebuke. Had Pericles not changed the laws of citizenship in previous years, his son would have been a citizen anyway. Nevertheless the people of Athens were kind to the first citizen.

Replica of a model of a trireme

It was probably during the autumn of this year that Pericles, the great statesman of democratic Athens who had led the Athenian state for the previous decades, died. With his death the relative harmony in Athenian politics came to an end and the state became split between rival factions, led by Cleon and Nicias.

Around this time Stesimbrotus of Thasos flourished. He was a logographer and sophist who wrote some historical and poetic writings, as well as propaganda pamphlets. His work was later used by other historians such as Plutarch, but it is not clear that any of his works themselves survive.

In the year 428 the Spartans and their allies marched into Attica and devastated the farmland once more. They had also kept a force besieging Plataea throughout the year. The Spartans were more willing to attack Attica again as the plague outbreak in Athens seemed to have ended at this time.

The city of Mytilene then revolted against Athens. They had been planning a revolt for some time, but had wanted to first unify the whole island of Lesbos. The Mytileneans had ancestral connections with Thebes and were apparently now in secret alliance with Thebes. They had begun to lay in great stores of grain and supplies and to hire mercenaries and other preparations for war. The other Lesbian cities informed the Athenians that a revolt was imminent.

Detail from the temple of
Athena Nike

The Athenians debated this in the Assembly and it was decided to send a force to take control of Mytilene during a religious festival, when the people would be outside the city at Malea and the Athenians could then negotiate from a position of strength. The Athenians sent out 40 ships to restrain Mytilene if necessary. But as the Assembly was ending, a sympathiser of Mytilene had already made haste away from the city and onto a ship to inform the rebels of the Athenian plan. This was one great disadvantage of the Athenian Assembly; it was very difficult to keep intentions secret.

Finding their revolt detected the rebels were not caught outside the wall. When the 40 ships arrived the people of Mytilene first tried to break past the Athenian fleet, who quickly quashed the attempt. They then made an armistice with the Athenians and sent an embassy to Athens to plead their case, while also sending emissaries to Sparta to slip past the Athenian blockade. After the Mytilenean embassy to Athens had failed to achieve its purpose, the Athenians besieged the city in earnest. This was no easy task, as the city of Mytilene was a strong one, and one of the few remaining members of the Athenian Empire who had their own navy. A Spartan mission eluded the Athenian blockade and entered the city, asking the besieged city to send a mission to Olympia, where the Peloponnesian League would meet around the time of the Olympic Games.

The Olympic Games were held this year. Symmachos of Sicilian Messene won the stadion race. Alexandros of Sparta owned the horses that won the tethrippon chariot race. Dorieus of Rhodes won the pancration competition. He was the son of the famous boxer Diagoras of Rhodes and this was his second Olympic victory.

After the Olympic Games the Peloponnesian League met nearby. The representatives of Mytilene made their case, pleading for aid to the states of the Peloponnesian League. It was decided that the members of the League would send a large army to attack the Athenians once again, as well as moving their entire navy to the Aegean side of the Isthmus and to threaten to attack Athens by land and sea. The emissaries of Mytilene had said that Athens was weakened by the plague and the revolt and could not resist a combined attack. The words of this debate made their way to the Athenians.

Kylix painted by Aison Painter, showing Theseus slaying
the Minotaur

The Peloponnesian League were at the edge of their military capability themselves. They had already mounted a military expedition against Attica that summer and were engaged in the siege of Plataea. They were not anxious for more operations.

The Athenians, aware of their own weakness and the impending attack, made an emergency appeal to the people, and enrolled nearly every remaining eligible male in the city in order to bring together a fleet of 100 triremes that would attack the Peloponnesian coast, while the siege of Mytilene continued, and the contingent of 30 ships that had been attacking the Peloponnese elsewhere continued to attack, even venturing near to Sparta itself. Thucydides mentions that even after the plague, the Athenians had 250 ships at sea on campaign at this time. This sign of Athenian strength dissuaded the Spartans from mounting another direct attack on Athens. They continued mustering a relief fleet however.

The people of Mytilene attempted to break the siege and managed to break out. They broke the siege on the landward side and came close to holding the whole island of Lesbos. Athens sent a relief force to their army, commanded by Paches and with 1000 hoplites, who beat back the people of Mytilene and built a wall around their city. Later that year, during the winter when sailing was dangerous, a Spartan managed to make it through the Athenian blockade and told the city of Mytilene that a Spartan relief force was on its way.

Athenian tetradrachm

The financial demands of the war were so great that the Athenians had to levy a tax on their own people, which was very unusual in the Greek world, as most revenues were from customs duties and state assets such as mines. They also asked for additional tribute from their allies, which provoked much resistance among their subject cities. One of their generals was in fact killed in Caria while attempting to collect the tribute.

The Plataeans and the Athenians garrisoned at Plataea tried to break the Spartan siege that winter, waiting until the dark of the moon and then launching a daring sortie at night during wind and rain. They were attempting to break out and escape to Athens. As soon as the besiegers were aware of the sortie they sent fire signals to Thebes to request more troops, but the Plataeans also made fire signals from the walls, garbling the communications. The escapees crossed the wall and made off into the night, fleeing towards the city of Thebes to confuse their pursuers, before doubling round and making their way to Athens by a circuitous route. Thucydides reports that 212 made it out, around half the garrison.

Around this time the Spartans obeyed a command of the Oracle of Delphi and took back the Agiad king Pleistonax, who had been exiled at the end of the First Peloponnesian War. The Pythia had ordered that the king was to be taken back as king, but there were many who believed that the Pythia of Apollo had been bribed and that her command came not from Apollo, but from Pleistonax himself. Pleistonax thus became king again, but remained unpopular and every time something went wrong, Pleistonax was blamed.

Death of Hippolytus, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, AD1860

In this year Euripides won the tragedy prize at the Great Dionysia festival in Athens. One of the plays he put forward this year was the tragedy Hippolytus. This is a play where Hippolytus, a devoted follower of the virgin goddess Artemis, has lived a chaste lifestyle, which would have been seen as strange in Greece. Aphrodite, goddess of love, is angered that Hippolytus has spurned her gifts and designs to punish him. To punish him, Aphrodite makes his step mother Phaedra fall in love with him. Hippolytus spurns her too, but Phaedra complains to Theseus, his father, that Hippolytus has tried to rape her. Theseus calls down the curse of his father Poseidon upon his innocent son and Poseidon sends a sea monster to crush Hippolytus as he rides his chariot along the beach. The deception is finally uncovered and Theseus is upbraided by Artemis for killing his innocent son.

I have always found this tragedy to be an exploration of the difficulty of having a polytheistic worldview, where justified devotion to one god might lead to justified enmity from another god. Hippolytus is excessive in his devotion to Artemis, but she does not discourage such worship either. Athenian society was a devout and conservative one, but also one that questioned the old stories and tried to probe the morality of the behaviour of the gods. The play Hippolytus is part of this probing tradition into the philosophy of polytheism.

It is said that Anaxagoras died around this time in his native Lampsacus. He had been exiled from Athens for his political connections to Pericles and his speculations that the sun was not a god, but rather a blazing rock at least as big as the Peloponnese. The dates of his death are not clear however.

In the year 427 the Spartans, under the command of a general named Cleomenes (King Archidamus was possibly quite sick at this time), invaded Attica once more and devastated the farmlands and the countryside. The Athenian cavalry, such as it was, attempted to harass the Spartans, and disrupt their raiding, but this was merely an annoyance to the Spartans, who continued to burn and pillage as they would. Attica must have become quite desolate, as the land had been raided for years on end.

Funeral stele from Rhodes

Meanwhile a Spartan-led fleet of 42 ships, commanded by a general named Alcidas, sailed towards Mytilene to try and break the Athenian siege there. The Spartans sailed very slowly and cautiously, perhaps fearing the consequences of a naval defeat here and remembering their defeat at Naupactus.

The Spartans were so slow with their fleet that the leader of the revolt, Salaethus, a Spartan who seems to have been commanding the revolt, decided to try and defeat the Athenians in a surprise sally. With the food supplies running low, this was their last hope. The people were issued with hoplite armour in preparation for this attack, but instead they turned against Salaethus, refused to attack, demanded food and threatened to make a peace with the Athenians. Salaethus seems to have escaped the city and the oligarchs realised that the rebellion was over. They surrendered the city to the Athenian general Paches, on the condition that there would be no immediate reprisals, but that the fate of the city would rest with the Athenian assembly.

Meanwhile the Spartan fleet under Alcidas had arrived in the region, only to find that Mytilene had surrendered. They sailed to Ephesus after having massacred some of their prisoners taken from the Athenian allies along the way. Rather than taking any action, Alcidas swiftly retreated back across the Aegean to the relative safety of the Peloponnese. Once Paches heard that the Spartans had dared to sail into Ionian waters he gave chase with his fleet, but was unable to catch Alcidas. Alcidas was criticised for cowardice, but a retreat was probably the right option here. Paches continued operations in the region, attacking and taking Pyrrha, Eresus and Colophon. After this he dispatched the ringleaders of the rebellion to Athens, including the captured Salaethus and awaited instructions as to the fate of the conquered city.

The Athenians seem to have executed Salaethus straightaway in their anger. They now had to decide what was to be done with the people of Mytilene, who had betrayed them and forced them to fight a costly and difficult war. The anger ran high and it was decided that the full adult male population was to be killed and the women and children sold into slavery. This was a harsh decision; the obliteration of a people. We would see this as genocide now. A ship was dispatched to Paches to inform him of the decision.

Modern reconstruction of a trireme

The next day the Athenians began to feel that this was too harsh. Punishment was certainly required, but utter destruction was not. The Assembly was called to debate the motion once more. Thucydides records the second debate, known in literature as the Mytilenean Debate. Cleon, a demagogue hated by Thucydides, led the side of the prosecution, arguing for the harsh penalty. Cleon was noted for his hawk-like stance on war related matters. The case for a lesser penalty was argued by an otherwise unknown person named Diodotus. It is hard to know how faithful Thucydides' account is. I would suggest that the speech of Cleon at least is much nastier than what was actually said. Cleon seems to have been an unpleasant character, but unpleasant characters do not necessarily say unpleasant things. It is usually more dangerous when they do not.

Punish them as they deserve, and teach your other allies by a striking example that the penalty of rebellion is death. Let them once understand this and you will not have so often to neglect your enemies while you are fighting with your own confederates.
Cleon's speech in favour of the execution or enslavement of every person in Mytilene, Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Book 3, written circa 400BC

Eventually the Athenians decided in favour of mercy and dispatched another ship to carry the new instructions to Paches. The crew of this second ship were urged to push themselves to the utmost and to make haste, to make sure they arrived before the ship that had sailed the day previously. By a great effort they nearly managed to make up the time. Thucydides records that they made it to Lesbos while Paches was reading the execution order and telling his soldiers to bring out the captives for execution. There were still heavy penalties and around 1000 oligarchs were executed, but it was not a general massacre.

The Athenians under the command of Nicias attacked an island near Megara and captured it, partly to use a base to prevent the Spartans using the port of Megara at all. This being done the Piraeus was much safer than it would otherwise be, as there was less chance of raiders slipping past unobserved.

Vase by Dinos Painter

Also in that summer, the Plataeans were forced to surrender. There were only around 225 left in the garrison, but even so they had been starved out. The Spartans offered the defenders what appeared to be fair surrender terms, saying that none would be put to death without trial. This was accepted, but the end result of the trial was that practically the entire garrison was executed and the women who had served as cooks and such like were taken as slaves. The Thebans settled the city with their own people, but about a year later they destroyed the entire city and placed a large temple precinct on the site (meaning it would be a sacrilege to resettle the city). Plataea would later be resettled in a fashion however.

It seems that around this time that King Archidamus II of Sparta died. He was succeeded by Agis II as the Eurypontid king of Sparta.

Meanwhile, Corcyra, one of the states which had helped provoke the war and which had been entirely useless to Athens, proceeded to be even more useless by having an outbreak of civil war. The oligarchs accused Peithias, who was the leader of the democratic faction, of treason. He in turn won his case and brought a retaliatory measure against his enemies. They faced ruin and stabbed Peithias to death. The city then exploded into civil war.

The Athenians were elsewhere engaged and the Spartan fleet under Alcidas united with another naval force led by Brasidas. The Spartans sailed to Corcyra, trying to exploit the weakness of the war-stricken city. They attacked with 53 ships. The Corcyraeans went against them with 60 ships, which attacked in a piecemeal and haphazard fashion. The Athenians meanwhile, who only had 12 ships in the region, proceeded to join battle in an orderly fashion.

The Spartans had divided their fleet; half to face the Athenians and half to face the Corcyraeans. Despite being outnumbered, the Spartans routed the disorganised Corcyraeans. Meanwhile, despite being outnumbered the Athenians began to toy with their Spartan opponents and threatened to destroy them with their circular sailing manoeuvre. This scared the Spartans so much that they sent their entire fleet against the Athenians, 53 ships against 12. Such was the skill of the Athenians that they extricated themselves, retreating coolly in good order, sailing backwards with the prows facing the enemy ready to change direction and ram at a moment's notice. This bought time for the Corcyraeans to retreat. The skill of the Athenian navy must have been a wonder to behold.

Modern reconstruction of trireme

The Spartans retreated, fearful of being caught in these waters lest the Corcyraeans finish their civil war and remember how to fight sea battles again. The Corcyraean populace murdered many of the oligarchic party and settled scores in the most brutal fashion. Some oligarchic exiles escaped and carried on the war from a nearby mountain.

Thucydides records this as the first of the civil wars between the commoners and aristocracy that were to occur in nearly every Greek state during the war, as each party saw the chance to appeal to either Athens or Sparta (or both) for aid in destroying their rivals.

To put an end to this, there was neither promise to be depended upon, nor oath that could command respect; but all parties dwelling rather in their calculation upon the hopelessness of a permanent state of things, were more intent upon self-defence than capable of confidence. In this contest the blunter wits were most successful.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Book 3, written circa 400BC

While this chaos was raging in Corcyra, war had broken out in Sicily between Syracuse and Leontini. Syracuse was one of the most powerful cities in the Greek world and Leontini was outmatched and lacking allies. As an Ionian city, they appealed to the Athenians for aid, sending Gorgias, who was a sophist famed for his rhetorical ability, to Athens to plead for an alliance. Athens sent 20 ships to Sicily under the command of Laches (no relation to Paches) and Charoeades, with Charoeades in overall command. The city of Rhegium was also allied to Leontini and provided another 30 ships. They attacked some islands off Sicily, but did not do much else that year.

That winter, the plague returned to Athens, with much loss of life. It is hard to know how Athens managed to maintain fleets in so many different areas while taking such casualties at home. Perhaps it was safer to send the fleets abroad for long periods of time, as it would reduce overcrowding and squalor in the city. But the plague had now killed far more than had been killed by the war, while barely affecting the Spartans at all. This drain on Athenian manpower and morale must have sapped Athenian strength from within. Finally, it seems that there were numerous earthquakes in Greece at this time, most particularly around Athens, Euboea and Boeotia.

Modern production of Oedipus the King

In this year Philocles won the Tragedy competition at the Great Dionysia Festival. Philocles was related by blood and marriage to great Athenians of previous generations, such as Aeschylus and war heroes such as Cynaegirus and Ameinias, who had fought at Marathon and Salamis. Almost nothing of his works survive, but later sources do list the names of his plays. He must have been a playwright of some note, because his plays this year won the prize over the plays of Sophocles, which included Oedipus the King.

Oedipus the King, which in Greek was written as Oedipus Tyrannus (not Oedipus Basileus, which might have made more sense), is also known today under the anachronistic title Oedipus Rex, which uses the Latin word for king. It is possibly the greatest of the tragedies that have come down to us.

The play begins with Oedipus as king of Thebes, which is suffering from a terrible plague. To end the plague, Oedipus is determined to discover the crime that has led to this punishment from the gods. The blind oracle Tiresias prophesies that it is a punishment for the murder of the previous king Laius. Once the murderer is found, the city will be free from plague. Oedipus decides to solve the mystery, before quarrelling with Tiresias. Through a series of dramatic revelations it becomes clear that Oedipus was not only the murderer of the previous king, but also unknowingly his son. To compound this crime, he had unwittingly married the dead king's wife, his own mother, and fathered children with his mother. His wife and mother hangs herself in anguish at this discovery, while Oedipus, heartbroken at what his investigations have revealed, stabs out his own eyes. The tragic king appears to the audience at the end as a pitiful ruin, awaiting exile and wandering as a fugitive upon the earth.

Modern production of Oedipus the King

This is a true Greek tragedy in every sense of the word. The hero is a brilliant man, yet a heroic flaw within his own character, in this case his own sense of daring and adventure, and his insatiable desire for knowledge, destroy him. There is also the inscrutable role of the gods. This play is an exploration of the role of free will and fate, and to what extent even the gods or oracles control these.

The social implications of a play that opens with a plague, set in Athens, which was between the outbreaks of plague, may have made it unpopular with the listeners. There would doubtless have been a part of society that believed the plague was a curse from the gods against Athens. There was also a section of society that believed it was a purely physical phenomenon. The play gives a clearly divine origin to plague, while also implying that this was a curse brought on by ritual pollution. I suspect this was one of the reasons the contemporary Athenians did not give Sophocles the prize that year. Later critical opinion has been kinder to the play.

Citizens of my beloved Thebes! See now your great Oedipus! That famous man who knew the answers of great riddles. That man whose good fortune every man in Thebes envied! See now in what monstrous storm of misfortune he has fallen. 
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, written 427BC

Oedipus and the Sphinx, Francois Xavier Fabre,
circa AD1807

In this year a comic playwright named Aristophanes won the 2nd prize in the Comedy competition with his play Banqueters. The play has not survived however.

This is as good a time as any to mention the sophist Gorgias, as it was this year that he had led an embassy to Athens to ask their aid for his home city Leontini. He was a sophist, a person with a reputation for wisdom who taught students on a variety of subjects, but most particularly on public speaking. He wrote widely and was associated with the Sicilian school of rhetoric, later bringing many of the techniques of that school to mainland Greece. He leaves us with some writings, but not many. He is mentioned in later Greek writers, but most particularly in the writings of Plato, who even names a dialogue after him.

He was a man who seems to have been quite a pleasant conversationalist and to have lived a happy life. He avoided hard living and lived to a great age, in full possession of his faculties. He acquired great wealth and was well-liked by his contemporaries in the Greek world. He often spoke at the Panhellenic festivals, such as the Olympic or Pythian Games. He was quick-witted and famed for being able to speak extemporaneously on any subject. Much of what he actually said was probably generalisations or rhetorical tricks, but these were amusing to his audience and himself. He would occasionally propose a paradox or controversial statement and defend it publicly.

Later bust of Sophocles

One of these defences was known as On the Non-Existent, where Gorgias publicly proclaimed that nothing exists; that even if it did, nothing could be known about it and that even if it could be known, this knowledge could never be shared or understood. This is a fairly obvious contradiction, and pretty clearly false. But this only makes the act of defending a hopeless position all the more admirable from a rhetorical perspective. Only a great speaker could make an obvious falsehood even remotely plausible.

In a world before the rules of logic were formulated, it might not even have been easy to spot the flaws in the argument. It was probably a demonstration piece of his rhetorical powers, but may also have been a veiled critique of Parmenides and the Eleatics.

This type of argument made many Athenians uneasy however, as it could be exploited in the Assembly or the law courts. It could make the Worse defeat the Better. It could persecute the innocent and allow the guilty to go free. Teaching people to speak well without teaching them to be good might become dangerous.

"On the Non-Existent" does not survive, but several other demonstration pieces to survive, notably Encomium of Helen, Defence of Palamedes and Epitaphios. The first two are broadly composed as defence arguments to clear two characters from the Homeric epics of any wrongdoing. The last was a sample funeral speech. Considering that the Athenians regularly had to defend themselves in court and that Pericles' Funeral Oration is among the most famous of speeches from the classical age, it is clear that Gorgias was demonstrating to potential pupils that he could teach them the ability to create these speeches.

Vase by Shuvalov Painter

Gorgias, along with other sophists such as Protagoras, later became known as the opponents of Socrates and the philosophers. The word "sophistry" has become an insulting term in the parlance of our times. But to the Athenians and other Greeks of this time the word had not yet become anathema and Gorgias probably saw himself as a wise man in the same tradition as Empedocles or Solon rather than someone who was an opponent of philosophy.

That Persuasion, when added to speech, can also make any impression it wishes on the soul
Gorgias, Fragments including Defence of Palamedes, written perhaps circa 427BC

Another sophist who we know was active in Attica at this time was Thrasymachus of Chalcedon. He was also concerned with rhetoric and would teach students to speak. Some fragments of his works are available to us, but he is primarily known as a character in Plato's Republic, where he gives a furious defence of the idea that justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger and that might makes right. There are indications that some people in Athens actually believed this. But it is also a position Plato strongly disagrees with, so Plato must be taken as a hostile witness to this and to sophistry in general. It is most uncertain that Thrasymachus, or anyone else, seriously believed this.

In the year 426 the Spartans invaded Attica once more under the command of the new Eurypontid king Agis II. However Thucydides records that they turned back because of earthquakes that occurred. These must have been viewed as a sign that the gods were angry and that no expedition should be risked, in case the anger was directed at the Spartans. Some towns were even hit by tidal waves. The occurrence of the tidal waves and the earthquakes was noted by Thucydides in his history, where he also seems to be the first writer to make the connection between earthquakes and tidal waves.

Vase by Pisticci Painter showing
Greek athletes

The cause, in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where its shock has been the most violent, the sea is driven back and, suddenly recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 3, written circa 400BC

The Athenians sent 60 ships with 2000 hoplites to attack the island of Melos, the only Spartan colony in the Aegean. Nicias was in command of this expedition and he ravaged the island of Melos but failed to bring them to terms. He then took his ships back towards Attica, using his troops to land and harry the Boeotians. Nicias joined with the main Athenian land army and brought the Thebans and Tanagrans to battle at Tanagra. This had been the site of a narrow Athenian defeat in previous decades, but this time Nicias inflicted a defeat on the Boeotians, as well as raiding and destroying their crops.

The Spartans thought to strengthen their position in Greece by founding a new colony near the pass at Thermopylae, named Heraclea in Trachis. This would be close to Euboea, which was an Athenian-held island, and could also block one of the land routes into Thessaly. However, the Thessalians were so annoyed at its foundation that they continually harassed the new city, so that it played no real part in this war or any others, although its strategic position meant that every ruler passing through that region took care to attack it.

The Spartan retreat and the remission of the plague seem to have given the Athenians some respite from their ills. They could harvest their crops once more and, despite any damages from the earthquakes, could begin to rebuild their damaged houses in the countryside. Considering that they had exhausted many of their resources and had done no real damage to the Spartans, many Athenians must have felt that a more aggressive policy was needed. Among these were the general Demosthenes and the demagogue Cleon.

Demosthenes was sent with 30 ships to harass the Peloponnesian coast. His mission also included attacking the island of Leucas (modern Lefkada), on the route to Corcyra. He was aided in this by the Acarnanians who lived nearby on the mainland. However, the Messenians who lived at Naupactus suggested that the Aetolians who lived inland to the north of Naupactus could be easily conquered. Demosthenes was intrigued by this, as it might open up a route to attack Boeotia from the north.

The attack on Aetolia was a signal failure, with the Aetolians using lightly armed troops to surround the heavily armoured Athenians and pelt them with missiles. The Athenians held out for some time but were eventually forced to retreat, losing 120 of their best troops while accomplishing nothing. Demosthenes was so afraid of returning to Athens after this failure that he stayed at Naupactus.

The Athenian setback gave the Spartans an idea that they could attack and destroy the Acarnanians and more importantly, the city of Naupactus, by attacking it from the landward side. They sent a force of 3000 allied hoplites under the command of Eurylochus, which marched northwards and into the territory of the Locrians. Here they took hostages and then marched against Naupactus itself. Demosthenes, who realised that the town was not properly defended, persuaded the Acarnanians to help defend the town. Despite the fact the Acarnanians were displeased with the Athenians, they nevertheless came to their aid and the Spartans retreated.

Athenian Temple on the sacred
island of Delos

Later that year the Athenians purified Delos once more. In the previous century Peisistratus had removed all graves on Delos visible from the temples. In response to an oracular pronouncement from Delphi, the Athenians removed all graves from the island and banned anyone from dying or being born there (forcing them to go to the island just beside it if the inhabitants wanted to do either of these things). It is not clear what question the Athenians had asked the Oracle, but it was probably to do with trying to rid themselves of the pollution causing the plague. Upon doing this, the Athenians instituted the Delian Games as a festival for the Ionians.

Around this time, the Peloponnesians under Eurylochus were invited by the Ambraciots to join with them in attacking the Acarnanians. Alarmed at this coming invasion, the Acarnanians beseeched Demosthenes to leave Naupactus and help them in their defence. Demosthenes moved his army and navy there and prepared for battle. The Peloponnesians and Ambraciots outnumbered the Athenians and Acarnanians, so Demosthenes laid an ambush with some Acarnanian troops who knew the land well.

Eurylochus extended his line and began to envelop the Athenians and their allies when the ambush was sprung. The Acarnanians threw the opposing line into turmoil and Eurylochus was slain in the confusion. With his death the Peloponnesian line collapsed and the broken soldiers fled as best as they could to the nearby city of Olpae, where they had to ask for terms of peace to try and escape from the Acarnanians and Athenians. Demosthenes allowed the Mantineans and other Peloponnesians to escape, but killed any Ambraciots who tried to leave.

Vase by Pisticci Painter

Demosthenes followed up his victory by ambushing an Ambraciot relief force that was on its way. By putting the Messenians in front of the army (who could speak a dialect similar to the Ambraciot speech) Demosthenes surprised the Ambraciots reinforcements at night and hunted them down. Ambracia had lost over a thousand hoplites in two days of fighting. Thucydides notes that this was the heaviest proportional losses that any city had endured in the war in such a short space of time. Afterwards the Acarnanians offered peace to the Ambraciots, fearing that their neighbours would be destroyed utterly and fearing who would replace them.

Demosthenes had won a great victory at the Battle of Olpae and defeated the Peloponnesians on land, although the army of Eurylochus had not been a Spartan army, but rather an army of Spartan allies. The campaign in Acarnania had not been pivotal, as the region was somewhat peripheral to the war. But Demosthenes now felt himself back in favour and no longer hid in Naupactus.

Meanwhile the Athenians in Sicily made an attack on Himera, on the northern shore of Sicily. Laches had been sole commander of this force, as his co-general had died. Other generals were sent out and Athens promised to send more ships to the western theatre of war, to try and finish the Sicilian campaign as soon as possible.

During this year, the comic playwright Aristophanes wrote a play called "Babylonians". The play has not survived, but it must have been relatively controversial, as the hawkish Athenian politician Cleon took the playwright to court to accuse him of slandering the city. It may not have slandered the city, but it had certainly excoriated Cleon. I wish that this play had survived so that we could see what type of play could trigger the 5th-century BC version of McCarthyism.

Modern eruption at Mount Etna

In the spring of 425 a great eruption of Mount Etna poured forth great rivers of flame upon the land of Catana in Sicily. This was seen as quite a large eruption by the standards of Etna.

The Spartans invaded Attica under the command of King Agis II of Sparta. Here the Spartans did their usual tactic of ravaging the lands, but it is probable that the Athenians were no longer in great fear of what damage the Spartans could do, as these invasions had happened so many times before. The Spartans also sent 60 ships to attack Corcyra, which was now once again locked in civil war (or had never fully ceased to be at war for the previous two years).

The Athenians countered these moves by sending out ships to assist in Sicily and to aid Corcyra against the Spartans. The Athenian ships passing by the Peloponnese on their way towards Sicily and Corcyra were met by the Athenian general Demosthenes. He requested the ships to stop and help him fortify a headland at Pylos. The other generals, eager to begin their own missions, had no interest in doing this, remarking that if Demosthenes wanted to waste money fortifying deserted headlands there were plenty of rocky wastelands all around the Peloponnese. But a storm forced them to shelter near Pylos.

Demosthenes had made a bold choice to fortify Pylos. It had a harbour nearby and could thus be supplied by sea. It was also close to Messenia and was thus perfect to do what the Spartans feared most: stirring up a helot revolt. The other generals finally saw the brilliance of the move and the Athenians began to fortify the headland.

Vase by Dinos Painter

The move was a serious one, and after some initial disbelief and scepticism, the Spartans recalled their army from Attica after only invading for fifteen days. This alone was enough to justify Demosthenes' strategic choice. The 60 Peloponnesian ships attacking Corcyra were also recalled, so that Pylos could be attacked from both land and sea. The other generals had departed after the place was nearly fortified, leaving Demosthenes to achieve his goals with his own troops, depleted after the campaigns in Acarnania the previous year.

The troubles in Corcyra came to an end in a vicious massacre of the oligarchic party. The Athenians, who had sailed north from Pylos, leaving Demosthenes to fight there, had aided and abetted the massacre in a way that must have terrified the many oligarchic regimes around the Greek world.

With the 60 Peloponnesian ships arriving from Corcyra the Spartans now held naval superiority. The bay at Pylos has a long narrow island called Sphacteria blocking the front of it, leaving only two narrow inlets on either side of the island to enter the harbour. The Spartans knew that Athenian naval reinforcements were inevitable so they planned to block the inlets of the harbour with their own ships and to land heavy infantry on the island to stop the Athenians from landing there and carrying out any tricks.

Having carried out these precautions the Spartans attacked the headland of Pylos from land and sea. Brasidas, a distinguished Spartan commander, urged the Spartan allies to ram their ships aground in the efforts to make a landing. This might have worked, but Brasidas himself was knocked unconscious and the landings failed. Some of the ships were very likely damaged in this attack.

The northern part of the island of Sphacteria seen from Pylos

The Spartans were right to fear Athenian reinforcements, as soon a navy of around 50 ships arrived from nearby Zacynthus. Realising quickly that the Spartans had not blocked the inlets of the harbour as they should have, the Athenians, although technically outnumbered, pushed past the island of Sphacteria and began to sink and capture the Peloponnesian ships in the harbour. The Spartans realised how badly things had gone wrong for them and tried to defend their ships from the land. The Athenians now had control of the seas once more and now the Spartan hoplites on Sphacteria were cut off from hope of rescue.

The people who had been trapped on Sphacteria seem to have been very senior indeed. The Spartan government immediately came out to Pylos and realised the scope of the disaster. They asked for a truce and armistice, so that they could ask the Athenians for peace, with the caveat that the men on Sphacteria would not try to escape during this armistice, while the Athenians would see them fed. In surety for this allowance, the Athenians would send a Spartan delegation to Athens on one of their triremes, while the Spartans would hand over their remaining triremes to the Athenians for the duration of the truce.

The Spartans seem to have been truly desperate. Those on the island were dear to the Spartans. It is hard to see how important this was to them from a military point of view. A few hundred Spartans were trapped there surely, but all cities in the war had lost more men than this, and for less cause. The loss of a few hundred men would barely dent Spartan power.

Why were they so obsessed with getting back these troops? There is no fully satisfactory answer for why these people were seen as so important. It is probable that a high percentage of these were Spartiates, the full Spartan class of soldiers and the core of the Spartan state. It is possible that at this point Spartiate numbers were beginning to dwindle, so that the men trapped on Sphacteria may have actually comprised perhaps up to a tenth of the state, but this would imply that the Spartiate numbers had fallen to a third or a quarter of what they had been in the earlier part of the century. Whatever the reason, they were important enough that Sparta offered to end the war entirely if these men could be returned.

Unfinished Doric temple in Segesta

The Spartans sent their emissaries to the Assembly in Athens, offering to end the war immediately and on favourable terms. Cleon, a popular demagogue in the Assembly, argued against this, demanding that Sparta make real concessions, some of which would involve abandoning their allies. The Spartans, knowing that all the discussions of the Assembly were in public, could not negotiate such terms even in principle. They asked for a private discussion and Cleon refused. Thus the Spartan plea for peace was rejected by the confident Athenian assembly, who by now must have been delighted with this new Spartan humility. For the first time in the war, the Athenians were clearly winning.

When the envoys returned to Pylos to say that there would be no peace, the battle continued. The Athenians alleged that the Spartans had broken the truce and refused to give back the ships. They laid siege to the island of Sphacteria, hoping to starve out the defenders and make them prisoners. The Spartans countered by offering freedom to any helot who brought food to the island. This was done by swimming out or by risking the blockade at night. Enough food was brought in to keep the Spartans alive. The Athenians now risked serious problems if they carried on the siege into the winter months, as their blockading vessels would be at risk to storms, and without a blockade the Spartans could simply escape.

The Athenians debated in the Assembly what was to be done, as the siege dragged on. Cleon demanded that the generals attack. In this case, the elected general was Cleon's rival Nicias. Cleon taunted Nicias with cowardice and indecision. Nicias offered to resign his office and let Cleon command an attack if he really wanted to. Cleon realised that Nicias was being serious and tried to backtrack, but the Assembly enjoyed seeing the turnaround and forced Cleon to make good on his boasts. Once he realised there was no way out, Cleon doubled down on his boasting and promised to bring back the Spartans dead or alive.

Plan showing the Athenian attack on
Sphacteria

A fire had since broken out of Sphacteria, robbing the Spartans of any cover from missiles, and covering much of the island with ash. The Athenians, under the command of Demosthenes and Cleon, landed a large force of troops, both heavy and light, on the south of the island under the cover of darkness. When the Spartans realised the Athenians had landed in force, they tried to storm out and beat the Athenians back to their ships. But there were too few of them to make a proper phalanx and their heavy armour slowed them down so that they could not catch the lighter troops, while clouds of ash raised by the marching troops confused and disoriented them. They were hit with volleys of javelins and arrows. They retreated to a fortified area, but were then surrounded and outflanked by some Messenian troops. Trapped and baking in the heat, without food or water, the Spartans were prepared to die, when the Athenians offered to negotiate.

The Athenians were already masters of the approaches when Cleon and Demosthenes perceiving that, if the enemy gave way a single step further, they would be destroyed by their soldiery, put a stop to the battle and held their men back; wishing to take the Lacedaemonians alive to Athens, and hoping that their stubbornness might relax on hearing the offer of terms, and that they might surrender and yield to the present overwhelming danger. Proclamation was accordingly made, to know if they would surrender themselves and their arms to the Athenians to be dealt at their discretion.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 4, written circa 400BC

The Spartans were allowed to send a messenger to the mainland, asking if they could surrender. The message came back to do what they needed to do, as long as it was not dishonourable. The Spartans then surrendered.

A Spartan shield captured at Pylos and preserved as a
trophy in Athens

This was a fantastic coup for the Athenians and for Cleon in particular. The Greek world was shocked that the Spartans had not fought to the death and it shattered the legend of Spartan invincibility. The Athenians now had high-status prisoners. Any future invasion of Attica would be answered with the execution of these prisoners. This had saved the farmlands of Attica from their yearly ravaging.

The Athenians now also had a valuable base at Pylos that was ideal for raiding Spartan lands and to which the helots could escape to, meaning that the Spartan agricultural system would be gradually denuded of the forced labour that made it work. With these knives at their throat, the Spartans began to send envoys to Athens asking them for peace. But now that they were winning, the Athenians were in no mood to negotiate.

The Athenians shortly afterwards made an attack against Corinth, winning a small victory, before sailing southwards to Methana, walling off another isthmus and giving themselves a base on the eastern side of the Peloponnese. They also used their base at Naupactus to harry the Corinthians on the far side of Greece. Later that winter, fearing revolution in Chios, they asked the Chians to tear down their walls, which the Chians eventually complied with.

In their desperation it seems that the Spartans were beginning to negotiate with Artaxerxes, King of Persia. The Athenians captured a Persian envoy en route to Sparta and took him to Athens, where his cuneiform dispatches were translated, before the envoy was returned safely to the Ionian coast. Athens was rightly wary of beginning another war with the Great King in the midst of their current war. Apparently the Spartan envoys sent to Persia all contradicted each other and the King had requested genuine envoys who could truly speak for Sparta. It is an illuminating episode however, as it shows that there were people in Athens who could read cuneiform (probably in Akkadian).

Ruined sanctuary of Menelaus and Helen in Sparta

Around this time Euripides wrote the play Andromache. This play has survived and describes the hard life of Andromache, widow of the slain Hector of the shining helmet, as she is a slave in the household of the Spartan king Menelaus. The play would have resonated with the Athenians during the war, as many of them must have known relatives who had been captured or sold into slavery during wartime, while many of the audience would also have captive slaves themselves from the war. As hatred towards the Spartans had grown, Euripides portrays Menelaus as a vicious tyrant in the play.

While the dating of Andromache is uncertain, it is certain that the comic playwright Aristophanes won the first prize at the Lenaia Festival with his play Acharnians. This was a comic portrayal of one citizen's frustration with the war. It has the hero form his own private peace with the Spartans while laughing at the follies and stupidity of the various frauds and conmen who seem to do so well in the Assembly. He is opposed by a chorus of Acharnians, tough old farmers from the Attic district of Acharnia, famed for its fighters and targeted especially by the invading Spartans.

Unfinished Doric temple in Segesta

The hero blames the entire war on the abduction of Aspasia's prostitutes, sets up his own private market where he sells a visiting Boeotian a commodity rare in Boeotia; a genuine Athenian sycophant. It ends with the hawkish general Lamachus returning bruised and beaten from the wars, while the hero returns happy from a drinking party with a girl on each arm. It is the first Comic play to survive from the ancient world and, while humour does not always translate across cultures, it is quite funny in places. It also shows that, despite the sway that Cleon had in the Assembly, that there must have been many in Athens who longed for peace.

I remember now! This was a real delectation, this one! It gave my soul something to be really chirpy about. That was when our leader, Cleon had to vomit back the five talents shows the fingers on his hand again –count them – five talents, to the Treasury! Five talents –that's … let's see, six thousand drachmas to a talent… that makes… Oooooh, a lot! Hahaha! He had ripped off our allies by promising them that he could persuade our council to lower their taxes, so they gave him a neat little bribe of all these drachmas. But the Knights sniffed out the job and so they made him cough it all up again. Hahaha! What a beautiful job the Knights did on him! I love them for that! Men and deed, worthy of Greece!
Aristophanes, Acharnians, written 425BC

In art, Aison, the Dinos Painter, the Pisticci Painter and the Shuvalov Painter all flourished around this time. These were all Attic red-figure painters, who had workshops near the Kerameikos area of Athens and who produced high quality work. The Dinos Painter seems to have been influenced by a type of painting that would become more prominent in the next century, in that he used white paint to accentuate many details. This is sometimes referred to as the Rich Style. Some of the other painters eschewed this style however and continued with the previous style, using only red and black in their compositions.

Bust of Pericles, Roman copy
after an original by Kresilas

The sculptor Kresilas was active around this time. He created a number of famous sculptures, the most memorable of which is the famed bust of Pericles wearing a Corinthian helm. This has survived to us through Roman copies. It seems that he also was the sculptor who created the original Athena of Velletri type statue, which also survives as a Roman copy.

It had previously been thought that the Athena of Velletri was by the sculptor Alcamenes, who also flourished around this time. He had previously assisted Phidias with the decoration of the Parthenon, but was not a great sculptor in his own right. Some few Roman copies of his works are known, but his most famous works appear to be lost, or at least have not yet been identified.

Around this time Statue B of the Riace bronzes was made. This was recovered from the sea near Calabria, possibly from an ancient shipwreck. It is not clear who the statues are meant to represent, or who created them. However they were a fortunate find, as very few Greek bronzes have survived from the classical period.

It was around this time that Diogenes of Apollonia flourished. He was a philosopher who was active in Athens around this time. Like his contemporary Archelaus and his far-predecessor, Anaximenes, he believed that Air was the primary substance and at the root of all being. He was interested in physical processes, like Anaxagoras who had been active in Athens during previous decades. A few fragments of his works survive and he is quoted with some respect in the later works of Aristotle. He may perhaps have associated with a poor Athenian, known as Socrates, who was active in the debates in the city. He wrote about meteorites and blood vessels, among other things.

Statue B, Riace Bronzes

An anonymous political thinker from Athens was active around this time period. He is referred to as the Old Oligarch and he wrote a work on the constitution of Athens from the perspective of one of its opponents. It was preserved among the works of the later writer Xenophon, but it is universally acknowledged that Xenophon is not the writer of this piece. It is a reminder that many members of the educated classes were not enthusiastic about democracy in Athens.

It is also around this time that the historian Herodotus, the first to leave us a history book worthy of name, seems to have died. Despite the fact that in many ways Herodotus invented history, how, where, or when he died is not recorded. We all owe him a great debt however.

In the year 424 the Spartans did not invade Attica, as they feared the execution of the hostages from Sphacteria. Instead the Athenians, full of boldness and having taken bases for themselves to the north, east and west of the Peloponnese now took one to the south. Nicias led an army to take Cythera, an island lying to the south of the Peloponnese and dominating the approaches to Gythion, which was the port of Sparta, such as it was. The expedition was successful. The Athenians now began to harass the Spartan coasts from every angle, with the Spartans struggling to defend themselves.

In Sicily the Greek cities had been at war with each other, with Leontini having called in the Athenians to help defend against the more powerful Syracuse. Eventually though, the Sicilian Greeks began to be concerned with the ambition of Athens, particularly as it now seemed that they would soon be victorious against the Spartans. There was a council called at Gela with all states of Sicily invited to attend. Here it was decided among the cities that they would have a general peace and that the Athenians would be asked to leave, for fear of what they would do in the future.

Thus the Sicilian theatre of the Peloponnesian War came to an end for the time being. The Athenians felt that the general, Laches, had been too easy on the Sicilians and he was put on trial, accused of retreating after being bribed. The Syracusan speaker who put forward the proposal of the peace was Hermocrates, a prominent Syracusan who seems to have favoured an oligarchy.

Later Roman copy of the Athena Velletri

The Athenians do seem to have concluded a treaty of sorts with the western city of Segesta, which was continually in fear of being overrun by the nearby city of Selinus. It is around this time that the city of Segesta began work on a very magnificent temple in the Doric style. The temple was probably never finished, but the exterior was left untouched and remains mostly intact to this day.

The Athenians now seem to have wanted to make their position even more secure, by the conquest and fortification of Megara. This would have allowed them to make a very favourable peace. They could have released the hostages of Sphacteria for decent terms, while holding the fortified Isthmus as they had done in the previous war, preventing the Spartans from leaving the Peloponnese and protecting Attica.

However, here fortune seems to have turned against the Athenians. They may have overestimated their own skill and cleverness. The fortification of Pylos by Demosthenes was an excellent idea. However, the isolation and subsequent capture of the Spartans on the island had been mostly a matter of Spartan mistakes and blind chance rather than any cunning strategy of the Athenians.

The Athenians attacked Megara and were close to capturing it entirely. But before they could solidify their position, the Spartans counterattacked under Brasidas, who was leading a force northwards to take the Athenian colonies on the Thracian shore. Brasidas must have wanted to draw the Athenian navies away from the Peloponnese and he was in the right place at the right time to save the crucial city of Megara.

Statue B, Riace bronzes

The Athenians were undeterred, as they had now planned an even larger operation. Boeotia was dominated by Thebes, which was hostile to Athens and run by an oligarchy. As this time, most of the Greek world was now facing internal civic strife between what can be referred to as oligarchic and democratic parties. Thebes was no exception and the leaders of the democratic faction in Boeotia asked for Athenian aid in attacking Thebes.

A complicated plan was hatched by the confident Athenian generals. Demosthenes would attack Boeotia from the western coast, bringing troops from Naupactus. Hippocrates would lead an Athenian force to attack overland from the south to attack on the exact same day. Meanwhile there would be a general uprising of the democratic faction. It was not a bad plan and it would have knocked Thebes out of the war, perhaps even making it an ally of Athens.

As usually occurs with complicated plans that involve coordinated movements hundreds of miles apart with no communications, it went badly wrong. Demosthenes, for unknown reasons, but possibly because his plans were betrayed to the Thebans, moved too soon against the Boeotian coast. The democratic faction, now carefully watched, made no uprising. The Thebans and other Boeotian cities sent troops to repel Demosthenes. A few days later, having heard that Demosthenes had landed, Hippocrates marched north with a very hastily gathered army. Here he fortified the temple of Delium.

Roman copy of the bust of
Athena Velletri

Under the leadership of Pagondas, the Thebans marched out against the Athenians. The Theban phalanx was organised in an unusual fashion, with a line 25 men deep rather than the more customary 8 men deep. This is one of the first examples that we hear of tactical considerations in hoplite battles (Marathon might count as another, depending on how deliberate one believes Miltiades' tactics were). Whatever the outcome of this tactic of Pagondas, it clearly worked and the Athenians were routed.

To compound the danger for the Athenians, Pagondas had held a reserve of cavalry (never much use against a compact phalanx) to exploit the flight. They hunted down the Athenians, who had mostly thrown away their shields and were fleeing headlong. This greatly increased the Athenian casualties and turned the defeat into a disaster. Pagondas thus seems to have been one of the first generals recorded to have used a strategic reserve.

It is said that the Athenian philosopher Socrates was at this battle, but that he managed to survive the rout by coolly strutting away in full armour and without throwing away his shield. By making himself look quite in control of the situation, no Theban seems to have been interested in attacking him. He was accompanied in his retreat by Laches, an Athenian general who had previously been serving in Sicily, and Alcibiades, a young Athenian nobleman on horseback who helped cover their retreat.

The Athenians had suffered a tremendous defeat, easily their heaviest defeat of the war thus far. However, they still held their hastily fortified position at the temple of Delium itself. After receiving reinforcements from Corinth, the Thebans under Pagondas attacked the wooden section of the Athenian fortifications. They had constructed what appears to be something akin to a flamethrower which they used to ignite the wall and kill or rout the Athenian garrison. I find it astonishing that the first flamethrower seems to predate the first catapult. However, as fortifications were very seldom made of wood, this had limited uses.

Modern reconstruction of the Boeotian flamethrower

They sawed in two and scooped out a great beam from end to end, and fitting it nicely together again like a pipe, hung by chains a cauldron at one extremity, with which communicated an iron tube projecting from the beam, which was itself in great part plated with iron. This they brought up from a distance upon carts to the part of the wall principally composed of vines and timber, and when it was near, inserted huge bellows into their end of the beam and blew with them. The blast passing closely confined into the cauldron, which was filled with lighted coals, sulphur and pitch, made a great blaze, and set fire to the wall
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 4, written circa 400BC

Around this time Sitalces, King of the Odrysian Kingdom in Thrace, died in battle against the Triballi. He was succeeded by his nephew, Seuthes I, who had previously brokered a truce between Perdiccas of Macedon and Sitalces.

Brasidas, who had been gathering an army to attack the Athenian subject cities on the northern shore of the Aegean, continued his march up through central Greece and Thessaly and with a surprise attack, to the shock of everyone, managed to seize the Athenian colony of Amphipolis. This was a major Athenian city in the region and its loss would prove problematic for the Athenians. Brasidas then used it as his base and took over other smaller cities in the region.

Acropolis Hill viewed from Areopagus, the Temple of
Athena Nike is on the bastion in the right of the picture

Thucydides, an Athenian general who is best known to us as a writer of the history of the Peloponnesian War, was stationed nearby with a fleet. Hearing that Amphipolis was threatened, he sailed to its relief, but Brasidas had already offered the city of Amphipolis moderate terms of surrender, which they had accepted. Thucydides was able to secure Eion for Athens, but this was seen as not good enough and Thucydides would later be exiled by the Athenians for dereliction of duty. He would use his time in exile to brood against the Athenian democracy under Cleon's leadership and to focus on writing his history.

Brasidas consolidated his position near Thrace by either subduing Athenian-held towns, or by encouraging them to revolt. The Athenian Empire now began to seem weak in that entire area and the Athenians were worried that they would soon face an empire-wide rebellion. In the early months of the year the Athenians might have reasonably expected to defeat Sparta by winter. Now, with their failure at Megara, at Delium and with the loss of their northern cities, the strategic balance of power seemed equal once more.

In this year the comic playwright Aristophanes wrote the play Knights. It is a satire making fun of the Athenian politician Cleon, who was in favour of the war and who presented himself as the champion of the poorer classes. Aristophanes pokes fun at this and depicts him as a miserable character vying for the affection of Demos (the people) with a sausage-seller who is even more shameless than he is. It is a wonderful thing to picture Cleon in the audience watching himself be so mocked on stage. Cleon was popular, but the mocking of Cleon was even more popular, with Aristophanes' play winning the first prize at the Lenaia competition.

Later Roman statue of Euripides

Also around this time, although the dates are less clear, Euripides wrote the play Hecuba. This is a dark work, set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, where captured Hecuba, the wife of slain Priam and formerly Queen of Troy, yearns for justice against those who have wronged her. She eventually gets some measure of revenge, but it does not satisfy her, nor win her freedom, nor save her from her prophesied end.

The Olympic Games were held this year. Symmachos of Sicilian Messene won the stadion. Hellanikos of Lepreon won the boy's boxing. Klemoachos of Magnesia won the boxing. The great pancratiast Dorieus of Rhodes won his third successive victory at the Olympics this year. He was the son of Diagoras of Rhodes, a famed boxer, and Dorieus' brothers had also been Olympic champions. Leon of Sparta owned the horses who won the tethrippon chariot race.

In the year 423 the Athenians and the Spartans agreed on a year's truce. This is known as the Truce of Laches, who was one of the proposers of the truce from the Athenian side. While the negotiations were ongoing however, the town of Scione revolted from the Athenians and Brasidas accepted its joining of the Spartan side in the war. Brasidas, who behaved quite moderately towards the Athenian cities, was held in high repute by both sides in the war. The Spartans appreciated his nearly single-handedly reversing the military situation and the Athenians respected him as an honourable foe.

As Scione had technically revolted after the truce was in effect, but before Brasidas was aware of it, both sides argued that they should keep it. Cleon passed a decree that would see the town of Scione destroyed and the population massacred. Another town, Mende, also revolted. Brasidas had made an alliance with Perdiccas II of Macedon and had left the coast to assist Perdiccas against his enemies. This allowed the Athenian general Nicias to retake Mende and to attack, but not yet take, Scione. As the Athenians and Spartans were still fighting on the northern Aegean coast, Brasidas now seems to have been ignoring the truce altogether, as he later made an unsuccessful attempt to take Potidaea by surprise.

During this time of truce, Tegea and Mantinea, two cities in the Peloponnese who were both under the influence of Sparta, fought a small war between themselves. The Tegeans were victorious. The Athenians used this time to expel the population of the island of Delos, arguing that it was required by an oracle. These refugees were taken in by one of the Persian satraps of Asia Minor and given land in which to settle.

Later Roman bust of Aristophanes

In this year, the comic playwright Cratinus won the prize of Comedy at the Great Dionysia festival with the play The Wicker Flask, which does not survive to the present day. We do know that Aristophanes put on a play called The Clouds, which does survive. This was a lampooning of the new philosophical and sophistic ways of thinking that were becoming popular in Athens, particularly among the young people.

Aristophanes shows an old man, named Strepsiades who is weary that his son is becoming far too clever and no longer has any respect. Eventually he goes down to the "Thinkery" to learn all the rubbish of these new ways for himself so that he can beat his son at his own game. Here he meets the chief meddler with the youth, Socrates the Athenian, who is presented as a clownish, head-in-the-clouds, intellectual. Ultimately the new knowledge does not help curb the impudence of his son, so Strepsiades ends the play by trying to burn down the "Thinkery".

The play is useful to us in that it gives us another view of Socrates. Aristophanes' portrayal is quite hostile, but it is a useful contemporary source for the life of Socrates and may give us some information about him. It must be used with caution of course. The version of the play that we currently have is from a later staging of the play, perhaps six years later.

Caryatids in the Acropolis Museum Athens

It seems that Socrates took the joke in good humour and it seems that Aristophanes and Socrates were acquaintances and perhaps friends at this time and in later years. Socrates may have been chosen for the target simply because he had a famously ugly face, which resembled the grotesque masks worn by the comic actors.

However I think it more likely that Socrates had done something silly in that year that is unknown to modern audiences. Aristophanes' play had come third in the competition, but another comic playwright named Ameipsias had written a play named Connus that had received second prize. This was also a play lampooning Socrates. That two comic playwrights should simultaneously choose a private individual for ridicule suggests that Socrates had become particularly notorious in Athens in the previous year.

Around this time, with Athens still smarting from the defeat by the Thebans at Delium, Euripides wrote the play known as The Suppliants, or Suppliant Women. This play is set after the war between Eteocles and Polyneices at the seven gates of Thebes. Here the dead Argive heroes who had attacked the city are left unburied by the order of Creon, the new ruler of Thebes. To allow the dead to be buried, Theseus, the hero of Athens, leads an army to Thebes and brings back the bodies of the dead. The play is a patriotic one, with heroic Athenians and impious Thebans. It also hints at the developing friendship that seems to have been growing between the Athenians and the neutral city of Argos, which was a democracy and had been an ally of Athens in the past.

Ruins of the foundation of the Temple of Hera in Argos

In this year Chrysis, who held the role of priestess of Hera in Argos, placed a lamp near some garlands and fell asleep. The garlands caught flame and the temple of Hera at Argos burned to the ground. Chrysis fled the city and sought refuge elsewhere in the Peloponnese, as burning down the chief temple of the city was generally not viewed kindly in the Greek world, even if it was accidental.

In the year 422 the truce between Athens and Sparta expired. Cleon was clearly angry with the damage that Brasidas had done to the Athenians with the capture of Amphipolis and the capture of a number of other smaller towns. He gathered a force of about 2000 hoplites and sailed north. Here he recaptured Torone. Cleon enslaved the women and children and took the men as hostages to be held by the Athenians.

Cleon then marched against Amphipolis itself. His army was somewhat larger than Brasidas', who retreated back to the city walls rather than risking an unequal battle far from home. Cleon made the mistake of marching too close to the walls for no real reason. He suspected that Brasidas was planning a sally forth and ordered a withdrawal. Because the withdrawal took place hurriedly and near to the walls, Brasidas did sally forth with the Spartan troops (most of them helots that the Spartan state wanted far away from Sparta) and the people of Amphipolis. A hard-fought battle ensued, but the Athenians never recovered from their original disorder in the withdrawal and the Athenians were defeated in what is known as the Battle of Amphipolis.

Temple of Athena Nike in Athens

The battle was significant because it saw the death of both Cleon and Brasidas. Both of these men had been very keen for war and had pushed for the continuation of the war in the face of a growing desire for peace on both sides. With both "hawks" dead, the partisans of peace could prevail. Emissaries were sent between the states and negotiations opened up.

In this year a comic playwright named Cantharus won the prize for comedy at the Great Dionysia. Aristophanes put forward his play The Wasps this year. It marks a return to form in that it mercilessly mocks Cleon (presumably it was put on before his death that year) and makes fun of the older Athenian jurymen who vote for Cleon. It tells of a son, named Bdelycleon, trying to save his father, Philocleon, from his obsession with the courts. As part of this treatment, the son has covered the house with nets to stop his father from running off to do jury duty, and instead sets up a mock trial where he can try the cases of his household, such as the case of the dog that stole the cheese and other such important trials.

In the year 421 the absence of war settled gradually over the Greek world. The truce still held in Sicily in the west, while in mainland Greece, Athens and Sparta were tired of war and were negotiating. The main architects of the peace were Pleistonax on the Spartan side and Nicias on the Athenian side. Pleistonax was the Agiad king, but was quite unpopular in Sparta, as it was thought that he had bribed the Oracle of Delphi to command the Spartans to recall him from banishment. Nicias was a talented, but cautious, general of the Athenians. He was from an aristocratic background and was known to admire Sparta. He was probably the Spartan proxenus (like a consul or ambassador) in Athens.

Architectural detail from the Temple of Athena Nike

The two sides agreed on a peace that came to be known as the Peace of Nicias, which ended the Archidamian War. Everything would go back to how it was before the war. The Spartans would hand back the territory they had captured, with the exception of Plataea, which was "surrendered voluntarily" and would be held by the Thebans. Particularly important to the Athenians was the return of Amphipolis. The Athenians would evacuate Pylos and the other fortresses on the coast of the Peloponnese, as well as handing back the prisoners taken at Sphacteria.

The peace treaty was a relatively sensible one, but was doomed from the start. Elis, Corinth, Megara and Thebes all refused to ratify the Spartan treaty, meaning that all the most important members of the Peloponnesian League were angry at the Spartans. Even worse, the Spartans were unwilling to hand over Amphipolis against the will of the Amphipolitans, who rightly feared what would happen to them. Thus, Sparta merely evacuated here, but did not hand it over.

History then nearly took a very different turn. Both Sparta and Athens were worn out from the struggle. Any neutral state, such as Argos, or perhaps Syracuse, might be disproportionately powerful in the Greek world at this time. The Peloponnesian League was in real danger of breaking up, with the primary allies of the Spartans refusing to ratify the treaty and threatening alliances with Argos. The main clause feared by the Spartan allies was a clause of the treaty that said that the Athenians and the Spartans could change the terms of the treaty by their common consent, but without necessarily consulting their allies.

Erechtheion Temple on the Acropolis

Seeing the risk of a new war developing, the Spartans applied for a peace treaty with Athens and received it. This must have been the work of Nicias, who generally proposed pro-Spartan policies and might be said to follow a similar policy to Cimon in the previous generation. A new League might threaten either Athens or Sparta, but if they combined their forces, they might form the foundation of a true Greek confederation. Perhaps the two states were too different to ever be permanent allies, but I do think this alliance between the two states was not doomed from the beginning, and that history could have taken a different direction. But it was not to be.

Meanwhile the Corinthian delegates, seeing that Athens and Sparta were in a treaty, went to Argos to conclude a treaty with Argos. The Mantineans and Eleans came over to this new alliance next. The Argives and Corinthians tried unsuccessfully to bring Thebes into their new alliance, but the Thebans in Boeotia had their own ideas and did not yet want this alliance.

The Athenians finished the siege of Scione, which had not surrendered as part of the Peace of Nicias. Cleon had passed a decree in the Assembly before his death that ordered that the adult males should be massacred and the women and children sold into slavery. This terrible fate before the people of Scione, which was viewed almost as a war crime by the Greeks. The Athenians then settled the exiled Plataeans there. Thus amid the tensions between all the parties, the year came to an end, but the uneasy peace still held.

Replicas of the caryatids on the Porch of the Maidens

Around this time the Erechtheion temple on the Acropolis was begun in Athens. It is dedicated to both Poseidon and Athena. It was built near the area where a sacred snake was fed cakes by the priests and which was believed to have been the guardian of the city, as well as being near the tomb of the legendary king Erechtheus, for whom it is named. It is on the northern slope of the Acropolis and gives beautiful views over the city. An eternal flame designed by Callimachus with an asbestos wick stood near the temple.

Its most famous feature is the Porch of the Maidens, where Caryatids, statues of women acting as pillars, gaze out across the Acropolis. One of these was removed to Britain in the early 19th century AD by the controversial Lord Elgin, who also damaged another caryatid terribly. The remainder were damaged by acid rain in Athens, but are currently in the new Acropolis Museum at the southern foot of the Acropolis and are well-preserved from future harm.

In this year, Eupolis of Athens won the prize for comedy at the Great Dionysia in Athens with his play Flatterers. This play has not survived to the present day. We do know that it was laughing at the wealthy nobleman Callias III, an extravagant nobleman who was probably the richest man in Athens, but who had a propensity for throwing away all his money on sophists, women and other luxuries. However, Aristophanes' play Peace, which won second prize, has survived.

In this play, an exasperated Athenian named Trygaeus flies up to heaven on the back of a dung-beetle to find out what has happened to Peace. He finds that she has been imprisoned in a big cave and that War now has charge of heaven; although War is a little perplexed what to do with Cleon and Brasidas gone. Trygaeus frees Peace from her cave and brings her down to the world, filling her in on the latest gossip, including the death of another Comic poet named Cratinus, who apparently died of anger while drunk. Trygaeus eventually marries Harvest, who was also imprisoned with Peace and her companion Festival.

Modern reconstruction of a
gastraphetes

While the exact date cannot be given exactly, it seems that around this time the gastraphetes was invented. This literally means "belly-bow" and was a type of semi-mechanical crossbow that was braced on the ground, held in place with the leg and stomach, and cranked to increase the torsion. It is not clear what its purpose was in war, but it was probably used primarily in sieges, being a much more powerful bow than the usual Greek bow. It was the ancestor of later siege weapons, which would shortly come into use, as the Greeks became more interested in the conduct of sieges.

In the year 420 the peace still held, but there were serious tensions between all the parties and a major lack of trust. There was much back and both sides felt that neither the treaty nor the alliance were being fully honoured. But the peace still held as of yet. The Thebans held the key to peace in Greece. They had neither made peace with Athens, joined Argos, nor given up their anger with Sparta. But whichever group they joined would have very strong land forces indeed. It seemed that after much deliberation, that the Thebans were inclined to stay aligned with Sparta.

This scared the Argives, who had previously believed that Thebes would join their alliance. If Corinth and the other sides deserted as well, then Argos might face the rebuilt Peloponnesian League alone and without allies. The Spartans and Argives were concerned that the thirty-year truce that they had previously signed was about to expire. The Spartans, in concluding their peace with the Thebans, had in fact broken the terms of the peace with Athens, as well as the many fortresses and cities that had yet to be handed over, and the Athenian popular opinion suspected that the Spartans were planning to break the treaty.

The Spartans, seeing that they were running the risk of losing Athenian trust, sent a delegation to Athens to answer the questions of the Athenians and to reassure them of good faith. In particular, they were to try and prevent the Athenians from making an alliance with the Argives. Once they arrived, they were met by Nicias, the architect of the peace and a senior figure in Athenian politics, who was also known as a friend of Sparta.

Later Roman bust of Alcibiades

Before addressing the Assembly, the Spartans were met by Alcibiades, a prominent young nobleman, who had fought in several battles despite his youth. He was very wealthy and well-connected to the Athenian aristocracy, being related to the Alcmaeonids. He was also believed to be very handsome, and he used his popularity to influence the taste of the people. It is said that Athenians boys used to learn flute-playing until Alcibiades decided that it made his face look ugly while playing. After this the Athenians stopped learning flute-playing in their education. This is probably a later story, but it shows the influence that Alcibiades was believed to have had. He was frequently in the company of Socrates and the many sophists who flocked to Athens. In short, he was young, handsome, intelligent, wealthy, educated and ambitious.

Alcibiades counselled the Spartans to be guided by him and to pretend that they were not sent with full powers. Alcibiades had spoken against the Spartans in the Assembly previously, and he promised that he would turn the people towards the Spartans, as long as they said that they had not come with full powers. The Spartans trusted the young nobleman.

The Spartans were asked in the Assembly whether they had come with full powers, and they answered that they had not, as they had been advised by Alcibiades. They were then roundly denounced in the Assembly, by none other than Alcibiades who had betrayed them. Nicias pleaded with the people to be allowed to send an embassy to Sparta to make sure that they maintained the treaty, handed over Amphipolis, which was not as yet handed over, and to ask the Spartans to break their alliance with Thebes.

Caryatid in British Museum

Nicias' embassy was sent, but as with Alcibiades in Athens, the war-party in Sparta was now influential once more and Xenares the ephor blocked all Nicias' proposals. Nicias returned in disgrace to Athens and Alcibiades now became the most popular man in the state. Alcibiades was risking restarting the war simply so he could gain prestige. The Athenians and the Argives now signed an alliance and Alcibiades was now elected as one of the generals in Athens.

The Corinthians were now in a state of displeasure with the Argives and did not join the new alliance, but Athens now had an alliance with multiple Peloponnesian states, including Argos, Elis and Mantinea. Corinth now became more aligned with Sparta, as the balance of power had now shifted in Athens' favour and the political game had become two-power rather than a three-power affair.

The Spartans and the Eleans had a land dispute over a subject city of Elis. The Argives and Epidaurians went to war, with the Athenians aiding the Argives. Spartan armies prowled around on the edges of Argos. Athenians and Spartans were in large armies on opposing sides in various wars, and yet still the strange peace, with enemies locked in overlapping meshes of contradictory alliances, held.

Near Thermopylae, the newly founded Spartan city of Heraclea in Trachis was attacked by the nearby Thessalians and their allies. The city did not fall, but they suffered very heavy casualties. The Thebans were so concerned with the weakness of the city, and the fear that the Athenians would take it by force, that they took over the city and expelled the Spartan governors, which did not endear them to the Spartans. But the Theban alliance was too valuable to the Spartans to risk an open breach with them, so the Spartans held their peace and the peace held.

Around this time Heraclea Pontica, a Greek city on the southern coast of the Black Sea founded Chersonesos Taurica around this time. This colony was on the northern coast of the Black Sea, in the Crimean Peninsula. The city was founded in a good location with an excellent harbour. The city is today known as Sevastopol.

Coin of Elis from around this time period

The Olympic Games were held this year. Hyperbios of Syracuse won the stadion race, Aristeus of Argos won the dolichos race. Theantos of Lepreon won the boy's boxing competition, while Amertas of Elis won the boy's wrestling. Androsthenes of Mainalos won the pancration. Xenombrotus of Cos owned the horse that won the horse race. Boeotia owned the horses that won the tethrippon chariot race, except that they didn't.

The Spartans had been squabbling with the Eleans, who oversaw the Olympic Games. The Eleans then barred the Spartans from the games. Lichas of Sparta submitted his team of horses for the chariot race, but had the team race in the name of Boeotia, paying homage to the strength of the Theban/Spartan alliance. When his team won, Lichas burst onto the field to crown the victors, thus letting everyone know that these were his horses and that the glory was Sparta's. The Olympic officials beat up Lichas and threw him out of the Olympic grounds.

It is possible that this year saw the comic poet Eupolis win the comedy prize with the play Autolycus, but the dates are unclear. The play has not survived.

Friezes from the Temple of Athena Nike

Apollodorus Skiagraphos, a master of ancient Greek painting, may have flourished around this time. The dates are unclear, with some indications that he flourished perhaps six decades earlier. But those who are said to be his later contemporaries, pupils, rivals and imitators are in the late 5th century and early 4th, so for this reason I have chosen to mention him here. None of his paintings survive, but he invented a shading technique that was widely copied and became a staple of Greek painting from that time onwards.

The Temple of Athena Nike in Athens was completed around this time. It was built on a high bastion to the southern side of the Propylaea. It was destroyed in later years, but has been reconstructed today. Many of the friezes have been preserved in museums in Greece and around the world. It is quite a small temple, but a beautiful one. It was dedicated to Athena Goddess of Victory, and contained scenes of victories over the Persians at Marathon and Plataea. The cult statue here had no wings (Nike/Victory usually had wings) and this was seen as a good omen, in that wingless Victory could not fly away from Athens.

Around this time Ion of Chios, the poet, dramatist and philosopher, died. Oenopides of Chios, the mathematician and astronomer, also seems to have died in this time period, as did the famous sophist Protagoras, who had held that "man is the measure of all things".

The philosopher Hippo is said to have flourished around this time. He believed fire and water to be the primordial elements of the universe but nothing of his work survives and Aristotle in particular was not impressed with his thinking. He was accused of atheism apparently, but it is unclear why.

Later Roman bust of Herodotus

Hippias of Elis also flourished around this time. He was a sophist who taught rhetoric and oratory in Athens, and charged higher fees than the other sophists, which was a point of pride for him. He believed that he was able to speak off-the-cuff on any subject that was proposed to him and occasionally performed feats of speech at the Panhellenic festivals such as the Olympic Games. He claimed some level of expertise in every subject known to man. However, if this sounds like a vain and shallow person, we should remember that much of our knowledge of Hippias comes from Plato, who disliked Hippias and everything he stood for, so we must take this negative picture with a grain of salt.

Finally, Antiochus of Syracuse wrote a history of Sicily around this time. This history would be of use to Thucydides in the later writing of his history. Antiochus' work does not survive to us, but it was praised in antiquity for its care and attention. Clearly the work of Herodotus was becoming influential all over the Greek world and people were beginning to take up the mantle of the Father of History and to continue the story, as we may hope people always do.

And thus the period draws to a close. The first phase of the Great Peloponnesian War had come and gone, with the plagues, sieges, massacres, triumphs and defeats that it entailed. Athens and Sparta were now locked in an uneasy peace and their multiple levels of alliances and un-kept treaties prevented any trust from building up on either side. In all cities, there seem to have been tensions between the oligarchies and the common people, and in most cities there appear to have been tensions between those who favoured peace and those who desired war. Even with the violence of the war, involving most states in the Greek world, culture still flourished, but the rise of the sophists were seen by some as a threat to the polis and to society as a whole. I will continue the story in the next blog.

Victory riding on her chariot

Primary Sources:
Euripides, Hippolytus, written 428BC
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, written 427BC
Gorgias, Encomium on Helen, written perhaps circa 427BC
Gorgias, Fragments including Defence of Palamedes, written perhaps circa 427BC
Euripides, Andromache, written circa 425BC 
Aristophanes, Acharnians, written 425BC
Diogenes of Apollonia, Fragments, written perhaps circa 425BC
Aristophanes, Knights, written 424BC
Euripides, Hecuba, written circa 424BC
Aristophanes, The Clouds, written 423BC
Euripides, Suppliant Women, written circa 423BC
Aristophanes, Peace, written 421BC 
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, written circa 400BC
Plato, Gorgias, written circa 380BC
Plato, Republic, written circa 380BC
Hippocratic Corpus, written circa 300BC
The Parian Chronicle, written circa 216BC
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, written circa 40BC
Plutarch, Life of Pericles, written circa AD100
Plutarch, Life of Nicias, written circa AD100
Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades, written circa AD100
Pausanias, Description of Greece, written circa AD150

Secondary Sources:
Historical eruptions on Mount Etna
Catalogue of Greek coins

Related Blog Posts:
Greece 439-430BC
439-420BC in the Near East
439-420BC in Rome
419-410BC in Greece