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2 results

  • 9 - The Archidamian War

  • Edited by David M. Lewis, John Boardman, J. K. Davies, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 March 1992, pp 370-432

  • Summary

    Open warfare between Athens and the Peloponnesian League began in 431. Thucydides oscillates between two beginnings of the war, the Theban attack on Plataea in the spring and the Spartan invasion of Attica eighty days later. Archidamus analysis of the strengths of the Athenian position is hardly different from that of Pericles. During the Archidamian War there were five invasions, only hampered by Athenian cavalry who kept the light-armed away from the city itself. The longest invasion, in 430, lasted forty days, the shortest, in 425, lasted fifteen days. The invasions of 430 and 427 were said to be particularly damaging. National characters and institutions played their part in the way in which war policies were formed. The name of Plataea meant much for Spartan sentiment, and Archidamus made some attempt at a settlement on the basis of a Plataean return to neutrality.

  • 10 - The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition

  • Edited by David M. Lewis, John Boardman, J. K. Davies, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 March 1992, pp 433-463

  • Summary

    Argos had done well out of her neutrality in the Archidamian War, and the prospect of leadership in a new alliance appealed to a people conscious of their heroic past. Mantinean democracy was a further bond with Argos. Many historians have blamed Athens for not supporting her Peloponnesian allies with larger forces in 418, attributing this to indecision between the policies of Nicias and Alcibiades. Thucydides comments on the fact that Sparta did not treat an Athenian raid from Pylos in summer 416, which took much booty, as releasing them from the Peace of Nicias. Athens' interest in the west was not new. It had been clear to Thucydides, still in Athens, that the expedition of 427 was to explore the possibility of gaining control over all Sicily, and the generals who assented to the Peace of Gela had been punished for not pursuing that objective more resolutely.