After the news of Sybota and the Corinthian seizure of Anactorium reached Athens, the chances of conflict were greatly increased, and the Athenians were compelled to take steps in case war should come. The policy of Pericles was to make Athens ready for war with Corinth but to avoid any step that might involve Sparta or make Athens guilty of a technical breach of the peace.
Perhaps Athens’ most vital resource in a war was money, so Pericles took steps to see that the Athenian treasury would be full if and when war came. We have the stone containing the inscription of two decrees offered on the same day by Callias, the son of Calliades, and passed by the Athenian assembly. Both deal with the reorganization of Athenian public finance. The first provides that since three thousand talents have been paid to Athena on the Acropolis, the debts owed to the other gods should now be repaid. The fund so accumulated should be administered by a new board of treasurers, like those of the treasurers of Athena, and kept likewise on the Acropolis. Any surplus should be used for dockyards and walls. The second decree provides that certain golden statues of Nike and the gateway to the Acropolis, the Propylaea, were to be completed, but after that, no sum exceeding ten thousand drachmas should be spent without a previous special vote of sanction in the assembly.1 The Athenians were battening down the hatches and preparing for trouble. It is clear that this was merely a prudent precautionary measure and not the product of panic, for major public works still under way were to be completed, but no important new projects would be allowed to drain the reserves without a special vote. At the same time, the reserve funds were collected under a unified jurisdiction and taken up to the safest place in the city, “where they would be safe from invading Peloponnesians and readily available if the state needed to use them.” 2
These decrees were passed in 434/3, at least some months before the Athenian clash with Corinth, even before the Athenians accepted the alliance with Corcyra.3 It is certainly possible that even before the summer of 433, Pericles “already saw a war coming from the Peloponnese,” 4 but such an assumption is not necessary. A prudent statesman, even one who hoped and expected to keep the peace, would want to take such precautions.
After the Battle of Sybota, however, prudence demanded more decisive measures. One of these measures was the expedition of Phormio to Acarnania. Amphilochian Argos was an early Greek settlement in barbarian territory on the east coast of the Ambracian Gulf. At some point in their history the Amphilochian Argives were hard-pressed, called upon their Ambracian neighbors to join them as fellow citizens (ξύυοικοι), and a union resulted.5 It must have been sometime in 433 or a little earlier that the Ambraciots, colonists of Corinth, took advantage of the presence of a powerful Corinthian military and naval force in the region to expel the original Argives and seize the city for themselves.6 The Argives, however, turned to their Acarnanian neighbors for protection, and together they did what the Corcyreans had done, turning to Athens for help. The Athenians responded by sending Phormio with thirty ships. From the Athenian point of view the expedition was a total success. The Athenians and their allies took Argos by storm and reduced the Ambracians to slavery. The Amphilochian Argives and Acarnanians resettled the city. The Acarnanians became firm allies of the Athenians, who had established a base from which they could trouble the Corinthians in their own sphere of influence.7 All this probably took place in the spring of 432 and was another measure to give Athens the most advantageous position possible when war came.8
It was probably about the same time that Diotimus took a fleet to answer the appeal of Naples.9 We do not know what he accomplished; it could not have been much. Probably the idea was to win allies from southern Italy for the coming war, or, at any rate, to get the lay of the land and remind the Italians of Athenian power and influence, absent from the region for almost fifteen years.
There can be no doubt that a similar Athenian action took place in the year 433/2 after the Athenian expedition had sailed for Corcyra.10 This was the acceptance of requests made by ambassadors from Rhegium and Leontini to renew their old treaties with Athens.11 The likelihood is that the Sicilians came to Athens after they heard of the Battle of Sybota. They knew that the Athenians would have to abandon their policy of hands off the west and probably hoped to get the advantage over their local enemies by using the immense power and prestige of Athens in their own behalf. The Athenians accepted because there was no longer any need to avoid offending Corinth and because they hoped to win friends in Sicily to help in the coming war.12
These measures were relatively insignificant compared with two steps taken by Athens in the months following the Battle of Sybota. The first of these, the extraordinary demands made on Potidaea, we will consider in the next chapter. At about the same time, however, as these demands, the Athenians passed a decree barring the Megarians from the ports of the Athenian Empire and the market of Athens.13 In spite of the fact that Thucydides did not treat it as an important factor in bringing on the war, and does not even include it among the aitiai that preceded it, the majority of ancient opinion regarded it as the main cause of the war. Most modern opinion does not go so far, but it is generally agreed that the Megarian Decree played a very significant role in the events leading to the war. For this reason it is important to try to resolve the many questions surrounding the decree. We are not certain of its precise contents, of whether there was only one decree, of when it was passed, of its purpose, or of why Thucydides treats it as casually as he does.
Thucydides reports only one decree, barring the Megarians from the ports of the empire and the market of Athens. But some scholars have thought his version represents in a single decree measures imposed in two steps, or at any rate gradually.14 Their arguments derive from two rather enigmatic pieces of information. The first comes from the Acharnians of Aristophanes and is typically difficult to interpret. Dicaepolis is compelled to try to justify the Spartan action in going to war against Athens. He, too, like the angry Acharnians, hates the Spartans. His vines, too, they have cut down:
But come, for only friends are here, why do we blame the Laconians? Some of our men (I do not say the state, mind you, I do not say the state), some vice-ridden wretches, men of no honor, false men, not even real citizens, kept denouncing Megara’s little coats; and if anyone ever saw a cucumber, a hare, a suckling pig, a clove of garlic, or a lump of salt, all were denounced as Megarian and confiscated.15
Next he tells of the theft by some drunken Athenians of a Megarian woman and the counter-theft by the Megarians of three prostitutes from the house of Aspasia. Pericles, in his fury,
Enacted laws which sounded like drinking songs, “That the Megarians must leave our land, our market, our sea and our continent.” Then, when the Megarians were slowly starving, they begged the Spartans to get the law of the three harlots withdrawn. We refused, though they asked us often. And from that came the clash of shields.16
Aristophanes appears to be describing two stages of Athenian economic action against Megara, the first in which imports from Megara seem to be forbidden, the second in which Aristophanes parodies the fuller embargo described by Thucydides. It would be rash, however, to accept his evidence at face value. If we take it seriously, we must be troubled by his assertion that the state had nothing to do with the earlier denunciations, but only private informers. This would be incompatible with a theory of two official decrees. If we regard his remarks about the state as ironical, we open a Pandora’s box of inscrutable ironies and even of comic inventions. The evidence of Aristophanes can not be used to establish the reality of an earlier and milder decree.
The second item comes from the Corinthian speech at Athens in 433, which we have already examined. One of the points on which the Corinthians insist is that war is not yet inevitable. The Athenians, they say, should not turn a possibility of war into a certainty by joining Corcyra and winning the hostility of Corinth. “Instead, it would be prudent to remove the suspicion that formerly existed on account of the Megarians.” 17 Some scholars have taken this to be a reference to an earlier Megarian decree,18 but this is quite unjustified. The force of the word proteron is clearly to show that “whatever the suspicion was, the occasion for it had passed away.” 19 The reference of the Corinthians is to the suspicion they had formed of Athenian aggressiveness from the aid Athens had given Megara in the First Peloponnesian War, the chief cause of Corinth’s “bitter hatred” for Athens.20 Their suggestion is that instead of confirming Corinthian suspicions by joining with Corcyra, another enemy of Corinth, they should wipe away the memory of an earlier affront to Corinthian interests, the aid to Megara. The statement, therefore, tells us nothing about any Athenian pressure on Megara before the decree described by Thucydides. Neither Aristophanes nor Thucydides provides sufficient evidence to make us believe that the Athenians took any economic measures against Megara before the passage of the decree barring Megarian commerce from Athens and her empire.21
The date of that decree has been the source of some controversy. Almost all scholars have placed it somewhere between the Battle of Sybota in late 433 and the meeting of the Spartan alliance to hear complaints against Athens in the summer of 432.22 The complaints of the Megarians to Sparta at the assembly in the summer of 432 is a firm terminus ante quern, and the vast majority of scholars has regarded the Battle of Sybota as a satisfactory earlier terminus, but not everyone has been convinced. Steup and Schwartz, on the basis of an erroneous interpretation of the passage in the Corinthian speech discussed above, believed that the decree was already in effect before 433.23 Brunt, however, who interprets the passage correctly, has put forward a more powerful challenge to the traditional view. In his opinion, we may infer that “the decree was not passed in 433 or 432, but some time earlier, that it was not classed by Thucydides even among the αίτίαι of the war simply because it was long antecedent to the war and because the long acquiescence of Sparta and her allies in its existence proved that it did not even occasion the war.” 24
His main reason for rejecting the usual date rests on the silence of Thucydides. If the Athenians had chosen the delicate period between 433 and 432 to make such a gesture as the decree implied, he argues, Thucydides could not have ignored it. We have already seen how dangerous it is to base a thesis on the often inexplicable omissions of Thucydides. We must grant, however, that this silence is particularly surprising and calls for explanation. There are many possible explanations for it, one of which we will offer later on. Brunt’s answer is by no means the only one possible, and as we shall see, there are serious objections to it. He seeks to bolster it by the analogy of the complaints made by Aegina.
At the meeting of Sparta’s allies in the summer of 432, the Aeginetans complained that “they were not autonomous as they should be according to the treaty.” 25 The restoration of Aeginetan autonomy became one of the Spartan demands on Athens, along with the demand for the raising of the siege of Potidea and the repeal of the Megarian Decree.26 Brunt assumes that Aegina had lost her autonomy in 457, that she did not regain it by the peace of 446/5, and still did not have it by 432. “Sparta had thus long given de facto recognition to Athens’ control of the government of Aegina but that did not prevent her in 432 from demanding the restoration of Aegina’s autonomy.” By analogy, Sparta might have allowed the Megarian Decree to stand for some time and then suddenly decided to deliver an ultimatum in 432.27
The analogy is not a bad one, but we may doubt whether it serves its intended purpose. We have no reason to believe that anyone regarded Aegina as having lost her autonomy in 457. To be sure, she lost her walls and ships and agreed to pay tribute, but this need not mean that she was no longer autonomous. As Brunt himself has pointed out, the term autonomy is far from precise, and we cannot know just what it meant to a particular city at any particular time. The point is that the Thirty Years’ Peace seems to have made no change in the status of Aegina, yet it regarded her as autonomous, even though she had been stripped of walls and fleet over a decade earlier and forced to pay tribute. In a polemical addendum to his article Brunt attacks the assumption made by the ATL that the Thirty Years’ Peace provided both that Aegina should be autonomous and pay tribute. He suggests that it may merely have called Aegina autonomous and listed her as an ally of Athens, saying nothing about tribute. Each side would then have interpreted the situation differently, the Athenians claiming the right to collect tribute, the Aeginetans paying under protest, the Spartans ignoring the situation until 432. This is surely a forced interpretation. It is better to accept the view of ATL that the tribute payments, which began at least as early as 454/3, were never interrupted and never questioned. Thus, if the Aeginetans in 432 claimed that the Athenians were interfering with their autonomy, the likelihood is that the interference was recent. We may well believe that it was one of the series of steps that followed the Battle of Sybota and aimed at preparing Athens and her empire in case a general war should break out.
Unfortunately, Thucydides typically tells us nothing about the nature of the Aeginetan complaint, its source, justification, or even its precise time of origin. The suggestion of the ATL is, of course, not certain, but it is at least plausible. “Possibly Athens installed a garrison; strategic control of Aegina was vital in case of war.” 28 Such an action is at least consistent with the Athenian expedition to Potidaea, which is firmly dated to the same year, and with the other security measures we have attempted to date to the period after Sybota. If it is proper to associate the complaints of the Aeginetans with those of the Megarians, and it may well be, then the Aeginetan case appears to strengthen the traditional dating of the Megarian Decree.
It is further true that although no reliable ancient source explicitly dates the decree, all, even Thucydides, speak of it only in close connection with the outbreak of the war. If it had existed for some time, we might expect to learn that fact explicitly from one of the many ancient authors who deal with the decree. The argument from silence can cut both ways. There is one final argument for the traditional date which is very persuasive. When the Megarians complain to Sparta about the Athenian embargo, they have many other complaints (ἔτερα οὐκ ὀλίγα διáΦρα), but the only one regarded as a breach of the peace (παρὰ τὰς σπουδάς) is the Megarian Decree. It is hard to deny the force of Adcock’s assertion: “If it was regarded as a breach of the Thirty Years’ Peace, the Megarians must have challenged it immediately upon its publication, and we may assume that it was passed immediately before the Megarian complaint.”29 The vast majority of scholars over a century of study have fixed on the period between Sybota and the summer of 432 for the issuing of the Megarian Decree. To be sure, arguments should be weighed and not counted, but both weight and numbers lead to an affirmation of the traditional view.
The commercial embargo against Megara, then, was enacted in 433/2. But Plutarch reports yet another Megarian decree, which requires our attention. First he tells of the measure we have already discussed. Then he describes the attempts of the Spartans to get Pericles to rescind the decree. Pericles refused, but according to Plutarch, he was sufficiently concerned to try to justify it. He proposed a decree ordering a herald to go to Megara and to Sparta to make plain that the embargo was imposed because the Megarians had worked sacred land. Anthemocritus was chosen herald and went out with the “reasonable and humane” justification of Athenian policy, but he never completed his task. He was killed, so it seems, through the agency of the Megarians. So much for sweet reasonableness. Now Charinus proposed another decree concerning the Megarians with the following provisions: Athens should be the enemy of Megara without treaty or negotiation; any Megarian found on Athenian soil should be put to death; the generals are to include in their annual oath the promise to invade Megara twice a year; Anthemocritus is to be buried near the Dipylon Gate.30
The story looks suspiciously aetiological, as though it were an attempt to explain the semiannual invasions of Megara that the Athenians in fact launched during the early years of the Archidamian War. Yet Plutarch appears to be citing records of real decrees, perhaps the collection of Craterus.31 We have seen, moreover, that it is a mistake merely to dismiss Plutarch when he tells us something omitted by Thucydides. It is, of course, impossible that the Athenians could have ordered any invasion of Megara, not to speak of two a year, before war had been declared, and this has led some scholars who accept the fact of the decree to place it after the attack on Plataea which opened the war.32 It is also possible that Plutarch or his source is misguided or confused.33 A further possibility is that Pericles did formulate an explanatory decree, a herald was sent and murdered, Charinus proposed a harsh decree, though certainly not containing all the provisions reported, but the decree failed of passage. Our investigation shows that there was certainly no Megarian Decree except for the commercial embargo proposed by Pericles before the outbreak of war, and probably none afterwards.
We are now free to consider why Pericles proposed a decree sometime between the fall of 433 and the summer of 432 that barred the Megarians from the market of Athens and the ports of her empire. Among the first to question Thucydides’ slight estimation of the importance of the Megarian Decree were the economic determinists. Cornford believed that it was an act of economic imperialism on the part of Athens, a step in the western policy that culminated in the Sicilian expedition. Since it is clear that Pericles opposed such a policy, Cornford supposes that he was forced to adopt it because of “thunder on the left” from the Piraeus party headed by someone like Cleon.34 Among the many flaws in this argument, the most telling is the assumption that Pericles yielded to pressure from the imperialists and was not sincerely in favor of the policy represented by the Megarian Decree. Who can believe that, can believe anything, and the theory has won few adherents in the sixty years since its invention.
Beloch, accepting tbe evidence of most of the ancients, but not of Thucydides, thought it was a device for bringing on war in order to solve Pericles’ domestic political troubles.35 Few have accepted this interpretation, but there is widespread agreement that when Pericles proposed the decree he already believed a general war to be inevitable and acted either to bring it on, or to give Athens a strategic advantage when it did come.36 The latter view assumes that Pericles expected economic pressure to force Megara out of the Peloponnesian alliance and under Athenian control. This would make Athens safe from invasion when war came. If that was the purpose of the decree, it failed totally, and as Brunt has shown, there is very little reason to believe that it could have succeeded. In peacetime it would have been very difficult for Athens to enforce the policy in the empire. Even during the war, when the Athenians blockaded Megara and invaded her territory twice annually, when her condition was very serious indeed, Megara did not give in. In spite of her suffering in the Archidamian War, Megara refused to accept the terms of the Peace of Nicias in 421.37 It looks as if the Athenian policy only stiffened the Megarians’ will to fight instead of causing them to yield to the Athenians. We may imagine that Pericles could have anticipated that mere economic blockade would not detach the Megarians from the Peloponnesian League.
It has also been suggested, however, that the force of the Megarian Decree was chiefly psychological. With it Pericles “threw down the gauntlet before his enemies; he wanted to show his enemies that Athens had not the slightest fear of them….” 38 Another version is somewhat more forceful, suggesting that it was intended precisely to make the war inevitable, to bring it on.39 In its most advanced form, this theory suggests that the decree was actually the first act of war: “The decree was not what vulgar tradition came to see in it, a cause of war; it was an operation of war, the first blow at the courage and will of Athens’ adversaries.” 40 Finally, one ingenious interpretation has combined this view with the strategic one discussed above. In this view, Pericles was prepared to accept either of two possible consequences of his policy. Either Megara would submit, “and the Athenian fleet, based at Pegae, would dominate the Gulf of Corinth and the route to the West, and that would be a victorious peace; or it would resist, and Sparta would this time be forced to abandon its waiting and that would mean war.” But it would be war under conditions very favorable to Athens; the Athenians would not have declared it, they were better prepared than their adversaries, and Pericles, who was getting old, was still on hand to lead them. Seen in this way, the decree was an act of defiance.41
These arguments are not implausible and are supported by an impressive weight of opinion, but they seem to suffer from a serious flaw. It is true that if Pericles hoped to bring the Megarians over to Athens, he chose a singularly ineffective weapon. It is likewise true that the weapon was not particularly well suited to the task of bringing on the general war. It is perfectly clear that the decree was only one of several factors that influenced the Spartan decision. Nor should we forget that the decision for war was not a foregone conclusion even after the decree was in effect. Archidamus possibly could have persuaded the Spartans to abstain from war. The two purposes suggested for the decree, moreover, are connected. If Pericles expected it to bring on a war with Sparta, he should have been sure to bring Megara over to the Athenian side and thus guarantee the security of Attica. To plan to bring on a war without taking steps to fight it on the most favorable terms is foolishness, and we have no reason to suspect Pericles of that kind of incompetence. If the majority is right and Pericles was already convinced that war with Sparta was inevitable, he should have launched an unexpected attack on Megara. If the surprise assault succeeded, so much the better. Even if it was anticipated, the Athenians could besiege the city and occupy the passes of Geranea, which would seal off Attica from Peloponnesian attack with equal effectiveness. To be sure, that would have been a breach of the treaty, but if Pericles thought the war inevitable, the moral damage Athens would suffer from the technical guilt would be amply compensated by the strategic gain. Whether or not this is a just estimate of the situation, it is at least clear that an attack on Megara was one of the options available to Pericles. It is usual to speak of the Megarian Decree as though it were the most extreme measure possible, but we may now see it as a mean between the two extremes of doing nothing whatever and launching an attack on Megara.
It is instructive to compare Pericles’ policy in regard to Megara with his treatment of the Corcyrean affair. On that occasion there were three options: to do nothing and suffer a strategic loss; to make an offensive and defensive alliance and so guarantee war with Corinth; or to choose the middle way and make a defensive alliance only in the hope that Corinth would see reason, refrain from altering the balance of power, and preserve the peace. Pericles characteristically chose the moderate policy because he did not yet consider war with Corinth inevitable. The Battle of Sybota and the Corinthian actions that followed made it clear that war had become very likely, but it was not yet clear that Sparta need be involved. As yet no interest vital to Sparta had been touched. The Spartans had indicated their disapproval of Corinthian policy; they had themselves stayed aloof and seem to have restrained their allies. The peace party seems to have had the situation well under control, and since 446/5, Pericles on the one hand and Archidamus on the other had preserved a satisfactory modus vivendi on the basis of live and let live. In the winter of 433/2, Pericles had good reason to hope that if Corinth insisted on provoking a conflict with Athens, it could be localized and Sparta kept out. We may well believe that Pericles’ policy in regard to Megara was shaped by his desire to avoid a war with Sparta which he did not yet regard as inevitable.
But if Pericles wanted to avoid war with Sparta, why did he take any action against Megara at all? The official pretext offered by the Athenians was that the Megarians had worked sacred land, had encroached illegally upon border lands unmarked by boundary stones, and harbored fugitive slaves.42 It is generally regarded, and rightly so, as merely one of those trumped-up justifications so easy for neighboring states to manufacture on demand.43 Such minor complaints, even if justified, hardly required such a powerful response. It is true that Athenian relations with Megara had not been good since the Megarians had rejoined the Peloponnesians in the former war. It is also possible that it was the Megarians who took a leading role in suggesting that the Peloponnesians help the Samians and Byzantines in their rebellion of 440. Even so, we need to explain why the Athenians acted when they did, and not earlier or later. The answer is to be found in the affair at Corcyra. Megara, as we have seen, took part in the Battle of Leucimne on the side of Corinth. This was no offense against Athens, but in 433, Athens was an ally of Corcyra. Megara, in spite of the evident Spartan refusal to involve the Peloponnesians, and in spite of the failure of other states to make a second appearance at the side of Corinth, nevertheless fought at Sybota.
This Megarian action presented Athens with a problem. It was, of course, a hostile act and could not fail to arouse resentment. Much more important, it was a vote for Corinthian policy and against Spartan policy in the councils of the Peloponnese. It was the plan and hope of the Corinthians to involve the Peloponnesian League in their quarrel with Athens, as they had done in the former war. The Spartans, on the other hand, were applying pressure on their allies to stay aloof. If the Megarian action went unpunished, the Athenians might reason, other states might join Corinth in the next encounter. This would be bad in itself, but might also make it more difficult for Sparta to stay at peace. There must have been men at Athens who advocated no action at all. There must have been others who urged an immediate attack on Megara. Pericles once again followed the middle course, not because of an abstract liking for moderation, but because of his estimate of the situation. War with Corinth could not be avoided if Corinth held to her policy, but war with Sparta could. The policy to be followed should hurt the Megarians and teach them and other potential enemies how costly such enmity must be. At the same time, however, it must not include a technical breach of the peace or any other situation that would force Sparta to fight. The Megarian Decree seemed an admirable compromise.
Some have argued that the decree was in fact a breach of the peace.44 In doing so they accept the claim of the Megarians themselves, who complain to the Spartans that the decree is in violation of the treaty of 446/5. An assertion made under such conditions would in itself be more than a little suspicious, but we have even better reasons to doubt its accuracy. In a speech to the Athenians, Pericles flatly denied the Megarian claim, asserting that nothing in the treaty forbade an action like the decree.45 It is altogether unbelievable that Pericles should not tell the truth on that occasion. His political enemies were present, and nothing could have been more convenient for them than to catch Pericles in a lie about a simple matter of fact.46 It is, moreover, quite impossible to think that the treaty could have guaranteed free trade to all signatories. We have several treaties from the fifth century, but none contains such a provision. Let us also remember that Athens was doing nothing more than, passing a trade regulation effective in her own territory and that of her allies. Pericles ridiculed the demand the Spartans would later make that the Athenians repeal the decree. He agreed to repeal it if the Spartans would also repeal their long-standing law barring foreigners from their territory. His point was that both were internal matters and not subject to negotiation. His analogy was tendentious and far from exact, but it makes clear that any clause preventing each state from controlling its own trade would be absurd in the treaty of 446/5. As Völkl points out, that treaty was neither a Versailles nor a St. Germain.47
We may be sure, then, that the Megarian Decree was not a technical breach of the peace. If we have conjectured correctly that the herald Anthemocritus really was sent to Megara and Sparta with a soft answer to justify the Athenian action, we may see in his mission a further attempt by Pericles to reassure the Spartans. The action he regarded as necessary and not subject to retraction, but he seems to have been eager to make it clear that it did not imply a new Athenian policy of aggression. The murder of the herald, allegedly by the Megarians, must have strengthened the hands of the aggressive faction in Athens, who tried to bring on an immediate attack against Megara through some form of the Charinus Decree. If, however, our reconstruction is sound, Pericles opposed the harsh proposal and defeated it, allowing nevertheless a heroic burial for Anthemocritus. He held to his moderate policy of firmness toward Corinth and her allies, and restraint and conciliation toward Sparta.
No doubt Pericles’ confidence in his ability to remain on good terms with the Spartans rested on his long experience, his knowledge of the political situation in Sparta, and his personal associations with important Spartans. There was a Spartan called Pericleidas who led a Spartan embassy that came to Athens for help during the famous helot rebellion after the great earthquake.48 He is very likely the father of Athenaeus, son of Pericleidas, who signed the Peace of Nicias on Sparta’s behalf in 421.49 The significance of the names is not to be ignored any more than is Cimon’s decision to name his son Lacedaemonius.50 The names of Pericleidas and his son indicate a friendship with Athens, as do the missions each is asked to perform. It is obvious that the Spartans would only send a man to ask for Athenian help in an emergency who was very much persona grata. It is likewise clear that the Spartans who signed the Peace of Nicias were in favor of a policy of peace with Athens. Perhaps it is not too much to suppose that the family of Pericleidas chose that name for him because of some special relationship they may have had with the family of Pericles.
However that may be, we know with certainty that Pericles had very close relations with King Archidamus. Their relationship was the one called xenia, guest-friendship, the old Homeric association based on mutual hospitality.51 Their friendship was so close and so well known as to cause Pericles serious embarrassment when war came. Archidamus led the Spartan invasion of Attica, and Pericles was very much afraid that his friend would bypass his fields while destroying tbose of other Athenians, “either of his own accord as a favor to Pericles, or at the command of the Spartans in order to create a prejudice against him.”52 As a result, Pericles was forced to make a public statement. He admitted his friendship with Archidamus but denied that it was made to the harm of the state. Then he turned over his private property to the state, asking that “no suspicion should fall on him because of it.”53
With such associations among influential Spartans, Pericles must have been well informed as to the state of Spartan opinion and may have hoped, with reason, that war could be avoided, for his friends in the peace party had done a fine job of restraining Sparta and her allies since the Epidamnian crisis first threatened the stability of Greece. He chose to employ only economic sanctions against IVIegara to strengthen the hands of his Spartan friends and to avoid the appearance of Athenian aggression. In spite of the excellence of his information and the caution of his policy, the event shows that Pericles miscalculated. It is true that Pericles was technically correct, and no clause in the treaty was violated by the Megarian Decree. But in practice it amounted almost to an act of war against a member of the Spartan alliance. No doubt Pericles counted on a friendly Spartan government to put a different interpretation on it, and so it would have, had the friends of Pericles remained in control of the situation. But the issuance of the Megarian Decree gave a powerful weapon to those Spartans who had always opposed the existence of the Athenian Empire and the policy of peaceful coexistence with Athens. The Megarian Decree, unlike any other Athenian action since 446/5, could be made to appear an act of aggression against a Peloponnesian state. It would be of no use to point out that Athens had not invaded the Megarid and was making a carefully limited response to a specific provocation. The fact remained that Pericles, in raising his diplomatic bid in an attempt to localize the coming war with Corinth, frightened many Spartans and drastically changed the political situation in Sparta.
Perhaps the decade of secure control he had exercised in Athens dulled his keen understanding of the vagaries of domestic politics; perhaps he overestimated the political power of his friends; perhaps, as most statesmen do at one time or another, he believed what he wanted to believe. It is not impossible, moreover, that political pressure from aggressive Athenians helped him decide against a policy of doing nothing in regard to Megara. The decision and the responsibility, however, were his, for he resisted their more extreme demands and chose a policy that suited him. If we have judged his intentions rightly, it was a blunder. The Megarian Decree put the Spartan war party into power and by so doing made a general war more likely. Seen in this light, it was a very important factor in bringing on the war, and there is no way to deny that Thucydides has slighted it.
Thucydides’ neglect of the importance of the Megarian Decree has troubled all intelligent students of Thucydides and of the causes of the war. The explanations offered have been many and various: the purpose of the decree was economic and Thucydides did not understand economic factors in history; Pericles was responsible for the decree that brought on the disastrous war, so Thucydides suppressed its importance to protect the statesman he most admired; the insignificance of the decree in the Thucydidean account is evidence that Thucydides changed his mind about the causes of the war while writing and never finished the parts he planned to add in order to make his final opinion clear; Thucydides records only official policies, and since the Megarian Decree was a policy of the Piraeus party forced upon an unwilling Pericles, Thucydides does not report it; Thucydides reports only effective policies, and the Megarian policy was not effective. One explanation we have already examined disposes of the problem by suggesting that Thucydides does not treat the Megarian Decree as an important cause of the war because it was put in effect well before the final crisis.54 Most of these have been amply refuted, while some hardly require refutation. None has won wide acceptance. Probably there will never be general agreement on this question, for it goes to the very root of the Thucydidean problem. It involves the question of how and when he composed his history, what were his methods, his intentions, and his philosophical preconceptions, and a thorough examination of these matters is beyond our present intention and competence. Here it is possible only to make a tentative suggestion arising from a comparison with Thucydides’ treatment of the Corcyrean debate at Athens.
On that occasion, as we have seen, Thucydides omits information that he surely had and which we would very much like to have. He speaks of Corinthians, Corcyreans, and Athenians, never of individuals or political groups. In the case of the Athenians, at least, we know from Thucydides’ own account and from independent evidence that there was an important division in Athens over what action to take, and the decision almost went the other way. There could be no question of deliberate concealment on the part of Thucydides, for all his readers knew the facts and were well aware of the position taken by Pericles. The treatment of the Megarian Decree is very similar. We would like to know who proposed it, who opposed it, what were the arguments pro and con, when precisely it was passed, and what its purposes were. Thucydides knew all this but chose not to tell. Once again there can be no question of concealment. Everyone knew that Pericles had proposed the decree; Thucydides himself makes it clear that he supported it fiercely. The common opinion was that Pericles was responsible for causing the war precisely because he had proposed the decree and refused to withdraw it. That view was at least as old as the presentation of Aristophanes’ Acharnians at the Lenaean Dionysia of 425. By 391, Andocides could coolly mention in passing that the Athenians had gone to war in 431 “because of the Megarians.”55
It is precisely the prevalence of this interpretation, we may suspect, that explains Thucydides treatment of the Megarian Decree. As Meyer has shrewdly pointed out, the Thucydidean account of the causes of the war is a “latent polemic” against the popular interpretation.56 Thucydides was persuaded that the war was inevitable from the time Athens became an imperial power. He was convinced that forces were at work beyond the control of individuals. The war would eventually have come whatever the internal political conditions in each state and regardless of which leaders supported which policies. Although he believed this was generally true, it was especially important to emphasize it in the case of Athens, for there the vulgar view had taken hold that one man, Pericles, had brought on the war by rigid adherence to a single policy, the affirmation of the Megarian Decree. To his mind that interpretation was altogether wrong. The decree was really a measure in the preliminary maneuverings of a war that was already determined, if not in progress. Thus, his omission of names and an account of internal politics was deliberate: he omitted them because he was profoundly convinced that they were irrelevant. He knew that his readers would not only be aware of the omissions, but they would be surprised and perhaps shocked by them as well. The slight importance he allotted to the decree was a most artistic way of making the point of its insignificance. His intelligent readers would not miss that point.
We, of course, are free to disagree with Thucydides’ estimate, especially if we are not fully persuaded of the war’s inevitability. In our view it may appear to be one of several steps Pericles took to prepare Athens for the approaching war with Corinth. The Callias Decrees, the treaties with Rhegium and Leontini, the expedition of Phormio to Acamania, possibly also the journey of Diotimus to Naples, the demands on Potidea, as we shall see, are all measures that might be taken by an Athenian statesman preparing for war with Corinth but careful to avoid an offense against Sparta or her other Peloponnesian allies. The Megarian Decree is part of the same policy, but it was a mistake, for it could be made to appear as an unprovoked attack against a Peloponnesian ally and so a threat to Sparta’s position of leadership in the Peloponnese.
1 I follow the text in ATL, II, 46–47 (D1 and D2) where a useful bibliography may also be found.
2 J. B. Bury, A History of Greece, third edition, revised by Russell Meiggs (London, 1952), 396A.
3 For the date of the decrees, see ATL, III, 326ff. and Wade-Gery and Meritt, Hesperia, XXVI (1957), 163ff., especially 184–187. I am particularly grateful to Professor Meritt for making it clear to me why the 434/3 date is to be accepted.
4 The quotation is one of the chronologically vague reports given by Plutarch (Per. 8). Meyer (Forschungen, II, 324) suggests that the words were spoken some time in 435 and 434, “Bald nach dem Scheitern der Friedensvermittlung, während der Rüstungen der Korinther….”
5 2. 68. 2–5.
6 For a discussion of the date of this event and the expedition of Phormio that resulted, see Appendix G, pp. 384–385.
7 2. 68. 6–9.
8 I adopt the date suggested by Wade-Gery (Essays, 253–4 and n. 5 on 253). I am convinced that a date between 445 and 443 is ruled out by the failure of the Corinthians to complain about the enslavement of Corinthian colonists by Athenians. If this had happened since the Thirty Years’ Peace, the Corinthians could not have failed to mention it in their speech at Athens. A date in the 450’s is possible, but less likely than one in the period suggested here. Wade-Gery’s argument is very persuasive: “I am convinced that Phormio made it [the expedition] in the spring of 432, and that the previous seizure of Argos (Thuc. 2. 68. 6) is parallel to the seizure of Anactorion (1. 55. 1), two attempts by Korinth, on the morrow of Sybota, to secure at least the Ambrakiot Gulf” (253, n. 5). The main argument, far from powerful, against such a date is the silence of Thucydides. To quote Wade-Gery again: “Thucydides’ narrative of near-western events is not continuous after the battle of Sybota; and Phormion had the time for such action before he was sent to Potidaia.”
9 See Appendix G, pp. 384–385.
10 Dittenberger (SIG [4th ed.; 1960], No. 70, 89) points out that since the expedition to Corcyra was sent out in the first prytany of 433/2, when Aiantis held the prytany, and the treaties with Rhegium and Leontini were renewed during the prytany of Acamantis, “Intelligimus igitur, turn demum, cum iam Atheniensium classis Corcyram missa esset, Leontinorum et Reginorum legatos Athenas venisse.” The ambassadors, of course, may have come as early as September 433 or as late as July 432, but in any case, their arrival must be placed after Sybota.
11 IG, I2, 51 and 52 = Tod 57 and 58. For the date of the original treaties, see above, p. 155, n. 3.
12 ATL, III, 320 and n. 84.
13 The sources for the Megarian Decree are Thuc. 1. 67. 4; 1. 139. 1–2; Aristoph. Acharnians, 515ff. with scholia to 527 and 532; Aristoph. Peace 603 ff. with scholia to 246, 605 and 609; Andocides 3. 8; Diod. 12. 39. 4; Plut. Per. 29ff.; Aristodemus 16 = FGrH, IIA, No. 104.
14 Busolt (GG, III: 2, 810–811) believes that a ban on the importation of Megarian goods into Attica was enacted some time before the summer of 433, that is, before the treaty with Corcyra. Later, in the winter of 433/2, he believes that the full decree cited above was passed (p. 814). A similar, but not identical, view is held by F. A. Lepper (JHS, LXXXII [1962], 25–55, especially 51–55). He suggests that the decree cited by Thucydides may have been a late step in a gradual “cold war” that Athens had been waging against Megara for some years.
15 515–522.
16 532–539.
17 1. 42. 2…. τῆς δὲ ὑπαρχούσης πρό τερου διὰ Mεϒαρέας ὑποψίας σῶϕρου ύϕελειυ μᾶλλου
18 E.g., Classen, 140; Busolt, GG, III: 2, 811–812.
19 Brunt, AJP, LXXII (1951), 271, n. 9. Lepper (JHS, LXXXII [1962], 54) suggests an alternative interpretation of the passage: “ὑπαρχούσης πρότερου need not mean, as Brunt thought, ‘which existed formerly (and is now over)’; it could (though certainly not so easily) mean ‘which was in existence earlier (before the start of the Kerkyra affair) and still exists’….” Even Lepper does not insist that this interpretation is preferable to the more obvious one, arguing merely that it cannot be altogether rejected. To me, Brunt’s interpretation seems the only one possible.
20 Thuc. 1. 103. 4.
21 For similar arguments, with which I concur, see Adcock, CAH, V, 476–9.
22 Nissen (Historische Zeitschrift, N.F., XXVII [1889], 409) places it in August or September 432, one or two months before the assembly at Sparta; Busolt (GG, III: 2, 814 and n. 4) puts it in the winter of 433/2. On page 811, n. 1, he gives a valuable and thorough summary of opinion up to his time. Bury (History of Greece, 394) chooses the autumn of 432; Beloch (GG2, II: 1, 293, n. 1) puts it shortly before the Spartan assembly. Meyer (Forschungen, II, 307) puts it in the spring of 432, after the beginning of the siege of Potidea. Adcock (CAH, V, 477) puts it in the summer of 432, immediately after the departure of the Athenian expedition to besiege Potidea. Glotz and Cohen (HG, 618–619) puts it about the same time, as does Bengston, (GG, 219). Hammond (History of Greece, 320) puts the decree before the affair at Potidea.
23 Classen, I, 140; Eduard Schwartz, Das Geschichtswerk des Thukydides, reprinted from 1929 edition (Hildesheim, 1960), 123, n. 2.
24 AJP, LXXII (1951), 271.
25 1. 67. 2.
26 1. 140. 3.
27 Brunt, op. cit., 272.
28 The authors of ATL also speculate that the fact that Aegina paid only nine of the fourteen talents in the spring of 432 instead of her former thirty may have been the cause of the Athenian action. Brunt is quite right to point out that the gaps in the tribute lists make it less than certain that Aegina was still expected to pay thirty talents after 440/39 or that the low payments must mean that Aegina was in default. H. B. Mattingly (Historia, XVI, [1967], 105) has tried to connect the inscription IG, I2, 18 with Athenian measures taken against Aegina at this time. The inscription appears to record Athenian regulations for Aegina, but it is very fragmentary and cannot be dated on the basis of internal evidence. Orthodox epigraphers place it somewhere between 457 and 445 B.C. Mattingly, in accordance with his general revision of the dates of Athenian inscriptions, thinks a date in the late 430’s possible and suggests that the inscription belongs to the year 432, soon after the Megarian Decree: “I would suggest that assurances were given to the Aeginetan envoys about Athenian intentions. The blockade was not directed against Aegina, but was designed solely to damage Megara. Athens was anxious to maintain the Thirty Years’ Peace and to deal with Aegina on the basis of the legal agreements between the two cities (συμβολαί). But this depended upon Aegina’s refraining from behavior or attitudes prejudicial to Athenian interests. If Aegina were guilty of anything of the sort, Athens would not hesitate to use its fleet against the island” (pp. 4–5). This is an ingenious reconstruction of a puzzling fragment, but the evidence appears too slim to support so much weight. My own view is that the Athenian action, whatever it was, was motivated by strategic considerations, not financial ones.
29 CAH, V, 477.
30 Plut. Per. 30.
31 W. R. Connor, AJP, LXXXIII (1962), 226.
32 E.g., Busolt, GG, III: 2, 814, n. 4; Beloch (GG2, II: 1, 293, n. 1) accepts the same date for the Charinus Decree, but altogether rejects the murder of Anthemocritus as having anything to do with it.
33 L. Holzapfel (Untersuchungen über die Darstellung der griechischen Geschichte [Leipzig, 1879], 176–86) argued that the Charinus Decree was spurious, the result of contamination of the real decree by some references in Aristophanes as well as an attempt to explain the semiannual invasions. Connor (loc. cit.) has given the argument a new twist by trying to show that Plutarch confused events of the fourth century with the ones we are considering here. His argument is far better supported than Holzapfel’s, but as he himself recognizes, it is not conclusive.
34 F. M. Cornford, Thucydides, 25–38.
35 GG2, II: 1, 292; Attische Politik, 21–22.
36 Among those who adhere to this view in one form or another are Busolt (GG, III: 2, 814); Meyer (Forschungen, 307 and GdA, IV: 2, 15–17); Bury (History of Greece, 394); Adcock (CAH, V, 186–7); Glotz and Cohen (HG, II, 618–19); De Sanctis (Pericle, 232–233 and SdG, II, 265; ATL, III, 320).
37 Brunt, op. cit., 276–277.
38 Meyer, Forschungen, II, 307.
39 De Sanctis, SdG, II, 265.
40 Adcock, CAH, V, 186.
41 Glotz and Cohen, HG, II, 618–619.
42 1. 39. 2.
43 I have seen only one argument in favor of the reality of these claims (Karl Völkl, Rheinische Museum, XCIV [1951], 330–336.). Völkl believes that the Megarians really committed the alleged offenses, prompted by the Corinthians, who hoped to provoke Athens to war in this way. This is not persuasive, but Völkl deserves credit for recognizing that the decree was a moderate rather than extreme measure.
44 Nissen, Historische Zeitschrift, N.F., XXVII (1889), 413; Meyer, Forschungen, II, 303; Beloch, GG2, II: 1, 293.
45 1. 144.2.
46 As Adcock put it, “Pericles declared that this decree was not a violation of the Thirty Years’ Peace, and we may accept his testimony against that of the aggrieved Megarians” (CAH, V, 186). To the same effect, see also Völkl, op. cit, 332–333, and H. Nesselhauf, Hermes, LXIX (1934), 289.
47 Völkl, op. cit., 333.
48 Plut. Cim. 16. 8; Aristoph. Lysistrata 1137ff.
49 4. 119.
50 V. Ehrenberg, PW, XIX, s.v. “Pericleides,” 747–748.
51 Thuc. 2. 13. 1–2; Plut. Per. 33. 2.
52 2. 13. 1.
53 2. 13.2.
54 The economic theory is implicit in the work of Cornford and often appears, unacknowledged, elsewhere, especially in popular treatments. The chief proponent of the view that Thucydides shielded Pericles, apart from Beloch, is Eduard Meyer (Forschungen II, 307). The notion that Thucydides changed his mind and did not finish his revision is set forth by Schwartz, op. cit., 92–101 and 117–128. Gomme (Hist. Comm., I, 465–467) does not accept Schwartz’s theory of a change of mind but believes the work is unfinished. The official policy theory belongs to Cornford (25–38). The effective policy theory is set forth by J. B. Bury in The Ancient Greek Historians (paper edition; New York, 1958), 91–101. The early date idea is put forth by P. A. Brunt, AJP, LXXII (1951).
55 3. 8.
56 Forschungen, II, 307.