In 416 the popular assembly in democratic Athens approved a much debated proposal to dispatch a massive military force against the Sicilian Greek powerhouse of Syracuse – another democratic state – that resulted in an Athenian defeat of colossal proportions. Not unexpectedly perhaps, the same voters later turned on those who led them into this disaster, as if, Thucydides ironically remarks (8.1), they had not voted for the expedition in the first place. With little doubt, the Sicilian expedition demonstrates the intersection of democracy and war, something the contemporary world witnessed in 2003 when the United States invaded Iraq.1 Though separated by millennia, events in Athens and Washington DC argue for the importance of understanding the relationship between democracy and war.
In the last twenty years, scholars have explored these issues, asking questions such as, are democracies less inclined to war than other political systems? Are they as willing to go to war with other democracies as they are with non-democratic states?2 More importantly perhaps, who decides who fights? How “democratic” is the loss of life? A popular perception is that democracies are beneficent, but as the late Tony Judt (2010) notes, being democratic is no guarantee for good behavior. Discussion of democracy’s origins and structures, whether in Athens or elsewhere, are not at issue here: the focus instead is on democracy’s experience with war and war’s impact on democracy. It is sufficient to accept the emergence of Athenian democracy c. 500, and like that of the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, slowly maturing for decades. Other Greek states, most notably Corcyra and Syracuse, also shared in the democratic experiment.3 But democracies are not all alike and they are, like all things human, imperfect: Thucydides tells that Athens was a democracy in name but in reality the rule of one man, Pericles (2.65.9). His cynical assessment finds echoes in Ronald Syme’s view (1939: 7) that oligarchy lurks behind any government; we might add that, as some in the United States argue today, lobbyists constitute a fourth branch of democratic government and that a state defended by one percent of its population is not very democratic.
While democracy may be many-faced, war has but one. Some it kills at once, others slowly die from physical and psychic trauma. The Greeks knew these things well: Homer left no doubt about the brutal realities of defeat – vengeance for the deaths of friends, war’s ravaging of the fighter’s psyche, enslavement and killing of the helpless. The philosopher Heraclitus (c. 500) observed that “war is the father of all things.” In her penetrating essay from the early days of World War II, “The Iliad, Poem of Might,” Simone Weil observed that “the human soul never ceases to be modified by its encounter with might” (1977: 153). While her concern is war’s effects on soldiers and non-combatants, her remarks apply equally to those who lead or follow, to all those touched by war. I begin briefly with the Persian Wars, looking closely at Marathon where the youthful Athenian democracy triumphed over the far greater power of Persia. War’s impact on this emerging democratic community set the course for more than 150 years, until in 322 the representatives of another king, this time a Macedonian, crushed Athenian power for all time at the naval battle of Abydos.4 The clash of democrats and kings will define issues that will be expanded by looking closely at institutional and personal dimensions of war and democracy, and concluding with an excursus on war and democracy outside Athens.
The Persian conquest of the Lydian kingdom (547/6) brought the submission of the Ionian Greeks in its wake, and so began an era of Greek-Persian exchange and confrontation, lasting two hundred years and ending with Alexander’s conquest of Persia in 331. While many Greeks later acquired a distaste for the Great King’s court rituals, especially the despised proskynēsis (prostration), his wealth provided a powerful incentive for accommodation. Many Greeks entered Persian employment as soldiers, bureaucrats, or doctors. The Persian state may well have influenced Greek polities as different as the Macedonian kingdom and the Athenian democracy. Still, the Persians and their King remained objects of contempt, a force to challenge when it could not be used.5
The greatest challenge was what we today call the Great Persian War of 490–478, and the first battle in that conflict – Marathon – is exemplary, revealing the challenge and response of the emerging Athenian democracy to the threat posed by Darius I. Annoyed by Athenian interference in Ionia, Darius decided to punish Athens and sent an expeditionary force to that end across the Aegean. Learning of the threat, the Athenians responded: their generals called on other Greeks for support (Hdt. 6.105.1), while in a meeting of the assembly they debated what action to take. Miltiades, a general experienced in the Persian way of war, proposed that all able-bodied men assemble with rations and march out to meet the invaders, and that a number of slaves be freed to add to their numbers. The Athenians approved Miltiades’ measure which became a by-word for prompt action (Aristotle, Rhetoric 411 a 10; see also Pausanias 7.15.7; scholion on Demosthenes 19.303 Dindorf = 19.536 Dilts).
The decision to free slaves and send them into battle has sparked debate, as there were free but poor Athenians, the thetes, who could have been pressed into service as easily.6 What explains their absence from the front? Peter Hunt has suggested that war was the prerogative of the elites who feared that such an opportunity would strengthen thetic political ambitions and weaken the authority of the privileged classes. Elites, on the other hand, would provide the necessary slaves for impending battle and these would have little hope of winning political recognition.7
But were the thetes shunned, overlooked in favor of slaves all for the sake of political partisanship? This apparently sensible argument overlooks what other defensive measures the Athenians surely took. With the bulk of the citizen army away, Athens lay undefended, leaving women, children, and the old vulnerable. In fact they were not abandoned to their fates. Responsibility for their defense and the city was surely entrusted to those too old or young to serve in the regular army and to the thetes, some of whom had perhaps sailed in the small fleet to the relief of Ionia only eight years before (498). That force, commanded by Melanthius, a distinguished Athenian, had consisted of twenty ships, perhaps some two thousand men.8 An unknown number of slaves probably had served as oarsmen on those ships, and did so again now as the city faced the Persian threat. But Athenian citizens surely served too: thetes pulling oars alongside slaves and elite Athenians who sailed their own ships or those provided by the community through the naucraric system.9 The army’s crushing victory at Marathon, however, followed by its rapid return to Athens (Hdt. 6.116), eclipsed the role of Athens’ nascent fleet and its sailors, creating the legend of the “Marathon-fighters” that was still bantered about by Aristophanes seventy years later (for example, in Acharnians 181). Yet within ten years, and with victories at Artemisium, Salamis, and Mycale (480/79), the Athenian fleet secured for the mass of Athenians a louder voice in the now triumphant democracy. That voice would grow even louder as Athens acquired more power and with it an empire.
The fleet that defeated the Persian armada of Xerxes numbered 170 ships, the result of a silver strike in Laurium that the Athenians, persuaded by Themistocles, invested in warships rather than citizen cash dividends.10 So began a period of Athenian naval power that dominated the Aegean world and was ended only by the greater power of Macedon. To organize, equip, and man such a fleet required the democracy to replace the older and less sophisticated naucraric system. In its place emerged the “trierarchy,” so-called from the commander of the trireme (trierarchos). This became one of the chief liturgies (a community requirement imposing on the wealthy the duty to perform a public service) that an affluent Athenian would be obliged to assume – responsibility for equipping a warship, paying its crew, and serving as the ship’s captain.11 Later, as costs and losses mounted in the Peloponnesian War, two men (syntrierachs) shared the costs and duties of outfitting one ship. By the mid-fourth century, the wealthiest 1200 Athenians were organized into twenty groups called symmories to assume these costs and obligations. These administrative changes, made necessary by wartime demands and rising costs, themselves reveal changes in the domestic economy: where once some two hundred wealthy Athenians could fund the fleet, now six times that number were required.12
Battling the Persians shaped the Athenian community into the next century. Once the Spartans abandoned the anti-Persian coalition (c. 477), the Athenians found opportunities they could not refuse: prospects of leadership that fueled imperial expansion, and opportunities for domestic advantage, both political and economic. Wartime needs led to the trierarchy; while it imposed financial obligations on affluent Athenians it also provided opportunities, as Thucydides makes clear, for less affluent Athenians to imagine better lives through wartime service (6.24.3). Many poorer citizens earned a living from service aboard warships, pulling the oars: once on land many worked in the shipyards maintaining those same ships (Garland 1987: 68–72). Not only did these poorer Athenians profit from war, so too did their somewhat more prosperous hoplite brothers-in-arms. Hoplites of the Peloponnesian War era evidently received daily pay and allowances ranging from two to four obols, with an additional allotment for an attendant (surely a luxury for poorer hoplites, as those recruited from the thetic census). But the figures are debated and a fragment of Theopompus the Comic implies that service for poorer citizens was more onerous.13 Poorer citizens, both thetes and less affluent hoplites, probably provided the colonists who profited from wartime confiscations of land. In 427, for example, some 2700 Athenians settled as cleruchs (military colonists now forming a garrison) on land taken from the Mytilenians (Thuc. 3.50.2, with Hornblower 1991–2008: 2. 440–1 for detailed discussion); in 415 another 500 were settled on Melos (Thuc. 5.116.4). While few sailors and soldiers became rich from military service, hopes of some tangible reward, either loot or land, brightened prospects of service. Such hopes, for non-elites and elites alike, perhaps encouraged the harsh policies Athenians dealt to communities that fell under their domination.
Successful wartime leadership assures the survival of any society. Those who lead face a hard reality: the deaths of those who follow, defeat in battle. Generals in democratic wartime societies, as in democratic Athens, face these and more: popular aspirations and expectations, practical challenges in leading those who elected them. In the aftermath of the Cleisthenic reforms in Athens, the office of general (stratēgos) was created, essentially displacing the older polemarch (polemarchos), or “war-chief,” an associate aristocratic leader of earlier times.14 Popularly elected and without restrictions on repetition, holding the office offered an ambitious man ample opportunity to exercise extensive influence and authority. Some 1770 men could have won election to the stratēgia in Athens’ classical era, 499–498 to 322–321; in reality, surviving sources preserve only 497 names and a number of these are men elected multiple times.15 Some generals exploited the opportunities offered them: in the 440s and 430s, Pericles dominated Athens for fifteen consecutive years as general (Thuc. 2.65.10), while in the fourth century Phocion held the office a record forty-five times (Plutarch, Phocion 8.2).
Athenian generals occupied a prominent place in society. Their headquarters stood in the agora and they could summon meetings of the assembly; they participated in the performance of state rituals in the theater and at least once awarded prizes of victory.16 A number were probably driven by hopes of Homeric glories – Tolmides and Demosthenes, but also the veteran Nicomachides who lost an election to the businessman Antisthenes (probably c. 370s: Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.4.1, with Develin 1989: 291), illustrate these military-minded generals. Others, men like Themistocles, Pericles, and Phocion, recognized the political influence the stratēgia offered; their accomplishments are only slightly more distinguished than those of Conon, who revived Athens after the Peloponnesian War, and his son Timotheus.17 Such choices were personal: the office of general and its public visibility offered leadership potential to one driven and ambitious enough to take it. Personal too were decisions to seek enrichment at the public’s expense and more than a few generals succumbed to this temptation, or suffered political prosecution on trumped-up charges of embezzlement and corruption.18
The Athenian democracy, perennially worried about tyrants and loss of power, featured internal fail safes that monitored generals, ranging from an end of office scrutiny (euthyna) to monthly reviews by the assembly (ekklēsia), and failure to win approval would bring deposition and prosecution. Failure on the field of battle, failure to meet or satisfy the expectations of the demos, often resulted in fines. Not even Pericles, the greatest of all democratic leaders, or Phormio, a dashing naval commander, escaped such penalties. But worse things could happen: exile, as Pythodorus, Sophocles, and Thucydides suffered (Thuc. 4.65.3; 5.26.5); political murder, as in the killing of the “Arginusae six” (see below), or the damnatio memoriae of Nicias whose name was deliberately omitted from the casualty lists of the Sicilian campaign he had opposed (Pausanias 1.29.9).19 All these illustrate the danger of failing to meet democratic expectations. But doing one’s duty was no less dangerous – there are many ways to die in war – and many generals did not survive. In one day of fighting around Potidaea (430–429) three generals – Hestiodorus, Phanomachus, and Xenophon – died along with four hundred others fighting the Chalcidians and their allies (Thuc. 2.79 with 70.1). Through the fifth and fourth centuries, death in battle was the fate of many a general (38 names are known: Hamel 1998: 204–9).
One duty that surely challenged the popularity of Athenian generals was the mustering of troops for campaign. While a catalog of available soldiers provided a muster roll, exemption and favoritism were as common in classical Athens as in Civil War America.20 Aristophanes refers to the equivalent of draft-dodgers, young urban loafers who preferred hanging out in the agora to serving in the army, leaving such dangers to their country cousins more willing to do their duty (Aristoph. Knights 1369–71; Peace 1181–8). Democracy’s burdens, then as now, are not always shared equally.
Losing men in battle was as worrisome to Athenian generals as it is to American commanders in Afghanistan today (and Iraq before that). In Acarnania (427–426) a punishing defeat that took over a hundred of Athens’ “best men” so worried Demosthenes their commander that he remained at Naupactus, afraid to return to Athens and report. Thucydides understood his plight well: later he himself failed to save Amphipolis from the Spartan commander Brasidas and suffered exile, either official or self-imposed (5.26.5). His comment that Demosthenes stayed put “since he was afraid to face the Athenians for what had happened” makes plain the power of the demos to punish failed commanders. Later victorious, Demosthenes returned home, Thucydides tells, as “with this achievement to his credit, [it was] a much safer thing to do” (3.98.5, 113.6; see further below).
Command anxiety affected tactical and strategic decisions: dependent on the people for their votes and favor, generals sometimes miscalculated in their assessment of the popular will and made poor decisions. Several incidents in the Peloponnesian War make this clear. In defeating the Spartans at Pylos, Cleon won an undeserved name for himself, and the Athenian rank and file knew it. Outside Amphipolis in 422, he found himself with a problem little different than that faced in 1942 by the British High Command in North Africa – the “Rommel problem.” Just as British soldiers compared their commanders with the “Desert Fox,” so too did Athenians with the Spartan Brasidas (Thuc. 5.7). Worried that he might lose face if he challenged Brasidas and lost, Cleon attempted to maneuver away from the city but instead walked into a trap, losing his life and his army. In the Sicilian expedition, Demosthenes and Nicias attempted to rally their soldiers and sailors after a hard fought battle in Syracuse’s Great Harbor, telling their men that while they had lost, they still held the advantage over their enemies and should try again. But the men refused to follow. Nicias and Demosthenes could not budge them: their failure of leadership led to a fateful retreat resulting in the expedition’s annihilation (Thuc. 7.72).
These two examples, which could be expanded, reveal the command dilemmas Athenian generals faced.21 Rank and file troops cannot be allowed to influence command decisions, either tactical or strategic. Poor morale and intra-unit conflicts cannot be tolerated, otherwise unit cohesiveness and fighting ability will be lost. But these were realities for Athenian commanders and the issue is one of democratic values trumping military necessity.
That the Athenian democracy sacrificed military leaders and willfully ignored realities of war is made painfully clear in the trial, in reality a “kangaroo court,” of a board of generals (six of ten), who allegedly left thousands to die after the battle of Arginusae (406). While the generals’ victory had destroyed a Spartan fleet and restored Athenian control of the Aegean, the cost of victory was high. The crews of damaged and sinking ships could not be rescued from a sudden storm. Many men were lost, their bodies unrecovered, complicating funeral rituals. The triumphant generals soon found themselves blamed for the disaster when, in fact, other officers had been assigned to save the shipwrecked crews. Xenophon’s account makes clear the anger and pandemonium that swept Athens, stirred perhaps by the status of many of the missing – elite citizens who had volunteered for sea duty.22 Relatives of these, as well as many others, cried for vengeance and blood. Too few supported those like Socrates who attempted to uphold the law. But twenty-five years of war, death, and stress had blinded too many. The law ignored, the generals were tried together, then quickly condemned, sentenced to death, and executed (Xen. Hell. 1.7, with Tritle 2010: 208–9, 210–12).
Yet the popular outrage that cost the Arginusae six their lives was not an unfamiliar Athenian response to disappointment or defeat. In the winter of 430/29 the besieged inhabitants of Potidaea finally yielded to relentless Athenian pressure and surrendered their city to the Athenian general Hagnon. The Potidaeans had resisted fiercely – not only the Athenians but a hunger so great that some had resorted to cannibalism. Athenian losses too had been severe: two thousand talents spent on the siege, hundreds of frontline troops dead. Yet Hagnon allowed the Potidaeans terms of surrender: each man left with the clothes on his back, each woman with that and a second cloak. When news of these “generous” terms reached Athens, the demos was outraged. Many Athenians apparently wanted unconditional surrender and an opportunity to make the Potidaeans pay for their initial rebellion, not to mention their obstinate defense (Thuc. 2.70.4).
What lay behind these public outcries? Thucydides only notes the popular uproar at Hagnon’s generosity, but some tendencies in the democratic decision-making process seem clear. As early as Themistocles, popular leaders had debated policy choices before the assembled demos. In 483 it had been about what to do with the money from the Laurium silver strike. In 416–415 it was the debate over the proposed expedition to Sicily, enthusiastically endorsed by Alcibiades who overcame the unsuccessful resistance of Nicias (Thuc. 6.8–25). Such debates, while healthy for a democracy, also have a negative side: they incite personal ambitions and adventurous policies as leaders seek to win popularity. As Thucydides suggests in the case of Mytilene leaders become opportunistic, the people greedier and more demanding.23
Events in Mytilene (427) reveal democratic harshness as few do, confirming that the outrage at Hagnon’s “generosity” towards the Potidaeans was not atypical. Once favored allies, the Mytilenians had for some time chaffed under Athenian domination and, finding a moment of Athenian weakness, broke ties (Thuc. 3.36.5, with Hornblower 1991–2008: 2. 419). But the revolt failed: the Athenians rallied and the Spartan alliance proved illusionary, just as the Athenians would later tell the people of Melos (Thuc. 5.105.4). Athenian fury knew no bounds – the city was to suffer the fate of Troy: the entire male population was to be killed, the women and children enslaved. But the regrets of some Athenians prompted a reopening of the debate, offering Thucydides the setting of his famous debate between Cleon and Diodotus. In the end the Athenians retreated from their harsh edict, contenting themselves with the executions of “only” a thousand men, perhaps those identified as the ringleaders of the failed revolt, more likely as enemies of Athens.24
Events in Potidaea and Mytilene reveal the depth of Athenian wrath when challenges threatened the power, wealth, and security of the demos. In their enthusiastic response to the Sicilian expedition Thucydides makes plain how real these closely related concerns were to the Athenians. While voting to send themselves into harm’s way, many who approved the expedition did so out of excitement, not wanting to miss a grand adventure.25 Others were motivated by simpler but no less crucial factors – hopes of pay for service supplemented by the prospects of booty in foreign victories (Thuc. 6.24.3).
Economic realities influenced wartime political discussions in Athens no less than in modern America. Democratic Athens required extensive material resources from across the Mediterranean world for its expanding military economy and burgeoning population: timber for its (war)ships, high quality Black Sea wheat for its citizens and soldiers and their families, supplies for the Periclean building program, and much more. All this drove demand and whetted appetites for more – work, opportunity, better lives. Public and private consumption – as well as the multiplication of public service and employment – encouraged the development of cash payment for wages, stimulating, as Sitta von Reden argues, “monetization, exchange, and commodity consumption all over Greece.”26 Such needs and expectations surely influenced democratic Athens to take hard lines with stubborn allies and economic rivals, such as Thasos (466), Samos (441–439), and Megara (435).
Hans van Wees has noted too how “competition for wealth within a community aggravated the pressure on resources,” and from this sprang “violent competition for wealth” that led social elites to exploit their poorer neighbors and debtors.27 This economic struggle for gain and profit (kerdos) – driven, shaped, and warped by wartime realities – must be considered in any discussion of war and democracy. Nowhere is this clearer than in the collisions of rich and poor in Athens and Corcyra during the Peloponnesian War. Here a close reading of Thucydides makes clear the connections between wartime communal conflict and economic competition (on Corcyra see further below).
By 411–410, twenty years of near constant war were wearing down the resolve of many elite Athenians. A number of these, serving as trierarchs with the fleet in Samos, began discussions on ending the war with Sparta and in doing so toppling the democracy that had ruled Athens for some ninety years.28 How many of these men might have supported Pericles and his imperial policy when things were going smoothly is unknown. But these times were long gone; by now, Athenian losses seemed unending. A horrific plague had taken perhaps a third of the population. Material losses from Spartan raids in Attica only worsened. The Sicilian expedition had ended in total disaster, its effects rippling through the Aegean arena. All this had weakened the enthusiasm and resolve of many elites. With no end to their war in sight, these men could only see their resources dwindling (ironically subsidizing poor sailors who earned a living through their service) and decided that enough was enough. Supported by conservative, radical clubs in Athens (often closely linked to these elites with the fleet), these men launched a revolution, now known as that of the 400, which briefly overthrew the democracy in 411–410. While Athenian democrats suppressed the putsch, the experience spawned further violence evidenced by the murder of Phrynichus, one of the oligarchic leaders, assassinated in broad daylight in the agora.29
Economics may not have been the sole determining force in the radical policies now pursued by these former democrats. There is an element of cynicism as well in the sometimes violent measures they took. Cynicism follows as a response to war and violence and works like a cancer in a body politic: it will slowly consume democratic resolve and values. When trust and respect for public leaders and others within the community erodes so too does respect for the law and the political system itself.30
How equally does a democracy share the consequences of war, the inevitability of death in battle? It is in Athens that the best evidence is to be found for the social consequences of war’s trauma in the classical Greek world. Demographic argument is famously difficult as the numbers are incomplete and debatable. It remains clear, however, that wartime losses in Athens during the Peloponnesian War were staggering, amounting to possibly one-third of the population; these included serious losses in the naval battles at Arginusae and Aegospotami.31 Such losses exhausted the democratic will to war no less than the economic constraints. Only a few examples can be cited.
At Potidaea, in 431–429, approximately 2,000 hoplites died as the result either of plague or battle.32 At Delium, in 424, nearly 1,000 hoplites were killed in one day. At this time the Athenians would have been hard pressed to field some 15,000 front line troops, as these men surely were. These losses would have amounted, relatively speaking, to the deaths all at once of more than 10,000 Americans in Iraq at the height of the US build-up in 2007. Such losses surely devastated an already weary population.33 The exact number of casualties in Sicily, in 415–413/12, is difficult to reconstruct but must have amounted to approximately 3,000 to 5,000 (Thuc. 6.71.1, 101.6; 7.82.3, 85.2, 87.4, with Rubincam 1991: 197–8). Among these were many elites, both trierarchs and cavalrymen (6.94.2). At Aegospotami, in 405, the Spartans and their allies commanded by Lysander trapped nearly the entire Athenian fleet at anchor, as many as 180 ships (not even ten escaped). Lysander allowed the execution of the Athenian prisoners, around 3,000 to 4,000 men, again including many trierarchs.34
Hence casualties among Athenian elites, trierarchs as well as frontline troops, in the Peloponnesian War were grave.35 One case that reveals much of war’s impact on democracy is a defeat suffered in Acarnania in western Greece. Here in one day in 427–426 120 marines serving as hoplites died in battle (Thuc. 3.95.2, 98.4). Thucydides described these as the “best” (beltistoi) men of Athens to die in the war. His comment may refer to the Archidamian War, but it is no less possible that it is an editorial comment written from the perspective of the war’s end. In any case, as A. W. Gomme notes, Thucydides’ analysis remains powerful as he compares this loss with those suffered at Delium (4.101.2) and Amphipolis (5.11.2), both one day affairs and major set battles.36
Who were these men Thucydides calls the “best”? It seems unlikely they were thetes, the “working-class” citizens of Athens who through the Peloponnesian War were often enroled as marines, as happened, for example, in the preparations for Sicily (Thuc. 6.43.1). While beltistoi can carry a social or political meaning, sometimes even both, it seems unlikely that, given Thucydides’ own elite status, he would think of thetes as the “best.”37 Who then? It seems worth considering the possibility that the marines killed in Acarnania had been recruited from the ranks of Athens’ elite cavalry – in other words, Athens’ best young men. Earlier manpower losses from battle and plague, and multiple campaigns across the Aegean in this year necessitated such extreme measures in recruitment.38 Service as infantry rather than cavalry might also explain why their losses – probably 50 percent when unmentioned wounded survivors are included – were so high.39
The enrolment of marines illustrates the impact of losses Athens suffered during the Peloponnesian War. Early in the war hoplites and knights, men trained in the use of arms, were recruited for sea (and land) duty.40 Twelve years later, as the Athenians prepared for the Sicilian invasion, they recruited and armed (evidently at public expense; see IG I2 45 = I3 46, with Gomme et al. 1970–81: 4. 310) 700 thetes for such duty. This measure follows earlier examples of thetic enlistments, demonstrated in the settlement of hundreds in Mytilene and Melos as military colonists or cleruchs.
Alongside the growing reliance on mercenaries, such steps demonstrate the impact of wartime losses (including from the plague) on the manpower resources of the Athenian state.41 But the growing military role of poorer Athenians only democratized the community further. As these less affluent members of the democracy were asked to serve, they claimed a louder voice in the decisions taken by the democracy. Such a role is evident in the popular support for the Sicilian expedition related by Thucydides (6.24.3–4): the masses imagined prospects of pay and employment. Clearer evidence that these poorer Athenians believed themselves invested in the democracy is found in the restoration of the democracy in 403. In the fight against the oligarchic Thirty Tyrants, it is Athenians of humble origins – tanners, shoe-sellers, carpenters, and muleteers – who fought and died to make Athens again democratic (Rhodes and Osborne 2003: no. 4).
But not all deaths from battle occur on the battlefield. In fact the wounded often take years to die, whether from wounds or other trauma.42 In 1919 the sight of disfigured and homeless veterans was a common occurrence on the streets of London, Paris, or Berlin (Cohen 2001), just as today the largest population of homeless veterans in the United States is to be found in Santa Monica, California. Such sights were no less common in ancient Greece. War cripples sought cures and relief from Asclepius in his sanctuary at Epidaurus – that the god was brought to Athens in the midst of the Peloponnesian War reveals no less the need for his comforting presence there (Tritle 2010: 49–50, 116). The philosopher and rhetorician Gorgias, in an aside in his rhetorical showpiece The Encomium of Helen, tells of the consequences of battle: men left crippled and unable to work, disabled not only physically but psychically (Gorg. 82 B11.16–18 Diels-Kranz with Tritle 2010: 158–60). Like so many of their modern counterparts, they endured lives in pain, troubled by their memories.43 Sophocles’ drama Philoctetes and its hero plagued by a wound that will not heal is not simply a mythic tale, but a story taken from the streets of contemporary Athens where the war wounded lingered in unheroic pain and suffering.44
The war-wounded are unhappy reminders of the tragedy of war. Only less so are the war-dead whose sacrifices become transfigured by myth. In the aftermath of the victory over the Persians and into the fourth century, the Athenians took concrete steps to memorialize their dead with public speeches that became canonical, and with honorific stelae naming those who gave their lives for the community. These acts are often seen as evidence of democratic ideology penetrating Athenian society and culture.45 While there is much truth in this, other states took similar steps at the same time to remember the dead. Megara, Tanagra, and Thespiae, all apparently set aside memorial precincts with inscribed lists of the war dead, all apparently organized in tribal groupings as in Athens.46 Naming the dead transcends political ideology, I think: it is a human thing and reflects the awful trauma of war and the scars left in its wake.47
Wartime economics and mounting casualties pushed many wealthy Athenians into reactionary politics, aggravating the crisis confronting them and revealing the stresses war brings to society. Just as such Oscar-winning films as The Hurt Locker (2008), Platoon (1987), and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) express modern American responses to war’s violence, so too does the literature and art of Athens. Like many Athenians, Euripides had firsthand experience with war and democracy. Early in the Peloponnesian War his play Andromache reflected animosity toward Sparta. In what have come to be known as his war plays – Heracles, Orestes, Helen, Trojan Women, and Iphigeneia in Tauris – Euripides spoke to and mirrored what many Athenians must have thought as the Peloponnesian War dragged on seemingly without end: the absurdity of war being fought to no purpose (Helen), the vicious killing of non-combatants, women and children (Orestes, Trojan Women), Greeks committing acts of violence which repelled even “barbarians” (Iphigeneia in Tauris), the homecoming of a veteran who kills his own wife and children in a violent fury (Heracles).48
Literature, philosophy, and art all reflect stressors of war that Athenians and many other Greeks would have recognized. Such a response may be seen as well in the concerns and attention that Aristophanes and Euripides showed to women. Aristophanes’ best known comedy, Lysistrata, tells a rollicking tale of the women of Greece uniting to stop the madness of their battling men: but it also makes clear the consequences of war for women, their loss of sons in far-flung campaigns (589–90), their aging in solitude (595–6). While Antigone famously counts the loss of a brother more dearly than that of husband and children (Sophocles, Ant. 904–15), Aristophanes suggests that the pangs of such losses – husbands, sons – were felt as keenly as any other. He mentions too the plight of aging, unmarried girls, their fathers and prospective grooms absent on military service, or worse, dead or incapacitated. These are exactly the situations that encouraged an Athenian decree in the later fifth century to relax marriage laws and sanction informal unions such as that attributed to Socrates by Diogenes Laërtius (2.26). Such arrangements reflected not only a shortage of men (mentioned by Diogenes), but surely diminished material resources for dowries too. These wartime social realities contextualize the women’s issues that appear in both Aristophanic and Euripidean drama.49
War also left in its wake widows and orphans and these required attention. In the funeral oration attributed to Pericles, Thucydides calls attention to the difficulties that widows and fatherless sons would now face, just as Homer does telling of the fatherless future of Astyanax (Thuc. 2.45.1–2; Hom. Il. 22.485–505). Thucydides adds that such war-orphaned sons received public recognition and, as part of the public ceremonies associated with the Great Dionysia, a set of armor upon reaching their eighteenth year. Elsewhere we learn from the Aristotelian Athenian Politeia about state subsidies to orphans (24.3) and about the obligation of the courts to resolve judicial disputes involving orphans (Pseudo-Xenophon, Constitution of the Athenians 3.4). All this was calculated, as Kurt Raaflaub argues, to encourage civic virtue and responsibility (1998: 30–6, with further discussion and references).
In summer 341 the politician Demosthenes attempted to arouse his fellow Athenians to respond to the dangers posed by Philip of Macedon and his new way of making war – an army of specialists fighting year round, not just in spring and summer (9.47–50). While Demosthenes’ Third Philippic returns us to the theme of democracy’s clash with kings, just how useful are Demosthenes’ arguments for an understanding of the nature of war in the later fourth century?
On the eve of Marathon the Athenians had relied mostly on their citizen soldiers, the hoplites, to defend the city, though as argued above, the Athenian fleet of some seventy warships surely helped defend Athens too. When Demosthenes attempted to rouse the Athenians to action, the naval picture could not have been more different. The fleet now numbered over three hundred warships, possessed its own military harbor in the Piraeus, and a sophisticated administrative hierarchy supported its operation. In short it was a powerful military force, so intimidating that Philip and later Alexander chose negotiation in order not to fight it.50
The citizen army was no less able and dedicated. Since the late fifth century, the experience of war had prepared and trained Athenian citizen soldiers for extended field operations. Peloponnesian War campaigns at Potidaea, Pylos-Sphacteria, and Syracuse find fourth-century parallels from the struggles with the Spartans in the 370s to the series of campaigns against Philip that led to Chaeronea (338/7). By this time too the Athenians were acquiring the newest type of artillery, torsion weapons or catapults which they had taken from their enemies and had stored for future use. Just as the Athenians had reformed their administration of the fleet, so too had they reorganized the board of generals, appointing them to particular duties so as to improve their roles of command and control.51
The fight against Philip of Macedon at Chaeronea, however, represents the clearest expression of the Athenian democracy’s dedication and resolve. Committed to battle by popular vote, the Athenians joined their Greek allies in an effort to force Philip from Greece and Greek affairs. In a fierce struggle, some 1,000 Athenians died while another 2,000 became prisoners (Diodorus 16.85–86; Polyaenus, Stratēgēmata 4.2.2; Plut. Alexander 9.2–3). The end result was no Marathon, no Plataea. But the discipline, the dedication, and, yes, even the preparation for battle demonstrate the same commitment to defending democratic values, the democratic way of life.52
A powerful maritime state possessing a large fleet, Corcyra’s role in igniting the great Peloponnesian War is well known, as is also its famous civil war (stasis) of 427–425.53 Corcyra’s history of violence obscures its progress to democracy, which it enjoyed briefly in the 380 s when it joined the Second Athenian League. By the late fifth century, the Corcyraean halia (assembly) had established a boule (council), a prytaneion (organizing committee), and a law court, suggesting political organization along democratic lines.54 Thucydides makes clear that the council acted in a deliberative fashion, preparing business for the assembly, and that there were also magistrates, though their selection remains less certain. The presence of oligarchs and democrats implies unsettled issues over wealth as well as the absence of reforms (like those of Solon and Cleisthenes in Athens) that would have flattened social-economic status.55 While Corcyra may not have been an Athenian-like democracy, it was a democracy in development when stasis pushed it into paradigmatic violence. What forces precipitated this conflict?
First, war and violence: some 250 elite Corcyraeans, taken captive in the naval fight at Sybota (433–432), were imprisoned in Corinth and, after a number of months of captivity, returned home.56 Details of their imprisonment are unknown. The subsequent actions of these quislings – attacking and killing democratic leaders and their followers and inciting violent civil strife – suggest that some kind of “brainwashing” inspired their rejection of democratic values. But more critically, these elites were held captive for months and during that time would have been unable to protect their property and their families’ financial well-being. As noted above, life in the Greek world – one’s economic survival – was tentative and as the costs of an on-going war ballooned there would have been intense competition for remaining resources. This and a growing hardness to war’s realities would have made many ready to do anything to protect their wealth and role in the community: to take from others what they lacked. Thucydides makes clear that at least some of the elites were killed by their debtors, whose motives are transparent.57
Thucydides’ famous account of these outbursts of violence is well-known and needs no retelling. But the results of this communal suicide were tragic. A previously wealthy and powerful community was reduced to a shadow for generations. Recurrent bouts of civil strife continued into the fourth century when once more the oligarchic faction seized power (c. 361; see Aeneas Tacticus 11.15). Corcyra’s alliance with democratic Athens ignited a fierce and divisive debate that was ideologically oriented but aggravated by war-time power politics and a cruel economic imperative. As Thucydides understood well, the Corcyrean disaster revealed what could happen to an emerging democratic community that was divided by divergent political views. But underneath these political preferences were economic relationships and imperatives that, when enhanced by the stress of war, could lead to unimagined conflict and worse.
After the overthrow of the Deinomenid tyrant Thrasybulus in c. 466, the people of Syracuse continued the democratic impulse, further distancing themselves from the wealthy aristocratic landholders (gamoroi) who had dominated the city’s early history. By the end of the fifth century, Syracuse enjoyed its freedom: a nearly sovereign ekklēsia enacted laws, had abolished property qualifications, and briefly experimented with a form of ostracism known as petalism (petalismos).58 Another feature Syracusan democracy shared with its Athenian counterpart was its harsh treatment of generals (stratēgoi) who failed or simply disappointed popular expectations. Such institutions and practices may have suggested to Thucydides (7.55.2) that the Athenian assault on Syracuse was war by one democracy on another.59 His analysis of Syracusan democracy may conflate reality and political theory, but it seems clear that an adversary’s shared democratic values did not deter the Athenians from their political, economic, and imperial goals.
The Athenian attack panicked the Syracusans and initial resistance was ineffective. A meeting of the assembly rallied spirits and raised hopes. In a scene little different from democratic Athens, unsuccessful generals were sacked and more aggressive and able men were elected in their place. Among these was the aristocratic Hermocrates who provided periclean-like leadership and inspiration which proved more effective than the indecisive and divided Athenians (Thuc. 6.33–34, 72.2, with Hornblower 1991–2008: 3, ad loc.). Diodorus contributes vividly to Syracusan democratic vistas in the assembly’s debate of the fates of their Athenian prisoners. Hermocrates proposed leniency. Despite his many contributions to the victory, he was shouted down for being too soft. The demos then heard Nicolaüs, an aged citizen who had lost two sons in the fighting, thinking he would take a hard-line. Instead Nicolaüs, his losses leaving him to face a bleak future alone, also advocated mercy for the Athenians. But the appeal fell short and those who demanded vengeance on the Athenians carried the day.60
Victory obligated the Syracusans to assist their Peloponnesian allies against the Athenians. In fulfillment of this debt, Hermocrates, now reelected general, led a Syracusan squadron into the Aegean (Thuc. 8.29.2; cf. 6.103.4; 7.21.3, 73.1). Here he became entangled with the Persian satrap Tisserphernes over subsidies to the Peloponnesian fleet (Thuc. 8.29.2, with Hornblower 1991–2008: 3. 836–7); not long after (spring 411), and along with his two colleagues, he was deposed from office yet again, later meeting a tragic death at home (Xen. Hell. 1.1.27; Diod. 13.75.5–8). Syracusan democracy was democratic enough that Thucydides, an acute observer of society and politics, could imagine that, despite differences, it was just that. But without reforms of the type that had leveled society in Athens, Syracusan democracy remained driven by conservative, even oligarchic sentiments, with popular leaders fighting for personal dominance in a factionally divided society that was accustomed to personal ascendance whether of a tyrant or general (see Rutter 2000: 150–1).
What is the impact of war on democracy and democratic society? In the Greek world with its narrow margins of survival, economic stresses accompanying war and violence resulted in political tensions and civil conflict: in Athens, ninety years of democracy collapsed, while an evolving Syracusan democracy succumbed to the tyrannical aspirations of Dionysius I. Democratic Corcyra suffered by far the worse: a horrific civil war, catalogued in all its detail by Thucydides, shattered a community’s prospects for a better life.
Do democracies evolve in response to the challenges of war? Athens offers the quickest answer and the best evidence for this, evident in its sophisticated military ministries: a naval administration that provided the financial necessities for wartime action; an articulated military command structure. In some ways war and preparation for war built democratic Athens as it did the modern nation state. But it also created a demand for more resources and wealth that in turn stimulated aggression and greed.
Finally, how democratic is the loss of life? How willing are democracies to fight? During the Peloponnesian War the Athenian democracy suffered grievous losses on all levels of society. The severe losses suffered at Arginusae among elite knights, for example, certainly inflamed passions and ignited the trial and killing of the Arginusae six. Not only a blot on the conscience of the democracy, it raised passions against the democracy itself. This contributed not a little to the conservative backlash that later empowered the Thirty Tyrants who terrorized the democratic opposition. But war and wartime service had sufficiently democratized the community that it could fight back and restore a democratic state and society that flourished through the fourth century and even beyond.
Again, how willing are democracies to fight? In Athens, as the democratic economic engines heated up, the democracy needed more of everything to maintain the momentum set in motion by victory over the Persians. Here we return to the Athenian democratic decision to attack Syracuse which, however imperfect, did seem democratic to Thucydides, a perceptive political critic. This was a military venture that promised popular leadership, gain, and dominance to some, personal excitement and glory to others, and prospects of opportunity and employment to many. These forces are known in many variations both in ancient and modern times and seem, as we move forward in the early years of a new millennium, as timeless as ever.
Notes
1 The wartime experiences of ancient and modern democracies offer some interesting parallels, but this is not my concern; for an attempt at comparison, see McCann and Strauss 2001. Modern examples cited below will draw from the American experience with which I am most familiar.
2 Doyle 1997: 265–77, 71–5; Mearsheimer 2001: 367–8, 406 n. 24; Judt 2010: A27. Mearsheimer (406 n. 24) suggests that democracies enjoy more peaceful relations with other democracies, but see Robinson 2010.
3 Athenian democracy, which informs most of what follows here, is a hotly debated subject, but its beginning is identified here with the reforms of Cleisthenes (c. 500); see further Raaflaub et al. 2007: 1–21 and the other essays in this volume (with the agnosticism expressed by Cartledge, ibid. 167). Aristophanes, Knights 43 (c. 424) describes the figure Demos as a “sixtyish” old man which should push the notion of democracy back to the Cleisthenic reforms. American democracy: Declaration of Independence (1776), Articles of Confederation (1783), Constitution (1789), and the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1828–36), and the establishment of real “democracy” in the United States. Corcyra and Syracuse are discussed below.
4 The Lamian War of 322/1 was ended by Antipater who was de facto in power in Greece and Macedonia in the aftermath of Alexander’s death in Babylon; he defeated the Athenians on both land and sea.
5 Persian influence on the Greeks: Miller 1997; Raaflaub 2009 (Athens); Kienast 1973 with Griffith 1976 (Macedonia).
6 In a sense enfranchised by Solon some hundred years earlier, some thetes by now had become politically active and ambitious, as they demonstrated in their support of Cleisthenes only some twenty years before.
7 Hunt 1998: 26–8 argues too that the slave recruits served as hoplites. This seems unlikely: what sort of military training would they have had? Throwing unskilled men into a battle line is a recipe for disaster. More likely the slave recruits served as light-armed troops, haphazardly armed by their owners, to extend the ranks of an army facing superior numbers.
8 Herodotus (Hdt.) 5.97.3, 99.1 says “ships” (naus), adding that the Eretrian ships accompanying the Athenian flotilla were triremes. But Athens was not wealthy and triremes were expensive: the Athenian fleet probably consisted of penteconters for the most part. Two thousand men, slave and free, and led by elites, is probably the high figure. Pace Hunt 1998: 26, the Athenian fleet in 491/0 numbered some seventy ships, including now (most likely) some triremes (Hdt. 6.89, 132, with Rhodes 1981: 151). On naval developments see further Morrison et al. 2000: 1–49; Wallinga 2005: 94–107.
9 Discussion of the naucraries: Gabrielsen 1994: 19–26; Rhodes 1981: 151–2; slave-sailors: see Thuc. 1.55.1. Similar naval organizations are found in medieval Scandinavia, the leding: people were divided into districts, each contributing a single ship, fully equipped and manned (see further Lund 2003). I thank my colleague A. Perron for this reference.
10 The Laurium silver strike occurred in 483–482 with much of the revenue invested in building one hundred ships ([Aristotle,] Constitution of the Athenians [Ath. Pol.] 22.7, with Rhodes 1981: 277–8).
11 Gabrielsen 1994: 26–39 dates the trierarchy to the 480s as the Athenians moved from private to public financing of warships; Davies 1971: xx, considers the trierarchy sufficient reason to rank an Athenian performing it among the “propertied” elites of Athens.
12 Syntrierarchy: Lysias (Lys.) 6.47, with Todd 2007: 469; symmories, first created in 378–377, revised by a law of Periander (ca. 357) that divided responsibilities among 1200 rich citizens, divided into twenty symmories; ca. 340 Demosthenes passed a law that ostensibly limited the trierarchy to the Three Hundred, the richest citizens of Athens, but it appears that some 1,200 Athenians continued to serve as trierarchs as before. See further Gabrielsen 1994: 207–13; Rhodes 1981: 679–82.
13 Pritchett 1971: 18–24, discusses the evidence, concluding (23) that “military service … was financially unremunerative,” something any serving soldier will come to realize. Theopompus, in Kassel and Austin 1989: 734 (fr. 56) mentions military pay of two and four obols, but the context, obscure and ironic, seems to suggest that payment of the latter sum would provide much better for a fighting family.
14 Athenian stratēgia: [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 22.2, 58, 61.1–2 (with discussion in Rhodes 1981). In democratic Argos generals (possibly a board of five) were also called stratēgoi (Thuc. 5.59.5, with Hornblower 1991–2008: 3. 155), as were generals in democratic Syracuse.
15 Names in Develin 1989. Boards of ten are known only for 441/0, 425/4, 414/3, 412/1, 410/9, and 406/5; another thirty individuals are possible, but the evidence and identifications are uncertain and again some names are repeated.
16 Stratēgeion: Camp 1986: 116–18; rituals and awards: Goldhill 1990: 100–1, 114.
17 Themistocles, Pericles, and Phocion each earned a life by Plutarch; Conon: Xenophon, Hellenica 4.8.8–10; Timotheus: Isocrates 15.101–39.
18 Hamel 1998: 122–57 discusses the known instances of generals prosecuted for some offense, suggesting that in the Peloponnesian War era these averaged about one per year (131); see also next note. Aristophanic comedy abounds in references to the corruption and manners alike of generals and political figures: see Ehrenberg 1962: 48, 155–6, 341–2; Sidwell 2009: 171, 194.
19 Hamel 1998: 140–57 for others. Cf. the fate of Paches: prosecuted after recovering Mytilene, he astonished the court by committing suicide at his euthyna (Plut. Nicias 6.1; Aristides 26.5, with Gomme 1945–56: 3. 332). The charges leveled at him remain uncertain (rape? military failure?), but his dramatic suicide demonstrates the power wielded by the demos and the dread it must have instilled in those commanders assigned to execute its orders and satisfy its expectations.
20 Debate continues over the existence of a hoplite katalogos which is here accepted. See Tritle 2010: 65 n. 43 for discussion and references to other scholarly views.
21 See, e.g., Alcibiades reconciling quarreling elements of his army in Asia (Xen. Hell. 1.2) or Phormio’s pep talk to demoralized troops in the Corinthian Gulf (Thuc. 2.88–92).
22 Xen. Hell. 1.6.24 records that knights in great numbers manned the fleet that fought at Arginusae, perhaps following Cimon’s example before Salamis (Plut. Cim. 5.2); this suggests that normally they did not serve as marines.
23 Thuc. 3.38.3–7, 42.3–6 essentially makes this assessment of democracy in remarks attributed to Cleon and Diodotus in the debate over Mytilene; see further below.
24 The Athenians later destroyed other communities as well. Xenophon reports that news of the disaster at Aegospotami in 405 terrified them as they imagined potential retribution. At war’s end many Spartan allies demanded this, but the Spartans refused, not out of mercy but anxiety of allies grown too strong by the long war (Xen. Hell. 2.2.3, 19–20).
25 Thuc. 6.13.1, reminding us of Europe in 1914 or even the United States in 2011, and the enlistment of many a young American today.
26 Full discussion of economic issues is not possible here; see Raaflaub 1998: 22–3, who notes the difficulties in assessing economic realities, Garland 1987: 68 (for the economy of the Piraeus), and von Reden 2007: 404–6 (public and private consumption).
27 Van Wees 2007: 281–2, anticipated by Finley 1982: 80–2 who noted too how profit margins and survival were never easy and how such competition drove conflict. See also Davies 2007: 352 who adds that most people had to work “very hard nearly all the time.” Millett 1991: 7–8 notes the role of trust (pistis) in matters of credit, a value that the stress of war could surely strain. Note also such basic forces in Greek society as agōn (competition) or pleonexia (greediness, search for advantage).
28 Thuc. 8.47.2, 48.1, 63.4, with Ostwald 1986: 152–3; Tritle 2010: 172.
29 For full discussion of the Revolution of 411–410, see Thuc. 8.45–99, with Gomme et al. 1970–81: 5. 309–11; Hornblower 1991–2008: 3. 883–1039; Tritle 2010: 171–7. The oligarchic movement continued with the Thirty, including disgruntled former, democrats, empowered by the Spartans who plunged Athens into civil war (404–403); see Xen. Hell. 2.3–4; Lys. 12.8–9, 12, with Tritle 2010: 223–33.
30 For discussion of cynicism in politics, see, e.g., Wills 2002; note too the echoes in Cartledge (Raaflaub et al. 2007: 162) on modern democracy.
31 Calculations of losses: Strauss 1986: 179–82; Hansen 1988: 14–28, detailing the evidence, though only deaths; see n. 42 for consideration of other casualties.
32 Thuc. 2.30, 58, 70, 79: some 1500 men in the siege of Potidaea, more than 400 in battle at Spartolus; cf. Rubincam 1991: 184–5 (who argues that the numbers are conventional), 192–8 (tables of figures), and Tritle 2010: 52–3.
33 Thuc. 4.101.2, with Rubincam 1991: 187; Tritle 2010: 103.
34 Xen. Hell. 2.1.28–32; Plut. Lysander 13.1, with Tritle 2010: 214–15. Note also the losses suffered in the victory over the Spartans at Arginusae (406) where probably another 3,000 to 4,000 Athenians were lost (see Xen. Hell. 1.6.34–5, with Tritle 2010: 208).
35 See nn. 32–3 above, but note that in three battles or campaigns alone – Sicily, Arginusae, Aegospotami – more than 300 ships were lost (with crews totalling up to 60,000, though probably less than half of these would have been Athenian citizens); among these surely were many trierarchs.
36 Rhodes 1994: 254–5, suggests the Archidamian War, as does Gomme 1945–56: 2. 408; Hornblower 1991–2008: 1. 514 omits comment.
37 Noted by Andrewes in Gomme et al. 1970–81: 5. 106. I thank Hans van Wees for discussing this passage with me.
38 The years 427–426 witnessed a major expenditure of forces by war-ravaged Athens: three campaigning theaters – Sicily, western Greece, and the Aegean/central Greece (Boeotia), commanded by seven generals, 110 ships, and all available hoplites (Thuc. 3.91.4 notes “in full force”: pandēmei). See Thuc. 3.86, 90 (Sicily), 3.91 (western Greece, Melos, Boeotia).
39 See Hornblower 1991–2008: 1. 514; 3. 419, 1064. Gomme 1945–56: 3. 408 notes that Arnold (1847) had suggested that “young men of higher families” had been recruited for the expedition; whether Demosthenes (or Proclus, his co-commander, also killed) persuaded them to join appealing to their sense of duty, prospects of plunder, or simple adventure, is unknown. Arnold is, I think, mostly correct, but a simpler explanation is to see unassigned cavalrymen pressed into action, literally to make-up manpower shortages.
40 Cf. van Wees 2004: 210, 308 n. 40, after Thuc. 8.24.2, who suggests that the recruitment of thetes as marines was the norm. The suggested presence of elite Athenians, as those in Acarnania, whether of cavalry or hoplite status, recommends caution. Wartime conditions often force unusual responses to circumstance.
41 Many in the Athenian expeditionary force in Sicily were mercenaries: Thuc. 6.42.1, 98; 7.31, 33, 42.
42 Sources – ancient or modern – rarely comment on the war-wounded, but they exist: Plut. Moralia 241 tells of injured Spartans; the miracle inscriptions from Epidaurus attest to lingering wounds of war as well (LiDonnici 1995: 109, 113, 115); Lys. 24 may be a speech on behalf of a crippled veteran. War wounded in art appear in vase paintings, such as the Sosias painter’s depiction of Achilles treating the wounded Patroclus (c. 500 BCE, in the Antikenmuseum, Berlin); see also the late fourth-century Fugger Sarcophagus with a scene of a warrior protecting another with his shield (Salazar 2000 offers these and other illustrations), or scenes of battle, with wounded men, on the west frieze of the temple of Athena Nike in Athens, now part of the Elgin collection at the British Museum (Jenkins 2006: 114–17); on the art of the era, the so-called “Rich Style,” see Tritle 2010: 119–20.
43 Gorgias clearly identifies psychological casualties in classical Greece; but such expressions of wartime psychological trauma take different forms. Insufficient attention has been paid to Socrates’ wartime service and how this might have affected him and influenced his thought. Socrates survived one of the worst days Athenian soldiers ever faced, at Delium. Such survival cannot but have left a mark. Evidence may be seen in his moral-ethical statements, for example, that it is better to suffer injury than to injure. This is the reaction of many a soldier who realizes that war-time violence is not only wrong, but something to avoid (see further Tritle 2010: 232–5; pace Plato, Charmides 153a–d, Laches 181a–b, both written decades after Socrates’ wartime service at Delium and Potidaea and about battles of which neither Plato nor his circle had immediate knowledge).
44 See further Tritle 2010: 191–2, with reference to war wounded petitioners at Epidaurus (LiDonnici 1995). Note too Herodotus’s story of Epizelus, left blind after Marathon (Hdt. 6.117) – an amazing story, to be sure, that many visitors to the agora besides Herodotus must have heard often.
45 Athenian rhetoric and rituals: Thuc. 2.34–46; Loraux 1986; casualty lists: Tritle 2000: 166–7.
46 Megara, Tanagra, Thespiae: Low 2003. After its crushing victory over the Athenians at Delium, the Thebans dedicated a victory park and celebrated an annual festival, the Delia, erecting also individual stelae dedicated to their fallen heroes (Athanias, Mnason) that survive today (see Tritle 2010: 104).
47 This argument I hope to pursue elsewhere more fully.
48 On these dramas and their implications for wartime conditions and attitudes in Athens and Greece during the Peloponnesian War, see further Tritle 2010.
49 Harrison 1968: 13–17, followed by Just 1989: 54, accepts the historicity of the decree but considers the Socratic details less certain; on Aristophanes, Euripides, and women: Just 1989: 106–11, 194–7.
50 Morrison et al. 2000: 157, after IG II2 1613. 284–302; on harbor facilities see Garland 1987: 154–8.
51 The fourth century army: Burckhardt 1996; artillery: IG II2 1627B. 328–41, hinted at by Aristotle, Politics 1331a13–14; military reorganization: [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 61.1–2, with Rhodes 1981: 677–82.
52 Yet another funeral oration, that by Demosthenes, continued the Periclean (Thucydidean) tradition; see further Loraux 1986.
53 Thuc. 3.70–85 provides the classic account of this conflict and the inversion of values that resulted (3.82–4; see Tritle 2010: 71–5; Hornblower 1991–2008: 2. 466–91; Price 2001 for detailed discussion). Thuc. 4.46–8 describes the end of the Corcyrean civil war (425): the democrats slaughtered their enemies, afterwards hauling away their bodies like so much timber. Thucydides’ “revolting” narrative (so Hornblower, 204–5) makes clear the viciousness that came to characterize “war,” and a radicalized Corcyrean democracy capable of extreme violence.
54 See Thuc. 3.70–1 and additional sources and discussion in Gehrke 1985: 88–9; Gehrke and Wirbelauer 2004: 362. Gehrke 1985: 368–9 cites evidence revealing the wealth, and indirectly, the competition, that would have been found on the island.
55 This seems evident in the violent upheavals of the stasis in which individuals were killed over issues of money (see below and n. 57).
56 Thuc. 1.55.1; Gehrke 1985: 389 identifies these as hoplites: while true, some were surely trierarchs or their Corcyraean equivalent, and so of wealthier standing. But this faction grew: Thuc. 3.85.1 numbers them at 500 after much brutal fighting.
57 Thuc. 3.81.4, with Hornblower 1991–2008: 2. 476–7, who discusses the complexities of this social-economic clash. Thuc. 3.84.1 also speaks of pleonexia (greed) as a driving force, but the passage may be a later gloss on Thucydides’ analysis.
58 Thuc. 6.20.2; Fischer-Hansen et al 2004: 226–7 also note the activities of nomothetai (a board of law review) in 412–411 and suggest hints of probouleusis, the activities of a boulē (council) preparing business for the assembly. Robinson 2004: 140–2 (= 2000) and Rutter 2000: 137–51 take differing views on Syracusan democracy.
59 Thuc. 7.55.2 (with Hornblower 1991–2008: 3. 650–1). Thuc. 6.32.3–41 (with Hornblower, 396–7; Raaflaub 2006: 211–12) offers an assessment of democracy using the Syracusan assembly as a setting and Syracusan political leaders – Athenagoras and Hermocrates – as advocates.
60 Diod. 13.19.4–6, with Tritle 2010: 156–7; Robinson 2004: 145–6. Rutter 2000: 143–8 rightly cautions against too ready reliance on Diodorus’ understanding of democracy, given his distance from the events.
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