Athens and democracy on the eve of the Peloponnesian War

[Einzige]

I'm largely new to the subject of ancient Greek history; it was never one of my strong-suits in school, and the only material I have at present pertinent to this event is, of course, Thucydides. I'm very interested in examining the underlying conflict in social structures inherent in the War, but I lack the benefit of any scholarly resources until the next time I'm at the bookstore. So I'm going to ask you to bear with me on this issue, as I'm a layman.

In the opening chapters of The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides mentions in passing the revolutionary situation in the state of Epidamnus as one of the causes of the War:

As time went on Epidamnus became both powerful and populous; but there followed many years of political unrest, caused, they say, by a war with the foreign inhabitants of the country. As a result of this Epidamnus declined and lost most of her power. Finally, just before the war between Athens and Sparta, the democratic party drove out the aristocratic party, who then went over to the foreign enemies of the city and joined them in making piratical attacks on it both by sea and by land. The democrats inside the city now found themselves in difficulties and sent an embassy to Corcyra, begging their mother country not to allow them to perish, and asking for help both in making some settlement with the exiled party and in putting an end to the war with the foreigners...

When the people in Epidamnus realized that no help was forthcoming from Corcyra, they were at a loss how to deal with the situation. They therefore sent to Delphi to inquire from the god whether they should hand over their city to the Corinthians... (t)he reply from Delphi was that they should hand over their city and accept the leadership of Corinth...

As a result of the ill-feeling now existing between Corcyra and Corinth, we are told that Epidamnus, a fledgling democratic state, became a pawn in the battle between the motherland and her colony:

When the Corcyraeans discovered that the settlers and the troops had arrived at Epidamnus and that the colony had been handed over to Corinth, they reacted violently. As soon as the news arrived they put to sea with twenty-five ships, which were soon followed by another fleet. Sailing up to Epidamnus, they demanded in the most threatening and abusive language first that the Epidamnians should reinstate the exiled party, and secondly that they should send away the troops and settlers that had from Corinth. These exiles, meanwhile, had come to Corcyra, had appealed to the claims of their family connections (pointing out the tombs of their own ancestors there), and begged for help in being brought back.

On this point I am clear enough: the democrats of Epidamnus, having given the boot to their aristocrats, then needed foreign aid in stabilizing their society. Corcyra rejected such a plea and in fact took the side of the Epidamnian aristocrats, and the Corinthians gave them aid, setting Epidamnus in the middle of the long-running feud between mother and client state.

This is clear to me. What is not clear to me is what happened after:

The result of the engagement was a decisive victory for the Corcyraeans, who destroyed fifteen Corinthian ships. It happened that on the very same day the besiegers of the Epidamnus forced had forced the city to surrender...

In Corinth tempers were running high over the war with Corcyra. All through the year following the sea battle and in the year after that the Corinthians were building ships and doing everything possible to increase the efficiency of their navy... (i)n Corcyra, the news of these preparations provoked alarm. They had no allies in Hellas, since they had not enrolled themselves either in the Spartan or the Athenian league. They decided therefore to go to Athens, to join the Athenian alliance, and see whether they could get any support from that quarter.

When the news of this move reached Corinth, the Corinthians also sent representatives to Athens, fearing that the combined strength of the navies of Athens and Corcyra would prevent them from having their own way in the war with Corcyra. An assemble was held and the arguments on both sides were put forward.

Hostilities continued between Corinth and Corcyra, and each appealed to Athens for aid. And Athens chose Corcyra.

Now, from what little the Peloponnesian War was discussed in school, it was often portrayed in modern terms as a great ideological war between the forces of democracy and aristocratic conservatism, in tones, I suspect, drawn from the Cold War. Yet, having just begun the Peloponnesian War, Athens strikes me as absurdly hypocritical: they, the supposed defenders of Greek democracy, sided plainly against the right of self-determination by the Epidamnian democrats (if we are to apply modern standards of democratic thought) and with those who sheltered the Epidamnian conservatives.

My question, then, can be summed up simply: is the way in which Athens is portrayed in modern thought - as, like I've said, a bastion of modernity and a forerunner to the West - really tenable in light of what strikes me as a fundamental contradiction in their actions prior to the outset of the War?

The impression I have is that Athens was quite committed on a nearly ideological level to democracy, imposing it as they did on most of their conquests. Why, then, would they not aid Corinth, and by corollary the Epidamnian democrats?

[Norseman]

Because Corcyra had a large and powerful navy, which Corinth didn't, and by accepting them as their allies the Athenians further increased their naval supremacy. It was in short an entirely pragmatic decision, much like the US decision to support various horrible right-wing dictatorships while claiming to be fighting for democracy. So it seems the Athenians were very modern indeed in this regard.

[Einzige]

Because Corcyra had a large and powerful navy, which Corinth didn't, and by accepting them as their allies the Athenians further increased their naval supremacy. It was in short an entirely pragmatic decision, much like the US decision to support various horrible right-wing dictatorships while claiming to be fighting for democracy. So it seems the Athenians were very modern indeed in this regard.

I had reasoned that possibility out myself beforehand, and it makes sense to me, but an argument can easily be made that Corcyra was a naval rival to Athens, and joining with Corinth to defeat a regional rival is at least as reasonable as joining with Corcyra to defeat Corinth.

Now, again, my knowledge of the subject is extremely limited, and I don't know the precise nature of the relationship between Corcyra and Athens, but it seems to me that an argument in the direction I outlined above is at least tenable.

[Steve]

The Corcyraeans played the card that if Athens sided against them and they were subsumed into the orbit of poleis allied with Sparta (including Corinth, it should be noted), it would lead to the Spartan-led coalition having the naval power to threaten the Athenian "League". But that if Athens sided with them, they would ally with Athens and the Athenian naval hegemony would grow that much further indomitable.

By this time it was clear that there was going to be trouble between Athens and Sparta, so the Athenian Assembly didn't find it too hard to decide to back Corcyra even though they were fighting democrats. Practicality trumps ideology a fair bit, though not always (Witness the Assembly, years later and in desperate straits after the Sicily disaster, voluntarily dissolving itself and turning Athens into an oligarchy on the premise that this would attract Persian support!), and the practicality of pressing a potential ally into the enemy's camp, an ally with a weapon that could be dangerous to you, simply to save a distant democratic city-state that had already aligned with your enemy's ally (Corinth) is a tad lacking.

And of course this wouldn't be the last time Athens went after another democracy. There was this democracy on Sicily called "Syracuse" that tended to vex them....

[Simon_Jester]

I think the key thing to remember is that various forms of "aristocracy" were the norm throughout the civilized world at the time. As far as I know, there was no ideological core of "democracy is the only acceptable government!" fanatics running Athens. Whether you wanted to be ruled by a democracy or an oligarchy depended heavily on how you expected each sort of government to treat you, and whether the government you had at the moment was governing well.

Now, both sides had their partisans, their supporters, but it wasn't a Great Culture War of pro-democracy Athenian good guys against anti-democracy Spartan bad guys.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

If you really want to see how Imperialistic Athens had become, one doesn't need to look further. Syracuse was a democratic state, yet Athens invaded because it was attracted to the rich grain and lands.

Ultimately, Thucydides expresses some degree of contempt for the demogogues who urged on the war. Not least, the attack on Syracuse was led by some of the politicians who sought personal glory and gain. These demogogues won the minds and hearts of the people, and the expedition had support, that is, until its crushing defeat.

In any case, I have forgotten much details of the book, since my last reading in 2004. The Athenians were using every means to keep their allies in their orbit, and I recall there was some degree of oppression for those who tried to break away. Really, at the end of the day, the Athenians merely overstretched themselves in their desire for control and power and then simply overspent the treasury and fell.

[Steve]

Some degree of oppression? If not for a reconsideration vote they would have utterly extirpated the Mytilineans because a single clique in the city had revolted; the men would've been executed en masse and the women and children sold into slavery. All because in the first vote Cleon, one of their worst demogogues, whipped the Athenians into a frenzied lather of "We must react brutally or our other tribute cities will be emboldened to revolt!".

Later on they did these very things to Melos, and the Melians' only crime was wanting to be left alone and not reduced to being a subject state of Athens (and of course their pleas to be left alone spawned one of the most known bits of Thucydides' history, the Melian Dialogue).

Ironically, if the Athenians hadn't put the cautious, anti-attack Nicias in charge of the first Sicilian expedition, it's possible that a bolder commander would've sailed his fleet and army right up to the underdefended, unprepared harbor of Syracuse and provoked the city to submit. But between the recall of Alcibiades and Nicias' own caution and discomfort with the expedition, the Athenian forces dawdled and allowed the Syracusans to start improving their defenses. And the rest, as they say, is history.

[Narkis]

My question, then, can be summed up simply: is the way in which Athens is portrayed in modern thought - as, like I've said, a bastion of modernity and a forerunner to the West - really tenable in light of what strikes me as a fundamental contradiction in their actions prior to the outset of the War?

The impression I have is that Athens was quite committed on a nearly ideological level to democracy, imposing it as they did on most of their conquests. Why, then, would they not aid Corinth, and by corollary the Epidamnian democrats?

This is quite wrong. The Athenians' main concern at the time was to expand their haegemony over what was then considered the Hellenic world. Their main rival was Sparta. They cared little about democracy and the self-determination of other city-states, unless it'd expand Athens' influence, or diminish Sparta's. Corinth was a firm ally of Sparta at the time, and it was unlikely that Athens' help would make them switch sides. But Corcyra was unaligned and a big naval power, and getting them on their side was invaluable, despite any ideological differences.

Athens had little in common with a modern democracy. It far more resembled an Empire, and the cautionary tales you might've geard about a "tyranny of the majority" were quite true there. While Pericles was alive he reigned supreme, and after his death charismatic orators, the demagogues, could whip the public into a frenzy at will, and have it support anything at all, no matter how good an idea it was. Things like the disastrous Syracusean expedition, or recalling Alcibiades while the expedition was already underway and leaving the cautious Nicias in charge, someone who'd been against attacking Syracuse from the beggining, or even destroying Melos utterly when the Melians tried to remain neutral in this madness.



Damned,a new post has been made in this topic. Ninja'd by Steve.