Unorthodox Angles/Andrew Gramling
Echoes from History: The Last Daughter of Alexandria, and the End of the Hellenistic Age Part I
Peace, the absence of conflict, is a condition that many strive for, yet it can be remarkably elusive. The end of the Greco-Persian Wars ushered Greece into a new age—one filled with extraordinary cultural achievements, philosophical discoveries, and artistic expression. Yet the hearts of men remained unchanged. The same ambition for influence and power that had driven kings and city-states for generations continued to shape the Greek world. With Persia no longer standing as the common enemy, a new struggle emerged: a contest for dominance among the Greeks themselves which threatened to turn them into the antithesis of everything they stood for. Thus began the Peloponnesian War.
Athens and Sparta — old rivals who had united briefly to drive away the most powerful land and sea multinational force the world had ever witnessed, now became increasingly wary of each other, when there was no longer a looming external threat to capture their attention. While Athens was not originally known for aggressive expansion, it slowly transformed into an expanding empire over time and threatened to become the thing they once fought against— an obstacle to freedom. Adding to the irony, Athens appeared to have some righteous intentions, but it was not always seen from that angle, particularly by the Spartans, whose interests often opposed Athenian ambitions.
The Spartan-allied Corinthians, whose former colony of Corcyra had grown so prosperous that they began to rival Corinth itself, drew a line and demanded complete obedience to the motherland. In the ensuing conflict which resulted from opposition to Corinthian demands, the Corcyrans requested aid from Athens, and after full compliance had been reached, more tension between Athens and Sparta had developed. The Athenians later imposed sanctions on Sparta’s Megarian allies, which they refused to rescind in the face of Spartan pressure, claiming they had a right to defend their own interests.
In a preemptive move, Sparta’s ally of the city-state of Thebes, intervened on their behalf and attacked the city of Plataea, where the decisive Greek victory over Persia had been won decades earlier. The Thebans were well aware that the Plataeans were allied with the Athenians, and although the attack failed, it created an opening for direct warfare.
Sparta believed that in order to crush the growing aspirations of the Athenians, all that would be necessary would be to destroy the countryside around Athens to completely disable their food production. It was the counter-strategy of Athenian statesman and general Pericles to wall off Athens and bring the population of the Attica, which included the entire Athenian metropolitan area, within its walls and rely on the navy to import food. In so doing, Pericles may have temporarily spared Athens from the wrath of Sparta, but not from divine wrath, as some Greeks would understand it. Pericles unintentionally doomed himself and many other Athenians when a plague killed a large portion of the overcrowded population which had little opportunity to disperse because of the war and the city's fortifications.
With the death of Pericles came new leadership, stoking increasingly aggressive policies, and with the additional deaths of both Cleon of Athens and Brasidas of Sparta at Amphipolis came a segue towards a resolution of conflict between rivals, though one that did not remove the tension that lingered in the atmosphere.
Athenian willingness to help allies coupled with their expansive ambitions led them to the island of Sicily, where there was another power struggle between Greek colonies there. What started as a mission of aid transformed into an opportunity to gain resources, expand influence, and strengthen the empire. Sparta saw yet another opening to counter the agenda of Athens and supported the Syracusans in Sicily, which resulted in the loss of a huge portion of Athens’ military power, but it was not devastating enough of a move to cripple the capabilities of the Athenians indefinitely.
With this endless stalemate between old rivals remaining through war, disease, and political maneuvering, Sparta knew it had to seek external support beyond the boundaries of Greece in the most ironic and unexpected of all places— Persia. The ones who remained so defiant in the face of the Persian Empire were now seeking their aid to deal with a domestic threat, and Persia did not do it for altruistic reasons. A united Greece would always remain a threat to Persian expansion, and by fueling the weakening of stability of Greece through secondhand intervention, Persia had nothing but self-serving ambitions for doing so. They provided the Spartans with gold which they committed to the bolstering of their naval forces. It was always known that Sparta was the supreme land power while Athens dominated the sea, but this one move gave Sparta a formidable advantage. At the Battle of Aegospotami, commander Lysander of the Spartan navy destroyed the Athenian fleet through cunning more than might, which cut off their access to grain supplies, and eventually forced a surrender, ending the Peloponnesian War, and the longstanding rivalry between Athens and Sparta.
A vicious cycle ensued. The Spartans, once fearful of Athenian ambition, became the oppressors they had sought to overtake. Due to heavy mistreatment and rather disdainful actions, including occupying the Theban citadel, the Cadmea, during peacetime, the Thebans regarded Sparta’s actions as a betrayal after helping them defeat the Athenians and rebelled. The conflict reached its pinnacle at the Battle of Leuctra. Sparta had earned a reputation of being the most capable infantry in all of Greece whose accomplishments spread far beyond Greece, throughout the Persian Empire, and beyond. It therefore seemed almost unthinkable that Thebes would challenge them in open combat, knowing better than anyone else still alive of what the Spartans were truly capable of. Perhaps it was this knowing in part that led to the challenge.
General Epaminondas of Thebes began life as an ordinary citizen, but through merit, reputation, and military genius rose to a position of prominence. Knowing how rigid the Spartan mentality, however unyielding, could be, he developed a strategy that went beyond what Greek battle formations traditionally incorporated. As mentioned previously, the most elite hoplites in the phalanx battle formation are placed on the right side. Epaminondas defied expectation and put his elite division on the left side, which was used to blitz Sparta’s elite troops on the right side, and resulted in an unanticipated defeat for the Spartans. Their aura of invincibility had been shattered not with brute strength but by a superior strategy.
Thebes was now the dominant power in all of Greece. After defeating their military and freeing many of their helots, there was no reason to invade Sparta itself. Enough damage had already been done to their former ally. With the ever-changing power dynamic in Greece fueled by competition between city-states, it was only a matter of time until another power would rise up to challenge the power of Thebes. A young Macedonian hostage observed from the inside the tactics of commander Epaminondas and the political structure of Greek power during his involuntary stay in Thebes. The Greeks scarcely noticed the young Macedonian hostage watching from the sidelines. Years later, the lessons he learned in Thebes would be refined into a military machine unlike anything the Greek world had ever seen. His name was Philippos II Amyntou — better known to history as Philip II of Macedon.