Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome

by Victor Davis Hanson

  1 Nabonidus Chronicle, col. ii, 15. Cyrus himself entered Babylon two and a half weeks

  later.

  2 Jeremiah 28.14.

  3 Ezekiel 32.23.

  4 Cyrus Cylinder 20. The titles used by the Persian kings were not original to them

  but were derived from an assortment of Near Eastern kingdoms, Babylon included.

  5 Aeschylus The Persians 104–5.

  6 Cyrus Cylinder 16.

  7 Herodotus 1.214.

  8 Isaiah 45.1–3.

  9 Heracleitus, quoted by Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Doctrines of the Eminent

  Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library no. 184 (Cambridge, MA:

  Harvard University Press, 1925), 1.21.

  10 For a concise introduction to the sources that enable the events of 522 to be recon-

  structed, as well as the sources themselves, see the chapter “From Cambyses to Darius

  I,” in Amélie Kuhrt, The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period

  (London: Routledge, 2007), vol. 1.

  11 Bisitun Inscription 63.

  12 A date that is probable rather than certain.

  13 Phocylides frag. 4. Despite the Assyrian reference, the poem is almost certainly a

  reflection of the growth of Persian power.

  14 Tyrtaeus 7.31–32.

  15 Quoted by Tim Blanning in The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815 (New York: Vi-

  king, 2007), 626.

  16 Herodotus 6.116.

  17 Herodotus 8.24.

  18 Herodotus 9.62.

  19 Lycurgus Against Leocrates 81.

  30 Holland

  2. Pericles, Thucydides, and the Defense of Empire

  Donald Kagan

  By the middle of the fifth century, when Pericles became the

  leading figure in Athens, defense of its empire was of the highest im-

  portance, because the empire was the key to the defense of Athens itself.

  It represented security against a renewal of the Persian threat, and it pro-

  vided the means for warding off any future chal enge from Sparta. Beyond

  that, its revenues were essential to Pericles’ plans for making Athens the

  most prosperous, beautiful, and civilized city the Greeks had ever known.

  The glory it reflected was an essential part of his vision for Athens.

  Pericles and his Athenians regarded their empire as necessary, but it

  also raised serious questions. Could an empire limit its growth and am-

  bition and maintain itself in safety? Or did rule over others inevitably

  lead the imperial power to overreach and bring about its own ruin? Was

  empire, especially by Greek over Greek, morally legitimate? Or was it

  evidence of hubris, the violent arrogance that was sure to bring on the

  justified destruction of those who dared to rule over others as though

  they were gods?

  It fell to Pericles, as leader of the Athenian people, to guide their

  policy into safe channels and to justify the empire in the eyes of the

  other Greeks as well as their own. In both tasks Pericles broke a sharply

  new path. He put an end to imperial expansion and moderated Athe-

  nian ambitions. He also put forward powerful arguments, by word as

  well as deed, to show that the empire was both legitimate and in the

  common interest of all the Greeks.

  It is important to recall that the Athenians did not set out to acquire

  an empire and that the Delian League that was its forerunner came

  into being only because of Sparta’s default, but the Athenians had good

  reasons for accepting its leadership. First and foremost was the fear and

  expectation that the Persians would come again to conquer the Greeks.

  The Persians had attacked them three times in two decades, and there

  was no reason to believe they would permanently accept the latest

  defeat. Second, the Athenians had hardly begun to repair the dam-

  age done by the latest Persian attack; they knew another would surely

  make Athens a target again. In addition, the Aegean and the lands to its

  east were important to Athenian trade. Their dependence on imported

  grain from Ukraine, which had to travel from the Black Sea, meant that

  even a very limited Persian campaign that gained control of the Bos-

  porus or the Dardanelles could cut their lifeline. Finally, the Athenians

  had ties of common ancestry, religion, and tradition with the Ionian

  Greeks, who made up most of the endangered cities. Athenian security,

  prosperity, and sentiment all pointed toward driving the Persians from

  all the coasts and islands of the Aegean, the Dardanelles, the Sea of

  Marmora, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea.

  The new alliance was one of three interstate organizations in the

  Greek world, alongside the Peloponnesian League and the Hellenic

  League formed against Persia, which had by no means lapsed when the

  Spartans withdrew from the Aegean. After the founding of the Delian

  League, the Hellenic League had an increasingly shadowy existence

  and collapsed at the first real test. The important, effective, and active

  alliances were the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta, on the main-

  land and the Delian League, led by Athens, in the Aegean.

  From the first, the Delian League was very effective because it was

  entirely and enthusiastically voluntary, its purposes were essential to

  its members, and its organization was clear and simple. Athens was

  the leader: all the members, about 140 in the beginning, swore a per-

  petual oath to have the same friends and enemies as Athens, in this

  way forming a permanent offensive and defensive alliance under Athe-

  nian leadership. Hegemony, however, was not domination. In the early

  years of the league, the Athenians were “leaders of autonomous allies

  who took part in common synods.”1 In those years, those synods deter-

  mined policy and made decisions at meetings at Delos, where Athens

  had only one vote. In theory, Athens was only an equal partner in the

  32 Kagan

  synod, with the same single vote as Samos, Lesbos, Chios, or even tiny

  Seriphos. In fact, the system worked in Athens’s favor. Athenian mili-

  tary and naval power, the enormous relative size of Athens’s contribu-

  tion, and the city’s immense prestige as hegemon guaranteed that the

  many small and powerless states would be under its influence, while

  the larger states that might have challenged the Athenians were easily

  outvoted. Many years later, the embittered and rebellious Mytilene-

  ans would say, “The allies were unable to unite and defend themselves

  because of the great number of voters.”2 In the early years, however,

  there appears to have been harmony and agreement among the mem-

  bers, large and small, and the degree of Athens’s influence was propor-

  tionate to its contribution. From the beginning, then, Athens was in the

  happy position of controlling the Delian League without the appear-

  ance of illegality or tyranny.

  The early actions of the league must have won unanimous and en-

  thusiastic support: the allies drove the Persians from their remaining

  strongholds in Europe and made the sea lanes of the Aegean safe by

  expelling a nest of pirates from the island of Scyros. As victory fol-

  lowed victory and the Persian threat seemed more remote, some al-

  lies thoug
ht the league and its burdensome obligations were no longer

  needed. The Athenians, however, rightly saw that the Persian threat

  was not gone and that it would increase to the degree that Greek vigi-

  lance waned. Thucydides makes it clear that the chief causes for the

  later rebellions were the allies’ refusal to provide the agreed-upon ships

  or money and to perform the required military service. The Athenians

  held them strictly to account and

  were no longer equally pleasant as leaders. They no longer be-

  haved as equals on campaigns, and they found it easy to reduce

  states that rebelled. The blame for this belonged to the allies

  themselves: for most of them had themselves assessed in quotas

  of money instead of ships because they shrank from military ser-

  vice so that they need not be away from home. As a result, the

  Athenian fleet was increased by means of the money they paid in,

  while when the allies tried to revolt, they went to war without the

  means or the experience.3

  Pericles and the Defense of Empire 33

  Less than a decade after its formation, perhaps in 469, the forces

  of the Delian League won smashing victories over the Persian fleet

  and army at the mouth of the Eurymedon River in Asia Minor. This

  decisive Persian defeat intensified the restlessness of the allies and the

  harshness and unpopularity of the Athenians. The rebellion and siege

  of Thasos from 465 to 463, which arose from a quarrel between the

  Athenians and the Thasians and had no clear connection with the pur-

  poses of the league, must have had a similar effect.

  The first Peloponnesian War (ca. 460–445) strained Athenian re-

  sources to the limit and encouraged defection. The destruction of the

  Athenian expedition to Egypt in the mid-450s provided the shock that

  hastened the transformation from league to empire. To many, it must

  have seemed the beginning of the collapse of Athenian power, so it

  provoked new rebellions. The Athenians responded swiftly and effec-

  tively to put them down, and then took measures to ensure they would

  not be repeated. In some places they installed democratic governments

  friendly to and dependent on themselves. Sometimes they posted mili-

  tary garrisons, sometimes they assigned Athenian officials to oversee

  the conduct of the formerly rebellious state, and sometimes they used

  a combination of tactics. All were violations of the autonomy of the

  subject state.

  The Athenians tightened their control of the empire even more in

  the 440s. They imposed the use of Athenian weights, measures, and

  coins, closing the local mints and so depriving the allies of a visible

  symbol of their sovereignty and autonomy. They tightened the rules

  for collection and delivery of tribute payments, requiring that the trials

  for those accused of violations be held in Athens. They used military

  force against states that rebelled or refused to pay tribute. Sometimes

  the Athenians confiscated territory from the offending state and gave

  it as a colony to loyal allies or Athenian citizens. When such a colony

  was composed of Athenians it was called a cleruchy. Its settlers did not

  form a new, independent city but remained Athenian citizens. When

  the Athenians suppressed a rebellion, they usually installed a demo-

  cratic regime and made the natives swear an oath of loyalty. The fol-

  lowing is the oath imposed on the people of Colophon:

  34 Kagan

  I will do and say and plan whatever good I can with regard to the

  people of the Athenians and their allies, and I will not revolt from

  the people of the Athenians either in word or deed, either myself

  or in obedience to another. And I will love the people of the Athe-

  nians and I will not desert. And I will not destroy the democracy

  at Colophon, either myself or in obedience to another, either by

  going off to another city or by intriguing there. I will carry out

  these things according to the oath truly, without deceit and with-

  out harm, by Zeus, Apollo, and Demeter. And if I transgress may

  I and my descendants be destroyed for all time, but if I keep my

  oath may great prosperity come to me.4

  A bit later they imposed a similar oath on the Chalcidians, but in

  this one allegiance was sworn not to the alliance but to the Athenian

  people alone.

  The association took a critical step in the transition from league to

  empire in the year 454–453, when the treasury was moved from Delos to

  the Acropolis in Athens. The formal explanation was the threat that the

  Persians might send a fleet into the Aegean, following a catastrophic

  Athenian defeat in Egypt and confronted with a war with Sparta. We

  do not know whether that fear was real or merely a pretext, but the

  Athenians did not waste time in turning the transfer to their advan-

  tage. From that year until late in the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians

  took one-sixtieth of the tribute paid by the allies as first fruits for the

  goddess Athena Polias, patroness of the city and now of the reconsti-

  tuted league. The Athenians were free to use the goddess’s share as

  they liked, not necessarily for league purposes.

  Changes so important and so radical that they transformed a volun-

  tary league of al ies into a largely involuntary empire ruled by Athens de-

  manded justification in the ancient world of the Greeks. In most respects

  the Greeks resembled other ancient peoples in their attitudes toward

  power, conquest, empire, and the benefits that came with them. They

  viewed the world as a place of intense competition in which victory and

  domination, which brought fame and glory, were the highest goals, while

  defeat and subordination brought ignominy and shame. They always

  Pericles and the Defense of Empire 35

  honored the creed espoused by Achil es, the greatest hero of Greek leg-

  end: “Always to be the best and foremost over al others.” When the leg-

  endary world of aristocratic heroes gave way to the world of city-states,

  the sphere of competition moved up from contests between individuals,

  households, and clans to contests and wars between cities. In 416, more

  than a decade after the death of Pericles, Athenian spokesmen explained

  to some Melian officials their view of international relations: “Of the

  gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessity of their nature

  they always rule wherever they have the power.”5

  Yet the Melian Dialogue, as this famous passage in Thucydides

  on international Realpolitik in the classical world came to be known,

  was a dramatic presentation of the morally problematic status of the

  Athenian Empire. The Athenians’ harsh statement is provoked by the

  Melians’ claim that the gods will be on their side, because the Athe-

  nians are behaving unjustly toward a neutral state. The Melian com-

  plaint may refer to the specific actions taken or contemplated by the

  Athenians, but it would have struck a deep vein of sympathy among

  the Greeks. The Greeks were free from the modern prejudice against

  power and the security and glory it could bring, but their own historical

 
experience was different from that of other ancient nations. Their cul-

  ture had been shaped not by great empires but by small, autonomous,

  independent poleis, and they came to think that freedom was the natu-

  ral condition for men raised in such an environment. Citizens should

  be free in their persons and free to maintain their own constitutions,

  laws, and customs, and their cities should be free to conduct their own

  foreign relations and to compete with others for power and glory. The

  Greeks also believed that the freedom made possible by the life of the

  polis created a superior kind of citizen and a special kind of power. The

  free, autonomous polis, they thought, was greater than the mightiest

  powers in the world. The sixth-century poet Phocylides was prepared

  to compare it to the great Assyrian Empire: “A little polis living orderly

  in a high place is greater than block-headed Nineveh.”6

  When poleis fought one another, the victor typical y took control of

  a piece of borderland that was usual y the source of the dispute. The

  defeated enemy was not normal y enslaved, nor was his land annexed

  or occupied. In such matters, as in many, the Greeks employed a double

  36 Kagan

  standard by which they distinguished themselves from alien peoples

  who did not speak Greek and were not shaped by the Greek cultural

  tradition. Since they had not been raised as free men in free communities

  but lived as subjects to a ruler, they were manifestly slaves by nature, so

  it was perfectly al right to dominate and enslave them in reality. Greeks,

  on the other hand, were natural y free, as they demonstrated by creating

  and living in the liberal institutions of the polis. To rule over such people,

  to deny them their freedom and autonomy, would clearly be wrong.

  That was what the Greeks thought, but they did not always act ac-

  cordingly. At a very early time the Spartans had conquered the Greeks

  residing in their own region of Laconia and neighboring Messenia and

  made them slaves of the state. In the sixth century they formed the

  Peloponnesian League, an alliance that gave the Spartans considerable

  control over the foreign policy of their allies. But the Spartans gener-

  ally did not interfere with the internal arrangements of the allied cit-

  ies, which continued to have the appearance of autonomy. In the two

  decades after the Persian War, the Argives appear to have obliterated