Status Updates From The Peloponnesian War: Athe...

Restarted this to prep for History

This is Sparta

Additionally important point that the peace to end the war “did not establish a stable balance of power” nor did it create a “new order.” The Spartans lacked the resources to maintain their newfound empire/hegemony. This is key for understanding the decades of violence and contestation that roiled Greece after 404 and enabled later Macedonian supremacy.

Major point about substantial depopulation across the Greek world owing to the war/attendant civil strife (the war considerable increased the prevalence of democrat vs. oligarch civil war, and attendant unprecedented atrocities) and local contestations. drove poverty, which spurred large-scale enlistment of Greeks as mercenaries in foreign armies.

The Athenian population ten years after peace was roughly half of what it had been at the war’s start. The Athenians were alone in being so devastated by plague (1/3 killed, worsened by city crowding following the evacuation of Attic countryside), but the war’s violence, armies’ destruction of crops, and economic/trade collapse all ravaged Greece.

The point being the “rule of the mob/just” narrative that influences political philosophy debates for the next two millennia misunderstands that the generals’ execution (presented as exemplary of a rowdy, unstable Athenian democracy) was a single breach of law that was strongly contested at the time, nearly didn’t occur, and immediately rescinded by the populace.

Important point that much of the political theory/philosophy that is coming out of Athens (i.e, Socrates and Aristotle) and related to questions of democracy and governance bears distinct reflection of the moment. Kagan argues that the unflattering view of democracy we get at certain moments (illegal ordering of Arginusae generals’ deaths; rejection of Spartan peace terms) were quite rational in context.

Alcibiades strategy of “justness and conciliation adopted as a means of recovering the empire” proved extremely effective. He led extremely effectively at the strategic level (whereas Thrasybulus was a remarkably successful operational commander).