This is a survey of ancient Greek history from the Bronze Age to the death of Socrates in 399 BCE. Along with studying the most important events and personalities, we will consider broader issues such as political and cultural values and methods of historical interpretation.
The Sicilian Expedition (416-413 BCE) and its Aftermath
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来自 Wesleyan University 的课程
古希腊
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从本节课中
The End of the War, the End of the Century
The final Module brings us to the end of the fifth century and beyond. The charismatic Alcibiades persuaded his fellow citizens to invade Sicily. Eventually they were routed. Along with the events of the end of the war, we will consider the social and economic importance for Athens of foreign residents (metics) and slaves. Despite the catastrophe in Sicily, the Athenians kept fighting for almost a decade. After their final defeat, they endured a period of oligarchic domination and a brief but vicious civil war. Although they resolved it with a general amnesty, it is likely that the lingering anxiety contributed to the prosecution and conviction of Socrates in 399 BCE. In response to prior learners’ requests, the module ends with a lecture about Philip II and Alexander the Great. The Macedonians also offer a salutary reminder that Greek history is a capacious subject that should not be artificially limited to the Classical period.
与讲师见面
Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, PhDProfessor
Classical Studies
We now move to one of the climatic events in the history of Greece at the end of the
fifth century. And that is, the so called Sicilian
Expedition, which could with equal justice be called the Athenian Invasion.
Because in 415, the year after the attack on Milos, the Athenians, as I've said,
decided to attack a much larger island, and that is Sicily.
The cause was a plea from some old allies. In the northwest, there's a community
called Edesta, and the Egestians had been allies at Athens.
They got into a quarrel with a nearby state called Selinus, straight south of
there. And they asked the Athenians to help, and
the Athenians agreed. One of the things we're seeing here,
unmistakably, is the way that this war has spread, and spread, and spread.
Thucydides said in his introduction that the war eventually consumed most of the
Greek world, and we're really seeing that here.
No longer confined to the mainland or the, the, the Cycladic islands, but now going
all the way over to Sicily. Thucydides is Caustic, about the Athenians
ignorance, about what they are undertaking.
Sicily, you might remember, had been settled by Greeks very early on during the
Archaic age, when the colonization movement had its first great wave to
southern Italy and Sicily. So these were poleis.
These were communities organized along Greek lines that had grown wealthy and
powerful. In fact, in 480, the community of
Syracuse, under the leadership of its tyrant Galon, had warded off an attack
from the very powerful North African community of Carthage.
The Athenians, Thucydides says, didn't know what they were undertaking.
And he provides a sort of capsule history of Sicily, to make up for it.
He hits their ignorance and then says that they had some anxiety themselves about
what they were going to do. So after having had an assembly in which
they agreed to help the Agestians. That a second assembly to debate what they
should do. Here the protagonists were Nikkius, the
moderate general who had given his name to the peace that had been signed some 6
years earlier, the peace of Nicias and countering him was Alcibiades.
Niccius spoke first and gave arguments against sailing.
He said, this is our opportunity to recover, there's no real need to undertake
such a long and dangerous expedition which, if we succeed will give us very
little and if we fail, will damage us enormously.
He also mentioned, that there had been, a second, somewhat less virulent output,
outbreak of the plague. And, he says we have a chance to recover
from that. And then, he takes an open hit at
Alcibiades. He says that, this man, just wants glory
for himself. Don't let him, don't let him persuade you,
don't let him deceive you, and he says, give up the mad dream of conquest.
Alcibiades gives the response, and Thucydides again gives us an estimation.
He said that Alcibiades was exceedingly ambitious for money and fame.
And, Thucydides adds somberly, he was not the least, he was among the most I should
say, responsible for the ultimate downfall of Athens.
What does Alcibiades say? It's worth looking at in some detail, just
very quickly. He says, first of all, I'm Alcibiades.
I brought the city glory with my victories at the Olympics.
Remember the chariot races, first, second, and fourth?
I won those, and brought the glory back to the community.
Now it's clear, it's true that Olympic victors did bestow a degree of glory on
the community form which they came, but Alcibiades here seems to have reversed the
polarity, so to speak, of what's really important.
He then goes on to say, I also benefited the Athenians because I gave lavishly to
support tragic choruses. He undertook the Chordagia.
But then he goes even farther, and he says that the people in Sicily are a motley
rabble. You hear a distinct class bias here.
So they're ready to go whichever way the wind takes them.
You don't have to worry about them. He refers to them not only as a rabble but
as a mob. Well, no.
In fact, Syracuse, the main city on the east end of the island, was a democracy.
He goes on even farther to say that it is the nature of empire to expand.
Remember, Pericles had warned. About this in his last speech.
He said keep the empire but don't expand it.
And then Alsabides concludes by saying it is the safest law to take one's nature and
character for better or worse and live up to it.
You can hear that. Incredible arrogance and recklessness and
confidence. You can see why he was the celebrity he
was. Niccius then takes the opportunity to try
to rebut this speech, and say, It's going to take much more effort than you think.
He calls for vastly greater resources than he really thinks they're going to need in
the hope of dissuading the Athenians from undertaking this venture.
But it backfires. In a striking turn of phrase, Thucydides
says That all alike, young and old, fell in love with the enterprise.
Alcibiades as arrows again. It's not a great way to undertake planning
for a major military campaign. In fact it's hard to see what the
Athenians could have done worse. We'll go on a bit.
They appointed three generals,Nikkius, who didn't want to go, Lamacus who we know
very little about but seems to have been kind of a competent, non entity and
Alcibiades. As they were preparing for this great
expedition. There was a kind of civic uproar.
Throughout the city there were statues called herms, which is a column with the
head of Hermes and male genitals. And Hermes is the god of crossroads and
transitional places. So doorways, crossroads in a road.
A mountain pass, things like that might have a statue or some little memory of
Hermes to help us along. And just before the expedition sailed, the
Hermes were mutilated, they were docked. And Alsabaeides and his elite buddies were
implicated in this. Not only that, but rumors tarted to spread
that Alcibiades and his friends had taken part in a prophination of the Eleusinian
mysteries. The great annual celebration in honor of
the goddess Demeter. That they performed a sort of parody of
the mysteries. If this were Herodotus these would be the
bad omens, but for Thucydides they're just a sign of how wired up the Athenian
population is. The Athenians prepare a huge armada, 130
war ships. A hundred support boats, 134 war ships and
130 support boats. Over 5,000 hop lights.
The guess is that there were perhaps over 20,000 men involved in this, in the whole
venture. Think of Xerxes.
Think of the Persian invasion. I think we're meant to.
They make their way across the Mediterranean, across the Ionian Sea, I
should say. Up the coast to Kerkyra, modern day Corfu,
around The heel of Italy, and then over to Sicily.
Shortly before their arrival, Alcibyatyes, who has great intelligence sources, hears
that the Athenians have sent a ship out with orders that he be arrested, and he
flees. And where does he go?
To Sparta. Goes over to the enemy.
When the Athenians get to Syracuse, note that they're in Syracuse, not in Agesta,
that is they're Far-East, not Far-West. They start and they, get some success
initially. What I'm showing you here, just very
briefly, is a map not of, Sicily or Syracuse but of Attika, because when
Alcibiades went to Sparta, he gave the Spartans invalualbe advise to hurt the
Athenians. With so many men away on a foreign
expedition, home defenses were way down and the Spartans managed to make their way
into Attik territory and establish a fort at Dekelea.
It served as a refuge for deserting Athenian slaves, and as a post from which
the Spartans could harass Athenian land traffic.
This is, all thanks, to Alcibiades. In Sicily, meanwhile The Athenians are
around the great harbor at Syracuse, here shown in a wonderful ninteenth century
photograph. They start to get the idea of building a
wall to besiege Syracuse. But the Spartans.
Realizing that even their interests might have some play this far away, are
prevailed upon and do send a General Gylippus, who fortifies Syracuse and hopes
and brings them back to the battle in a big way.
The Athenians We are told, have their wall stymied by a counter-wall.
The actual geography of this is a little hard to figure out.
This is sort of a schematic of wall and counter-wall.
And this is the great sort of ear-shaped harbor that we were just talking about.
It's at this point. That Thucydides records for us a letter
home from Nicias. He says, the ships are rotting.
The slaves are deserting. We're losing.
And then he also says that he has an extremely painful disease of the kidneys
and asks for relief for himself. The Athenians don't accede to his request
to be brought home, but I think probably to his shock the send out a massive force
of reinforcements under the general Demosthenes.
The battles pick up around the harbor. And the Athenians suffer a defeat there.
The Athenians don't lose often at sea and they do now.
Moreover the Athenians are encamped in an awful kind of pestilential swamp and
Demostenes the general says we got to get out of here.
They're getting ready to go but there's a lunar eclipse and Nikkius who Thucydides
says is a little over addicted to beliefs of this kind, listens to the soothsayers
and waits out the 27 days of purification after an eclipse.
It's catastrophic, first The Syracusans had wanted nothing more than to drive the
Athenians out of the Great Harbor. But then after defeating them, their plan
changes. They set up a barricade of old ships,
hulks, chained together, and trap the Athenians.
So the Athenians are now trapped behind the counterwall on land Behind this
blockade at sea. There is another battle in the great
harbor and the Athenians are decisively defeated and Nikkius and Demosthenes
decide to flee overland. Thucydides account again is unsparing.
Tormented by heat and thirst, by the constant raiding from the Syracusans and
their allies on land, finally the remaining Athenians come to a small river,
the Assinarus. And if you can picture it, the river is
here. There's a height on the other side.
And the Athenians are so desperate to get to the water that they sort of trample
each other. Whereas from the height on the other side,
the Syracusans are raining down arrows and missles, and the Athenians, so tormented
by thirst, keep going to the water. As fouled as it was by mud and blood and
filth. Demosthenes and Nikkius are killed.
The remaining Atheniana are captures and put in to work in the quarries in
Syracuse. They're enslaved.
This, according to Thucydides, was the greatest Hellenic achievement of this war
or any other. At once most glorious to the victors, most
calamitous to the conquered. They were beaten at all points and all
together; all that they suffered was great.
They were destroyed as the saying goes, with the total destruction.
Their fleet, their army, everything was destroyed and few of the many returned
home. Such were the events in Sicily.
Immediately thereafter, There were, there was a flurry of revolts among the allies.
And there was political upheaval at Athens.
And we'll see what happens next in our next lecture.
