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The Athenians smelled victory in this strategy and nothing would deter them… (ROBERT GREENE) | Part B’’

The Athenians smelled victory in this strategy and nothing would deter them… (ROBERT GREENE) | Part B’’

As his influence grew, he started to assert himself in the Assembly
and alter its policies. He argued against expanding Athens’s
democratic empire. He feared the Athenians would overreach and lose
control. He worked to consolidate the empire and strengthen existing
alliances. When it came to war and to serving as a general, he strove to
limit campaigns and to win through maneuvers, with minimal loss of
lives. To many this seemed unheroic, but as these policies took effect,
the city entered a period of unprecedented prosperity. There were no
more needless wars to drain the coffers, and the empire was
functioning more smoothly than ever.
What Pericles did with the growing surplus of money startled and
amazed the citizenry: instead of using it to buy political favors, he
initiated a massive public building project in Athens. He
commissioned temples, theaters, and concert halls, putting all of the
Athenian craftsmen to work. Everywhere one looked, the city was
becoming more sublimely beautiful. He favored a form of architecture
that reflected his personal aesthetics—ordered, highly geometric,
monumental yet soothing to the eye. His greatest commission was that
of the Parthenon, with its enormous forty-foot statue of Athena.
Athena was the guiding spirit of Athens, the goddess of wisdom and
practical intelligence. She represented all of the values Pericles wanted
to promote. Singlehandedly Pericles had transformed the look and
spirit of Athens, and it entered a golden age in all of the arts and
sciences.
What was perhaps the strangest quality of Pericles was his speaking
style—restrained and dignified. He did not go in for the usual flights of
rhetoric. Instead, he worked to convince an audience through airtight
arguments. This would make people listen closely, as they followed the
interesting course of his logic. The style was compelling and calming.
Unlike any of the other leaders, Pericles remained in power year
after year, decade after decade, putting his total stamp on the city in
his quiet, unobtrusive way. He had his enemies. This was inevitable.
He had stayed in power so long that many accused him of being a
secret dictator. He was suspected of being an atheist, a man who
scoffed at all traditions. That would explain why he was so peculiar.
But nobody could argue against the results of his leadership.
And so now, as he began to address the Assembly that afternoon,
his opinion on war with Sparta would carry the most weight, and a
hush came over the crowd as they anxiously waited to hear his
argument.
“Athenians,” he began, “my views are the same as ever: I am against
making any concessions to the Peloponnesians, even though I am
aware that the enthusiastic state of mind in which people are
persuaded to enter upon a war is not retained when it comes to action,
and that people’s minds are altered by the course of events.”
Differences between Athens and Sparta were supposed to be settled
through neutral arbitrators, he reminded them. It would set a
dangerous precedent if they gave in to the Spartans’ unilateral
demands. Where would it end? Yes, a direct land battle with Sparta
would be suicide. What he proposed instead was a completely novel
form of warfare—limited and defensive.
He would bring within the walls of Athens all those living in the
area. Let the Spartans come and try to lure us into fighting, he said; let
them lay waste to our lands. We will not take the bait; we will not fight
them on land. With our access to the sea we will keep the city supplied.
We will use our navy to raid their coastal towns. As time goes on, they
will grow frustrated by the lack of battle. Having to feed and supply
their standing army, they will run out of money. Their allies will bicker
among themselves. The war party within Sparta will be discredited and
a real lasting peace will be agreed upon, all with minimal expenditure
of lives and money on our part.
“I could give you many other reasons,” he concluded, “why you
should feel confident in ultimate victory, if only you will make up your
minds not to add to the empire while the war is in progress, and not to
go out of your way to involve yourselves in new perils. What I fear is
not the enemy’s strategy but our own mistakes.” The novelty of what he
was proposing aroused great debate. Neither hawks nor doves were
satisfied with his plan, but in the end, his reputation for wisdom
carried the day and his strategy was approved. Several months later
the fateful war began.
In the beginning, all did not proceed as Pericles had envisioned. The
Spartans and their allies did not grow frustrated as the war dragged on,
but only bolder. The Athenians were the ones to become discouraged,
seeing their lands destroyed without retaliation. But Pericles believed
his plan could not fail as long as the Athenians remained patient. Then,
in the second year of the war, an unexpected disaster upended
everything: a powerful plague entered the city; with so many people
packed within the walls it spread quickly, killing over one third of the
citizenry and decimating the ranks of the army. Pericles himself caught
the disease, and as he lay dying he witnessed the ultimate nightmare:
all that he had done for Athens over so many decades seemed to
unravel at once, the people descending into group delirium until it was
every man for himself. If he had survived, he almost certainly would
have found a way to calm the Athenians down and broker an
acceptable peace with Sparta, or adjust his defensive strategy, but now
it was too late.
Strangely enough, the Athenians did not mourn for their leader.
They blamed him for the plague and railed at the ineffectiveness of his
strategy. They were not in a mood anymore for patience or restraint.
He had outlived his time, and his ideas were now seen as the tired
reactions of an old man. Their love of Pericles had turned to hate. With
him no longer there, the factions returned with a vengeance. The war
party became popular. The party fed off the people’s growing bitterness
toward the Spartans, who had used the plague to advance their
positions. The hawks promised they would regain the initiative and
crush the Spartans with an offensive strategy. For many Athenians,
such words came as a great relief, a release of pent-up emotions.
As the city slowly recovered from the plague, the Athenians
managed to gain the upper hand, and the Spartans sued for peace.
Wanting to completely defeat their enemy, the Athenians pressed their
advantage, only to find the Spartans recover and turn the tables. Back
and forth it went, year after year. The violence and bitterness on both
sides increased. At one point Athens attacked the island of Melos, a
Spartan ally, and when the Melians surrendered, the Athenians voted
to kill all of their men and sell the women and children into slavery.
Nothing remotely like this had ever happened under Pericles.
Then, after so many years of a war without end, in 415 BC several
Athenian leaders had an interesting idea about how to deliver the fatal
blow. The city-state of Syracuse was the rising power on the island of
Sicily. Syracuse was a critical ally of the Spartans, supplying them with
much-needed resources. If the Athenians, with their great navy, could
launch an expedition and take control of Syracuse, they would gain two
advantages: it would add to their empire, and it would deprive Sparta
of the resources it needed to continue the war. The Assembly voted to
send sixty ships with an appropriate-sized army on board to
accomplish this goal.
One of the commanders assigned to this expedition, Nicias, had
great doubts as to the wisdom of this plan. He feared the Athenians
were underestimating the strength of Syracuse. He laid out all of the
possible negative scenarios; only a much larger expedition could
ensure victory. He wanted to squelch the plan, but his argument had
the opposite effect. If a larger expedition was necessary, then that was
what they would send—one hundred ships and double the number of
soldiers. The Athenians smelled victory in this strategy and nothing
would deter them.
In the ensuing days, Athenians of all ages could be seen in the
streets drawing maps of Sicily, dreaming of the riches that would pour
into Athens and the final humiliation of the Spartans. The day of the
launching of the ships turned into a great holiday and the most aweinspiring spectacle they had ever seen—an enormous armada filling the
harbor as far as the eye could see, the ships beautifully decorated, the
soldiers, glistening in their armor, crowding the decks. It was a
dazzling display of the wealth and power of Athens.
As the months went by, the Athenians desperately sought news of
the expedition. At one point, through the sheer size of the force, it
seemed that Athens had gained the advantage and had laid siege to
Syracuse. But at the last moment, reinforcements arrived from Sparta,
and now the Athenians were on the defensive. Nicias sent off a letter to
the Assembly describing this negative turn of events. He recommended
either giving up and returning to Athens, or the sending of
reinforcements right away. Unwilling to believe in the possibility of
defeat, the Athenians voted to send reinforcements—a second armada
of ships almost as large as the first. In the months after this, the
Athenians’ anxiety reached new heights—for now the stakes had been
doubled and Athens could not afford to lose.
One day a barber in Athens’s port town of Piraeus heard a rumor
from a customer that the Athenian expedition, every ship and almost
every man, had been wiped out in battle. The rumor quickly spread to
Athens. It was hard to believe, but slowly panic set in. A week later the
rumor was confirmed and Athens seemed doomed, drained of money,
ships, and men.
Miraculously, the Athenians managed to hold on. But over the next
few years, severely imbalanced by the losses in Sicily, they staggered
from one reeling blow to another, until finally in 405 BC Athens
suffered its final loss and was forced to agree to the harsh terms of
peace imposed by Sparta. Their years of glory, their great democratic
empire, the Periclean golden age were now and forever over. The man
who had curbed their most dangerous emotions—aggression, greed,
hubris, selfishness—had been gone from the scene for too long, his
wisdom long forgotten.

 

 

 

Part A’: https://www.lecturesbureau.gr/1/the-athenians-smelled-victory-in-this-strategy-and-nothing-would-deter-them-robert-greene-part-a-2573a/?lang=en

 

 

 

The laws of human nature

ROBERT GREENE



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