Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Western civ.
Speaker 2: In today's bow.
Speaker 1: In this author interview, I'm sitting down and we're talking
Speaker 1: about a new translation of the History of the Peloponnesian
Speaker 1: War by Thucydides. Now, this translation and the original I
Speaker 1: suppose thousands of years old, so you may be asking yourself,
Speaker 1: really we need another translation of Thucydides. I actually think
Speaker 1: this one is very, very good. And the difference for
Speaker 1: me is that it's one complete volume that's all put together,
Speaker 1: and it's very understandable in the way that it's written.
Speaker 1: You can tell that the translation stays true to the
Speaker 1: original because I've looked at several other translations and compared
Speaker 1: them and they're not wildly different, which tells us, okay,
Speaker 1: we're on the same factual playing field here. But it's
Speaker 1: it's more readable than some of the other translations that
Speaker 1: I have picked up. Now, if you've never looked at Thucidides,
Speaker 1: you know, history of the Peloponnesian War, you might not
Speaker 1: realize how long. It is. But this thing clocks on
Speaker 1: it at about, you know, over six hundred pages long.
Speaker 1: So it's a big history. And well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a thirty year Long War, So I mean, I suppose
Speaker 1: that is to be expected. The reason that I've always
Speaker 1: thought that this, combined with Herodotus, are always some of
Speaker 1: the most important and critical reads, especially for students of history,
Speaker 1: is that these are the first and these are the
Speaker 1: first works that really show us what a historical analysis
Speaker 1: of an event is supposed.
Speaker 2: To look like.
Speaker 1: Now, of course, Herodotus and Thucidides, you know, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: consider them scientific today. To often they go into morality,
Speaker 1: too often they go back on old tropes. But that
Speaker 1: being said, our notion of history as storytelling really gets
Speaker 1: its grounds in those two authors, Herodotus and Fucidities. Of
Speaker 1: this specific work before then, if you look at accounts
Speaker 1: of battles and so on and so forth, they're very
Speaker 1: one dimensional. You know, as I point out in the text,
Speaker 1: we just I'd love to know more about let's say,
Speaker 1: Ramsey's the Great Campaigns. But what we have are some
Speaker 1: you know, stella, and we have some you know, carvings
Speaker 1: that give us some indication of what happened, but there's
Speaker 1: no detail, there's no it doesn't come to life in
Speaker 1: the way that Thucidites work here does. We don't get
Speaker 1: a sense of any characters. We don't get a sense
Speaker 1: of who did what, other than just simply ramses being
Speaker 1: great and blessed by the gods and therefore he won
Speaker 1: you know that. But that's not history. That's just a description.
Speaker 1: That's just a list of things, and that is why
Speaker 1: it's so disappointing and why I work like this is
Speaker 1: so important. Now, before we get to the interview, I
Speaker 1: do want to confess we did run into technical difficulties
Speaker 1: with this one. There were supposed to have been two
Speaker 1: people on the interview and we only ended up with
Speaker 1: fifty percent. So information about the translation itself we didn't
Speaker 1: get into because we couldn't do that. But I was
Speaker 1: able to talk with historian Polly Low about the Peloponnesian War,
Speaker 1: which is of particular interest to me. So the interview
Speaker 1: is a little bit shorter, and I think still interesting
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. And I'm going to throw
Speaker 1: this out there as a teaser that as we wrap
Speaker 1: up in twenty twenty six, the actual narrative of Western SIV,
Speaker 1: one of the first events that I'm going to be
Speaker 1: looking at in detail in a really long format episode
Speaker 1: that'll come out after that will actually be the Peloponnesian War.
Speaker 1: I've decided yet, but it may actually be the first.
Speaker 1: So this will kind of tease that transition, which is
Speaker 1: a long ways off yet, but still we'll plant the
Speaker 1: seed in your mind if you're interested in the Peloponnesian War. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to come, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: actually be referencing this translation again in that you know,
Speaker 1: a year or two down the line. But if you
Speaker 1: would like to pick it up now you can. It
Speaker 1: is available for purchase today. You know, you can go
Speaker 1: ahead and click the link in the show notes and
Speaker 1: have it at your door in a couple of days
Speaker 1: if you want, or go down to your local book
Speaker 1: purveyor put it in order or see if they have
Speaker 1: a copy. Either way is fine, but it's there for
Speaker 1: your convenience if you'd like it. And so, without further ado,
Speaker 1: after a couple of quick messages, let's just jump in
Speaker 1: and talk about the Peloponnesian War, all right. So the
Speaker 1: question that I wanted to ask then, as we sort
Speaker 1: of inch towards the war itself, the Peloponnesian War itself
Speaker 1: is setting the stage of let's start with our two
Speaker 1: principal combatants, which I'm sure most people are going to
Speaker 1: be aware of the city states of Athens and Sparta.
Speaker 1: And of course when I use the word grease, of
Speaker 1: course that's an anachronism for the time which wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been used. So everyone forgive me, okay, everybody who is
Speaker 1: getting angry at the their earphones right now. I am
Speaker 1: going to use some to mix and match terms for
Speaker 1: ease of understanding here. But this, when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: was sort of taught as this almost existential struggle between
Speaker 1: two polarly opposite political and social systems. So if you
Speaker 1: could kind of lay the groundwork of to what extent
Speaker 1: is that true and to what extent like what was
Speaker 1: the situation like in I'm putting in air quotes grease
Speaker 1: at the time of the beginning of the Peloponnesian conflict
Speaker 1: in war.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is these two at least two really
Speaker 2: important questions in there. If we start with the second one,
Speaker 2: the sort of the Greek scare quotes context, I guess
Speaker 2: the important thing to say, and you already made this
Speaker 2: alluded to this point, is that there's no single nation
Speaker 2: state of Greece. So we're dealing with a set of hundreds,
Speaker 2: maybe even up to about a thousand small sometimes really tiny,
Speaker 2: independent political communities. So it's a very sort of disperse
Speaker 2: disparate system. But these communities feel that they have something
Speaker 2: in common, they have sort of cultural, linguistic other features
Speaker 2: in common, so they would think of themselves as Greeks,
Speaker 2: but also as independent communities. So that's the sort of
Speaker 2: world that we're living in. Then within that Athens and Sparsa. Again,
Speaker 2: you're quite right, this idea that they're conceived of as
Speaker 2: sort of polar opposites. That's an idea which owes a
Speaker 2: lot in fact of Thucydides. He constructs this model of
Speaker 2: Athens and Sparsaer's two very very different communities, and that's
Speaker 2: almost sort of part of his explanation for why they
Speaker 2: end up fighting, because they're so different that they can't
Speaker 2: really coexist. Athens, as depicted by Fusidities, and also, at
Speaker 2: least to some extent in reality, is a well. It's
Speaker 2: a more open community. It has a democratic system of government,
Speaker 2: democratic in the ancient sense, so men have or free
Speaker 2: men have political rights, but a large group of the
Speaker 2: population of Athens have political rights. It's very expansionist in
Speaker 2: this period, it's built up this very large alliance which
Speaker 2: has sort of morphed into something closer to an empire.
Speaker 2: By the time the war breaks out. It's very wealthy.
Speaker 2: So that's a sort of very quick overview of what
Speaker 2: Athens is like. Sparta is depicted by thucidities as a
Speaker 2: much more small conservative society. It has a very distinctive constantitution,
Speaker 2: which is has well has a slight democratic aspect in
Speaker 2: that there is an assembly, but the assembly can't it
Speaker 2: can sort of rubber stamp decisions. It can't make policy
Speaker 2: in the way that the Athenian Assembly can. It's probably
Speaker 2: really run by a small council, a council of old men,
Speaker 2: thirty thirty men called the Gruzia, which is essentially the
Speaker 2: Greek equivalent of the term senate. It also has two kings,
Speaker 2: very unusually, so it has quite a complicated political structure,
Speaker 2: but less sort of less popular control over governance and
Speaker 2: over governmental decisions. It has a smaller citizen body than Athens,
Speaker 2: probably its total population if we include the enslaved people,
Speaker 2: but it's probably the same as, maybe even slightly more
Speaker 2: than Athens, but the cities and the male citizen population
Speaker 2: of Sparta is vastly outnumbered by the non citizen population,
Speaker 2: so it's a different sort of structure of society. It
Speaker 2: also has an alliance, but it's a rather smaller alliance
Speaker 2: and it's based really it's more regionally specific, so it's
Speaker 2: based in the Peloponnese, the area immediately around Sparta, So
Speaker 2: it's sort of it's always a slightly more old fashioned
Speaker 2: source of system that Spartans have got going, contrasted by Thucydides,
Speaker 2: and I think there is some sort of it's not
Speaker 2: just Thucididies. I think this is something in this with
Speaker 2: the more a dynamic sort of go getting Athenian system.
Speaker 1: And of course then I mean there's a difference in
Speaker 1: their military structures, right, And this is again something that
Speaker 1: sort of was ground into me when I was a student,
Speaker 1: that the Athenians are this great maritime power that they have,
Speaker 1: this the fleet that has been extremely successful really stitching
Speaker 1: together and an empire. I mean then you know it's
Speaker 1: the Delian League, right, but it's you know, it's an
Speaker 1: empire really in a lot of the ways that it
Speaker 1: functions in reality. And then you have the Spartans, which
Speaker 1: are of course build oftentimes is the pre eminent land
Speaker 1: power of the time. You know, they have an army,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about you know, classical Greek failanx at
Speaker 1: this point in history. And so the question that I
Speaker 1: have is like, is that true? To what extent are
Speaker 1: there opposing military structures different And if that's the case,
Speaker 1: if one is saying, well, we're going to be prerominantly
Speaker 1: a landpower, the other one is saying we're going to
Speaker 1: be a maritime power, then then what's the need to fight?
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't seem like your spheres of influence
Speaker 1: are the same or that you're necessarily even competing over
Speaker 1: the same space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think it is true, certainly at the
Speaker 2: start of the war that Athens is a major naval power.
Speaker 2: Spartan doesn't really have a navy to speak of because
Speaker 2: they're state. They've never needed to build up a navy.
Speaker 2: And the amount of just infrastructure that you need to
Speaker 2: have a navy. You don't just need we need to
Speaker 2: supply timber, but you also need ship sheds, you need
Speaker 2: people who can build and maintain the fleet. Is extremely
Speaker 2: expensive to have to have a navy, much more expensive
Speaker 2: than having a land army. Because a land army in
Speaker 2: this period, in both Athens and Sparta is primarily just
Speaker 2: your male citizens some of your non citizens who just
Speaker 2: the in their spare time effectively go out and fight.
Speaker 2: So that's quite a cheap way to do warfare. Sparta
Speaker 2: doesn't invest in that until really a late stage of
Speaker 2: the war. So yeah, So Athens has built up this
Speaker 2: naval power much earlier, sort of in the fifth century,
Speaker 2: and has continued to invest in it and has passed
Speaker 2: of building up its alliance. One thing that Athenians do
Speaker 2: is ask, or properly tell compel its allies to give them,
Speaker 2: rather than sending them men, which would be the old
Speaker 2: fashioned way of doing an alliance, to give them money.
Speaker 2: And the Athenians have then been spending that money on
Speaker 2: lots of things, but one of the things they can
Speaker 2: spend that money on is building up the fleet. So
Speaker 2: this is definitely true. Then your second question in that case,
Speaker 2: if they've got separate spheres of influence, why do they
Speaker 2: come into conflicts is a good question, And the impression
Speaker 2: we get from Thucydides is that in some ways the
Speaker 2: Spartans get sort of not quite bullied, but prompted into
Speaker 2: going to war into responding to the growth of Athenian
Speaker 2: power by other Greek states. So the Spartans themselves and
Speaker 2: the picture of Thucidies gives us wood for a long time,
Speaker 2: and in fact, were for a fairly a lot of
Speaker 2: time quite happy just to sit back and say this
Speaker 2: isn't our problem, because we're strong enough. We could fight
Speaker 2: the Athenians if they ever came for us. But we're
Speaker 2: not that fussed. But it's other Greek states, in particular Corinth,
Speaker 2: which is one another one of the larger Greek city
Speaker 2: states the north of the Peloponnese, but closer to Athens.
Speaker 2: Current had been a naval power. Current is interested in
Speaker 2: trade and it's got interests around the Aegean and the
Speaker 2: Corinthians are worried that the Athenians are encroaching on areas
Speaker 2: of Corinthian influenced Corinthian sources of revenue, sources of power.
Speaker 2: And it's the Corinthians who go to the Spartans and say, you,
Speaker 2: as the other major power in Greece, you've got to
Speaker 2: stop the Athenians, because if you don't stop them, then
Speaker 2: it's game over for all of us, and.
Speaker 1: We'll get to the causes causes of the war in
Speaker 1: a minute. But I kind of want to back up
Speaker 1: for a second before we get there and talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the major conflict that people will know that
Speaker 1: precedes this, you or the Persian Wars, right, and those
Speaker 1: come to an end, and if my memory serves plateaeas
Speaker 1: like four, you know, seventy or three seventy nine, somewhere
Speaker 1: in that, in that range, and so you know, it's
Speaker 1: been forty some years roughly, give or take since the
Speaker 1: end of the Persian War, you know. But my question
Speaker 1: has always been, you know, to what extent, even during
Speaker 1: that conflict, is it fair to characterize Sparta and Athens
Speaker 1: as allies in the traditional sense or you know, because
Speaker 1: it seems like their cooperation breaks down almost while that
Speaker 1: war is still going on. And so I wonder about
Speaker 1: I wonder about that because everyone, you know, you look
Speaker 1: at this and you say, oh, oh, the here's the former allies.
Speaker 1: Now they're at war. Were they really ever that close
Speaker 1: even in that conflict.
Speaker 2: It's it's a really good question, a really hard question
Speaker 2: to answer because the sources that we've got for that
Speaker 2: conflicts are written by people who know what happens in
Speaker 2: the Peloponnesian War. So if you Herotoesis as narrative of
Speaker 2: the Persian Wars, there's all sorts of clues, not very
Speaker 2: subtle in fact, that this is all going to go wrong,
Speaker 2: and that already during you know, this period where in
Speaker 2: theory the Greeks are all united, there's beef between Athens
Speaker 2: and Sparta, and you know, we can already see the
Speaker 2: seeds of what's going to become the Peloponnesian War. But
Speaker 2: Herodotus I think was writing during the Peloponnesian War. Some
Speaker 2: people would put them a little bit earlier, but he
Speaker 2: knows about the Peloponnesian War definitely, and so it's it's
Speaker 2: hard to know how much hindsight there might have been
Speaker 2: that he's sort of writing into his account of the
Speaker 2: Persian War. But I think it's very plausible that already
Speaker 2: in the in four eighty four seventy nine, I mean,
Speaker 2: Athens has already built up it's bi clete, it's already
Speaker 2: been expanding, it's already sort of been developing its interests,
Speaker 2: particularly up in the northeaster gene. So I think it's
Speaker 2: entirely likely that the Spartans already might be thinking, hang on,
Speaker 2: you just need to be a bit a bit careful
Speaker 2: about how much power they Athenians could be building up here.
Speaker 1: And then when it comes to the actual spark of
Speaker 1: the wars, the official war begins. I think it's usually
Speaker 1: dated to four thirty one, which I'll say BCE. Whether
Speaker 1: you say BCE or BC, I don't really care. I
Speaker 1: mean you're dating it for the birth of Christ either way,
Speaker 1: so I don't I'm not sure really you know what
Speaker 1: purpose we're serving by making a huge distinction on that,
Speaker 1: but setting that aside for a moment. So the war
Speaker 1: officially begins in a way that a lot of major
Speaker 1: wars begin, right, not intentionally almost, and because of these
Speaker 1: alliances and the alliance systems that have been built up
Speaker 1: along this patchwork. I think you said one hundreds, maybe
Speaker 1: the thousand different city states, And so I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you could walk us through the start of the
Speaker 1: war and how the alliance system actually caused it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I guess with the big disclaimer that we're
Speaker 2: fucidity gives us a version of the causes of the war,
Speaker 2: which is masterful and compelling and very sort of sophisticated,
Speaker 2: but probably very idiosyncratic, and we actually it's one of
Speaker 2: the few places where we can see traces and other
Speaker 2: sources of other versions of explaining the war which look
Speaker 2: quite different. So we're talking about the Fucidities version and thucididies.
Speaker 2: His sort of master stroke is this distinction between the
Speaker 2: superficial causes and what he thinks is the true, the
Speaker 2: underlying cause, that is the real reason, and the real reason,
Speaker 2: he says, is this steady growth of Athenian power and
Speaker 2: the fear that this caused in Sparta, and that's his
Speaker 2: sort of core reason that the war was going to
Speaker 2: break out. So we're just looking at the sort of
Speaker 2: the trigger factors, and there for the trigger factors, yeah,
Speaker 2: he identifies these these sort of almost like sort of
Speaker 2: proxy conflicts. One of the important ones that I've already mentioned,
Speaker 2: or actually two of two of them involve corinth. So
Speaker 2: the issue is that the Athenians are thought to be
Speaker 2: encroaching on the Corinthians Corinthian sphere of influence. So they're
Speaker 2: meddling with a Corinthian settlements called Potterdaea, which is up
Speaker 2: in the north of Greece, sort of just south of
Speaker 2: modern Tesloniki and that's sort of that region, so a
Speaker 2: long way away from Athens, so the Athenians are a
Speaker 2: sort of a long way out of there where they
Speaker 2: should be. And then the other area where the Athenians
Speaker 2: are getting involved is Corsirah. That's modern Corfu, so out
Speaker 2: in the west, another place where which had traditionally being
Speaker 2: part of the Corinthian sphere of influence. And there's a
Speaker 2: local squabble happening between Corsirah and another city called Epidamnus,
Speaker 2: which is on the mainland and what's now Albania, and
Speaker 2: they one party appeals to Athens for help in settling that.
Speaker 2: Aliens get involved take advantage of this opportunity to establish
Speaker 2: their influence, and that annoise the Corinthians. The Corinthians, as
Speaker 2: I said, a part of the Spartan lights. So they
Speaker 2: then go to Sparta and say you've got to put
Speaker 2: a stop to this. Then there's a dispute about Megara,
Speaker 2: which is athens near neighbor immediately to the north of Athens,
Speaker 2: but again it's sort of between Athens and corinth So
Speaker 2: this is another thing that annoys annoys the Corinthians. And
Speaker 2: then the last trigger point that the sides identifies involves
Speaker 2: Athenian really brutal behavior in the treatment of its near
Speaker 2: neighbor agener and Ireland, just off off the coast of Athens.
Speaker 2: So sort of two of those triggers really are to
Speaker 2: do with the Athenians upsetting Corinth, and then that sort
Speaker 2: of has implications for the Peloponnesian Alliance led by Sparta.
Speaker 2: Two of them maybe less direct impacting the Peloponnesian Alliance,
Speaker 2: but it's reasonable I think that those states, when they're
Speaker 2: being attacked or disadvantaged by by Athens, might appeal to
Speaker 2: other powers to try and help them out. And this
Speaker 2: is a recurring feature of how politics international politics works
Speaker 2: in the Greek world that small states ask for help
Speaker 2: when a big state sort of is making trouble for them,
Speaker 2: they'll look to another big state to try and help
Speaker 2: them out.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a hallmark of a lot of conflicts
Speaker 1: even today. I mean, you can point on unraveling situations
Speaker 1: in the Middle East that tend to draw in some
Speaker 1: of the peripheral great powers, even though you know many
Speaker 1: would argue they don't particularly have a direct interest in
Speaker 1: what's going on there. And so to me, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of rinsing and repeating throughout a lot of history.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the interesting things about
Speaker 1: the pelop Anesian War. Into the question of why do
Speaker 1: we need another translation or why do we keep talking
Speaker 1: about it, it's because, well, it's one of the first
Speaker 1: times that a war is really studied in great detail
Speaker 1: by someone who's relatively close to it in ways that
Speaker 1: we just don't. You know, we know about some of
Speaker 1: the conflicts that you say, Rameses the Great was involved
Speaker 1: in in you know, New Kingdom Egypt, but we don't
Speaker 1: have exhaustive written details on what exactly happened. And this
Speaker 1: is the first time that we have something about this.
Speaker 1: And that's why, you know, when it comes to when
Speaker 1: we talk about history versus archaeology, well we have written texts,
Speaker 1: and that's and that call goes a long way to explaining, well,
Speaker 1: why do we care about this? So the war starts,
Speaker 1: and then I've always been interested in this point, this,
Speaker 1: this first point. The war starts, and almost immediately into
Speaker 1: the war, Athens gets hit by a plague, right, a
Speaker 1: debilitating sickness, and the word plague is used. Tell me
Speaker 1: what kind of you know, disease? We think this was
Speaker 1: that'd be helpful. And a lot of people die, and
Speaker 1: one of one of them is of course Pericles, who
Speaker 1: is the leader. And so I've always wondered of just
Speaker 1: how devastating was that in when it happened to Athens.
Speaker 1: And then I have an interesting counterfactual. But I'm always
Speaker 1: interested to hear what people think about the impact of
Speaker 1: that specific event on really the rest of the war,
Speaker 1: which is going to go on for a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean to cities. Clearly thinks this is
Speaker 2: extremely important. And the sort of placement of it in
Speaker 2: his narrative is so striking because we have the sort
Speaker 2: of this great positive vision of Athens presented in the
Speaker 2: funeral oration of Pericles, and then we go straight into
Speaker 2: the plague, which is just it's it's, it's it's awful
Speaker 2: and compelling, the awful. It's one of the really brilliant
Speaker 2: bits of of his his his narrative. What disease was it?
Speaker 2: Nobody knows. People keep trying to find out, and all
Speaker 2: sorts of suggestions made, some version of TB some just
Speaker 2: a really version of something like Spanish blue Foot, but worse,
Speaker 2: no one's been able to map it onto a disease
Speaker 2: which currently exists, which in many ways makes sense because
Speaker 2: it will have mutated in all sorts of ways. So
Speaker 2: probably there isn't any exact equivalent Moond equivalents with this disease,
Speaker 2: but it sounds in the simities gives us this very
Speaker 2: detailed description of what it's like because he himself caught
Speaker 2: it and was one of the few people who didn't die,
Speaker 2: and it sounds awful as a disease. But also I
Speaker 2: think the really compelling thing about his account is also
Speaker 2: what he says about the effect it has on society
Speaker 2: and the way it sort of makes people behave in
Speaker 2: terrible in terrible ways. We know that it was serious.
Speaker 2: I think has been one burial site excavated in Athens
Speaker 2: which has been I think persuasively identified as a plague pit.
Speaker 2: You know, just a large number of bodies in one
Speaker 2: place without any any real any of the normal sort
Speaker 2: of trappings of a few NONI rituals that we would
Speaker 2: expect in and it's of about the right date, So
Speaker 2: it seems persuasive plausible that this this is you know,
Speaker 2: wasn't making this up, that this was a serious, a
Speaker 2: serious thing. As for yeah, yeah, how whether he's making
Speaker 2: it up the impact that it has on Athens again,
Speaker 2: probably not. We know that the Athenians start introduce a
Speaker 2: new healing cult at around this time, and it seems
Speaker 2: again quite likely that that's connected with the plague. And
Speaker 2: this is a response to the plague. And there's various
Speaker 2: religious rituals that Fucides doesn't put a lot of weight
Speaker 2: on because he's not a great belief for in the
Speaker 2: importance of religion a sort of historical explanation for things.
Speaker 2: But there's probably some sort of religious developments in this
Speaker 2: period as well that can be explained as an Athenian
Speaker 2: response to the plague, because the normal way of explaining
Speaker 2: a plague in this period is that you've done something
Speaker 2: to upset the gods. You know, theories of disease exist
Speaker 2: that people knew certain about and about how infections happened.
Speaker 2: But normally, if a plague hits your city is because
Speaker 2: you've done something to annoy Apollo or a similar god,
Speaker 2: and the way to solve it is to get the
Speaker 2: gods back on your side.
Speaker 1: Kind of the counterfactual that I've always been interested in
Speaker 1: here is this question of I'm always interested in timing
Speaker 1: in history, like, there are some events that just seem
Speaker 1: to come at the worst possible moment, and I would
Speaker 1: put this in that category.
Speaker 2: Question.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if we can answer it, but
Speaker 1: I always wonder if, let's say, if the plague hit
Speaker 1: three years earlier, like you know, is this a scenario
Speaker 1: where the Athenians are still willing to go to war,
Speaker 1: where they're still willing to support their allies. I tend
Speaker 1: to think no, But if you think I'm wrong, I mean,
Speaker 1: you tell me. I mean it seems, you know, they
Speaker 1: at this point in its history, Athens is feeling very
Speaker 1: good about itself in four point thirty one going into
Speaker 1: the war. I'm not sure that they feel the same way.
Speaker 1: But maybe I'm also just misunderstanding how decisions are made
Speaker 1: in Athens too.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really good and interesting and also
Speaker 2: impossible question. But yeah, I think it's so hard to tell. Again,
Speaker 2: because we're so reliant on Thucydides, who, particularly because of
Speaker 2: the way he portrays Paricles and Paricle's influence over the
Speaker 2: Athenian people, I think makes the decision to go to
Speaker 2: war seem relatively uncontroversial in Athens, whereas I suspect and
Speaker 2: this is the slight hints we get from other sources.
Speaker 2: It was much more controversial than thro these lets on.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it could well be that it wouldn't have
Speaker 2: taken much to make the Athenians not vote for war.
Speaker 2: And that I mean the impression that we get from
Speaker 2: particularly from Aristophanes, who's a comic poet, and then it
Speaker 2: crops up in some other some later sources as well,
Speaker 2: is that a lot of the decision on whether or
Speaker 2: lot to go to war hinged on one of the
Speaker 2: sort of superficial causes. So what the Athenians were doing
Speaker 2: to Megra, and if the Athenians of the Spartans give
Speaker 2: the Athenians an ultimatum basically stop bullying the Megarians, and
Speaker 2: the Athenians won't back down. But if they'd been willing
Speaker 2: to back down, that could have avoided the war could
Speaker 2: have been avoided. Yeah, and maybe if they if the
Speaker 2: plague had hit earlier, or if Pericles had been less persuasive,
Speaker 2: you know, they they might the ms have back down.
Speaker 2: Whether that would have meant the war never happened, or
Speaker 2: just the war didn't happen at that point, whether you
Speaker 2: just postponed. If these citities is right, this war was inevitable.
Speaker 2: It had to happen at some point. Then maybe the
Speaker 2: war would just have broken out five years later.
Speaker 1: Well if ucinity is and I'll disagree on that point.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure there's such a thing as historical inevitability frankly,
Speaker 1: but I mean it begs a similar question. You know,
Speaker 1: if the Archduke isn't assassinated in Sarajevo in nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: does World War One not happen or does it just
Speaker 1: happen later at that point? And I think, but it's
Speaker 1: always interesting to think about these questions because then it
Speaker 1: gets you into it forces you to confront the questions
Speaker 1: about the conflicts themselves, if you start to think about
Speaker 1: the various counterfactuals that are involved here. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that I asked you about was or do
Speaker 1: I just misunderstand the Athenian political system, because like I mean,
Speaker 1: Athens is thrown out you you just see the word
Speaker 1: democracy next to it, and I'm always interested in that
Speaker 1: because I would be remiss then if I didn't ask
Speaker 1: you about my all time my favorite character from the
Speaker 1: Peloponnesian War and who seems to have been somebody who
Speaker 1: was quite good at talking to the Athenian Assembly, and
Speaker 1: that that gentleman has a name of Alcibiades. Alcibidies, to
Speaker 1: me seems like one of the most colorful figures of
Speaker 1: ancient and classical history. Certainly he comes through pretty clearly here.
Speaker 1: You know, he's this really unique person who at one
Speaker 1: point is in Athens, then he's at Sparta, then he's
Speaker 1: in Persia. I mean, he seems to be you know,
Speaker 1: if if Eucydides is setting this up as this massive
Speaker 1: dichotomy of ideology, he seems to fly in the face
Speaker 1: of that because he's able to apparently move between these
Speaker 1: different cultures. Do you like Alabi? I mean, nobody likes Alsibodies,
Speaker 1: But do you find him interesting? Tell us about him
Speaker 1: about you know, because I find him endlessly fascinating and
Speaker 1: the role that he plays in the war so interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean, he is a fascinating character. Again, he's a
Speaker 2: fascinating character because he's constructed as a fascinating character by
Speaker 2: by Thucydides. I think Thucyddi has also found him really
Speaker 2: really interesting and and sort of someone who in some
Speaker 2: way exposes the what Thucydidy saw as problematic aspects of
Speaker 2: how the Athenian democratic system worked, because what Thucidity saw
Speaker 2: as a great weakness of the system is that if
Speaker 2: if a speaker was very persuasive, then a speaker could
Speaker 2: persuade the Athenians to do anything, even if that was
Speaker 2: really not in the athenians best best interests and our
Speaker 2: sobiety's is the is really the poster boy for that.
Speaker 2: Pericles is very persuasive, but Thusidies sort of lets him
Speaker 2: off because Thucididies thinks Pericles is persuading the Athenians to
Speaker 2: do sensible things. Al Sebiodes persuades the Athenians to do
Speaker 2: idiotic things, according to Thucilidies, to invade Sicily, which we
Speaker 2: could almost take as a decision to start a second war,
Speaker 2: and he sort of panders to the worst insect instincts
Speaker 2: of the Athenian so he promises them easy money, riches, glory,
Speaker 2: and the union democracy according to the Fucidities, so are
Speaker 2: sort of just persuaded by that and vote to do
Speaker 2: something which isn't ultimately in their best in their best interests.
Speaker 2: So yeah, part of the sort of characterization of azibid Is.
Speaker 2: Is this very charismatic, persuasive, glamorous figure. Is I think
Speaker 2: part of the Ciditi's project to show why democracy is
Speaker 2: a problematic form of government because it gives power to
Speaker 2: the people, but then also power to individual politicians who
Speaker 2: might not have the best interests of the people at heart.
Speaker 2: So our sobiety is set up as a sort of
Speaker 2: foil to a politician that decidities. I think admired a
Speaker 2: lot called Nikias, who's a much more sort of staid, sensible,
Speaker 2: slightly boring figure who's really who isn't a good orator
Speaker 2: and gives very good advice, but because he doesn't give
Speaker 2: it in a persuasive way, he doesn't he hasn't listened
Speaker 2: to by by the people. So we have these sort
Speaker 2: of these this flashy, persuasive, damaging politician Alcibieties set against
Speaker 2: this boring, good, unpersuasive, unsuccessful politicians.
Speaker 1: And if you have a chance, I'll certainly pick up
Speaker 1: the book to read about Alcibieties. But he is a
Speaker 1: fascinating figure. He his life intersects with Socrates. He he
Speaker 1: has this tendency to bounce around. He has sort of
Speaker 1: this I suppose if you know, we we tended to
Speaker 1: all for a while. I don't know that we actually
Speaker 1: do any more, but for a while, especially in the
Speaker 1: United States, we tended to punish politicians for flip flopping.
Speaker 1: Alcibid is made out of teflon. When it comes to this,
Speaker 1: he seems to be able to shift whatever it is
Speaker 1: that he's doing and really kind of manage to continuously
Speaker 1: avoid responsibility for his actions, including at one point having
Speaker 1: an affair with the Spartan king his wife, and so
Speaker 1: none of these things are particularly like you would look
Speaker 1: at him and say, well, he's definitely a foil for morality, right,
Speaker 1: I completely understand what you're saying, and it makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. And then he has this idiotic decision
Speaker 1: and I don't think you can really characterize as anything
Speaker 1: but to invade Sicily. You don't normally open another front
Speaker 1: right when you're starting that second war. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: if we kind of jump forward a little bit to
Speaker 1: the end of the conflict, right because we're kind of
Speaker 1: covering all parts of it, sort of like beginning, middle,
Speaker 1: and end, this really turns into US blog and ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, Sparta is going to say emerge victorious kind
Speaker 1: of an air quote, but they do it with an
Speaker 1: unlikely ally, right, and so how is Sparta ultimately able
Speaker 1: to turn the tide?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they get they get Persia on their side,
Speaker 2: and it's Persian money. So Tidy is in quite early
Speaker 2: on in the work actually, as part of his obituary
Speaker 2: of Pericles. So, as you mentioned, dies of the plague,
Speaker 2: so it dies quite early in the war. Says the
Speaker 2: two things that meant that the Athenians lost this war
Speaker 2: in the Spartans. One one was bad political leadership in
Speaker 2: Athens death Pericles, so it's the Alcibiodi's problem. And the
Speaker 2: other one was Persian money. So the Persians, well, they're
Speaker 2: probably a bit more involved in the early phases of
Speaker 2: the war than Ticinityes tells us. He very much underreports
Speaker 2: Persian activity in the first phase of the war, but
Speaker 2: they're not. They weren't directly involved, certainly. And then in
Speaker 2: the final phase, the Spartans persuade, ultimately persuade the Persians
Speaker 2: to start paying for a fleet. Again, this comes back
Speaker 2: to something we talked about earlier. The Spartans hadn't really
Speaker 2: been able to afford a fleet in the first phase
Speaker 2: of the war, and that had meant that they couldn't
Speaker 2: properly really really damage the Athenians. When they get this
Speaker 2: Persian money, then they can start to fund the fleet,
Speaker 2: and then they can confront the Athenians on more of
Speaker 2: us level playing field. And that's in the end what
Speaker 2: allows the Spartans to win. That they destroy come close
Speaker 2: to destroying the Athenian fleet, and then they can effectively
Speaker 2: blockade Athens and the Athenians are starved into submission, so
Speaker 2: which had sort of been the Spartan strategy from the
Speaker 2: very beginning that they thought they could try and sort
Speaker 2: of starve the Athenians out, but they couldn't do it
Speaker 2: until they had they had a fleet. So yeah, it does.
Speaker 2: It grinds to a very slow and quite miserable conclusion
Speaker 2: in the war.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an extremely long and costly conflict. And
Speaker 1: I put air quotes around the word victorious or one
Speaker 1: at the end for a Sparta because you do have
Speaker 1: to look at the end of the war and wonder, well,
Speaker 1: who really actually won anything out of this. It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like either side truly emerged victorious, you know. And
Speaker 1: for those who are history fans of classical history and
Speaker 1: for those who aren't, you'll know, well, why couldn't the
Speaker 1: Spartans blockade them? Well, Athens had these things called the
Speaker 1: long walls that protect that essentially protected its access to
Speaker 1: its main port. So until you choke off the water,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really hard to be able to starve
Speaker 1: them into submission. And ultimately, thanks to Persia and Sparta
Speaker 1: is able to do that and that ends the war.
Speaker 1: Although all it really ultimately does, at least in my opinion,
Speaker 1: in the invenient of some is it really just kind
Speaker 1: of cuts the grass for Philip of Macedon, who's going
Speaker 1: to come down and you know, take everybody's rights. Well
Speaker 1: maybe not. I mean, it doesn't really care about Sparta
Speaker 1: that much anymore, so, you know, but I think it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about it as a case study
Speaker 1: of a conflict that was a avoidable b shouldn't have
Speaker 1: gone on nearly as long as it did, and see
Speaker 1: allows you to look at it at the end and say,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure anybody actually won anything out of this,
Speaker 1: certainly not the due principal combatants. But you know, like
Speaker 1: I said, that's that's why it is relevant today, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of what it's fun to talk about, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I mean you could. I think you
Speaker 2: could take a slightly shorter term view sort of the
Speaker 2: outcome of the war that sparsay they build on their
Speaker 2: victory maybe for five years or so, but it's really
Speaker 2: remarkable how quickly the Athenians bounce back or how little
Speaker 2: sort of the spartansor a man able to take advantage
Speaker 2: of their victory. I think the other people you could
Speaker 2: say probably do okay out of this conflict is Persia,
Speaker 2: because it's the Persian objective probably is just to stop
Speaker 2: the Greeks causing trouble at the western edge of their empire.
Speaker 2: And if Sparta Anatins are just sort of squabbling a bit,
Speaker 2: then that's okay, but they don't want them sort of
Speaker 2: causing making trouble for them further east sort of into
Speaker 2: Asia minor western Anatolia. And actually Sparta and nath Is
Speaker 2: just wearing each other out. That's quite good news for
Speaker 2: Persia because it solves that problem for
Speaker 1: Them, and something that rings true even today as we
Speaker 1: think about the benefits of conflict