Peloponnesians

Thucydides, an Athenian wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, how they warred against each other;

It is said too by those of the Peloponnesians who have received the most certain accounts by tradition from their forefathers, that Pelops first acquired power by the abundance of riches with which he came from Asia to men who were in needy circumstances;

But the Corinthians, when they had made their preparations, set sail against Corcyra with a hundred and fifty ships.

In either case Hellas would have been subdued by the Persians, for I cannot see what advantage could accrue from the walls built across the isthmus, while the king was master of the seas.

Although the Peloponnesians had built not one but many walls across the Isthmus for their defense, they would nevertheless have been deserted by their allies (these having no choice or free will in the matter, but seeing their cities taken one by one by the foreign fleet), until at last they would have stood alone.

The consensus of most of the speakers was to sail to the Isthmus and fight at sea for the Peloponnese, giving this reason:

For when all the allies were in a state of dejection, and the Peloponnesians were fortifying the Isthmus and selfishly seeking their own safety;

for the Peloponnesians, put to shame by our courage, and thinking, moreover, that if the Athenians should first be destroyed, they could not themselves be saved from destruction, and that if the Athenians should succeed, their own cities would be brought into disrepute, they were constrained to share the dangers.

and when the Peloponnesians, led by Eurystheus, had invaded our territory, they marched out against them, conquered them in battle, and put an end to their leader’s insolence.

The loss on the Athenian side was twenty-five ships, crews and all, with the exception of a few men who were brought to shore, and on the Peloponnesian side nine Laconian ships, out of a total of ten, and more than sixty ships of the allies.

But when Callicratidas, as his ship rammed an enemy, fell overboard into the sea and disappeared, and Protomachus and those with him on the right wing defeated the opposing Lacedaemonian left, then began a flight of the Peloponnesians to Chios, though very many went to Phocaea;

Thereupon the Lacedaemonians took the field with their whole force, and likewise the rest of the Peloponnesians excepting the Argives, at the command of Pausanias, the other king of the Lacedaemonians.

Thus equipped, the forces in Samos went on to defeat the Peloponnesians at sea;

stealth in building our walls unknown to the Peloponnesians:

For when all the Peloponnesians came to you and called on you to lead them against the Lacedaemonians, it was not by such arguments that these men persuaded you not to receive them—(and that was why they took the only remaining course of applying to the Thebans)—but to contribute funds and risk your lives for the safety of the Lacedaemonians.

They remember the services rendered by their own ancestors to the ancestors of the Thebans, for, when the sons of Heracles were dispossessed by the Peloponnesians of their paternal dominion, they restored them, overcoming in battle those who were trying to oppose the descendants of Heracles;

For if the Argives and Messenians and Megalopolitans, and other Peloponnesians who side with them, quarrel with us because of our embassy to Sparta and because they think that we have some interest in Lacedaemonian policy;

They ordered all the Peloponnesians with the exception of the Argives to send two-thirds of their armies from their several cities, and they sent word to all the rest of the Boeotians and the Locrians and Phocians and Malians and Oetaeans and Aenians to take the field with their entire forces.

And the difference is just this, that the orators consider in this case or in that—for instance, whether it is expedient for the Athenians to make war upon the Peloponnesians, or to help the Corcyraeans against the Corinthians, or for the Thebans to ally with Philip against the Phocians, or for Alexander to cross over into Asia.

Likewise the Lacedaemonians, after having set out in ancient times from obscure and humble cities, made themselves, because they lived temperately and under military discipline, masters of the Peloponnesus;

This conclusion we may justly draw from the ancient struggles which they carried on against the Amazons and the Thracians and all of the Peloponnesians, and also from the wars which they waged against the Persians, in which, both when they fought alone and when they were aided by the Peloponnesians, whether on land or on the sea, they were victorious over the barbarians and were adjudged the meed of valor;

his piety toward the gods in connexion with the supplications of Adrastus and the children of Heracles when, by defeating the Peloponnesians in battle, he saved the lives of the children, and to Adrastus he restored for burial, despite the Thebans, the bodies of those who had died beneath the walls of the Cadmea;

And, again, why is it that the Thessalians are always at war with each other while the Megarians, who dwell between the Peloponnesians on the one hand and the Thebans and the Athenians on the other, are continually in a state of peace?

Furthermore, they were obliged to look on while all the Peloponnesians, who formerly had followed the lead of Lacedaemon against the rest of the world, united with the Thebans and invaded their territory;

And again, when fortune shifted her favor and the Thebans and the Peloponnesians were one and all trying to devastate Lacedaemon, we alone among the Hellenes formed an alliance with the Lacedaemonians and helped to save them from destruction.

The Peloponnesians, whose crops had failed at home, decided to march against our city and, expelling our ancestors, to divide the land amongst themselves.

Then the Athenians sent a herald and asked to have their king given over for burial, telling the enemy the whole truth and the Peloponnesians restored the body but retreated, aware that it was no longer open to them to secure the country.

Their words were to this effect, that it was shameful that Peloponnesians should be under the command of an Athenian and a Lacedaemonian who contributed no troops to the army, and that the hardships should fall to themselves and the gains to others, all despite the fact that the preservation of the army was their achievement;

and now the Boeotians, who formerly would not venture, even in their own country, to face the Athenians without help from Sparta and the rest of the Peloponnese, threaten to invade Attica by themselves, and the Athenians, who formerly overran Boeotia, fear that the Boeotians may plunder Attica.

Yes, and the care and birth of Erectheus, and the war waged in his day with all the adjacent country, and the war between the sons of Heracles and the Peloponnesians, and all the wars waged in the days of Theseus, in all of which it is manifest that they were champions among the men of their time.