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The long reign of Artaxerxes I (r. 465-424 BC), the younger son of Xerxes I placed in the imperial throne by the Persian nobility, was marked by early struggles as he sought accommodation with the pesky Greeks, especially the Athenians, who between 460 and 454 BC fueled an Egyptian rebellion that was only put down with a great cost to the empire.
After a relatively calm few decades, Artaxerxes I’s was succeeded on his death by his son Xerxes II, who was killed 45 days later by his half-brother Sogdianus – who was in turn murdered by another half-brother, who went on to reign as Darius II.
Life on the Persian throne wasn’t easy, even as royals took on the Egyptian custom of marrying princesses to their brothers to limit the number of possible claimants to the throne: Darius II’s reign was marked by harem intrigues, and the growing power of satraps and other nobles, some of whom are known to have accumulated massive estates literally spanning several continents[1].
This reign was also marked by a decisive intervention in Greek affairs. By 420 BC, the peace signed the previous year between Sparta and Athens was already crumbling. Eager for glory, Athens’ Alcibiades had opposed Nicias’ peace and advocated an aggressive foreign policy; this was backed by a groundswell of support for Athens from other democratic poleis including Argos, Sparta’s arch-enemy in the Peloponnese.
That year, the Eleans excluded Sparta from participating in the Olympic Games on a technicality, and imposed a fine on the city[2].
Hostilities renewed, and a large coalition of democratic poleis came head to head against the Spartans and their remaining allies in the Battle of Mantinea of 418 BC, the largest of the war. There, in a frontal crash with little tactical subtlety, the Spartans used their superior hand-to-hand combat ability and discipline to secure an improbable victory that helped them reconstitute their Peloponnesian League[3].
The war entered a particularly cruel phase. In 416 BC, Athens targeted the small Dorian island of Melos, sympathetic to the Spartans but neutral; after the capital city fell following a siege, the Athenians killed every man they could find, and sold the women and children into slavery.
This caused a massive controversy in Athens, and a few months later the veteran Athenian playwright Euripides (480-406 BC), an anti-democrat friend of Socrates like Alcibiades[4], produced his tragedy The Trojan Women, which is widely considered by classical scholars to be a metaphorical piece criticizing the Melian sack, using the Iliad as a cover[5].
Alcibiades wasn’t disheartened; it’s not really clear whether he supported harsh action against Melos, but his power increased after the event, and his main political enemy, a populist named Hyperbolos, was ostracized, in fact becoming the last Athenian ever to suffer this fate.
Next, Alcibiades presented the idea of launching a massive naval expedition to conquer Syracuse, with which Athens had been in a vague state of war for twelve years[6], and then use its enormous resources to defeat Sparta once and for all. This led to dissension with his former ally, the more cautious Nicias. Still, the Sicilian Expedition went ahead on 415 BC on a grander scale than Alcibiades had planned, with Nicias in command[7], and became one of the greatest disasters in military history.
FROM THE ARCHIVES:
Years of Athenian intrigue, as well as public discussion of the plans, should have been enough warning for the Syracusans, but weren’t. Syracusan general Hermocrates suggested that Carthage was contacted for help, but many others thought the notion of an Athenian expedition was so foolish as to be impossible and rumors were spread to weaken Syracuse’s democratic government. Thus, when an Athenian fleet with over 200 ships and almost 10,000 troops arrived in Sicily, panic ensued.
The Athenians weren’t overly optimistic though. They hadn’t found as many allies willing to join them in southern Italy as they expected. In addition, political infighting had led to the loss of Alcibiades: he fled the fleet for Sparta after he was notified that his enemies were going after him using the customary, politicized charges of sacrilege used against weakened political outcasts in Athens.
When the fleet reached Syracuse, after a detour in Catania, the Athenians disembarked and lined up for battle outside of the city. The Syracusan uneasily confronted them and lost, although they withdrew behind their walls with relatively minor casualties.
The Athenians again sailed to Catania to shelter their ships during the winter, which gave the Syracusans time to make preparations, including the construction of extra fortifications around the city.
Athens sent for reinforcements and tried to recruit troops from Etruria and Carthage, without success. What it got, as an extremely important side-effect of the expedition, was the participation of Italic mercenaries in a military campaign in Sicily, for the first time. Central and southern Italians, particularly Campani, were recruited by the polis of Leontini in order to reinforce the Athenian expedition, with many of them serving as mounted skirmishers, thus offsetting the traditional Greek scarcity of cavalry.
With the Italic troops and some extra men from Athens, Nicias went back on the offensive, taking the Epipolae, a rocky outcrop above the city. A drawn-out struggle around the construction of encircling walls and counter-walls ensued, and the Athenians managed to isolate the city by land and sea. Syracuse, crowded with refugees, was ready to fall, but Spartan allies – well informed by Alcibiades – then landed on Himera and marched towards Syracuse with a relatively minor force of about 3,000, which was able to break the extensive Athenian siege.
[1] That is, Africa (Egypt) and Asia, as in the case of Egyptian satrap Arsames.
[2] This ended Sparta’s glorious string of wins in Olympic chariot competitions, which they hadn’t lost since 449 BC. Sparta’s next chariot victory, in 396 BC, became famous because it was won by Kyniska, daughter of King Archidamos. As a woman she could not attend the Olympics, but she entered a four-horse chariot owned by her and became the first female Olympic victor. Kyniska won another Olympic victory in the four-horse chariot race in 392 BC. Two monuments at Olympia celebrated her success. See Donald G. Kyle’s “Greek female sport: rites, running and racing” in “A Companion to Sport and spectacle in Greek and Roman antiquity,” ed. by Paul Christesen and Donald G. Kyle. Wiley & Blackwell (2014), p. 267.
[3] Henk Singor underlines (in “The Spartan army at Mantinea,” in “After the past: essays in ancient history in honour of H.W. Pleket,” ed. by Willem M. Jongman & Marc Kleijwegt, 2002) the battle’s high stakes. Spartan King Agis was under intense scrutiny and, in effect, vigilance by a 10-member committee of fellow citizens, after his contemporizing position with Argos allowed the Athenians to provide them with reinforcements; and Agis’ attitude during the battle has triggered considerable controversy, despite the eventual Spartan victory. An Athenian victory would have represented a massive boost for the democratic forces across Greece and effectively turned Sparta into a second-class power two generations before that actually happened.
[4] Euripides was accused by democrats of being pro-Sparta, but that’s unlikely. In “Andromache” (445-450), he castigates the city in a manner that doesn’t signal admiration: ““Inhabitants of Sparta, most hateful of mortals/To all people, masters of tricks/Lords of lies, devious plotters of evils/You never have a healthy thought but everything/Is twisted—oh, it is wrong that you’re lucky in Greece/What don’t you do? Don’t you have the most murders?” The play also includes other curses against Sparta.
[5] This play is the third in a trilogy about the Trojan War, including a second part called “Palamedes,” of which only fragments survive, defending Odysseus’ ill-fated enemy. Euripides wrote 90 plays, of which only 19 survive; we only have fragments and uncomplete plot summaries of his Phaeton play, for example, or of Andromeda, about a beautiful young princess who was chained to a rock and awaited death from a sea monster until, at the last minute, the hero Perseus arrives on his flying horse, Pegasus, and rescues her. This was a very popular play: days before his death in Babylon, in 323 BC, Alexander the Great recited verses from Andromeda, during an alcohol-fueled party.
[6] In the Congress of Gela of 424 BC, Sicilian poleis had made peace, and Athens withdrew its fleet from the island, after three years of ineffective campaigning there.
[7] This appears to have been a result of the most disastrous rhetorical ploy of all times. Nicias remained steadfast against the expedition but, to show it wasn’t a matter of cowardice, stated that such an expedition would only work if it were much bigger than that planned by Alcibiades – which to him appeared as a crazy non-starter, but to Athens’ assembly sounded like a great plan.