Geostrategy of the Peloponnesian War 4: Syracuse and the Ionian War
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- Опубліковано 14 чер 2024
- Why did Athens invade Sicily? This is Part 4/5 in a re-examination of the strategies used in the 2nd Peloponnesian War. This video focuses on the strategies in the final 15 years of the war: Athens' culminating gambit at Mantinea, the reasons for the Sicilian Expedition, and Sparta's ultimately-successful effort to destroy the Athenian Empire.
Video 1 on CaspianReport's channel: • Geopolitics of the Pel...
SCRIPT: strategosstuff.blogspot.com/2...
All errors are my own - especially the pronunciation!
▬ CHAPTERS ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
0:00 - Introduction
0:33 - [I] The Peace of Nicias
3:06 - [II] Alcibiades: The Culmination of Athenian Strategy
6:44 - [III] The Sicilian Expedition
13:18 - [IV] Ionian War 1: The Conventional Strategy Reversed
17:38 - [V] Ionian War 2: War Termination
22:51 - [VI] Conclusion
▬ SOURCES ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War [Bks 5, 6, 7, 8]
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Histor...
Xenophon, Hellenica [Bks 1, 2]
www.gutenberg.org/files/1174/...
Kagan D. The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition. Cornell University Press 2013.
Kagan D. The Fall of the Athenian Empire. Cornell University Press 2013.
Hanson V. A War Like No Other. Random House 2006.
Henderson B. The Great War Between Athens and Sparta. Hauraki 2015.
Lazenby J. The Peloponnesian War. Routledge 2007.
Rusch S. Sparta at War. Frontline 2011.
Sears M. Understanding Greek Warfare. Routledge 2019.
▬ ATTRIBUTIONS ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Google Maps for the maps and the placement of the towns. Locations corroborated with Wikipedia (i.e. Corinth today is not where ancient Corinth was). Roads follow the route of modern highways, but they seem to match ancient routes well enough.
www.livius.org/pictures/a/map... (Sicily at the time of the Expedition)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilia... (Siege of Syracuse)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... (Greece during the PW)
Made using Powerpoint 2013, Audacity, WavePad and VideoPad.
Ah yes the Gods of Strategy have blessed us again!
Would be good to get a post Peloponnesian war overview and understand how the peace again deteriorated into wars in Greece, because Sparta was unable to gain an empire despite their victory over Athens and it would be cool to know how they mismanaged it all.
I'll definitely be talking about that in the next video, with the "corrosive" effects of the PW on Sparta's traditional strategic/military outlook.
@@StrategyStuff ua-cam.com/video/TrafXfDL2CA/v-deo.html on the Caspian report from 40 second to 1:40 . Do you know if Dugin prediction are coincided? Is it cold war 2.0 ?
Is Russia using gas war on Libya but fuelling more conflict? Or is that being done by European states ?
sparta didn't have the ability to hold onto anything - they were down to 8,500 spartiates and now that athens was beaten, the persians had no reason to funnel a lot of money over to them - in fact sparta followed in athens footsteps of demanding tribute - without the ability to enforce if everywhere
With these videos I can see how Macedon is integrated into the great game, not just a random nation with a creative warfare techniques.
I had no idea the concept of "exporting democracy" was invented by Athens and not the USA.
I have no idea about who are you, what is your formation, I don't check your source material, but GOD DAMN IT, YOU ARE THE BEST.
Actually he does list his sources in the video description but yeah he's really great.
Oh, yes, let me correct myself
@@MrViktorolon Hahaha love the correction
"Whose side is Alcibiades on?"
"At the moment?"
ha! such an interesting dude - absolute psycho, but he never lost a single battle and could have probably won the war for athens
Do one on the punic wars please!
Boy would i love to see the breakdown of crossing the alps and some of Hannibals maneuvering but I am not sure if there is as rich of a recorded history from that conflict as might be needed, especially the carthaginian sources would be tough to find.
This series was brilliant! Keep up the good work. Can we expect a series on the geo politics of the Spartan hegemony; Corinthian War and Theban war?
Always a good day when you upload
Excellent video; you manage to explain the “big picture” in an easily understood manner.
I love your videos, dont ever stop
Boys, we all know that strategy stuff must do the Seven Years War or the Thirty Years War. Juicy indeed.
How depressing it must be to watch your empire crumble piece by piece
I'd say it was still athens' to win right close to then end - i think they only realized it was over after they destroyed the spartan fleet at kyzikos and then realized enough persian money was sent to quickly rebuild it - spartan's got to use the roman (and then soviet) strategy of "just keep sending another force to be slaughtered until the enemy can no longer keep killing us"
I'm glad to see you active again!
This is fantastic! I absolutely love your channel
Ofc Persia sided with Sparta, they knew a Athenian victory would be bad for them as Athens was rich enough to both recover fast and potentially grow much stronger than Sparta.
Alcibiades time! Sweeet *OverlySarcasticProduction intensifies*
Great series! Great job!
He's back baby
great stuff, thank you
A cliffhanger. Yes! We get more.
I attended a Yale course on Greek history online, and its depiction of the Peloponnesian War was not so detailed as this one. It was a lot to take in, so it should be viewed several times.
Wonderful
404: Athenian Empire not found
Lol, i like that comment
My only question is why did it take Sparta so long to build fortification in Athenian land for permanent occupation of that land. It would seem logical for Sparta to do something like this after Athens proved it's effectiveness with Pylos.
What I will discuss in the next video (and yes Sparta already recognized the usefulness of forts right from beginning). But basically I argue that Spartan politics at the start of war probably recognized that a long war with Athens would have far-reaching consequences for Spartan society and so tried everything before doing that.
@@StrategyStuff Was an assault at the walls of Athens possible? If Sparta had good siege engines or catapults then it mybe could've bombarded the city of Athens itself into submission.
@@sneakone1009 The Ancient Greeks did not practice siege engineering until c.100 years later under Philip II of Macedon. That’s because the “meta” of classical hoplite warfare had evolved in a way that avoided long and destructive sieges: the two sides fight it out on a nearby battlefield, the winner takes control of the surrounding farms, the loser recognises that they have lost their sources of food and quickly bows to the inevitable.
I mentioned in previous videos that Athens and Sparta “broke the meta” precisely because they found ways to secure their sources of food and so didn’t need to immediately surrender once they lost a battle. But that meant that neither side had much practice in actually conducting sieges against a determined enemy.
At the beginning of the War, the entire might of Sparta still couldn’t take Athenian border forts or the village of Plataea, so they would have had very little chance against Athens walls. In their defence, Athens was similarly miserable at sieging (see the high cost of taking Potidaea and the failure at Syracuse).
@@StrategyStuff Thank you for the explanation. 😘😁
A more detailed description of the Sicilian expedition would be welcome.
Getting betrayed by Alcibiades is basically a tuesday in ancient Greece n
Is that the same Tissaphernes mentioned in the anabasis in 401bc?
Finally !!!
Overly Sarcastic Productions has some good stuff to say about Alcibiades, and why Athens lost the battle of Notium.
Please visit Micahistory 2, it would mean a lot!
Epic
how did Sparta supported Sicily while Athens had total naval dominance? Did they fought on sea?
nobody has ever had total naval dominance. the sea is vast and open. there is no way to definitively prevent random boatloads of Spartans appearing anywhere on the coastline... it's an Island so they can literally show up wherever. what superiority at sea achieves is that it safeguards your ports and traderoutes to the extent where random raids won't effect the flow of resources to any great extent while disrupting enemy trade constantly.
but you can never secure all your trade/movement or negate all enemy trade/movement; it's a game of maintaining the upper hand attritionally and wearing out the enemy... as the Peleponnesian wars show, you can rarely knock out the enemy as you can't be everywhere at once and nothing stops them putting more ships in the sea until you systematically invade them or they are so resource starved they can't continue... that takes a long time and these states used to plant forests near their cities so they could always build more ships.
symmetric warfare is a grind and a long term prospect no mater what, unless all parties limit it to a defined arena, i.e fighting over one disputed area and not letting it spill out of control (think Falklands crisis).
1) Thucydides mentions that there were small Athenian detachments on NW Greece who sighted the Spartans BUT they didn't stop them cause they thought they wouldn't be much trouble. But more realistically I agree with Heofonfyr that 2) Actually 100% sealing off Sicily from the small number of Spartan/Corinthian ships sailing over would have been very difficult even with the limitations of triremes (and considering a lot of the Athenian assets were in Syracuse, which was not where Gylippus landed). There was also a lot of tacit support from the Southern Italian (Thurii etc) + Sicilian ports.
It's very funny to me that a man named Hyperbolus was an aggressive radical
It would also seem like Sparta having two Kings helped with governmental stability and staying the course whereas Athens could shift with the way the situation was being perceived by the public.
Decisive leadership in times of trouble can be a powerful force such as the appointment of a dictator in the Romain republic or appointing a supreme commander in a Coalition army.
Have you thought of making of Patreon? Because I would like to donate monthly for your amazing historical content.
Let's see if I can actually keep a schedule going haha
You should open a Patreon. I would definitely support you
Alcibiades: Can you guys stop screwing me for one second?
Athenians: No, get back here for your obviously set-up trial!
Alcibiades: *Defects to Sparta*
Just another day Athenian democracy shooting themselves in the foot... Though I would still rather live in Athens instead of Sparta anyway...
I suspect Athens spread false rumor about Sparta, like mass killing of helots/slaves or whatever. Sparta was probably more like Syracuse or any other Greek "dictatorship", and did not treat their slaves or non-citizens that harshly.
Immanuel Herman Yeah, sometimes I also feel that these situations are exaggerated (Just guessing, I thought that if the lives of these slaves were so bad, they would have stop giving births, but I don’t remember there’s a natural dwindle in number of helots). Though I still prefer Athens because of their culture, all those tragedies and comedies, etc., Sparta didn’t really have these stuff in contrast. However if I were a girl then... Yeah, Sparta, definitely Sparta.
Sparta always was cautios and even dragged into the open war by allies (Corinth etc).
Athens was from time to time much more agressive and trigger happy. Athens strenght was not her navy alone but the economy tro sustain and rebuild it.
Once Sparta removed the rebuilding capabilty, and could rebuild herself with Persian help, Athens was doomed.
Sparta understood Athens position (and Saprta's own) it seems while Athens now and then could not see the situation at hand. Athens had the advantage but Sparta used what they had...
Yay I'm 50th!
Athens basically destroyed itself, it's strategies basically changed with the moods of the people and opportunistic backstabbing for political gain. The intense mistreatment of allies and the dithering on offensives as politicians clashed at home crushed their economy and military flexibility. I'm glad Athens lost, such a caustic government.
Sounds too close to the current domestic and geopolitical situation in the US to side with the 'oligarch' position..
Will discuss that in the next video. I argue that Athenian strategy was very much hampered by the fact that policy preferences were built upon deep socioeconomic divides. The "urban poor" of Athens received most of the "benefits" of war (i.e. wages, political power) while getting little of the costs.
You should open a Patreon account. I would definitely support you
Were slaves actually used to man the triremes? I thought it's been debunked as a myth or is there still a nugget of truth to it?
Athens preferred using freedmen (mainly poor) as oarsmen; Sparta used helots. Both also hired mercenary crews.
@@StrategyStuff i see thanks and double thanks for the vids! This war deserves a much needed adaptation to TV considering all the larger than life characters involved.
@@hombrejose8164 Yes this would be awesome.
A very dangerous demagogue called Hyperbolus... Is hyperbole named after him?
Hyperbole is named after the Greek hyperbola mathematical function. Hyperbolos probably means “for the prosperity of the net”, so maybe his dad was a fisherman or something
@@StrategyStuff Huh, so it's just a coincidence. It sounds like the kind of pun-naming in an Asterix comic.
Another reason given for the Sicilian expedition was the inherent character flaws of the Athenians. Being bold and daring, their culture basked in emotional extremes, and moderating voices were often ignored (Traditionalists were especially angered by the decline of farmers and their lifestyles in favor of military and naval activities for the citizenry). The Athenians also required tribute and luxury goods to sustain their public works, an appetite which never shrank. So the Sicilian Expedition can be seen as a product of the Athenian mob's insatiable demand for goodies and resources as much as a strategic political-military choice.
See: www.artofmanliness.com/articles/courage-vs-boldness-how-to-live-with-spartan-bravery/
Athens basically doomed itself because of this!
There are I kind of like your videos but Dan you're pronounce I ation is killing almost makes me now if you wanna watch it alcidbiades (Owl, se, buy, uh, deez) and Argos (are, gose) man.
5:57 damn democracy. you would have done sth good.
while the Athenians did all they could to blunder their way into snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, are you perhaps not underestimating the persian influence? even with the losses, after the spartan fleet was wiped out at kyzikos, without the persians just sending money for a new one, wouldn't we back back to post-sicilian expedition? athens dominant on sea, yet not as dominant as before? while she would have spent resources retaking the tributaries, there would not have been any way for the spartan's to move against them
thanks!
The Persians accelerated Athens’ final defeat, sure, but IMHO A’s defeat was largely sealed after the major defections began, because Greek siegecraft at this time was poor and there was little chance that A, even without the opposition of the Spartan navy, could have regained the Empire it needed to sustain a long naval war (as demonstrated when they spent post-Cyzicus just trying to recapt the Hellespont). So had P had not paid up, S would have simply asked the revolting tributaries to fund it instead (they probably were already asking), and soon resume the process of wearing down Athens. Would have taken longer, but likely similar outcome.
When you're part of the first 100 views
1. Sicily ( Athens' bigest mistake)
2. Alcibiades ( a narcissist)
3. Persia's gold
Thats why Athens lost the war.
I’d argue all these boil down to Nicias: He & his faction stonewalled Alcibiades’ anti-Spartan Coalition, causing the Battle at Mantinea to go into Sparta’s favor; he also over committed resources to the Sicilian Campaign & his lethargy & opposition to Alcibiades’ diplomatic plan here caused the latter to defect, who proded Sparta down the path to success in the end, to say nothing about Nicias literally throwing the Athenian Treasury, Army & Navy away for petty political reasons.