ABSTRACT
In the spring of 413, possibly as the result of Alcibiades’ advice (Thucydides 6.91.6 – all references in this chapter are to Thucydides, unless otherwise stated), the Spartans, under King Agis, invaded Attica and occupied Decelea, a fortified outpost equidistant from Athens and Boeotia (7.27): thus this phase of the Peloponnesian War (413-404) is often referred to as the Decelean War. The Athenians’ attacks on the east coast of Laconia in 414 (6.105.2), the constant raiding from Athenian-held Pylos (7.18), and the Athenian refusal to submit these issues to arbitration convinced the Spartans that the Athenians had clearly broken the terms of the Peace of Nicias, and that they were justified in renewing the war (7.18). This permanent occupation of Decelea caused many problems for the Athenians:
The invasions in the Archidamian War had only been short affairs, the longest being 40 days, but now the Athenians were permanently deprived of most of Attica; the revenue from the silver mines was lost; 20,000 slaves escaped – the majority being skilled workmen and vital for the Athenian economy; the food supplies from Euboea had to be brought in by the more expensive sea route; and, finally, there was the constant, exhausting guard-duty by day and night (7.27-28). However, this strand of Spartan strategy, for all its debilitating effects on
the Athenians, was insufficient to win the war as King Agis of Sparta so astutely observed as late as 410:
The Spartans had to be far more adventurous and challenge the Athenians at sea in Ionia, and especially in the Hellespont: only by breaking up the Athenians’ sea empire, on which they depended for revenue, and by preventing grain from the Hellespont reaching the beleaguered Athenians could the Spartans win the war. Previously, in the Archidamian War, there was little hope of this owing to the strength of the Athenian navy and a lack of finance for the maintenance of a fleet, and it was probably for this reason (as well as the desire to get back the captured Spartiates) that Brasidas’ strategy in his Thraceward campaign of 424-422 was not sufficiently supported by the authorities in Sparta (see Chapter 19). The destruction of the Athenian fleet in Sicily in 413, however, had fulfilled one of the two preconditions for potential Spartan success in Ionia; the other – sufficient finance to pay the crews of a fleet that was large enough to wrest power from the Athenians in the Aegean – required the full involvement of the one power that had the wealth and the desire to destroy the Athenian Empire: Persia. Persia’s financial help to the Spartans, fitful at first but more committed later, gave the Spartans the means to wage war with the Athenians in Ionia: hence ‘Ionian War’ is the alternative name for the war from 413-404. However, it is essential to see how the Persians were gradually drawn into the Peloponnesian War from the beginning and why the King of Persia chose to support the Spartans in the Ionian War.
