IN his now neglected masterpiece Marlborough: His Life and Times, Winston Churchill once hazarded the following observation: “Battles are the principal milestones in secular history. Modern opinion resents this uninspiring truth, and historians often treat the decisions in the field as incidents in the dramas of politics and diplomacy. But great battles, won or lost, change the entire course of events, create new standards of values, new moods, new atmospheres, in armies and in nations, to which all must conform.”1 Though written with an eye to the duke of Marlborough’s great victory in the battle of Oudenarde, Churchill’s claim applies with no less and perhaps even greater force to the battle of Plataea.
Prior to Sparta’s defeat of the Persian army captained by Mardonius on that occasion, there was every reason to suppose that the Greek resistance would collapse and that Hellas would soon fall under the sway of the Great King. When the dust had settled, however—after the Hellenes had capitalized on Sparta’s victory by massacring the remains of Mardonius’ army and after word came through that on the same day Hellenic marines had crushed the Achaemenid forces at Mycale on the coast of Asia Minor and had burned much of what remained after Salamis of the Great King’s fleet—it gradually dawned on all concerned that affairs had undergone a decisive change; and everyone in and on the periphery of the Mediterranean world began to reassess.
Great victories provide an occasion for exultation. But when the celebration is over, the outcome can be sobering as well. This was especially true after Plataea because the Hellenic victory had implications that were simply staggering. In absolute terms, Achaemenid Persia cannot now be judged the greatest power in human history. There were, in later ages, dominions that governed more individuals and a larger territory. Moreover, in modern times, technology has profoundly and repeatedly altered the strategic playing field. But if one were to assess the power of polities in relative terms, as perhaps one should, one would have to award this ancient Near Eastern kingdom the crown.
The empire ruled by Darius and his son Xerxes commanded a greater proportion of the world’s population and of the world’s resources than any dominion that preceded or followed it, and it dwarfed in size and population all conceivable rivals. The ancient world was lightly populated. The only regions of any size in which population density was considerable were the four great river valleys where irrigation made possible the production of grain or rice on a very grand scale. In the early fifth century, only one of these four—the Yellow River in China—lay outside Darius’ and Xerxes’ control. The Indus, the Nile, and the Tigris and Euphrates—over these mighty rivers, the fertile and well-watered valleys through which they ran, and the great civilizations to which they had given rise, the first two Achaemenid monarchs held sway; and the resources that this great empire afforded him Xerxes marshaled against the coalition of diminutive Greek cities that rallied behind Lacedaemon in 481, 480, and 479 B.C.
This, however, he did in vain. For the Greeks outfoxed him in 480, and they did the same in 479 to the commander Xerxes had left behind. To be precise, in 480, Themistocles of Athens lured the Great King’s fleet into the narrows separating the island of Salamis from Attica—where, due to their numbers, the Persian triremes were apt to run afoul of one another and the much smaller, much less maneuverable Hellenic fleet could in familiar waters operate to best advantage; and there the Greek triremes wreaked such havoc on the Achaemenid force that it was left numerically and morally incapable of launching a second attack. In like fashion, in 479, Pausanias of Lacedaemon feigned a loss of nerve and staged an awkward, apparently desperate and disordered withdrawal from the southern bank of the Asopus River in Boeotia and lured Mardonius and the Persian infantry across that river onto terrain in the foothills of Mount Cithaeron where, he had good reason to believe, the Persian cavalry could not operate. There the badly outnumbered hoplites of Sparta and Tegea then formed up in a phalanx, shoved their way through the wall of wicker shields set up by the enemy, and relentlessly slaughtered without remorse the handful of dedicated spearmen bearing small shields and the multitude of shieldless archers doubling as spearmen whom Mardonius had deployed against them. That such a turn of events could take place—that a ragtag navy and militia, supplied by tiny communities hitherto best known for their mutual hostility, should annihilate an armada greater than any the world had ever known—this was then and remains today both a wonder and an occasion for rumination.
Was the war really over? Or would the Persians soon return? Was this victory an accident or an indication of a hitherto unsuspected strategic superiority on the part of the Hellenes? And if the war really was over, what was to come next? What in particular were the Greeks—and their Spartan leaders—going to do with this remarkable victory? Would they carry the war to Asia? Would they free from the Persian yoke the islanders of the eastern Aegean, the Greeks of Thrace and Asia Minor, as well as those of Cyprus? Or would they be satisfied with defending the Balkan peninsula and the nearby islands from Achaemenid domination?
These were the questions asked, and there were more—for the unity that the Hellenes had displayed to good effect in this war was unprecedented. Would they maintain the solidarity that they had achieved in 480 and 479? Or would they return to the petty squabbling among themselves that had occupied them in the past? Would the Spartans try to turn their hegemony into an empire? And what about the Athenians, who had demonstrated such remarkable prowess at Salamis?
These were among the concerns that preoccupied the handful of Greeks blessed with strategic vision and a broad, panoramic view—and none were more perplexing than those pertaining to Hellas proper. After all, wartime coalitions are fragile. Sentiment may well play a role in holding alliances together. But it is generally fear that occasions their formation and provides the requisite cement—and when, after a great victory, that fear gradually dissipates, as it will, coalitions tend slowly to dissolve and other antagonisms then emerge anew . . . or reappear.
There were a great many other questions asked as well. For each of the thirty-one cities participant in the victorious coalition had her own agenda; each had her own history and her own concerns; and the same can be said for the communities which had remained aloof—and also for those which had sided with the Mede. Moreover, most of the Greeks who lived in these divers cities and were possessed of a voice in the public assemblies that governed these tiny republics were not just parochial in their outlook. They were also profoundly confused, as well they might be. For they were on the threshold of an uncharted new world. The outcome of the contests at Plataea and Mycale had decisively altered not only the course of events. It had also opened up new vistas, and it had fired imaginations. In the process, it really had forged new standards of values, new moods, new atmospheres, in armies, in navies, and in cities, to which all in the foreseeable future would have to conform.
In The Spartan Regime, which was intended to serve as a prelude to a series of volumes on the evolution of Lacedaemonian foreign policy, I analyzed the character of the Spartan regime, traced its origins, and described the grand strategy it articulated before the Persians burst on the scene. In the early chapters of this volume’s predecessor—The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: The Persian Challenge—I restated the conclusions reached in that prelude and explored in detail the manner in which the Lacedaemonians gradually adjusted that strategy to fit the new and unexpected challenge that suddenly loomed on the horizon when the Mede appeared. Then, in the last four chapters of the work, I described the fashion in which the Spartans organized and managed the alliance with which they confronted and defeated the invader bearing down on Hellas.
In this volume, I describe the manner in which the victorious Hellenes gradually and awkwardly worked out a postwar settlement that seemed to suit all concerned, and I pay particular attention, as in its predecessor, to a neglected aspect of the story—the grand strategy pursued by the Lacedaemonians, the logic underpinning it, and the principal challenge to which, in this period, it was exposed. Then, I consider the fragility of the postwar settlement; I trace its collapse, the manner in which Sparta and Athens came into conflict and then once again forged a modus vivendi; and I describe the character of the war they fought and explain its ultimate outcome. If I bring this volume to a close with the Thirty Years’ Peace in 446, some thirty-three years after Mardonius’ defeat in the battle of Plataea, it is not because I believe that this agreement settled anything. It is, rather, because Sparta’s victory over Athens that year was a genuine achievement worthy of attention in its own right and because, in my judgment, Lacedaemon’s Second Attic War deserves a separate treatment.
The series, of which this volume forms the second part, is meant to throw light not only on ancient Sparta; her first great adversary, Achaemenid Persia; and her initial chief ally and subsequent adversary, Athens. It is also intended as an invitation to reenvisage Greek history from a Spartan perspective, and I hope as well that these volumes will turn out to be a contribution to the study of politics, diplomacy, and war as such. As I have argued elsewhere and try in this volume and in its predecessors to demonstrate by way of my narrative, one cannot hope to understand the diplomatic and martial interaction of polities if one focuses narrowly on their struggle for power. Every polity seeks to preserve itself, to be sure; and in this crucial sense all polities really are akin. But there are also, I argue, moral imperatives peculiar to particular regimes; and, if one’s aim is to understand, these cannot be dismissed and ostentatiously swept aside or simply ignored on specious “methodological” grounds. Indeed, if one abstracts entirely from regime imperatives—if one treats Sparta, Persia, Corinth, Argos, and Athens simply as “state actors,” equivalent and interchangeable, in the manner advocated by the proponents of Realpolitik—one will miss much of what is going on.
Wearing blinders of such a sort can, in fact, be quite dangerous, as I suggested in the preceding volume. For, if policy makers were to operate in this fashion in analyzing politics among nations in their own time, they would all too often lack foresight—both with regard to the course likely to be taken by the country they serve and with regard to the paths likely to be followed by its rivals and allies. As I intimate time and again in this volume and in its predecessors, in contemplating foreign affairs and in thinking about diplomacy, intelligence, military strength, and its economic foundations, one must always acknowledge the primacy of domestic policy. This is the deeper meaning of Clausewitz’ famous assertion that “war is the continuation of policy by other means.”
It was with Clausewitz’ dictum and this complex of concerns in mind that Julian Stafford Corbett first revived the term “grand strategy,” reconfigured it, and deployed it both in the lectures he delivered at the Royal Naval War College between 1904 and 1906 and in the so-called Green Pamphlet that he prepared as a handout for his students.2 And it was from this broad perspective that J. F. C. Fuller wrote when he introduced the concept to the general public in 1923. As he put it, “The first duty of the grand strategist is . . . to appreciate the commercial and financial position of his country; to discover what its resources and liabilities are. Secondly, he must understand the moral characteristics of his countrymen, their history, peculiarities, social customs and system of government, for all these quantities and qualities form the pillars of the military arch which it is his duty to construct.” To this end, he added, the grand strategist must be “a student of the permanent characteristics and slowly changing institutions of the nation to which he belongs, and which he is called upon to secure against war and defeat. He must, in fact, be a learned historian and a far-seeing philosopher, as well as a skilful strategist and tactician.”
With this in mind, Fuller drew a sharp distinction between strategy and grand strategy. The former is, he explained, “more particularly concerned with the movement of armed masses” while the latter, “including these movements, embraces the motive forces which lie behind them,” whether they be “material” or “psychological.” In short, “from the grand strategical point of view, it is just as important to realize the quality of the moral power of a nation, as the quantity of its man-power.” To this end, the grand strategist must concern himself with establishing throughout his own nation and its fighting services “a common thought—the will to win”—and he must at the same time ponder how to deprive his country’s rivals of that same will. If he is to outline for his own nation “a plan of action,” he must come to know “the powers of all foreign countries and their influence on his own.” Only then will he “be in a position, grand tactically, to direct the forces at his disposal along the economic and military lines of least resistance leading towards the moral reserve of his antagonist,” which consists chiefly, he observed, in the morale of that nation’s “civil population.” In consequence, Fuller insisted, “the grand strategist” cannot restrict his purview to matters merely military. He cannot succeed unless he is also “a politician and a diplomatist.”
Moreover, Fuller added, paradoxical though it may seem, “the resting time of the grand strategist is during war, for it is during peace that he works and labours.”
During peace time he not only calculates the resources in men, supplies and moral forces of all possible enemies, but, having weighed them, he, unsuspected by the enemy, undermines them by a plan. He attacks the enemy’s man and weapon power by advising his government, (i.) to enter into alliance with other nations, (ii.) to limit his material resources by gaining actual or fiscal control over commodities the enemy’s country cannot produce; and, according to their ethics, his government attacks the enemy morally either by fostering sedition in his country or by winning over the approval of the world by the integrity of its actions.
It was Fuller’s conviction that it is “manifestly impossible” for “one man to carry out the multifarious duties of the grand strategist,” but he added that it is “manifestly absurd” for “more than one man to attempt to give direction to these duties, when combined in a plan of war.”3
Some would argue that, in the absence of modern military education and something like a general staff, there can be no grand strategy; and there can be no doubt that in recent times institutions of this sort have proved invaluable. But, if having a general staff really were a necessity, we would have to reject the obvious: that the great statesmen of the past—such as Cardinal de Richelieu, Louis XIV, and the first duke of Marlborough; the elder William Pitt and George Washington; Alexander Hamilton and John Quincy Adams; Napoleon Bonaparte and the duke of Wellington; Otto von Bismarck; the Count of Cavour; and Woodrow Wilson—were all grand strategists. Moreover, as recent studies of the Roman, Byzantine, and Hapsburg empires strongly suggest, every political community of substance that manages to survive for an extended time is forced by the challenges it faces to work out—usually, by a process of trial and error—a grand strategy of sorts and to develop a strategic culture and an operational code compatible with that strategy.4
It is the burden of these volumes to show that in ancient Lacedaemon, Persia, Corinth, Argos, and Athens there were statesmen who approached the question of war and peace from a broad perspective of the very sort described by Fuller and that it is this that explains the consistency and coherence of these polities’ conduct in the intercommunal arena. There is, I would suggest, nothing of lasting significance known by grand strategists today that figures such as Thucydides and the statesmen he most admired did not already understand.
When they alluded to Athens, Corinth, Megara, or Lacedaemon by name as a political community, and, strikingly, even when they spoke of one these póleıs as their fatherland [patrís], the ancient Greeks employed nouns feminine in gender, personifying the community as a woman to whom they were devoted—which is why I with some frequency use the feminine pronoun to refer to Sparta and other Greek cities here.