CHAPTER 28
MICHAEL SEAMAN
IN ancient Greece, laying siege to a town took two forms, both of which entailed surrounding the town in order to prevent the escape of the inhabitants, the importing of provisions, or securing of reinforcements.1 Direct attack by assaulting a city’s walls and gates was, except when this proved too difficult, the preferred method of siege warfare. The alternative method was capture by circumvallation, in effect forcing the surrender of the town by starving the citizens through blockade. Attacking armies normally attempted to capture a polis by storm before resorting to encirclement since the latter form of capture took much longer and could prove far costlier. A besieging army could force entry by penetrating the fortifications, mining under them or advancing over them. Despite their affinity for war, the Greeks of the archaic and classical periods lagged behind the peoples of the Near East in techniques of siegecraft. The Assyrians, and their Persian neighbors who dominated the Near East after them and continued the development of siege techniques, could draw upon the large resources necessary for effective sieges. The independent Greek poleis, by contrast, with more limited resources and manpower, and reluctance to incur high rates of casualties, were slow to develop effective methods of siege warfare. Despite these limitations, Greek poleis undertook sieges in the archaic and classical periods which often resulted in the capture and destruction of a city.
Just how often Greek armies in these earlier periods would attempt the conquest of enemy cities and the degree of success besieging armies achieved are matters of some debate. Most military historians believe that hoplite battle was the preferred and dominant form of warfare among Greeks in the archaic and classical periods and that conventions in warfare kept the Greeks from committing wholesale destruction of towns and cities until the middle or late fifth century (see Hanson 1996: 606; Hanson 2000: 206; Ober 1994: 12–26; Connor 1988 3–28). This argument holds that sieges of cities, wanton plunder, and massacres were gradually introduced into Greek warfare in the period from 450–300, particularly in the period of the Peloponnesian War, which witnessed a permanent breakdown in these conventions. The theory might find support in a well-known passage in Thucydides’s introduction to his history, in which he makes the case that the Peloponnesian War was the greatest war ever to befall Greece:
The greatest achievement of former times was the Persian War, and yet this was quickly decided in two sea-fights and two land-battles. But the Peloponnesian War was protracted to a great length, and in the course of it disasters befell Hellas the like of which had never occurred in any equal space of time. Never had so many cities been taken and left desolate, some by the Barbarians and others by Hellenes themselves warring against one another; while several, after their capture, underwent a change of inhabitants. Never had so many human beings been exiled, or so much human blood been shed, whether in the course of the war itself or as the result of civil dissensions. (1.23.1–2; trans. C. F. Smith)
The message seems clear: the Peloponnesian War, by virtue of the extent of participation and duration, brought more misery to the Greeks than all previous wars. In fact his narrative would support this judgment. The evils of a war of exceptional length and one that involves nearly the whole of the Greek world in one way or another are bound to surpass those that marked earlier wars. However, some scholars hold that Thucydides may be attributing more to “his” war than the sheer number of atrocities that accompanied it, and that in the Peloponnesian War the Greeks behaved with greater brutality than they had in the past (Kiechle 1958; Strauss 2008: 240). Certainly Thucydides believed that “war is a violent teacher” (Thuc. 3.82.2) and few can deny that in the fifth and fourth centuries, sieges, death, enslavement, and forced exile were grim, though ever-present, possibilities as an outcome for a polis that went to war. However, a survey of Greek siege warfare down to the Hellenistic period suggests more continuity in siege warfare than is commonly thought.
We begin to see an increase in sieges and war atrocities in the fifth century, due in part to an improvement in our sources but also to the fact that the Greeks, namely the Athenians, were able to overcome some of the difficulties inherent in besieging an enemypolis. Thucydides states that the Peloponnesian War saw an increase in the number of cities taken and Greeks killed or exiled because the war was fought over many years and involved a great number of poleis. The historian does not, however, state or imply that this behavior was a recent phenomenon, only that its scale was unprecedented. In fact, besieging towns and committing what might be termed war atrocities were prevalent in Greek warfare long before the middle and late fifth century. It is only in the early fifth century, however, with the advent of a new and powerful coalition of Greek poleis under the leadership of an aggressive hegemon, that Greek armies had the manpower, finances, and ability to regularly undertake sieges with high rates of success.
During the approximately fifty years between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, the era known as the Pentecontaetia, at least thirty Greek poleis were besieged (see Appendix I for a list of these). With the advent of the Peloponnesian War, the Greeks experienced a dramatic rise in the number of sieges, as Thucydides observes (1.23.1–2). Throughout the course of the twenty-seven-year war, Greeks attempted no less than one hundred sieges, fifty-eight of which were successful (see Appendix II). Several observations can be made. This represents a threefold increase in sieges compared with those known from Pentecontaetia. The increase, in part, is surely the consequence of a large-scale war fought between two great coalitions faced by rebellious allies on one side and stubborn foes on the other, unwilling or reluctant to offer head-on battle. No less a factor in the higher number of sieges recorded for the Peloponnesian War and later historical periods is the expansion of the historical tradition itself beginning with Thucydides.
From the outset of the war, we see a drop in the overall success rate of sieges from the previous period. Of the thirty known sieges undertaken by Greeks in the years between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, twenty-seven ended with the capitulation of the city under attack, a success rate of 90 percent. During the Peloponnesian War, armies enjoyed an overall success rate of only 58 percent.2 Second, there is a marked shift away from circumvallation on the part of the Athenians and the Delian League, the onlypolis or coalition that attempted siege warfare in the Pentecontaetia (i.e., thirty known sieges by circumvallation: e.g., Sestos, Eion, Scyros, Naxos, Thasos, Aegina, Samos, and Potidaea). In the earlier period, the Athenians and their Delian League allies attempted a total of twenty-four sieges, twenty-one of which, or 88 percent, ended successfully. Of these, eight, or one-third, appear to have been siege by circumvallation. This contrasts sharply with Athenian siege warfare in the Peloponnesian War: of Athens’s fifty-seven sieges, only seven, or 12 percent, were attempted circumvallation. What accounts for the rise in Athenian attempts at storming towns? Surely, it was the enormous financial cost of a long siege that was the greatest disincentive. While the walling up of a city incurred less risk to the attacking army than launching repeated assaults on a town, not many poleis had the finances at hand to invest in a protracted siege that now easily lasted over a year or longer. Even Athens had trouble financing circumvallation while fighting the Peloponnesian War. It was while investing Mytilene, their eighth siege of the war, though only their first attempt at circumvallation, that the Athenians found themselves short on funds and resorted for the first time to a property tax (Thuc. 3.19.1–2). It is telling that Athens’s next attempts at circumvallation are those of Scione, Melos and Syracuse, the first of which takes place after the armistice with Sparta, and the others during the Peace of Nicias. About the same time, the Athenians and other allies assisted the Argives in their investment of Epidaurus (418), before evacuating Epidaurus as stipulated in a treaty (Thuc. 5.80.3; 5.75.5–6). The three attempts at circumvallation by Athens in the Ionian War, those of Chios, Miletus, and Phocaea, all end in failure. Athens prior to the Peloponnesian War, while at the height of its power and wealth, could afford the costs of circumvallation, repeatedly bringing sieges to successful conclusion no matter how long they lasted. But once it became involved in a long and extremely expensive war, it rarely could afford such luxury.
The large number of poleis stormed during the Peloponnesian War is striking. Circumvallation was almost always preceded by an attempt to seize the town by force, leaving the more expensive option as a last resort. But even discounting the almost certain assaults undertaken prior to each circumvallation, at least ninety attempts to violently capture Greek towns took place over less than three decades. As in the Pentecontaetia, it was a powerful coalition, with its large number of soldiers that gives an invading army the ability to overwhelm a town’s defenses. On several occasions the generals of a coalition army argued over which town they ought to campaign against, and then proceeded to execute their plan of action (e.g., Demosthenes in Leucas prior to his Aetolian campaign [Thuc. 3.94.2–3]). This was the case with the so-called “Quadruple Alliance” following its successful siege of Orchomenus in Arcadia in 418:
After this, being now in possession of Orchomenus, the allies deliberated which of the remaining places they should next proceed against. The Eleans were urging them to go against Lepreum, the Mantineans against Tegea; and the Argives and the Athenians sided with the Mantineans. (5.62.1; trans. C. F. Smith)
The large armies marching through Greece during the Peloponnesian War must have been intimidating to most Greek poleis. Brasidas’s army struck panic into the Amphipolitans when he appeared outside the city (Diod. 12.68.3; so too that of Sitalces as it marched through Macedonia overpowering and terrifying cities [Thuc. 2.101.2–3]). Some cities capitulated before hostilities commenced, as did Messana in 426: the city submitted on the approach of the Athenians and their allies, willingly giving up hostages and making other pledges in order to avoid being besieged (Thuc. 3.90.4; other poleis that surrendered without a fight: Cephallenia [Thuc. 2.30.2], Acanthus [Thuc. 4.67.3], Centoripa [Thuc. 6.94.3], and Abdera [Diod. 13.72.2]). Such intimidation can be seen in 418 when, upon the approach of the forces of the “Quadruple Alliance,” Tegea made a desperate appeal for Spartan assistance, warning their allies that, unless help arrived immediately, the Tegeans would be forced to join the enemy “and had all but already done so” (Thuc. 5.64.1).
It is clear from the sources that the capture of a town by siege was often accomplished in a matter of days. Frequently in Thucydides we read how a city was taken “at first assault” (autoboei).3 This is presumably before the defenders could get organized and while the besiegers still held an element of surprise. Consequently, the Athenians were able to retake Mytilene, in revolt for the second time, at the first assault, “for the Athenians, arriving unexpectedly, had immediately sailed into the harbor and defeated the Chian ships” and so took possession of the city (Thuc. 8.23.2). We are told that Brasidas would have taken Amphipolis at first assault “had he not stopped to pillage the countryside” (Thuc. 4.104.2), and earlier that it was his heroic act of bravery that prevented the rapid fall of Methone when, with one hundred hoplites, he dashed through enemy lines into the besieged city, whose “walls were weak and without sufficient defenders” (Thuc. 2.25.1–2; cf. the sudden winter attack and capture of Mecyberna by the Olynthians in 421/420 [Thuc. 5.39.1]; a Peloponnesian surprise attack took Carian Iasus [Thuc. 8.28.2–3]). Thucydides expresses certainty that had the Athenians and their allies attempted to storm Ambracia in 426, as Demosthenes had urged, “they would have taken it on the first assault” (3.113.6). And Xenophon relates how Lysander captured by storm Cedreiae in Caria in 405 “on the second day’s assault” (Hell. 2.1.15). It must therefore have been somewhat reasonable to expect that a town could be taken with a few days of assaults, and sieges are frequently abandoned after only one or two days, as at, for example, Stagirus (Thuc. 5.6.1), Elaeus (Thuc. 8.103.1), Haerae on Teos (Thuc. 8.20.2), and on Andros (Xen. Hell. 1.4.21–23). After unsuccessfully attempting to storm an unwalled Cnidus for a day, the Athenians returned on the second day only to find that the city’s defenses had been shored up during the night and that the city had been reinforced by men from outside and so they lifted the siege (Thuc. 8.35.3–4).4
An attacking army might persist in launching assaults if it had reason to believe that their cause might be helped by treachery from “friends” within the walls. It is frequently the case in Greek siege warfare that a city capitulates after internal ideological strife brings about a betrayal of the town. When the Mytilenaeans marched against Methymna in 428, they launched assaults and were under the impression that the city would be “delivered into their hands,” but when events did not turn out as they planned they departed (Thuc. 3.18.1). When the Peloponnesian garrison in Mende called for a sortie against the besieging Athenians, the “democratic faction” protested and routed the garrison, in part because the Peloponnesians “were terrified when the gates were opened to the Athenians, for they thought that the attack had been made as a result of a prearranged agreement” (Thuc. 4.130.2–5). There was obviously a danger in putting too much faith in the abilities of traitors, though occasionally efforts were rewarded, as during Cimon’s siege of Phaselis in Lycia certain Chian soldiers who were fighting alongside the Athenians and who were old friends with the people of Phaselis, “shot arrows over the town walls with notes attached” thereby affecting the town’s capitulation (Plut. Cim. 12.3–4). But the elaborate plot of Demosthenes in 424 for the betrayal of several Boeotian towns simultaneously failed miserably (Thuc. 4.76–77, 4.89; cf. also Plataea, betrayed in a time of peace and on a festival day [Thuc. 2.2], also the elaborate plot to seize Megara [Thuc. 4.66–67]). Despite the advice of his fellow generals, Demosthenes and Eurymedon, to evacuate Syracuse, Nicias insisted that the Athenians remain where they were, in part because he kept receiving messages from certain Syracusans with regard to the betrayal of the city, so that “there was some suspicion that it was due to some superior information that he was so obstinate” (Thuc. 7.49).
Even entry into a city by stealth did not automatically bring about capitulation. When certain Byzantines had stealthily brought in Alcibiades and his hoplites to betray the city, a battle ensued in which the Athenians would not have emerged victorious had not Alcibiades publicly proclaimed leniency toward the conquered (Diod. 13.67). The Athenian general Simonides was not so fortunate. No sooner had he taken Mende by treachery in 425 than the Chalcidians and Bottiaeans came up and “forced him out of town with the loss of many of his soldiers” (Thuc. 4.7).
SIEGE AT PLATAEA
With the Peloponnesian War we get the first detailed look at Greek siege warfare. Thucydides provides a thorough description of the Spartan siege of Plataea (429–427), from the initial betrayal of the town, to the variety of assaults and means of defense, to the final execution of the surviving Plataeans (Thuc. 2.2–6; 2.71–78; 3.20–24; 3.52–68). Expecting a siege, the Plataeans first gathered all their movable property from the outlying areas and then evacuated their women, children, and older men to Athens. The remaining Plataeans numbered four hundred men, along with eighty Athenian allies and 110 women to prepare the food. The Spartans and their allies launched a number of attacks which were in turn effectively met by Plataean countermeasures, with Thucydides providing what is essentially a play-by-play commentary. It seems reasonable to assume that the entire siege was planned in Sparta since the Peloponnesians did not make their annual invasion of Attica but marched straight to Plataea at the beginning of the campaigning season. The Spartans began the siege in spring 429 at the beginning of the campaign season (Thuc. 2.71.1), completing the wall of circumvallation “about the time of the rising of Arcturus” (i.e., mid-September) of the same year (Thuc. 2.78.2), precisely two years after the Theban surprise attack on Plataea and ensuing massacre of the Theban prisoners. Clearly the Plataeans had prepared.5
Once the decision to commence the siege was taken, the first order of business for the attacking army was to cut down the surrounding trees in order to build a wooden palisade around the city to prevent the defenders from making sorties. The attackers then spent the next seventy days, working in teams around the clock, building a giant mound against the city in an attempt to scale the wall. Not to be outdone, the Plataeans countered by first raising the height of their wall opposite the mound by erecting a wooden and brick tower, made from demolished houses. They then sapped the mound both by dismantling a section of the town wall and removing dirt into the city and by tunneling underneath. Next, as a protection in case their high wall was taken, the Plataeans built a crescent-shaped wall within their city wall which would force the invading army, assuming they breached the first wall, to build another mound to scale the newly formed second wall and leave them exposed on nearly all sides. The Peloponnesians then brought up their battering rams (embole), but to little effect since the defenders lassoed some rams and dropped onto others large beams suspended by iron chains from the walls thereby breaking off their tips. Finally, an attempt was made to burn the city by creating an enormous fire adjacent to the town wall. But instead of a favorable wind, which the besiegers hoped would carry the flames into the city, a thunderstorm arose and extinguished the great fire. Thus, after a siege of approximately four to five months, the Spartans were forced to settle for the slower and more costly siege by circumvallation. They dismissed the larger part of their army and threw up a brick wall around the city, digging trenches on either side, out of which they got the clay for the bricks. The Plataeans were slowly starved into surrender and capitulated in the summer of 427, after two years, but not before roughly half of them had made a dramatic escape on a stormy night the previous winter.
Figure 28.1 Remains of the fourth century walls of Plataea (gate and tower) looking north toward Thebes, the route taken by the escaping Plataean garrison. Photo Credit: L. Tritle.
The initial continuous assaults over the first summer must have taken a toll on both sides. Of the 480 Plataeans in the city at the beginning of the siege, 220 attempted escape (of which 212 succeeded), leaving approximately 260 men in town for the remainder of the siege. Thucydides states that about 225 Plataeans and Athenians were executed by the Spartans, meaning about thirty-five of them died in the four to five months of assaults prior to circumvallation. Thucydides is silent on how many Peloponnesians perished while attempting to storm the city but the number was surely much higher. When the Spartans in 425 were besieging the Athenians at Pylos, they made every effort to storm the fort, and assaulted the walls in successive waves. Diodorus writes that every day fighting took place before the walls and that many Spartans were slain and countless wounded in the series of attacks (Diod. 12.61–62; cf. also Thuc. 4.11–13).
Some scholars consider the siege of Plataea to be “ingenious” and “the acme” of Greek siege warfare (Adcock 1957: 58, now Campbell 2006: 39) but it was not. Nowhere does any ancient author state or imply that what took place at Plataea was revolutionary or even out of the ordinary. Plataea did not fall to siegecraft but by circumvallation; the defenders had expected and defended well against every means of attack, another indication that the various means of assault were not extraordinary in Greek siege warfare.
The siege of Plataea, as it is told, is probably the way most sieges unfolded in the fifth century, with the exception that the Spartans eventually relied on circumvallation, which, as we know, was attempted only on rare occasions, especially by non-Athenians. Therefore we should not read too much into Thucydides’s digression on the siege of Plataea. It is more likely that the passage is another example of Thucydides providing his reader with a detailed look at one aspect of the war, akin to his digression on the stasis at Corcyra.6 It is telling that in his description of the siege of Plataea, Diodorus confines his description to the initial betrayal of the town and the dramatic escape of the Plataeans, passing over completely the siege itself (Diod. 12.41.2–42.2; 12.56). Elsewhere Diodorus does not hesitate to relate a new development in siege warfare, such as Pericles’s novel use of battering rams (Diod. 12.28). It is also worth noting that Thucydides, who began writing his history at the outset of the war (Thuc. 1.1.1), was likely present in Athens after the siege and would have learned firsthand the details from surviving Plataeans who escaped to Athens (Thuc. 3.24.2) and were later settled at Scione (Thuc. 5.32.1). Moreover, the Spartan siege of Plataea, their only attempt at circumvallation in the war, leaving aside the naval blockade of Athens, makes for an interesting contrast with the Athenian siege of Melos in 416, not only because the two sieges relate the fate of a captured city, but because both explore warped forms of justice and realpolitik, the power politics that are practiced by both sides in war.7 Moreover, Thucydides is careful to point out a key difference between the two aggressors: the Spartans arrive and insist the Plataeans be neutral in the war (Thuc. 2.72.1), whereas the Athenians demand Melos join the Athenian Empire, rejecting Melian pleas to remain allied to neither side (Thuc. 5.94; see further Seaman 1997: 385–418.).
We may wonder, given their success at Plataea, why the Spartans did not attempt more sieges by circumvallation in the war. Circumvallation required an abundance of time and money and, while the Spartans themselves did not till their land with their own hands, their Peloponnesian allies did (Thuc. 1.141.3). The Peloponnesians were less zealous for war than the Spartans and often more concerned with the harvest (Thuc. 3.15.2). But few allies were as close to Athens as was Plataea (Diod. 12.56.6, 15.46.6), having been their allies since 519 (Thuc. 3.68.5), and, since it was situated in Boeotia but always at variance with Thebes (Thuc. 2.2.3), there was a special hatred felt toward them by the Thebans, whom the Spartans wanted particularly to please and count as allies (Thuc. 3.68.4). The Thebans constituted at least half of the hoplites who undertook the circumvallation and may in fact have been the only allies who participated in the siege (cf. Thuc. 2.78.1–2). Further, the annihilation of poleis would not likely have fit well with Spartan propaganda identifying themselves as “the liberators of Hellas” (cf., e.g., Thuc. 1.69.1, 2.8.4).
FATE OF THE DEFEATED
The Greeks experienced a dramatic rise in the number of sieges during the Peloponnesian War but sieges and the atrocities that often accompanied them were experienced by Greek poleis before the Peloponnesian War and long before the late fifth century. There was not, therefore, any “breakdown in permanent conventions” during the war because there were never any real conventions in place. Greeks made assaults on cities throughout the Peloponnesian War, oftentimes vanquishing the besieged, committing what might be termed an atrocity. About the same number of sieges are undertaken in the Archidamian War (forty-four, three by circumvallation) as those in the Ionian War (forty-one, four by circumvallation, counting the blockade of Athens). There is no evidence for a buildup or worsening of atrocities as the war progresses, as these too are committed by both sides throughout the war and even before its outbreak. At Epidamnus in 434, captured enemies were sold into slavery or put to death (Thuc. 1.29.5–30.1; Diod. 12.31.2). In the first years of the war, the Athenians murdered Spartan and Peloponnesian envoys without trial, and the Spartans put to death anyone captured at sea, whether they were fighting on the side of the enemy or not, a habit which they apparently only had at the beginning of the war (Thuc. 2.67). The siege of Potidaea was brought to a successful conclusion by the Athenians in the winter of 430/429, approximately eighteen months after the beginning of the war and at enormous expense. When the Athenian generals accepted the proposals of the Potidaeans to hand over their city and depart with only one garment each, they were blamed by the Athenians for having granted such lenient terms (Thuc. 2.70.4). Recall that the Athenian massacre of the Melians did not take place while Athens was in the throes of war but deep into the Peace of Nicias. And the Spartans destroyed Plataea at the outset of the war but at its conclusion spared the Athenians, against the wishes of many of their allies (Xen. Hell. 2.2.19).
The determining factor in the fate of a defeated polis in the Peloponnesian War was not the year it took place but was rather the disposition of those whose decision it was to negotiate the terms of surrender. At Athens, this could be the generals leading the siege (as Hagnon and his colleagues at Potidaea), but it often meant the assembly. On two occasions, the Athenian general Cleon, who was “not only the most violent of the citizens and who had by far the greatest influence with the masses” (Thuc. 3.36.6), convinced the Athenians to inflict capital punishment on allies in revolt: the Mytileneans in 427 (Thuc. 3.36.6, 3.37–40) and then the Scioneans in 423 (Thuc. 4.122.6). The anger of the people at Athens was apparently something that demagogues could appeal to and something generals knew well to avoid. At Potidaea, Hagnon feared raising the two-year siege because he knew that the Athenians were angry with the Potidaeans, both because they were the first to join the Spartans and because the siege had already surpassed the massive sum of one thousand talents (Diod. 12.46.4).8 Besides anger, expediency was often a motive in deciding how to treat the vanquished. Thucydides is specific in stating that the Spartans killed the Plataeans at the conclusion of that siege in order to please the Thebans (Thuc. 3.68.4).
CONCLUSION
When taken in the context of the history of Greek sieges, not a few of which ended in the massacre or enslavement of the inhabitants, what happened at Melos, for example, would not have seemed all that extraordinary to contemporaries. The lesson of the Melian affair is not one of brutality but rather a look at the use (or abuse) of power in war.
We know about more sieges and atrocities in the Peloponnesian War than in earlier periods because we have a first-rate historian who provides us with a detailed examination of the conflict. But it would be a mistake to conclude that, because of the increase in numbers of sieges, some resulting in atrocities, that the Greek attitude toward a defeated enemy had only recently become brutal. Therefore, when it comes to siege warfare, the Peloponnesian War is not the major turning point that some scholars would have us believe. The fact that the Greeks always behaved in a similar way in warfare is entirely consistent with Thucydides’s views (and this author’s) that human nature remains constant (Thuc. 1.22.4).
APPENDIX I: SIEGES UNDERTAKEN IN THE PENTECONTAETIA
Sestos (Hdt. 9.114–121; Thuc. 1.89.2; Diod. 11.37.4–5; Plut. Cim. 9.2–4; Polyaenus, Strat. 1.34.2); Eion (Hdt. 7.107; Thuc. 1.98.1; Plut. Cim. 7.1–8.2; Paus. 8.8.9; Diod. 11.60.2); Scyros (Thuc. 1.98.2; Plut. Cim. 8.3–6; Nep. Cim. 2.5; cf. also Thes. 36.1; Diod. 11.60.2; Paus. 3.3.7); Byzantium (Thuc. 1.131; Plut. Cim. 9.2–4; Polyaenus, Strat. 1.34.2; cf. Justin 9.1); Phaselis (Plut. Cim. 12.3–4; cf. Diod. 11.60.4); Carystus (Thuc. 1.98.3; Hdt. 9.105); Naxos (Thuc. 1.98.4, 137.2); Mycenae (Diod. 11.65; Paus. 2.16.4); Thasos (Thuc. 1.100.2–101.3; Diod. 11.70; Plut. Cim. 14.2); Aegina (Thuc. 1.105.2, 1.108.4; Diod. 11.70.2–4; cf. Thuc. 2.27.1–2; Diod. 12.44.2–3; Plut. Per. 34.1); Tanagra, following the battle of Oenophyta (Diod. 11.82.5; cf. Thuc. 1.108.2–3, who mentions only that the Tanagreans were made to tear down their walls); Tolmides’s sieges of Methone, Gythium, and Boia, in the First Peloponnesian War, and his capture of Chaeronea, undoubtedly resulting from a siege (Diod. 11.84; Paus. 1.27.6; sch. ad Aeschin. 2.75; Thuc. 1.108.5, 1.113.1); Naupactus (Diod. 11.84; cf. Thuc. 1.103.3); Pericles’s unsuccessful sieges of Oeniadae (Thuc. 1.111.2–3; Diod. 11.85.2; Plut. Per. 19.4) and Sicyon (Diod. 11.88.1–2; cf. also Thuc. 1.111.2; the poleis of Citium, Marium, and Salamis on Cyprus (Thuc. 1.112.2–4; Diod. 12.3–4; Plut. Cim. 19.1); Histiaea on Euboea (Thuc. 1.114; Diod. 12.7.1; Plut. Per. 22.1–2, 23.2); the re-founded Sybaris (Diod. 11.48.4, 12.10.1–3); Samos (IG I3 363 = ML 55; Thuc. 1.116–117; Diod. 12.27.2–28; Plut. Per. 26–28; Nep. Timoth. 1.2); the Sicilian town of Trinacie (Diod. 122.29); the Athenian attacks on Therme, Pydna, and Strepsa (Thuc. 1.61.2–4) preceding their siege of Potidaea (Thuc. 1.64.1–2, 65.1–2, 66.1, 67.1, 2.58.1–3, 70.1; cf. 3.17; Diod. 12.34.2–4, 37.1, 40.2, 45.2–46); the successful siege of Oeniadae by the Messenians of Naupactus (Paus. 4.25.1–2). Omitted are: sieges of forts (e.g., Ithome: Thuc. 1.101–102; Diod. 11.64.4, 12.6.1); sieges undertaken by non-Greeks (e.g., of Morgantina by the Sicels: Diod. 11.78.5); attacks on cities whose identity is not precisely known (e.g., Cimon’s attack on Persian garrisons in Caria preceding the battle of the Eurymedon; Diod. 11.60.3–4). The three failures were Pericles’s sieges at Oeniadae ca. 454, at Sicyon the following year, and that of Callias et al. at Strepsa in 434.
APPENDIX II: SIEGES OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
(Success is measured by capitulation, whether or not the town attacked fell by siegecraft or circumvallation.) Epidamnus (Thuc. 1.26.4–5; 1.29.4; Diod. 12.30.2–5, 12.31.2), included here given its integral role in the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War; Plataea (Thuc. 2.2–6; 2.71–78; 3.20–24; 3.52–68; Diod. 12.41.2–42.2; 12.56), Oenoe (Thuc. 2.18.1–2.19.1); Methone (Thuc. 2.25.1–2; Diod. 12.43.2–3); Pheia (Thuc. 2.25.3–5; Diod. 12.43.4–5); Thronium (Thuc. 2.26.2; Diod. 12.44.1); Sollium (Thuc. 2.30); Astacus (Thuc. 2.30.1); Pericles’s siege of Epidaurus in 430 (Thuc. 2.56.1–4; Plut., Per. 35; cf. Diod. 12.45.3); Prasiae (Thuc. 2.56.5); Amphilochian Argos (Thuc. 2.68); Stratus (Thuc. 2.80.8–82); Mytilene in 428–427 (Thuc. 3.5–6, 3.18.3–5, 3.25, 3.27–28; Diod. 12.55); Methymna in 428 (Thuc. 3.18.1); Pyrrha and Eresus (Thuc. 3.35.1); Minoa (Thuc. 3.51.3; Plut. Nic. 6.4); Leontini (Diod. 12.53, 12.83.1; cf. also Thuc. 3.86); Mylae (Thuc. 3.90.2–3; Diod. 12.54.4); Demosthenes’s storming of Potidania, Krokyle, Tichium, and Aegitium, unwalled villages in Aetolia (Thuc. 3.96.2; cf. also Diod. 12.60.1); Oeneon, Eupalium and Molycreium (Thuc. 3.102.1–2; Diod. 12.60.3),;Naupactus (Thuc. 3.100, 3.102.3–5; Diod. 12.60.2); Inessa (Thuc. 3.103.1); the Spartan siege of the Athenian fort atPylos in 425 (Thuc. 4.11.2–4.14.5; Diod. 12.61–62); the Athenian blockade and storming of the Spartan garrison on Sphacteria (Thuc. 4.14.5–4.16.2, 4.23, 4.26–39; Diod. 12.63); Sicilian Naxos (Thuc. 4.25.8); Messana (Thuc. 4.25.10–11); Scandeia and Cythera (Thuc. 4.53–57; Diod. 12.65.8; Plut. Nic. 6.4; cf. also Diod. 12.80.5); Thyrea (4.57.3–5; Diod. 12.65.8–9; Plut. Nic. 6.5); Nisaea in 424 (Thuc. 4.66–69; Diod. 12.66; Plut. Nic. 6.4; cf. also Diod. 12.80.5); Delium (Thuc. 4.100; Diod. 12.70.6); Mende and Scione (Thuc. 4.129–132.1, 4.133.4, 5.2.2, 5.32.1; Diod. 12.72.6–10, 12.76.3; cf. also Plut., Nic. 6.4); Brasidas’s attempt to storm Potidaea (Thuc. 4.135.1); Torone (Thuc. 5.2–5.3; Diod. 12.73.2); Stagirus and Galepsus (Thuc. 5.6.1); Thyssus (Thuc. 5.35.1); Mecyberna (Thuc. 5.39.1; Diod. 12.77.5); the probable siege of Heracleia in Trachis (Thuc. 5.51.2; Diod. 12.77.4); the Argive attempt on Epidaurus in 419 (Thuc. 5.56.5); Orchomenus in Arcadia (Thuc. 5.61.3; Diod. 12.79.2); the probable siege of Tegea that prompted the battle of Mantinea (Thuc. 5.62, 5.64.1–3; Diod. 12.79.3); the circumvallation of Epidaurus by the Argives and their allies (Thuc. 5.75.4–6, 5.77.2); Hysiae (Thuc. 5.83.2; Diod. 12.81.1); Melos (Thuc. 5.84–114, 5.115.4, 5.116.2–4; Diod. 12.80.5, 13.30.6); Orneae (Thuc. 6.7.2; Diod. 12.81.5); Hyccara and Hybla Geleatis (Thuc. 6.62.3–5; Diod. 13.6.1; Plut. Nic. 15.3–4); the attempted circumvallation of Syracuse (Thuc. 6.97–102; 7.2–6, 7.43–44; Diod. 13.7.3–13.8.2, 13.11.3–6); Amphipolis (Thuc. 7.9); Mycalessus (Thuc. 7.29); Haerae on Teos (Thuc. 8.20.2); Mytilene in 412 (Thuc. 8.23.2–3; Diod. 12.55); Polichne (Thuc. 8.23.6); Chios (Thuc. 8.24.6, 8.40.2–3, 8.55.2–56.1); Miletus, besieged twice in 412 (Thuc. 8.25.5, 8.27.6, 8.30.1); Carian Iasus in 412 (Thuc. 8.28.2–3); Pteleum (Thuc. 8.31.2); Clazomenae (Thuc. 8.31.3); Cnidus (Thuc. 8.35.3–4); Astyochus’s sack of Meropis on Cos (Thuc. 8.41.2; Diod. 13.42.3 wrongly assigns this to Alcibiades); Lampsacus and Abydus in 411 (Thuc. 8.62.2); Pydna (Diod. 13.49.1–2); Oenoe (Thuc. 8.98.2–4); Cyzicus, which changed hands three times in 411 (Athens captures easily: Thuc. 8.107.1; Diod. 13.40.6; Sparta captures by storm but loses after the battle of Cyzicus: Diod. 13.49.4–13.51.7); Eresus on Lesbos (Thuc. 8.100.4–5, 8.103.2); Elaeus in the Thracian Chersonese (Thuc. 8.103.1); Ephesus (Xen. Hell. 1.2.6–11; Diod. 13.64.1; Plut., Alc. 29.1); Pygela (Xen. Hell. 1.2.2); Abydus in 409 (Xen. Hell. 1.2.16; Plut. Alc. 29.1; cf. also Diod. 13.68.1); Chalcedon (Xen. Hell. 1.3.2–9; Diod. 13.64.3, 13.66.1–3; Plut.Alc. 31.1); Byzantium (Xen. Hell. 1.3.2, 1.3.14–22; Diod. 13.64.3, 13.66.3–67.7; Plut. Alc. 31.2–6); the Athenian fort at Pylos in 409 (Diod. 13.64.5–7); Nisaea in 409 (Diod. 13.65.1); the Chian acropolis (Diod. 13.65.3); Thasos (Xen. Hell, 1.4.9; Diod. 13.72.1; Nep., Lys. 2.2–3); Gaurium and Andros (Xen. Hell. 1.4.21–23; Diod. 13.69.4–5); Phocaea (Xen. Hell. 1.5.11); Delphinium and Eion (Xen. Hell. 1.5.15; Diod. 13.76.3); Methymna in 406 (Xen. Hell. 1.6.13; Diod. 13.76.5); Mytilene in 406 (Xen. Hell. 1.6.16–26, 1.6.35–38; Diod. 13.79.7, 13.97.2–3, 13.100.5); Cedreiae in Caria (Xen. Hell. 2.1.15); Iasus in 405, which had apparently now been retaken by Athens (Diod. 13.104.7); Lampsacus in 405 (Xen.Hell. 2.1.18–19; Diod. 13.104.8–105.1; Plut. Lys. 9.4); Samos (Xen.Hell. 2.3.6–7; Diod. 13.106.8; Plut. Lys. 14.1); and, lastly, Athens (Xen. Hell. 2.2.3–23; Diod. 13.107; Plut. Lys. 14.3–6). Excluded are sieges undertaken during the course of the Peloponnesian War but which had no impact on the war, e.g., the Campanian siege of Cymae (Diod. 12.76.4); the sieges in Macedon by Sitalches, Thracian king of the Odrysians (Thuc. 2.95–101; Diod. 12.50–51); the Libyan siege of the Euesperitae (Thuc. 7.50.2); and the Carthaginian sieges in Sicily from 410 to 407: Selinus (Xen. Hell. 1.1.37; Diod. 13.54.1–59.4); Himera (Xen. Hell. 1.1.37; Diod. 13.59.4–62.6); and Acragas (Xen. Hell. 1.5.21; Diod. 13.81.1–3, 13.85.1–91.1). Also excluded are sieges of cities whose precise identity is unknown, e.g., Corinthian attacks on cities of the Acarnanian coast (Thuc. 2.33.2); a supposed raid against an Athenian fort (Thuc. 4.23.1); Byzantine sieges of various Bithynian settlements (Diod. 12.82.2); and Thrasybulus’s successful sieges along the Thracian coast (Xen. Hell. 1.4.9; Diod. 13.68.1). Excluded also are cities that, out of fear, capitulated without a fight, e.g., Cephallenia (Thuc. 2.30.2); Messana (Thuc. 3.90.4); Acanthus (Thuc. 4.67.3); Centoripa (Thuc. 6.94.3); and Abdera (Diod. 13.72.2) as well as those cities that appear to have capitulated chiefly due to the treachery of their citizens, e.g., the fall of Mende to Brasidas (Thuc. 4.7); Anactorium (Thuc. 4.49); Amphipolis (Thuc. 4.103.5–106.4; Diod. 12.68.3); Panactum (Thuc. 5.3.5); Oropus (Thuc. 8.60.1–2); and Selymbria (Xen. Hell. 1.3.10; Diod. 13.66.4; Plut. Alc. 30). Lastly, not counted are the destructions of paltry forts, for example, those at Mt. Istone (Thuc. 4.46.1–2); Lecythus (Thuc. 4.114–116); and Cypsela (Thuc. 5.33).
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