Political and Military Conflict in the Greek World

The Mytilene of Alcaeus is a tricky knot to unravel. Waves roll in from every direction, with vague references in the poems to the back-and-forth push-and-pull of several factions alternatingly in ascendance and exile. But there is almost no constitutional specificity in the references to rule, few of these figures can be identified even vaguely, and there is little compelling textual evidence for any link in this chain of events. I would suggest that yet another player is missing from this political picture. Lydia is suspiciously absent from our models of archaic Lesbian politics.

In the longue durée, the Isthmus of Corinth was apt to be fortified. This history of fortification has hitherto been treated piecemeal and from a military-historical perspective, but the present paper draws on the archaeological and textual evidence from all periods in order to suggest that the impulse behind their construction derives instead from an enduring sense of what might be called the defective insularity of the Peloponnese.

Spartan-led Peloponnesian forces devastated the countryside of Attica in five of the first seven years of the Peloponnesian War (Thucy. 2.10-14, 2.18-23, 2.31, 2.47, 2.55-7, 3.1, 3.26, 4.2.1, 4.6), and would have done so in 429 and 426, too, were it not for a plague in Athens and a series of earthquake in those years (Thucy. 2.71.1, 3.89).

Thucydides’ emphasis on vision in the battle between Athenian and Sicilian forces in the Great Harbor of Syracuse (7.70-1), the moment at which the Sicilian Expedition becomes an inescapable disaster for Athens, was noted as early as Plutarch (Moralia 347a), but the significance of this aspect of the text has not been fully explored. I argue that Thucydides’ presentation of this conflict is highly reminiscent of sculptural depictions of battle, and especially funerary reliefs, works that would have been innovative and conspicuous in his time.