Peloponnesian War

this, the persians and the thracians were the only good guys here

Mede plz go

Was Alcibiades the greatest chad thundercock of the greek world?

>cucks a king of sparta
>fucks over literally every faction in the war at least once
>never gets his comeuppance, dies in his secret James Bond villain fortress in Thrace with a slave's mouth on his cock

Everyone was. They could have created their own massive empire but their autistic fights with each other prevented this.

Steven Pressfield's novel about Alcibiades is pretty fucking legit-- Tides of War

He never fucked over Athens, they tried to fuck him over so he made them regret their betrayal. But even when he was working with Sparta he was secretly trying to ruin them by cucking the king. He did literally nothing wrong

Sparta: took the gold of the Persians

Sparta was basically Autism: the polis.

Is Alcibiades the greatest hero to have ever lived?

>Freedom for the Greeks!
>Unless they're Ionians. Or anyone not in the sphere of Corinth or Thebes

Corinth had legitimate grievances that went beyond the immediate causes of the War. You can't go around helping people to enslave your relatives and expect to get away with it because muh Ionian League.
Sparta had an obligation as the leader of the Peloponnesian League to stop Athenian Imperialism.

Greeks were freer under Persian satraps than the self acknowledged "tyranny" of the Athenians. It's one thing to have to pay gold to your foreign masters, it's another to them show up and tell you how they're going to burn down your city and give your ancestral land to a bunch of thuggish Athenians so they can control your politics because "the weak suffer what they must."

>Corinth had legitimate grievances that went beyond the immediate causes of the War.
Cornth's legitimate grievances are the same shit you're attacking Athens for.

>Sparta had an obligation as the leader of the Peloponnesian League to stop Athenian Imperialism.
Not Persian imperialism though.

Athens conquered fuck all. They were given an empire voluntarily then the subject states started whining when they realized they no longer had autonomy.

>neutral power voluntarily joining the Delian League
>imperialism

Athens because of their blatant imperialism in which their shitty excuses couldnt adequately justify.
>Play pivotal role in defeating Persian invasions of decades prior.
>Abuse the fuck out of that role by intimidating smaller Greek states for &, supplies and port access. Extortion
>All in the name of protecting Greece meanwhile they spend that extortion on construction projects within Athenian territory and vastly expand their naval power and force projection.
>Athenian hegemony thus becomes a greater threat than Persia to those Greek states who want to control their own destines.

Athens would have been destroyed and its citizens enslaved if not for the Spartans vetoing that motion. Corinth and Thebes would have destroyed further advances in Greek philosophy, medicine and culture if they had been allowed their vengeance.

Thebes to be honest.

It's imperialism when you realize that your contributions benefit your state in no way and attempting to leave/ resist extortion will be met by Tiremes for days.

>It's imperialism when you realize that your contributions benefit your state in no way and attempting to leave/ resist extortion will be met by Tiremes for days.

>revolt from the Delian League
>finally free from Athenian slave masters
>turns out Spartans are even worse
>[autistic screeching]

Athens kept the sea lanes open. There's a reason the core of any anti-Athenian conspiracy was landed aristos and not the middle class

Wanting to receive the proper respect and degree of subservience a colony is obliged to give its mother-city is not the same as Athens' Imperialist subjugation of the Ionian Greeks.

Yes, the Spartan campaigns against the Persians during the Second Invasion were incredibly ill-lead and trivial compared to what the Athenians did before and after the Delian League, and as hegemon of both the Hellenic and Peloponnesian League, the Spartans were obliged to fight the Persians. However, by 431BC you cannot seriously argue that the Persians were a greater threat to the traditional freedoms of the Greeks than the Athenian Empire was.

The Corcyrans violated the Peace between Athens and Sparta for the benefits of Athens' Imperialism. There was nothing just about it and they had no right to do so.

>Athens kept the sea lanes open.
If you pay tribute to the Athenians, let them settle colonists on their land and give up your independence. Old Oligarch 101.

>Yes good Ionian. See how free your Spartan friends have made you? Now join the Boetian league or we will raze your cities to the ground

the Eternal Theban

Boitian league can go fuck itself. Thebes envied a more deservingly powerful Athens and couldn't accept that they failed to benefit from Persia's defeat because well...Thebes joined and aided the invaders and even saw Athens burnt to the grown but never could have believed they would still end up on the losing side.

Thebians were cowards and traitors, coveted hegemony and thus fought against Athens and then Sparta, until finally Alexander came along and realized Thebes was shit and would continue to be shit and did western civilization a great service by eliminating them...forever.
God damn fuck Thebes

If they kept their own fleets instead of expecting the Athenians to take all military responsibilities unto themselves, maybe they'd have had more autonomy.

>Wanting to receive the proper respect and degree of subservience a colony is obliged to give its mother-city is not the same as Athens' Imperialist subjugation of the Ionian Greeks.
Yeah, it's more arbitrary and less beneficial to the lesser state.

>The Corcyrans violated the Peace between Athens and Sparta for the benefits of Athens' Imperialism. There was nothing just about it and they had no right to do so.

t. Corinth

>If you pay tribute to the Athenians
So they should do it for free?

>let them settle colonists on their land
Thracian barbarians. Who gives a shit.

>However, by 431BC you cannot seriously argue that the Persians were a greater threat to the traditional freedoms of the Greeks than the Athenian Empire was.
It's not like hegemonic leagues weren't a Greek tradition, albeit on a smaller scale. I absolutely can. The Persian yoke was sometimes very light, yes, but sometimes quite heavy. Depended on the the mood of the current satrap and the situation at the time.

>and give up your independence.
They CHOSE to do that. Athens didn't force them to give up their fleets and pay the agreed upon tribute in kind.

Fact remains that Athens made unreasonable sacrifices for peace at every turn, including giving up territorial claims (so much for the evil Athenian Empire) only for the Spartans to reneg on their promises each time.

Worse how? Spartans did end up wanting to dictate your actions and requesting aid in theirs wars but hey at least their not bleeding your treasurey dry and can be counted on in protecting you if your ever attacked. Not to mention Sparta never fully recovered its former power despite being a victor over Athens. Their force projection was feeble and they were mostly humored vecatse if it.

>Spartans did end up wanting to dictate your actions and requesting aid in theirs wars but hey at least their not bleeding your treasurey dry
They tried that later, they just really sucked at it.

>and can be counted on in protecting you if your ever attacked.
As long as the war was over really really fast and you were easily reachable by land, sure.

>Not to mention Sparta never fully recovered its former power despite being a victor over Athens. Their force projection was feeble and they were mostly humored vecatse if it.
Due to incompetence, not lack of trying.

>Yeah, it's more arbitrary and less beneficial to the lesser state.

How is participating in a healthy relationship which had allowed the Greeks to spread across the Mediterranean somehow less beneficial than allying with a power in direct violation of a recognised treaty so you can get the temporary one up on another city you want to ravage?
Thucydides was a hundred percent right, the Peloponnesian War was a result of the degradation of old Greek values like humility and loyalty. Just look at how the Corcyrans start slaughtering each other the second the Athenians introduced democracy and tell me they weren't better off under Corinth's guardianship.

>The Corcyrans violated the Peace between Athens and Sparta for the benefits of Athens' Imperialism. There was nothing just about it and they had no right to do so.

Without binding oaths, Greek society (or any other society for that matter) can't function.

>So they should do it for free?
The Delian League was supposed to be a voluntary. The second the Athenians started extorting money and using the fact they had cleared the pirates out of the Ionian was not an excuse for them to use it to control the entirity of Greek commerce and redirect it through Athens, it became blatant Imperialism.

>Thracian barbarians. Who gives a shit.
Except it happened to nearly every Greek polis in the Athenian Empire. Melos, Samos, the list goes on.

(Cont.)

>They CHOSE to do that. Athens didn't force them to give up their fleets and pay the agreed upon tribute in kind.

"M-Muh unwarlike farmers"
The members of the Delian League didn't chose to become subjects of the Athenian Empire, they were subjugated through their superior military and the threat of force. The fact that literally every source tells us how the Ionian Greeks despised the Athenian's rule and actively fought against it time and again shows us they never "chose" to submit. Even the cities that gave ships instead of tribute ended up fighting rebelling against Athens (Samos)

>Athens made unreasonable sacrifices for peace at every turn
Returning to the status quo isn't "unreasonable," it's the reason the Persian Wars were fought.

>Thucydides was a hundred percent right, the Peloponnesian War was a result of the degradation of old Greek values like humility and loyalty.
Stopped reading there. Learn t think for yourself.

Nobody expected Athens to take the burden of Greece's defense by themselves and many states joined the league to better aid in creating a greater defensive framework for Greece, especially the Ionian colonies in Anatolia.
Athens abused this system and turned the planned mutual and cooperative resources of the league into an offensive Athenian military machine solely under Athenian control and woe to the Greek states who back out or stop allowing military access.

You mention Corinth being responsible for the Corcryans enciting conflict however Corcya had obligations it owed to Corinth and suddenly when Corinth demandes money that was overdue then it's Corinths' fault when Corcya decides to dodge its debt and incite conflict by screaming "muh autonomy" and promising Athens military support, military access and a presence in western Greece for going to war with Corinth??? C'mon user Corinth and Athens were rivals long before Athens made enemies with Thebes or Sparta but Corinth is not at fault in this.

>Nobody expected Athens to take the burden of Greece's defense by themselves
Why did they stop supplying their own ships to the league then?

>You mention Corinth being responsible for the Corcryans enciting conflict however Corcya had obligations it owed to Corinth and suddenly when Corinth demandes money that was overdue then it's Corinths' fault when Corcya decides to dodge its debt and incite conflict by screaming "muh autonomy" and promising Athens military support, military access and a presence in western Greece for going to war with Corinth??? C'mon user Corinth and Athens were rivals long before Athens made enemies with Thebes or Sparta but Corinth is not at fault in this.

>it's ok when Dorians do it

>Returning to the status quo isn't "unreasonable," it's the reason the Persian Wars were fought.
Kind of self defeating given status quo would make a Persian reconquest of Ionia more or less inevitable.

Greece underwent massive changes during the 5th century. It's the same century that gave us Socrates and Plato, actual democracy revolutionised Greek politics and oligarchies became counter-revolutionary, not just age old institutions that just were. It's not unreasonable to believe that their values changed along with the times.

>all the writers were rich oligarchic philosophers or exiles
>contemporary historians show that democracy is stupid
really sparks the noggin

The Ionians were safe from Persia when the 30 Years Peace that Corcyra violated was made in 445BC, even if the that was only because the Athenians were using the truce to tighten their grasp on them and prepare for round two.
In 404BC literally every major power in Greece was exhausted and the pre-Ionian Revolt status quo was considered to be good enough. Again, I think it's accurate to say that some Ionians under Persian rule was a better outcome than all the Ionians under Athenian tyranny.

Sorry mobile here but league members stopped sending ships because they were already drained from funding Athens and why give more ships to a fleet solely controlled by the Athenians?

As for the Corcya dilemma I'm not absolving Corinth and other Dorians like Sparta and Thebes in taking advantage of an opportunity for gain when it arises but only pointing out that Corinth is blameless with Corcya catering to Athenian ambitions in western Greece and creating casus belli.

Amen. Sic semper tyrannus.

>Again, I think it's accurate to say that some Ionians under Persian rule was a better outcome than all the Ionians under Athenian tyranny.
The Ionians didn't seem to think so judging by how it damaged Sparta's reputation.

>Sorry mobile here but league members stopped sending ships because they were already drained from funding Athens and why give more ships to a fleet solely controlled by the Athenians?
No, they just did it because it was easier and less risky. Prior to the revolt of Miletus, league members with their own fleets maintained a privileged status in the Delian League, and often didn't even pay tribute. Not that they weren't still required to, just Athens didn't force the issue when they were late to pay.

>Sic semper tyrannus
>literally promoting monarchy over democracy

>democracy makes people do stupid shit, just look at Corcyra, Sicily, etc etc etc
>oligarchy's pretty good... except Athens spent the entire time begging the Spartans for peace, trying and failing to ally with Persia and had to revert to a democracy in order to get their shit back together again

It's almost as if they were trying to tell us all governments are flawed if the people who run them are short-sighted and incompetent.

>The Ionians didn't seem to think so judging by how it damaged Sparta's reputation.

That's because it was used as propoganda by the Thebans and Corinthians, just like how Sparta propogandised their role as liberators of the Hellenes to turn resentment against Athenian rule into active support for their side in the war.

>It's almost as if they were trying to tell us all governments are flawed if the people who run them are short-sighted and incompetent.
I don't think it's exactly revolutionary to say Thucydides is biased given his narrative includes outright lies like Cleon running away in fear.

Every historian was biased, but acting like Thucydides' History is one long tract against democracy is reductive. It's like saying the Iliad is about how stealing someone's wife is bad.

>comparing a history to a transcribed oral mythological epic

>not believing that Thucydides saw the world through a lens shaped by his education in the classics and that aspects of Greek tragedy (hubris, nemesis) made its way into his account of the rise and fall of Athens

>being a Spartan catamite

Why would I want to be an Athenian?

Literally any Greek is better than being a Spartan. That place was a hellhole.

it was a backwater in this period before philip ii

For most. If you were a citizen who with a taste for war it would have been paradise. Albeit one built on the back of enormous suffering from everyone else.

Pretty comfty place if you were a male. No chance to be affected by a caste system like Sparta or living under a Oligarchy or monarchy like most other Greek states of the time.

Yeah Helots had it bad :/

It's not like it would've been that bad for a woman, either. Just be content as a housewife, as most women throughout history have been.

Amazing how 2 generations of men turned a backwater into the most powerful state of its time and my God the Hellenistic influence and cultural exchange....just brilliant.

Now that's where it gets tricky...Athens had abysmal rights for women, they couldn't be educated nor alone without a man accompanying them outside a domicile and had an average life span of 35....lower than most other Greeks.
Spartan women atleast lived to 50 and could walk free, visit a market and manage helots when the males were away. For all of Sparta's faults; their women had unprecedented rights that even Roman women never obtained centuries later!

>For most. If you were a citizen who with a taste for war it would have been paradise.
I too want to eat a disgusting black gruel every day while being sodomized by an older man.

What rights did Spartan women have that Roman women didn't?

Athenian demos.

Sure is bluepilled in this thread.

>It's almost as if they were trying to tell us all governments are flawed if the people who run them are short-sighted and incompetent.
Except Thucydides thought the incompetent ones like Nicias were supremely competent and the competent ones like Cleon were useless blowhards, due entirely to personal biases.

"Spartan women" meaning the upper echelons of full citizens, only. This was still a small minority of all women in the state.

Gee, the ancient world is not the post-1960s West. Not exactly a remarkable statement.

>Perioikoi
>Spartans

The Perioikoi were not citizens.

These were the merchant/craftsmen class, and mostly on the geographic fringes of Spartan control. Again, just another small slice of the Spartan caste system. A necessary 'evil' to provide the aristocrat/brahmin 'citizens' (Homoioi), who were above getting their hands dirty with anything but blood, with all the skilled labour (smithing, advanced carpentry/masonry, pottery, weaving, etc.) and economic needs the Spartan state had.