História da Grécia Antiga #20 com Donald Kagan, de Yale

Why aren't you all home like the rest of the class my subject today is Pericles as general I don't expect that it will take up all our time so if you like when I'm through I'd be glad to respond to any questions or comments that you want to make about the Peloponnesian War so if you're if you think of any as I'm talking I hope you'll have a shot at it near the end of his biography of Pericles Plutarch describes this great Athenian leader on his deathbed the best men of Athens and his personal friends

are gathered in his room and are discussing the greatness of his virtues and the power he held thinking he was asleep they added up his achievements and the number of his trophies for as general he had set up nine commemorating a victory on behalf of the city now we are inclined to think of Pericles primarily as a great political leader a Brilliant orator a patron of the Arts and Sciences the man who whose work in the peaceful arts shaped what is often called the Golden Age of Athens so it's useful for us to remember that

the office to which the people elected him almost every year for some 30 years from which he carried on all of these activities was that of Strategos general and that foremost responsibility of Athenian generals was to lead armies and navies into battle from his own time Until modern times Pericles talents as a general have been criticized and defended in the first year the Peloponnesian War when his strategy called for the Athenians to huddle behind the walls of their city while the invading Peloponnesian army ravaged their lands in Attica lucidity says the city was angry with

Pericles they abused him because as their general he did not lead them out into battle and they held him responsible for all they Were suffering in the next year after another invasion and destruction of their crops and farms and after a terrible plague had struck the city against acidity says they blame Pericles for persuading them to go to war and they held him responsible for their misfortunes at a lower level the poet her Memphis one of the poets comic poets whose work we don't have but occasionally we have a quotation and here's one her Memphis

presented one of His comedies in the spring of 430 the second year of the war that simply charged Pericles with cowardice he addresses Pericles as follows king of the satyrs why don't you ever lift the spear but instead only use dreadful words to wage the war assuming the character of the Cowardly Telly's but if a little knife is sharpened on a whetstone you roar as though bitten by the fierce Cleon Cleon as you know was his major Opponent in the last years of his life and Cleon was hawkish and an advocate of aggressive active fighting

now the title of this talk Pericles is general is also the name of the most vehement modern attack on Pericles as a general I say modern of course I'm talking about the 19th century when you're an ancient historian things take on those proportions the author dr. Julius fluke hartong was a veteran of the franco-prussian war and an appreciative Student of what he took to be the lessons taught by the great military historian and theorists theorist Klaus he believed that he had acquired some useful knowledge of the science of war as he put it that led

him vigorously and entirely to condemn Pericles as general generalship in Pericles conduct of the Peloponnesian War he says we see expeditions without inner unity without the possibility of greater results and I'm quoting to Luke Heartsong now to Avoid danger Pericles regularly gave away important advantages over all we find the effort to lose no battle but nowhere to win one as much as Pericles personal courage operated in battle and in the assembly so little did he have of the courage proper to a general which boldly risks the life of thousands at the decisive moment as such

he belongs to those one may say a philosophical group which brings everything as neatly as possible into the system and plan Instead of acting openly and vigorously it is a fact that Pericles the chief advocate of the anti-spartan policy never offered a single battle against the Spartans at the higher level of strategy the critique of Pericles is no less severe Pericles was a good Minister of War who made farsighted preparations but as general he did not know how to make good use of the existing situation again I quote he was a great borghi Meister this

means mayor said it was not A very friendly thing to call the great general who led Athens it was a great Burgermeister in the true sense of the word there is the rich many sidedness of his nature which was then by that which came into play his superiority to corruption everything Petty and paltry yet he lacked the prophets vision and the certain luck of the born statesman above all he lacked the recklessness which is often needed to Lead what has biggg what has begun to the goal as a leader of foreign policy he was not

comparable to asa mystical ease as a general not even approximately to a P Mon so that's the harshest of the critics of Pericles over the years but Pericles has been very lucky over the years in his defenders in antiquity his performance was justified and praised by Thucydides who was after all a contemporary a general himself and the historian of the period whose Interpretations have dominated opinion ever since he wrote for all the objectivity of acidity style he tells the story very much from Pericles viewpoint for instance when he describes the revolt against the Athenian leader

in the second year of the war and the Athenians unsuccessful effort to make peace this is how he describes the aftermath being totally at a loss as what as to what to do they the Athenian people attacked Pericles and when he saw That they were exasperated and doing everything as he had anticipated he called an assembly since he was still general he wanted to put confidence into them and leading them away from their anger to restore their calm and their courage he reports three of Pericles that is to say facilities does reports three of Pericles

speeches at length without reporting any of the speeches made by his opponents on those occasions with the result that the reader is made To see the situation through Pericles eyes and finally he makes his own judgement perfectly clear coming down firmly and powerfully on the side of Pericles and against all of his critics here's what sue said he says as long as he led the state in peacetime he kept to a moderate policy and kept it safe and it was under his leadership that Athens reached her greatest Heights and when the war came and it

appears that he also judged its power correctly Pericles Lived for two years and six months after the war began and after his death his foresight about the war was acknowledged still more for he had said that if the Athenians stayed on the defensive maintained their Navy and did not try to expand their empire in wartime thereby endangering the state they would win out but they acted opposite to his advice in every way and when their efforts failed they harmed the state's conduct of the war now in spite of his excuse me of his Successors departure

from his strategy and the disasters that resulted in spite of the entry of the Persian Empire into the enemy ranks the Athenians held out for 10 years after the disastrous Sicilian expedition and for 27 years with interruption altogether here's facilities final word on this subject so more than abundant was Pericles reasons for his own predictions that Athens would have won in a war against the Peloponnesians alone The city's makes it absolutely clear lucidity is where Pericles was right in the strategy that he had adopted and if the Athenians had stuck to it they would have

won the war Plutarch accepted Thucydides judgment and added further defense against the charges of cowardice and lack of enterprise that his enemies were launching against Pericles to Plutarch the actions that provoked such indicate accusations instead revealed prudence moderation And a desire to protect the safety of Athenian soldiers in 454 we're back now in the first Peloponnesian War Pericles led a seaborne expedition into the Corinthian Gulf through Synod ease merely reports that he defeated the sick Ionians in battle and ravaged the territory and besieged the important city of any OD though he failed to take it

and then sailed home obviously answering later criticism Plutarch concludes his account of these events by Saying that Pericles returned to Athens and now I quote him having showed himself to be formidable to the enemy but a safe and effective commander to his fellow citizens for no misfortune struck the men on the expedition in 437 he sailed into the Black Sea on a mission of Imperial consolidation that amounted to little more than showing the flag to the local barbarians an action that was too insignificant to be even noticed by facilities but Plutarch does Not miss the

chance to meet the criticism that had been directed against his hero on this campaign according to Plutarch Pericles displayed the magnitude of his forces and the fearlessness and confident courage with which they sailed wherever they liked and placed the entire sea under their power in 446 when by OSHA was in rebellion the bold and ambitious general Talmud EES convinced the assembly to send him at the head of an army to put Down the uprising Plutarch reports that pericles tried to restrain and to persuade him to in the assembly making his famous remark that if he

would not listen to pericles he would not go wrong in waiting for time the wisest counselor but told madhi's didn't listen and he went and the result was a disaster the Athenians suffered many casualties Toma DS was killed by OSHA was lost Plutarch's comment is that this is an Incident brought great Fame and goodwill to Pericles as a man of prudence and patriotism later in the same year rebellion broke out in Euboea and Megara revolted opening the road for a Peloponnesian invasion of Attica Pericles on this occasion had no choice he led an Athenian army

out to meet the invading army but instead of fighting a battle he convinced the Spartans to withdraw and then to negotiate a peace in retrospect no doubt his critics Accused him of missing a chance for victory in the field vicinities reports the Peloponnesian withdrawal without comments or explanation but Plutarch uses this action to respond in almost poetic language - later Chargers that accompany the Peloponnesian invasion in 431 reporting that his enemies Pericles enemies threatened and denounced him and choruses sang mocking songs to his shame and insulted his generalship for its cowardice and for abandoning everything

To the enemy the Peloponnesians Plutarch tells us expected the Athenians to fight out of anger and pride but to Pericles it appeared terrible to fight a battle against 60,000 Peloponnesian and be ocean hoplites for that was a number of those who made the first invasion I'm still quoting Plutarch and to stake the city itself on the outcome he reports Pericles calming language to the exciting excited Athenians in 431 saying that trees Though cut and lopped grew quickly but if men were destroyed it was not easy to get them back again had he turned I'm sorry

he returned to the charges of cowardice and lack of enterprise and he turned them on their heads and did so more fully in a passage that sums up his view of Pericles generalship and I'll read it to you in his generalship he was especially famous for his caution he never will he never willingly undertook a battle that involve great risk or Uncertainty nor did he envy or emulate those who took great risks with brilliant success and were admired as great generals he always said to his fellow citizens that as far as it was in his

power they would live forever and be immortals of the many modern scholars who have been persuaded by this view none has argued more forcefully in favor of Pericles generalship than hunts dell drac perhaps the most renowned military historian of his day and still a Respected figure in that field he he and flute Heartsong were contemporaries they lived in the well that they did their writing on this subject in the last decades of the 19th century annoyed but by the critics critiques rather lately leveled at Pericles and especially by flawed Hartung mm-hmm he wrote a thorough

defense in 1890 under the title the generalship of Pericles explained through the generalship of Frederick the Great His main effort in at work is to justify Pericles conduct of the war that began in 431 the subject of the greatest criticism leveled at the Athenian general Pericles strategy did not aim at defeating the Spartans in battle but was meant to convince them that war against Athens was futile his strategic goals therefore were entirely defensive he told the Athenians that if they would remain quietly take care of their fleet refrain from trying to extend their Empire in

wartime and so putting their city in danger they would prevail the Athenians were to reject battle on land abandon their fields and homes in the country to Spartan devastation and retreat behind their walls meanwhile their Navy would launch a series of commando raids on the coast of the Peloponnesus this strategy would continue until the frustrated enemy was prepared to make peace the naval rates and landings were not meant to do Serious harm but merely to annoy the enemy and to suggest how much damage the Athenians could do if they chose the strategy was not to

exhaust the Peloponnesians physically or materially but psychologically no such strategy had ever been attempted in Greek history for no state before the coming of the Athenian Imperial democracy ever had the man the means for trying such a strategy to do so was not easy for this unprecedented strategy was ran Directly across the grain as you know of Greek tradition willingness to fight bravery and steadfastness in battle became the essential characteristics of the free man and the citizen Pericles strategy of passivity therefore ran countered to the teachings of the Greek tradition but most Athenians were farmers

whose lands and homes were outside the walls the Periclean strategy required them to look on idly while their houses crops and vines and olive Trees were damaged or entirely destroyed in the face of these facts as well as of the power of tradition and the cultural values of the Greeks it is hard to understand even in retrospect how Pericles could convince the Athenians to adopt his strategy Delbert keenly aware of Athens numerical inferiority on land was convinced of the soundness of Pericles approach here's what Delbert wrote the structure of the Peloponnesian War obliges us to

give him A position not simply among the great statesmen but also among the great military leaders of world history it is not his war plan as such that bestows this right on him for the fame of the commander is gained not by word but by deed but rather the gigantic power of decision that accompanied it not to halt with a half measure but to plunge in wholeheartedly and to give up completely what had to be sacrificed the entire attic countryside and in addition me the Strength of personal authority that was able to make such a

decision understandable to a Democratic National Assembly and to gain their approval the execution of this decision is a strategic deed that can be compared favorably with any victory take that critics Delbert was pulling no punches and if you said he was a bum I say he was the greatest Dale Brooke tries to bolster his case by comparing Pericles with Frederick the Great King of Prussia In the 18th century during the Seven Years War Frederick applied what Delbert calls a strategy of exhaustion instead of the strategy of annihilation in which one army seeks out the other

to bring it to decisive battle with the goal of destroying its nation's ability to resist such a strategy is sometimes adopted by or forced upon the weaker side in a conflict because no other choice Promises success in the 20th century the North Vietnamese communists used it with success against the United States superior firepower brought the Americans victory in set battles but was not so effective in dealing with various forms of guerrilla warfare the Communists therefore usually avoided battles throughout the war continuing warfare over years without a decisive result fed division and Discontent in America and

ultimately exhausted the American will to fight in the second Punic War Rome repeatedly suffered crushing defeats in battle at the hands of Hannibal the Romans therefore chose the tactics of Quintus Fabius Maximus avoiding battle harrassing the enemy with guerrilla warfare until they grew stronger and and he far from home and cut off from it by sea grew weaker and was compelled to withdraw Pericles --es strategy however Was unlike these strategies in many ways unlike the Vietnamese communists and the Romans he never attempted a set battle on land the Vietnamese wore down America's resolve by inflicting

casualties on their forces the Romans avoided battle only so long as they had to their ultimate aim was to defeat the enemy in standard battles which finally they did in Italy Spain and Africa del Brookes comparison with Frederick strategy seems to me no less faulty the Prussian monarch was driven to it by combat losses in set battles fought over two years and by the absence of any alternative he needed to avoid battle to survive only good fortune not calculated war plans could save him Britain came to his aid with financial assistance and then the most

incalculable of all things happen the death of the wrote of the Rome sorry the Russian Empress who was a great fan of the I mean who was a hostile To Frederick broke up the coalition of his enemies allowing him to escape from the war unbeaten she was succeeded by Tsar who loved Frederick the Great and there by saved his neck the situation confronting Pericles was entirely different from these cases no helpful allies stood in the wings and no fortunate accident came to divide his opponents since he avoided all fighting on land against the Spartans he

inflicted no casualties as the Vietnamese and the Romans did they and Frederick moreover aimed finally at fighting and winning battles when the odds were in their favor the core of Pericles plan however was to avoid all land battles to show that the Peloponnesians could do Athens no serious harm and to exhaust them psychologically to make them see reason and understand that their efforts were futile and could not bring them victory his plan did not work the element of Chance the unexpected and incalculable intervened against Pericles and against Athens in the form of the terrible plague

that ultimately killed 1/3 of the Athenian population of course all this encouraged the Peloponnesians who refused to be discouraged and continued to fight when Pericles died in 429 the Athenian Treasury was running dry his plan lay in ruins and there was no prospect for victory only when his successors turned to a more aggressive Strategy did the Athenians level the playing field and achieve a position allow them to hold out for 27 years and indeed on more than one occasion almost brought victory so it's not surprising that Pericles strategy in the Pericles and the Peloponnesian War

has brought criticism that raises questions about capacity as a military leader even from sober and friendly scholars Gary boozled very distinguished German historian regarded his strategy as fundamentally Right but even he thought that it was somewhat one-sided and doctrinaire and in its execution it was lacking in energetic procedure and in the spirit of enterprise that's from a very good friend Hermann Bengtson as you can see the Germans have dominated this entire field of discussion defends the plan against its critics but concedes that the carrying out of the offensive part of the plan appears to modern

viewers as not very energetic and resolute I'll say Their influence no doubt these critics are by the knowledge that Pericles successors took some actions that did not risk significant land battles or numerous casualties and yet produced important successes in the spring of 425 the brilliant and daring general demosthenes conceived and executed a plan to seize and fortify the promontory of Pylos at the southwestern tip of the Peloponnesus from there the Athenians could launch raids at will and encourage The escape or rebellion of the helots Sparta's enslaved population his success panicked the Spartans who allowed several

hundred of their troops to be trapped and captured on the island of Spectre eeeh just off pylos they immediately proposed a peace which the Athenians then refused later in the same spring the Athenians seized and garrison the island of Cythera just off the southeastern tip of the Peloponnesus and immediately they began to launch raids Against the mainland through Citadis reports that the Spartans suffered what I think of is pretty much a nervous breakdown here's the accounts acidities gifts the Spartans sent Garrison's here and there throughout the country deciding the number of hoplites by what seemed

necessary at each place in other respects they were very much on guard for fear that there would be a revolution against the established order And from every direction a war rose up around them which was Swift and defied precaution in military affairs they now became more timid than ever before since they were involved in a naval contest outside their normal conceptions of preparation for war and in this unaccustomed area they fought against the Athenians to whom the omission of an enterprise was always a loss in respect to what they had Expected to achieve in other

words whatever victories the Athenians won however great they are always disappointed because they had expected more than that at the same time the misfortunes that had struck them in such numbers unexpectedly and in such a short time caused great terror and they were afraid the Spartans were that another calamity might again strike them some time like the one on the islands bacteria for this reason They were less daring and going into battle and they thought that whatever they undertook would turn out badly because they had no self-confidence as a result of having little previous experience

with misfortune let me just remind you of the enormous confidence with which they entered the war thinking that it would be no problem at all all they had to do was walk into Attica and neither the Athenians would come out to fight them as they had done the last Time and be destroyed immediately or they would surrender rather than see their lands destroyed and look where to what they had been reduced not my Pericles strategy of exhaustion but by the rejection of that strategy and the effort at a more aggressive approach in the light of

results such as these it is natural to ask why did the enterprises that produced the need then pretty sorry that the enterprises that produced these successes why do they need to wait Until the fifth year of the war why didn't Pericles use them at once his failure to do so is the most weighty of the charges brought against him and Delbert uses much effort and ingenuity to defend him he is forced to concede however that a more aggressive offensive effort would have been helpful he believes that the attack Pericles led against Epidaurus in the second

year of the war in 430 was meant to take and hold that city quote from Delbert if any Such conquest had succeeded any success in acarnania any campaign of devastation however intensive any fortification of a coastal spot in Messina would disappear in comparison taking effort hours he says would have threatened the neighboring states near the coast it might bring peace at once or at least cool the ardor for war amongst part is allies so why did Pericles wait and then do so little Dell Brooks answer is we do not know the failure by so learning

Clever and determined the scholar and by as many other defenders to explain Pericles behavior in this way I think is a powerful sign that they have taken the wrong path Pericles did not mean to use any serious offensive measures to wear down the enemy's ability to fight his goal as I have said before was psychological and intellectual to convince the Spartans and their allies that victory was impossible that the Athenians could easily sustain the only Damage the enemy could inflict the ravishing of Attica and to show that the ally to show through the ill eyes

I'm sorry that the Allies that the Athenians forgive me to show to them analyze that the Athenians could do them considerable harm if they chose Athens carefully calculated limited offensive efforts were meant to deliver a message without inciting the enemy to fight and to fight harder just as the carefully calculated limited Attacks by American forces against North Vietnam aimed at putting pressure on the enemy without causing their Chinese supporters to intervene that kind of strategy calls for very delicate action and very delicate judgment and of course there's no guarantee that it will work the offensive

party of Pericles plan was deliberately to do little harm for actions that were too aggressive he might anger the enemy and hardened his determination the goal was to depress The enemy's spirit by showing that there was no way for them to win to destroy their will to fight just a little footnote here that's always a critical issue in any strategy that anybody adopts an award really the two fundamental goals and they are not always they do not always produce the same strategy one is to make it impossible for the enemy to fight to destroy his

capacity to fight if you do that you have certain victory the other Is to destroy his will to fight and of course if you do that to win but his will may not be responsive to your approach if they could destroy the Spartan will they could be expected to make a negotiated peace that would return to the status quo before the war only made more secure by the demonstration that it could not be overthrown by force and that was Pericles his aim in the war that strategy failed As had Pericles diplomatic maneuvers in the period

leading to war from 433 to 431 when civil war in epidamnus a remote town on the fringes of the Greek world threatened to bring a great war between the Peloponnesian League and the Athenian Empire Perik Louie Pericles as I have argued to you pursued a policy of restrained limited intervention meant to deter Corinth Sparta's important alive without driving The Spartans and all their Peloponnesian allies into a war against Athens that effort also failed and resulted in a terrible war that Pericles had wanted to of to avoid do these great strategic failures fully make the case

for Pericles critics were they the result of cowardice lack of enterprise and resolution I think that a fair examination of his performance throughout his life as general he suggests otherwise The charge of personal cowardice is ludicrous even fluke Hartung concedes that his personal courage operated in battle and in the assembly no Athenian who led armies and navies in many battles repeatedly setting up trophies of victory could have escaped condemnation had he shown any sign of cowardice nor could he have been reelected general year after year if that was the picture of him nor did he

fail to demonstrate boldness and Enterprise in 446 the very survival of Athens and her empire were threatened the most menacing rebellions broke out close to home euboea Megara be OSHA Pericles swiftly took an army to put down the ubian rebellion and just as swiftly withdrew on news of the second which opens a door to a Peloponnesian invasion of Attica he arrived you remember to it just in time to persuade the Spartans to withdraw and then he returned that once the obeah To suppress the rebellions there and again when the island of Samos launched a dangerous

rebellion back in 440 Pericles took personal charge acting promptly and decisively and catching the same Ian's rebels unprepared for his swift reaction taking them by surprise ultimately forcing them to surrender by means of a naval blockade these expeditions however show that Pericles frequent caution did not derive chiefly from a Temperamental tendency or a character flaw but from thought and calculation the main reason he avoided land battles against their Spartan the Spartan and Peloponnesian allies is because he was certain to lose the numbers were decisively against him yet he was more careful than were bolder generals

no polis in the Greek world was prodigal with its citizens in battle and it behoove two general especially in a democratic state to keep the casualty Lists as low as possible we need to remember that Athenian generals were not only military leaders but also politicians who needed to be re-elected to their posts every year no doubt Pericles sincerely took pride in the prudence and economy of his leadership but it could not have hurt his political popularity when he boasted to the Athenians what I've quoted before that as far as it was in his power they

would live forever and be immortals such Considerations help explain his cautious performance and yet there is no evidence to suggest that he was one of those rare military geniuses who belong in the ranks of Hannibal Caesar Alexander the Great a lesser but still worthy example in our own time George Patton who understand the limits of rational calculation and war and the need boldly to seize opportunity when it offers Pericles was what a term that was used in the Second World War a soldier's General as the the PR forces of Omar Bradley attached that title to

him he was no George Patton or perhaps even a Bernhard Montgomery who seeks battle only when the odds are very heavily in his favor he lacked the Flair and the boldness of a team on the daring and ruthlessness that seeks victory at any cost another element has been suggested to explain the Periclean strategy Pericles himself says one critic was rather an Admiral than a general the Athenian Admiralty it was which framed the strategy at the outset of the war not Pericles the Burgermeister but Pericles the Admiral invented the strategy of exhaustion a strategy which came

near to ruining Athens in a couple of years and could never have won the victory well there was some merit in this analysis the Athenians under Pericles had built a grand strategy that was based on naval power that might seem to suit a maritime Empire whose homeland was an island such as Great Britain's or a power that dominates a continent and is separated from other great powers by two great oceans like the United States Athens geographical situation was not so fortunate for the city was attached to the mainland offering targets of coercion not available to

the enemies of the great anglo-saxon countries Pericles tried to cancel that disadvantage by building the long walls connecting the City to its fortified Harbor thereby in effect turning the city into an island it was an extraordinary strategy far ahead of its time in its reliance on human reason and technology and its rejection of traditional ways of fighting that cost lives and gave the enemy an advantage at the same time he abandoned all ideas of further expansion and devised a policy aimed at preserving peace and the status quo that perfectly suited Athenian interests such a policy

Depended for success on an extraordinary extraordinary amount of rationality on everyone's part the Athenians must be content with what they had and abandon hopes for abstention of their power there were always Athenians who objected to that but while he lived Pericles had the wisdom and the political strength to restrain and control them what he could not control were the other states and especially the enemy unexpected changes and shifts in power are the normal Condition of international history these changes have always taken place because international relations are guided only partially and spasmodically by rational calculations of

material advantage always at work as well our greed ambition jealousy resentment anger hatred and Thucydides famous triad fear honor and interest in the world as it has been therefore a state satisfied with its situation and wishing to preserve peace cannot rely on a reason That spawned response to its reason policies but must anticipate challenges that seem unreasonable the Spartans and their allies ought to have recognized that they had no realistic strategy to promise victory over Pericles reliance on defense and refusal to fight a major land battle but resentment and anger at Athenian power and the

fear that it might ultimately undermine their own alliance and their security led them to fight as I find it usual in human History they were more influenced by the memory of the Athenians failure to fight a traditional battle and negotiating a peace in for 246 then by the recognition that the new technology in the form of the long walls made it unnecessary for Athens to risk such a battle in the future to deter a war in such circumstances which is what Pericles was trying to do requires some offensive threat to the Peloponnesians whose Menace was

great And impossible to underestimate that would make the fear of immediate consequences of war stronger than all the emotions leading to war but Pericles had come to think of Athens as an invulnerable Island since the acquisition of a fleet of vast Treasury to support it and defensible walls for such a state to adopt a defensive strategy is natural it had developed a unique and enviable way of fighting that used these advantages and avoided much Of the danger and unpleasantness of ordinary warfare it allowed the Athenians to concentrate their forces quickly and attack islands and coastal

enemies before they were prepared it permitted them to strike others without danger to their own city and population success in this style of warfare made it seem the only one necessary and defeats with great losses on land made the Athenians reluctant to take risks by fighting on land Well fence of action and there you should be taken as a last resort only only when it was absolutely unavoidable Pericles carried this approach to its logical conclusion by refusing to use a land army even in defense of the homeland it's much less by using it in offensive

efforts that might do the enemy serious harm the enemy's passionate refusal to see reason made what might be called the Athenian Way of warfare inadequate and Pericles Strategy a form of wishful thinking that failed first aid like Athens in 431 he satisfied with the situation capable of keeping the enemy at bay the temptation to avoid the risks of offensive action is great but as people often don't notice it contains great dangers it tends to create a rigid way of thinking that leads men to apply a previously successful strategy or one supported by a general theory

to a situation in which it is not appropriate but it may have Other disadvantages as well its capacity to deter potential enemies from provoking a war is severely limited deterrence by standing behind a strong defensive position and thereby depriving the enemy of the chance of victory a suit assumes a very high degree of rationality and some degree of imagination on the part of the enemy mmm Spartans invaded attic and 431 they must have thought they were risking little even if the Athenians refused to fight Even if they persisted in that refusal for a long time

both of which they thought was unlikely and unnatural the Spartans would still be risking little more than time and effort in any case their lands and city would be safe had the Athenians possessed the capacity to strike where the enemy was vulnerable and had that capacity been obvious to everybody Pericles strategy of deterrence might have been effective once the war came there was no way to Win without abandoning the Athenian Way of war and the Periclean strategy as Pericles lay dying in the fall of 429 his strategy was a failure after three campaigning seasons the

Peloponnesians showed no signs of exhaustion of any kind on the contrary they had just lately refused an athenian offer of peace and fought on with the determination to destroy Athenian power forever the Athenians on the other hand had seen Their lands and homes ravaged repeatedly their crops and trees burnt and destroyed they were also suffering from the plague which was killing great numbers of them and destroying their moral fiber in the anecdote that I be I quoted at the beginning of this talk Plutarch speaks of Pericles response to the praise of his military prowess you'll

remember he expressed astonishment do you know they thought he was sleeping it turned out he wasn't he Was hearing what they were saying he expressed astonishment that they should be praising what was the result of good fortune as much as his own talents and what many others had accomplished instead he said they should be praising the finest and the most important of his claims to greatness that no Athenian now alive has put on mourning clothes because of me that assertion the last words of Pericles reported to us must have astounded his audience even his Friends

would have had to admit that his policy had contributed at least something to the coming of the war and that his strategy had something to do with the intensity of the destruction caused by the play his final words show deeply how he felt the wounds caused by the widespread accusations hurled against him and his stubborn refusal to admit that he had been wronged in any way he had applied his great intelligence to His city's needs and reason told him that he was not responsible for the results which he must have believed to be temporary he

must have thought in time his expectations would be fulfilled if his fellow citizens would have the wisdom and courage to hold to his strategy they would win out so he believed and so did his contemporary facilities more than two millennia later he closets saw war through very different eyes I quote him war is more than a true chameleon that slightly shapes its characteristics to the given case as a total phenomenon its dominant tendencies always make war a paradoxical trinity composed of primordial violence hatred and enmity which are to be regarded as a blind natural force

of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam and its elements of subordination as an instrument of policy which makes it Subject to reason alone these three tendencies are like three different codes of law deep-rooted in their subject and yet variable in their relationship to one another a theory that ignores any one of them or seeks to fix an arbitrary relationship between them would conflict with reality to such an extent that for this reason alone it would be totally useless like most generals in history and unlike its few

military geniuses Pericles saw War is essentially a linear phenomenon subject as Clause of its said to reason alone and too little in my judgment did he understand its other aspects for that he and his people paid a very great price okay well we do have some time and I'd be very glad to hear any questions or comments than any of you would like to make and after all we only have a 27-year warm you got 20 minutes to talk about it no problem anybody have anything to say yes that's A fairly long story but I

think the best answer I can give is the one I gave yesterday last time when I spoke about through Citadis reasons for writing the story that he did he had been a supporter of Pericles and things hadn't worked out well the state had gone a direction very different from the one that he favored including a strategy that was the opposite of Pericles the average guy in the street who was a guy that he didn't Approve of very much thought wrongly he believed that Pericles had been right it had been dead wrong it was Pericles fault

they went to war was Pericles fault they lost or and threw Siddha tees associated himself I think with Pericles and his approach to things and so he had to make the case that he believed the case that he made I mean it's very important to realize that and Pluto are coming many centuries later like everybody who has ever spoken about the Peloponnesian War once the acidities had written was powerfully influenced by Thucydides I think just about everybody who's ever considered the war has come away pretty much with through Citadis judgment of these things so I

think that's the answer to that oh yes did someone have a hand up no I imagined a hand yes the question is can I think of any modern generals who did use Pericles Approach as a model I think the answer is not anybody well yeah a general McClellan in the Civil War and it was a very analogous situation McClellan did not want to fight Lee's army he wasn't all that crazy about the anti-slavery stuff anyway but apart from that he didn't want to pay the price which was a tremendous price of fighting the Civil War

and so he wanted to avoid battle and pretty much Lincoln couldn't get him to fight so that was that's one example now This the next the next thing I would offer you as something to chew on at least if this is not identical it's only similar I think the the strategy undertaken by the Secretary of Defense in the current administration in launching the attacks on Afghanistan and on Persia Persia erupt I got Greeks I got Greeks on my mind I have to fight Persians Iraq reflected an aspect of it they would both for reasons I

don't have to explain to you Desperately eager to reduce casualties to a minimum and they were desperately eager to choose a an approach that would limit the time that the war lasted because of the political situation in the last decades in American history and they had an advantage technologically that seemed to make that possible America's fantastic advantage in firepower the capacity to deliver the the firepower at a distance with very little risk to the deliverers with the Notion of doing tremendous harm when it got there but you were I don't know if any of you

remember any of this some of you were too young to even think about Vegas but originally remember what was that phrase that they had what was what was that great strategy we're gonna use by bombing the hell out of the Iraq shock and awe it was the same thing shock and awe was meant to say oh my god this is gonna happen to us we quit was what they had in mind and they Deliberately chose not to have ground forces that would have been capable of doing the kinds of things that turns out you need

to to do to be successful in these wars just like other words so that and and when it happened that it was clear things were not working out according to their plan they stubbornly clung to that plan even as the evidence was that it wasn't going to work so that would be a candidate I'd suggest yes sir yeah A little bit louder please yeah the question is do I do I think that recent Athenian history or the struct you mean the Democratic Society the democracy had anything to do with the adoption of this plan perhaps

and you're absolutely right there must have been a very clear and painful memory of what happened to Tom ADIZ when he invaded by OSHA there were very very heavy casualties there for the Athenians that's the only one in which they did have a lot but they did have Those and they're unusual so that it may have persuaded Pericles that the Athenian people would find it hard but on balance I really think not I don't think that the Athenian democracy was very different from the oligarchies of the other Greek cities in the way they thought about

things they would have much preferred to fight it out it was only Pericles incredible command of the political situation that allowed him to take the strategy that people said what What the world is this guy doing and they turned against it very swiftly so no I don't think the democracy was especially important now the enemies of Pericles and the enemies of democracy I shouldn't say the animated Pericles I mean the ancient enemies of democracy do say that it was the Athenian democracies way of running the war which guaranteed the disaster and they fix on something

that comes later down the road the Sicilian expedition which was a Dangerous undertaking as it turned out although the Athenians didn't think so at the time and they think only a democracy could have done anything as stupid as that and they are in that way following precisely what through Sidda t says yeah but if you read my account you'll see that is another way of looking at it but that that's what the ancient anti-democratic view was democracies are idiots they don't know how to Ward do anything else right they will bring disaster I think you

can get this ass through a lot of ways release it ya know it's very clear that so long as Pericles was in charge everybody did what Pericles wanted done part of the reason he was that we know pretty well from the evidence that at least a good number of the 10 generals in any one year were close to Pericles so that his political influence spread very unusual thing in the ancient world for any buddy In ancient Athens for anybody to have that kind of a carryover effect but we see there's always several generals that we

know are friends of Pericles and I think the rest of the story is that you see the generals don't get to decide what they do in ancient Athens this is the part that blows your mind when you send an army out that army gets it general or more it gets an assigned amount of money and equipment and stuff and it gets orders and all of those Things are decided by the assembly after a debate by a majority vote and what I would suggest to you is that Pericles did not lose any of those arguments except

in the one case when they came after him and nailed them and then they put him back in office again so does that take care of your question really good yeah Heather yeah the question the heart of the question is what's apparently wise to adopt the strategy no matter how good a Strategy it might have been which he knew the Athenians didn't like and I think the answer well in there is the outcome is obvious no he wasn't wise but that's I think more because the strategy was faulty not so much because the Athenians didn't

like it he had proven over the years and he proved now in the most delicate of times that essentially he could get the Athenians to do what he wanted to do whether in fact they liked it to begin with or not he persuaded Them to do it so I don't think that was really a flaw the problem that was that things went wrong almost immediately and then such terrible things were happening as did shake his power for a while but even then he came back into power and still the strategy wasn't working I think the

problem therefore I'm seeing you could say he knew what he was doing he thought he could get away with it and he could have if the strategy had been correct yes Oh yes yes the question is ancient writers Plutarch assume you're really talking about they give Pericles credit for being a great general but they say bad things about Nikolas who was involved in the great defeat in Sicily and yet Nicky has pursued something like the strategy of Pericles which was avoiding these conflicts well I think first things I want to point out is that through

CID ''tis didn't do that not only this Acidities thoroughly support the strategy of Pericles he brights and encomium on the death of Nicky as' that raises him to the level of Pericles or higher in his own estimation but in the case of Nicky as it was in a way even worse than what Pericles did because Nicky is first of all was against the war against going to Sicily in the first place then when he was chosen to be general he went but before he did that he tried to convince the having lost the Vote shall

we go he then decided to trick the Athenians into not going anyway by saying to them oh well if you're gonna go all right but it'll be perfectly safe if you just sort of take this the original fleet was going to have 60 ships period well it ended up having 130 ships 5,000 hoplites raising the risk of that thing to the level that finally made it seem like they could lose the war by losing the Sicilian campaign And he didn't the athenians instead of saying which what he expected oh no no if that's what we

have to do let's not go instead they said right on yes you can have everything you asked for Nikki's what would you like and off they went and there after his performance on that expedition is one of somebody who doesn't really want to carry out his instructions he just what he would have liked to do was having lost the argument twice now He went out and did everything he could to avoid confronting any battle in Syracuse and was finally driven to fight at Syracuse very much against his will and then I could you know go

back and read it but he screws up the detail of it over and over again and so I think there are good grounds from for condemning him as a general whereas the grounds on which Pericles should be criticized I think is as a strategist rather than as a commander anybody else No but I think they I'll make one little exception to that but I I think they could have had a very good chance to come out of the war in the way pericles hoped they would if they had pursued the limited aggressive program that was

undertaken by Cleon and demosthenes after the death of Pericles so taking Pylos billing afford at pylos taking Sith or of building a fort there and perhaps even a few more other places on the periphery of the Peloponnesus and Launching attacks from those places but not staying to fight the Spartans at any great battle just causing that to happen if they had been able to do that for a stretch of time then the hope that Cleon had that the helots might escape to these forts and that then ultimately bring about an internal upheaval which the Spartans

panicked might happen would have led the Spartans to offer peace and in fact they do the Spartans offer peace many many you could argue that if the Athenians had simply accepted the Spartan peace offer in 425 the war would have been over and the Athenian Empire would have been attacked just the way Pericles wanted it so not only could they have done it they would have done it if they had accepted it they wouldn't accept victory you could argue as many a scholar does you have the only other point I want to make is after

that didn't happen and finally a peace was drawn up and signed and in Effect in 421 which is another evidence that they could achieve what they wanted by the techniques that were put forward but after that happened that peace broke down and now the Athenians found themselves part of a new alliance of states Peloponnesus in Ian's with three Peloponnesian democracies who produce a big land battle in the Peloponnesus and the Athenians come that I mean the the enemies of Sparta come that close to defeating the Spartan Army in the Peloponnesus had they done that they

would have finished Sparta off as a dominant power agree so the answer is they actually had it in their hands a couple of times and another time they missed by about an inch yeah they could have won that way I think we're out of time let me wish you all a very happy holiday bye-bye