Funeral Oration of Pericles

Context

The Great Peloponnesian War erupted in 431 BCE as a result of the growing rivalry between the Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian League. Originally, Athens and Sparta had been allies in the Persian Wars that culminated in the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE. The Greek offensive turned into an effort to liberate the Greek cities of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) from Persian rule. Sparta’s abusive leadership under Pausanius, regent to the king, created friction with the freed city-states and eventually caused his recall. The Athenian high command received an invitation to assume leadership. At the island of Delos, the various city-states and Athens forged an alliance that granted the latter prominence because of its substantial fleet. Smaller cities provided financial contributions in lieu of actual forces. Later, when Naxos, one of the island members, attempted to leave the league, Athens destroyed the city and enforced the alliance. Eventually the members of the Delian League found themselves tied to Athens by threat of force.

Tensions with Sparta began because of the construction of a series of defensive walls around Athens and its port, Piraeus; the enclosure also included the land between the two. In 465 BCE Sparta faced a helot (slave) rebellion, and Athenian forces arrived to assist. Fear of democratic influence, however, caused the Spartans to request that the Athenians return home. The Athenian general Cimon had been a strong supporter of good relations between Athens and Sparta, and this rebuff undermined his credibility. Ephialtes, an Athenian aristocrat, used the reverse to have Cimon exiled, paving the way for a series of reforms that limited the older, aristocratic Council of the Areopagus and transferred many of its powers to the assembly of the people. The new political emphasis in Athens steered away from relations with Sparta and from efforts to strengthen imperial designs. The road to war became a convoluted course in 460 BCE, when Athens involved itself in a dispute between Megara and Corinth, both Spartan allies. The conflict of interests in the region initiated what is known as the First Peloponnesian War. By 445 BCE, however, the opponents had signed the Thirty Years’ Peace, and Sparta forced Athens to cede territories gained in the fifteen-year war.

Subsequent incidents, such as a revolt in Miletus that threatened to bring Persian forces back into the Aegean, strained the treaty. The Peloponnesian League debated intervention against Athens to prevent a new Persian war. Archidamas II, king of Sparta, refused, however, and even in later events continued to seek the path of arbitration. Nevertheless, when Athens and Corinth conflicted over the latter's right to interfere in the affairs of its rebellious colony Corcyra (now Corfu), voices in the Peloponnesus began to clamor for war. Corinthian pressure on Sparta increased when its colony Potidaea, under Athenian control as part of the Delian League, received an ultimatum to destroy its walls and expel Corinthian magistrates. Sparta acquiesced in summoning the league after Athens issued the Megarian Decree, which created an embargo on goods from Megara. Despite Archidamas's resistance to conflict, Athenian emissaries brashly declared that any aggression against them would be ineffective, provoking the Peloponnesians to vote for war.

In a defensive move to protect the approaches to their territory, the forces of Thebes, an ally of Sparta, advanced against the city of Plataea, an ally of Athens. The Peloponnesian forces expected Athens to attack and therefore prepared to blunt the offensive. Archidamas's strategy assumed that a decisive defeat of Athenian armies would force their surrender. If the Athenians hid behind their large wall system, the Spartans would ravage the countryside and destroy the farms and the ripening fields. If Athens persisted in a defensive war, continual loss of their crops and property would demoralize the population and, likewise, force a capitulation. The Spartan leadership, however, did not anticipate Pericles' determination to utilize a large treasury and mercantile connections to furnish the city with foodstuffs. In short, he planned to allow the Spartans to ravage the countryside, even if it took three or four years; Athens could afford the loss. Simultaneously he planned to use the large naval advantage of more than three hundred ships to ravage the Peloponnesian peninsula and demoralize the enemy. Pericles intended to make the point that Athens could not be humbled, and thus the Spartans would weary in their yearly campaign of fruitless endeavors and seek arbitration to end hostilities.

During the first year of the conflict, both sides carried out their strategies. After the Theban maneuver, Archidamas mobilized his forces and slowly advanced into Attica, the territory of Athens. He hoped that rumors of his large army would force talks so that large-scale fighting would prove unnecessary and relations could be healed. However, his slow siege of border forts caused his troops to grumble at the delay, so he proceeded with the destruction of the countryside around Athens. According to the fifth-century historian Thucydides, the population of Attica, forced to retreat into Athens to protect its cattle and moveable wealth, expressed discontent and frustration. Many found themselves obliged to live as squatters in the streets or within space between the walls that connected the city with its port.

As Sparta ravaged the countryside, the Athenian fleet also engaged in raiding operations along the Peloponnesian coast, advancing into Corinthian territory on the western coasts. Other forces seized islands and forts in Euboea, the island to the east, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. After the Spartans ran out of supplies and retreated, Athenian troops retaliated against Megara in the fall of 431 BCE, devastating various villages. That winter, as troops returned from the campaign season, Pericles delivered his speech. Although his political connections and the naval successes helped him maintain a position of prominence and popularity among the majority of the citizens, voices of discontent criticized his strategy and policies, and even the system of government that allowed him to attain the authority which had brought Athens to its present situation.