Every student of Greek history knows that in the Persian wars of 480–479 b.c., the Athenians abandoned their polis but fought on to victory at Salamis from their ships. In the Peloponnesian War fifty years later (431–404 b.c.), Pericles urged the Athenians to use a similar strategy. In accord with Pericles' vision of Athens as “the sea and the city,” the Athenians abandoned the land and houses of Attica and adopted a defensive war strategy designed to take advantage of Athenian naval superiority.

Thucydides chronicled this long war between Athens and Sparta. Despite all that has been written about Thucydides and Pericles, however, no work has yet focused on Thucydides' critique of Pericles' radical redefinition of Athens as a city divorced from its traditional homeland of Attica. That critique is the subject of this book.

Thucydides, I argue, repeatedly questions and discredits the Periclean vision.

He demonstrates that this vision of Athens as a city separated from Attica and coextensive with the sea leads the Athenians both to Melos and to Sicily. After Sicily, flexible notions of the city greatly exacerbate civil strife in Athens, and the end of Thucydides' (preserved) text praises political compromise and reconciliation focused on the traditional city in Attica. Thucydides' final comments prize that city over even empire itself and implicitly censure Pericles for ever directing the Athenians' gaze toward another city.

We begin with an analysis of Thucydides' presentation of Pericles' radical redefinition of the city in books 1 and 2 of his History.

THE ATHENIANS CHOOSE PERICLES' CITY

At the completion of Pericles' last speech, in which he disclosed to the Athenians his “quite boastful” vision of an Athens that had traded its land and houses in Attica for control of half of the world, Thucydides segues into the so-called Epitaph of Pericles (2.65). Thucydides reveals here that Pericles lived only two years and six months after his speech, and he compares Pericles' leadership of Athens with that of his successors. According to Thucydides, after Pericles died, “his foresight in regard to the war was still more evident.” He goes on to explain

At the end of the Epitaph, Thucydides notes that even after Sicily, Pericles' successors held out for years

ATHENS DECIDES TO INVADE SICILY

The Melos campaign is the “prelude” to Sicily. The Athenian position articulated at Melos – that no island should be out of the control of the naukratores – argues that Sicily, that greatest of Greek islands, should belong to Athens as well. Thucydides implies the connection between Melos and Sicily with the speed of his narrative. After he notes the end of Melos – “of the Melians they killed as many of the men of military age that they captured; the children and the women they enslaved. They themselves colonized the territory, sending out later five hundred colonists” (5.116) – Thucydides turns immediately to Sicily: “during the same winter the Athenians wanted to sail to Sicily again with a greater force than the one with Laches and Eurymedon and to subdue it if they could…” (6.1.1). As with Melos, Thucydides takes care to note that the Sicilian Expedition does not represent some new aberration in Athenian policy making; Thucydides' reference to the expeditions of Laches in 427 (3.86) and Eurymedon in 425 (4.2) remind readers that the Athenians had long had their eyes on Sicily.

Thucydides' reference to the campaign of Eurymedon and his claim that the Athenians now planned to subjugate the island serve to give a sense of the mood in Athens on the eve of the Sicilian Expedition.

THE CITY IN ATHENS WAS QUIET

We saw in the previous chapter that the Four Hundred had a relatively easy time turning Athens to oligarchy, notwithstanding Thucydides' explicit comment to the contrary. As Thucydides continues his narrative to cover the fall of the oligarchy, he shows that the real difficulty that the Four Hundred faced in ending the liberty of the Athenian people came first from the Samians, then from the Athenians on Samos, and only late from the men in Athens. The effect is to reinforce the impression that the Athenians (and especially the Attic Athenians) do not really care about democracy. Moreover, when the Samian Athenians finally do focus on democracy, they consider abandoning the Athens in Attica altogether as they constitute themselves a (democratic) city on Samos. Although many commentators find the men on Samos sympathetic, Thucydides' presentation of them is far from favorable. Thucydides focuses on the destructiveness of their factioneers' zeal and on the danger of a portion of the city insisting that it alone is qualified to judge what the city should be. His narrative underscores the benefits of political compromise and implies that compromise and reconciliation are only possible for Athens around the image of the traditional city in Attica.

The Four Hundred had very little to fear from the men in Athens, as Thucydides' description of the council's meek withdrawal “saying nothing in opposition” (οὐδὲν ἀντειποῦσα, 8.70.1) demonstrates.