Who are the main characters?
Nicias, describe how he lost at Sicily
Laches was an unsuccessful general and political conservative in the Peloponnesian Wars. Laches was one of the commanders of triremes for a previous expedition to Syracuse before the Peace of Nicias. After that, both Laches and Nicias both negotiated the Peace of Nicias with the Spartans. After this peace broke down, Laches was killed in the Battle of Mantinea, where the Athenian forces were defeated.[1]
Lysimachus: father of Aristides the Just
Plutarch: Lives of Aristides and Cimon, Formation of the Delian League After the Greco-Persian Wars
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/plutarch-lives-of-aristides-and-cimon-formation-of-the-delian-league-after-the-greco-persian-wars/
https://youtu.be/QabwtFANCDc
Wiki, fn 187???
Melesias was one of the moderate oligarchs who seized power in Athens in 411 and ruled for a few months as a Council of four hundred members.[2] He was also the son of Thucydides, who wrote the ancient history of the Peloponnesian Wars, with Nicias’ imagined speeches and the primary account of the disastrous Athenian defeat at Syracuse.[3]
Fn 188???
Who were not characters in the dialogue? Alcibiades and Demosthenes, they were the truly courageous Athenians. Demosthenes’ imaginative victory at the XXX compelled Sparta to sue for peace.
From the Death of Pericles to the Peace of Nicias, Peloponnesian War, Thucydides and Plutarch
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/from-the-death-of-pericles-to-the-peace-of-nicias-peloponnesian-war-thucydides-and-plutarch/
https://youtu.be/szi7-9QQWI0
Alcibiades could have won the Sicilian Expedition, and the course of history would have been much different. The contest in the Eastern Mediterranean would have been a three-way contest between Rome, Carthage, and Athens.
Problem is that the direct democracy was hesitant to trust Alcibiades with the conduct of the war, he was not the steady hand that Pericles was.
Although these statements on courage are true in all cultures, their primary emphasis is a reminder that all ancient cultures are, by necessity, warrior cultures, as we learn in our studies of the Iliad and Torah. Ancient citizens lived in fear that if their polis were ever conquered and pillaged by a hostile force, all military age men would be slaughtered, and the women and children would be enslaved.
Alcibiades could have been as famous as Caesar or Napoleon, known for their military conquests. IMHO, if Alcibiades had not been charged, he could have defeated and absorbed Syracuse into the Athenian Empire, and perhaps conquered the rising Carthaginian Empire as well. Had he been able to project Greek power further west, perhaps he would have triumphed over Rome, and we would be inheritors of the Athenian Empire rather than the Roman Empire.
The Syracuse Expedition was lost by the overly cautious and procrastinating general Nicias. All of these triremes and hoplites and leading generals were decimated by a complete Syracusan victory that nearly caused Athens to lose the second phase of the Peloponnesian Wars.
Athens’ Disastrous Defeat at Syracuse in the Sicilian Expedition, the Peloponnesian Wars
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/athens-disastrous-defeat-at-syracuse-in-the-sicilian-expedition-the-peloponnesian-wars/
https://youtu.be/SaIqQ35ysl4
THE DISASTROUS SICILIAN EXPEDITION
Peace of Nicias
Alcibiades versus Nicias
A delegation from the small Sicilian Greek colonies traveled to Athens, seeking assistance in their struggles with Syracuse, the dominant city in Sicily who was loosely allied with Sparta. Alcibiades could be a most persuasive orator, and he convinced the Athenians that Athens could be successful in this far-flung theater of war.
Plutarch continues, “Nicias persevered, and refused to give up.” “He tried to change the minds of the men in the Assembly, accusing Alcibiades of trying to satisfy his own personal greed and ambition by forcing the city to undertake a difficult, dangerous war overseas. Thucydides records the speech of Alcibiades, who proclaims to the Assembly, “It is not possible for us to calculate, like housekeepers, exactly how much empire we want to have. We must plan new conquests to hold on to what we have, there is a danger that we will fall under the power of others unless others are in our power.”
Nicias then objects and state that an invasion of Sicily is such a daunting task that Athens needs more ships and also a hoplite army, and archers, and slingers, and vast supplies, and the Athenians agreed, approving a grand expedition of 134 triremes with all the supplies and five thousand hoplites that Nicias suggested! As Plutarch wryly notes, “Once Nicias failed in his attempts to convince the Athenians to abandon the war or to be relieved of command,” “the Athenians deposited him at the head of the expedition, where his excessive caution and hesitation were out of place,” and Alcibiades and Lamachus were the junior generals.[4]
One night, shortly before the expedition departed, vandals knocked off the faces and phalluses of the stone Hermae in Athens. These Hermae were thought to guard both houses and temples from bad spirits, but as Thucydides remembers, “this was taken very seriously, as it was regarded as an omen for the expedition, and at the same time as evidence of a revolutionary conspiracy to overthrow the democracy.”
The identity of these vandals was never discovered, some scholars speculate they were aristocrats angry with Alcibiades. Alcibiades was the main suspect, but nobody would prosecute him while he was in Athens. But a few months after the expedition set sail, his enemies did prosecute him. Since many of his supporters served on the expedition, Alcibiades would lose in court, so charges were brought, and a trireme was dispatched to fetch him. Alcibiades slipped away when they were in port, making his way to Sparta, who welcomed him as a refugee, a story we told in our reflection on Alcibiades.[5]
Although they had been warned of the large Athenian expedition launched against them, the Syracusans were not prepared when the Athenian fleet appeared in their waters. Syracuse was as large a city as was Athens, but if Nicias had not been so cautious, wasting so much time sailing around Sicily to intimidate the Sicilians, but had rather landed and attacked vigorously, they likely would have been triumphant. But instead, after a hoplite battle on the beaches of Syracuse, the Athenians wintered in the Sicilian city of Catana.
In contrast, the Sicilians were not idle, they sent ambassadors to Sparta, who promised to aid the Sicilians and declared war on Athens for violating the peace. A small force of hoplites were sent to Syracuse under the command of Gylippus, who started training the Syracusans how to face the Athenians in battle.
The next spring, the Athenians sailed back to Syracuse and began building siege walls to take Syracuse. Then Lamachus was killed in battle, Nicias was the only general in charge, and all momentum was lost, the Syracusans started building a counter-wall to prevent the siege, took control of the heights, threatening to trap the Athenian fleet. Instead of pulling out, fearful of the damage to his reputation, Nicias wrote a letter to Athens pleading illness, and requesting that he be relieved, and the Athenians sent reinforcements the next spring.[6]
The Syracusans won a number of battles, but were surprised when, as Plutarch tells us, “Demosthenes appeared off the harbors in a magnificent show of strength which dismayed the enemy. He had brought seventy-three ships, with five thousand hoplites on board, and at least three thousand others armed with javelins, bows, and slings,” “designed to strike fear into the enemy.”
However, these reinforcements did not cheer Nicias up for long: at their first meeting, Demosthenes argued for engaging the enemy immediately, for them to risk all in battle as soon as possible, and either take Syracuse or sail back to Athens. Nicias, being Nicias, preferred delay, but Demosthenes risked a night attack on the heights. In the past, Demosthenes had led several successful night attacks. Perhaps had the Athenian forces had not lost the initiative over these years of inaction they would have succeeded, but the momentum had long been lost, there was heavy fighting and much confusion, and many Athenians fell off the cliffs to their deaths.
Plutarch tells us, “Nicias was disheartened by this disaster, which he blamed on Demosthenes’ rashness. Demosthenes said this had nothing to do with it and suggested they leave the island as soon as possible, arguing that no more reinforcements would come, and that they could not defeat the enemy with their current resources.” “But Nicias was unhappy with talk of retreating and leaving the island” for fear “of the Athenians with their lawsuits and informers,” saying that “he preferred death at the hands of his enemies to death at the hands of his fellow citizens.”
But after the enemy received reinforcements, Nicias agreed to evacuate. But, as Plutarch tells us, “when everything was ready for this evacuation, and the enemy was completely off guard, there was a lunar eclipse. Nicias and those of his men who were ignorant or superstitious were terrified.” Nicias insisted they could not set sail for twenty-seven days, a full lunar cycle, not the mere three days that the omen dictated. “Nicias ignored almost everything else and spent his time on sacrifices and divination, without moving, until in a combined assault the enemy invested the Athenian fortifications and camp by land, while surrounding and blockading the harbor with their fleet.”[7]
The Athenians were now doomed. They tried several more times to board their ships and fight their way out of the harbor, they were forced back onto the beaches. With few provisions and low morale, shamed and anguished over having to leave their dead and sick behind, they burned their ships and started a desperate march south, but the Syracusans dogged their every step, attacking them along the way. After several days of desperate battles and struggles, they sought to cross a river.
In ancient times, the history of Thucydides was read aloud at public festivals, and every Athenian who heard the dialogue of Laches would also remember this horrifying description of the Athenian defeat, which Professor Kenneth Harl also read dramatically in the Great Courses Plus lecture on this defeat:
As Thucydides tells us, “Once they reached the river, the Athenians rushed into it, and now all discipline was at an end. Every man wanted to be the first to get across, and as the enemy persisted in its attacks, the crossing now became difficult. Forced to crowd in close together, they fell upon each other and trampled each other underfoot; some were killed immediately by their own spears, others got entangled and with the baggage were swept away by the river. Syracusan troops were stationed on the opposite bank, hurling down their weapons from above on the Athenians, most of whom, in a disordered mass, were greedily drinking in the deep riverbed. And the Peloponnesians came down and slaughtered them, the water immediately became foul, the nevertheless they kept on drinking it, all muddy as it was and stained with blood; indeed, most were fighting among themselves to have it.”
Finally, Nicias surrendered his forces, who were doomed to die in the quarries of Sicily, a few found refuge in Catana. Gylippus wanted to bring the two Athenian generals with him to Sparta as war prizes, but the Syracusans quickly slaughtered them both. And Thucydides dryly ends this chapter, “So ended the events in Sicily.”[8]
There was no mass media in Ancient Greece, this is how the Athenians first learned of their defeat, according to Plutarch: “A stranger landed in the Piraeus,” the port of Athens, “sat down in a barber’s shop, and proceed to talk about what happened at Syracuse as if the Athenians already knew about it. The barber listened to what the stranger had to say, and then, before he could tell anyone else, ran at top speed to the city, rushed up to the archons, and immediately made the news public knowledge. It was, of course, greeted with amazement and consternation. The archons convened an assembly and brought the man in.” They suspected that “he made the story up to cause a commotion. He was strapped to the wheel and tortured for a long time, until messengers arrived with accurate information about the whole catastrophe. This how difficult it was for them to believe that Nicias had suffered the fate which he had often warned them about.”[9]
We cannot improve on Will Durant’s summary of this ignoble defeat:
“The disaster broke the spirit of Athens. Nearly half the citizen body was enslaved or dead; half the women of the citizen class were widows, and their children were orphans.” With modern scholarship, Professor Kenneth Harl estimates that only a quarter to a third of the male citizens of Athens were lost at Syracuse, which makes more sense, but is still a devastating blow.
Summarize the following:
Will Durant continues, “The funds that Pericles had accumulated in the treasury were almost exhausted; in another year the last penny would be gone. Thinking the fall of Athens imminent, their subject cities refused further tribute; most of her allies abandoned her, and many flocked to the side of Sparta. In 413 BC Sparta, claiming that the Fifty Years Peace had been repeatedly violated by Athens, renewed the war.” “Their supply of food from Euboea and of silver from Laurium stopped; the slaves in the mines at Laurium revolted and went over to the Spartans in a body of twenty thousand men. Syracuse sent an army to join in the attack; and the Persian King, seeing an opportunity to avenge Marathon and Salamis, provided funds for the growing Spartan fleet, on the shameful understanding that Sparta would assist Persia in regaining mastery over the Greek cities of Ionia.”
“It was a proof of Athenian courage, and of the vitality of Athenian democracy, that Athens stood off her enemies for ten years more.”[10]
SOCRATES ON COURAGE IN ALCIBIADES 1
The main themes of Platonic dialogue Alcibiades 1 are friendship and love, and leadership, but they do briefly discuss courage.
Socrates asks Alcibiades if it is possible that an action be both disgraceful and just, and Alcibiades says this is not possible, and that “the just is also admirable.” But sometimes that which is disgraceful is also good, as death is deemed disgraceful, and sometimes the good soldier loses his life trying to save the life of his comrade, while others who witness the death of their comrades sometimes survive the battle.
Socrates then inquires whether courage is good.”
Alcibiades: “I would not choose even to live as a coward.”
Socrates: “Then cowardice seems to you to be the most extreme of bad things?”
Alcibiades: “To me it does.”
Socrates: “Cowardice is equal to being dead, it seems.” “Courage is among the best of things, and death among the worst.”[11]
Later, Plato describes the ideal education for future Persian kings. Four royal tutors of excellence are chosen: “the wisest man, the most just man, the most moderate man, and the most courageous man.” “The most just man teaches him to tell the truth throughout his life; the most moderate man teaches him not to be ruled by any pleasure, so that he may be accustomed to be free and truly royal, since he rules first of all over” his emotions, “and is no slave to them. The most courageous man teaches by preparing him to be fearless and without dread, since to be afraid is to be a slave.”[12] Courage is a primary virtue for the ruler in a warrior culture.
This echoes Xenophon’s description of the education of the kings and nobles of Persia in his Cyropaedia, the biography of Cyrus the Great. His addition is that hunting dangerous beasts practices skills used in battle.
Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, Biography of Cyrus the Great, King of Persia
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/xenophons-cyropaedia-biography-of-cyrus-the-great-king-of-persia/
https://youtu.be/E4BFSIpHHGk
PLATONIC DIALOGUE: LACHES AND NICIA
Plato shows irony when Lysimachus begins the dialogue: “So, Nicias and Laches, you have seen the man fighting in hoplite armor.” Regarding their sons, he proclaims, “Each of us is in a position to tell the boys about all the splendid achievements of their own fathers,” while they discuss how to train their growing children how to fight as hoplite infantry.[13]
At this point in the dialogue, Laches reminds everyone of the courage of Socrates at the Battle of Delium, the first major battle of the war which Athenas lost, where he likely saved the life of Xenophon. Later, his friend Alcibiades saved his life by covering his retreat.[14]
Laches praises him: “Socrates was with me during the retreat from Delium, and I can assure you that if the rest of the troops had been prepared to conduct themselves as he did, our city’s pride would have remained intact, and we wouldn’t have suffered such an awful defeat.”[15]
Socrates asks Nicias why they should teach boys how to fight as hoplite infantrymen. He ends his explanation with a comment that reveals his vanity:
“Though it may seem trivial to some people, let us not disdain to mention that it will also make a man better looking on those occasions when he ought to appear better looking and when, moreover, his striking appearance will be terrifying to his foes.”[16]
188a-b discusses Socrates
Socrates asks Laches: What is courage? This is Laches’ original answer: “You can be certain that anyone who is prepared not to break and, but to resist the enemy without turning to flight, is a brave man.”
Referring to hoplite tactics
But Socrates seeks a broader definition of courage: “I meant to ask you not just about courage for hoplites, but also about courage for horsemen and every other kind of soldier; and I wanted to find out what constitutes courage not just in warfare, but when facing danger at sea, or against illness and poverty, or even in political life; and I wanted to know what constitutes courage not just in the face of pain or fear, but also when people fight heroically against desire or pleasure.”[17]
Socrates: “Imagine a man who shows persistence in battle. He is prepared to fight, because he used his intelligence to calculate the odds: he knows that his comrades will help him, that he will be fighting opponents who are outnumbered and outclassed by his side, and also that he has the position. Would you say this man, whose persistence is supported by this kind of intelligences and these resources, is more courageous, or the man in the opposite camp who is prepared to stand his ground with persistence.”[18]
Is persistence courage? Many commentators posit that this is the favored definition by Socrates.[19]
Another ironic question by Laches: “Nicias is claiming that only diviners are courageous. After all, who would know whether it is better for someone to live or die? But what about you, Nicias? Do you think of yourself as a diviner, or, if not, are you not courageous?[20]
Nicias suggest that “courage and thoughtfulness are qualities possessed by very few people, whereas boldness, daring, and fearless recklessness are commonly found in men and women and children and animals.”[21]
Socrates concludes, “So we have failed to discover what courage is, Nicias.”
Laches reproaches Nicias. Since Nicias was so contemptuous of his answers that he thought Nicias could formulate an accurate definition.??? But Nicias retorts: “Good for you, Laches! The fact that not long ago you yourself turned out to be utterly ignorant about courage no longer bothers you in the slightest.”[22]
DISCUSSING THE SOURCES
Many of the same professors who encourage us to disparage Xenophon will also encourage us to disparage Alcibiades 1.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(general)
[2] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner (New York: Penguin Classics, 1972, 1954, originally after 410 BC), Book 8.86, p. 589.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_speakers_in_Plato%27s_dialogues
[4] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Nicias, translated by Robin Waterfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 1998, originally 100+ AD), Chapters 12-14, pp. 197-199 and Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner, Book 6.18, pp. 421-422.
[5] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 6.27-28, pp. 426-427, Book 6.60-61, pp. 447-448.
[6] Kenneth Harl, History of the Peloponnesian Wars, Teaching Company, 2007.
[7] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Nicias, Chapters 21-24, pp. 207-211.
[8] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 6.84-87, pp. 534-537.
[9] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Nicias, Chapter 29, pp. 216-217.
[10] Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume 2, Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966, 1939), p. 448 and Kenneth Harl, History of the Peloponnesian Wars.
[11] Socrates and Alcibiades, Plato, Alcibiades 1, translated by David M Johnson (Focus Philosophical Library, 2003), 115e, pp. 18-21. The footnotes say this last statement is not found in most manuscripts, but in quotations by later authors.
[12] Socrates and Alcibiades, Plato, Alcibiades 1, 121e-122b, p. 33.
[13] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, translated by Robin Waterfield (Oxford University Press, 2009, 2005, originally 300s BC), 179c-180a, p. 38.
[14] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, 181b, pp. 39-40, see footnote.
[15] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, 181b, pp. 39-40.
[16] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, 181e-182d, pp. 40-41.
[17] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, 190e – 191e, pp. 52-53.
[18] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, 193a, p. 55.
[19] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, 194a, p. 56, footnote on p. 159.
[20] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, 195c, p. 59, footnote on p. 159.
[21] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, 197b, p. 61.
[22] Plato, Meno and Other Dialogues, Laches, 199e-200a, pp. 64-65.
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