The First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC), the long walls, the Egyptian disaster, the Five Years' Truce (451 BC), the Peace of Callias (around 449 BC), the Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC), and the significance of the period

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to describe the First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC), the major battles and treaties, the building of the long walls connecting Athens to the Piraeus, the Peace of Callias (around 449 BC) with Persia, the Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC) with Sparta, and the overall significance of the period 500 to 440 BC for the development of the Greek world.

The answer

The drift to war (461 to 460 BC)

The dismissal at Mount Ithome (462 BC) and Cimon's ostracism (461 BC) ended the Athenian-Spartan alliance against Persia that had won the Persian Wars. Athens immediately:

• Allied with Argos (long-standing Spartan rival)
• Allied with Thessaly (defected from Persian influence after Plataea)
• Received Megara (which had quarrelled with Corinth over a border dispute and switched alliance)

Megara was strategically critical: it controlled the isthmus between Athens and the Peloponnese. Corinth (Sparta's chief ally) was provoked.

The long walls

In the late 460s and early 450s BC the Athenians built the long walls connecting the city to the Piraeus, around 7 km away. Two parallel walls (the North and the Phaleric, later replaced by the Middle or South wall) enclosed the road. The system made Athens, in effect, a fortified island: even a Spartan land invasion of Attica could not force surrender as long as the navy controlled the sea and supplies came in through the Piraeus.

Strategic logic. The long walls embodied Themistocles's vision: Athens as a sea power independent of land control. They made the Pericles strategy of the Peloponnesian War (435 to 421 BC) possible.

Spartan reaction. Spartans regarded the long walls as confirmation of Athenian ambition. They would not be permanently destroyed until 404 BC after Athens's defeat.

The First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC)

A series of campaigns rather than a single war. Thucydides covers them briefly in the Pentecontaetia (1.103 to 115).

The Egyptian expedition (460 to 454 BC). A Delian League fleet of 200 triremes was diverted to Egypt to support the revolt of Inaros against Persia. After initial successes the expedition was destroyed in 454 BC; 250 ships and 8,000 men lost.

Halieis (around 459 BC). Athenian forces defeated by Corinthians and Epidaurians.

Cecryphaleia (around 458 BC). Athenian naval victory off the Argolid.

Aegina (458 to 457 BC). Athens besieged and reduced Aegina, the historic naval rival in the Saronic Gulf. Aegina was forced into the Delian League and made a tribute-payer.

Megara and Pegae (around 458 BC). Athens garrisoned Megara and built long walls connecting Megara to its port of Nisaea.

Tanagra (457 BC). A Spartan army crossed the Corinthian Gulf to Boeotia, intended to support oligarchic factions and threaten Athens by land. The Spartans defeated the Athenians at Tanagra. Cimon, still ostracised, presented himself at the Athenian camp asking to fight; he was refused but his ostracism was later cut short.

Oenophyta (457 BC, 62 days after Tanagra). The Athenians under Myronides defeated the Boeotians and Locrians. Athens controlled Boeotia and Phocis for the next ten years.

Athenian command of central Greece (457 to 447 BC). Athens dominated Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and the western Peloponnese (Achaea). Pericles led a naval expedition around the Peloponnese (around 454 BC).

The Five Years' Truce (451 BC). Negotiated, perhaps by the recalled Cimon, between Athens and Sparta. Hostilities paused but the underlying tensions remained.

The Peace of Callias (around 449 BC). A negotiated settlement with Persia. The terms: Persian fleets would not enter the Aegean; Persian armies would not approach within a day's ride of the Asia Minor coast; Athens would not send forces into Persian satrapies; the Ionian Greek cities were autonomous. The historicity of the peace is debated (Thucydides does not mention it; Plutarch, Diodorus, and the fourth-century BC orators do). Most modern historians accept a peace settlement of some kind around 449 BC.

Coronea (447 BC). Athenian setback in Boeotia. The exiled Boeotian oligarchs returned and defeated an Athenian force at Coronea. Athens lost control of Boeotia.

The Euboean revolt (446 BC). Major revolt of the Athenian-controlled island. Pericles led a punitive expedition. Hestiaea was depopulated and replaced with Athenian cleruchs; Chalcis was forced to swear a loyalty oath (the Chalcis Decree). Euboea was Athens's largest cleruchic island.

Megara revolts (446 BC). Megara expelled the Athenian garrison and reverted to the Peloponnesian League. The Athenian troops in Pegae and Nisaea were destroyed.

The Spartan invasion (446 BC). The Spartan king Pleistoanax invaded Attica with a Peloponnesian army. He withdrew after diplomatic intervention. Pleistoanax was later prosecuted at Sparta on suspicion of accepting an Athenian bribe (Plutarch, Pericles 22 to 23) and was exiled.

The Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC)

Athens and Sparta negotiated a thirty-year peace in the winter of 446/5 BC. The terms:

Each side recognised the other's sphere. Athens kept the Delian League; Sparta kept the Peloponnesian League. The two systems were juridically separated.

Argos was allowed to make a separate peace with Sparta. Argos chose not to renew its Athenian alliance.

Athens gave up some mainland gains. Megara, Achaea, Troezen, Pegae returned to Peloponnesian influence.

Disputes were to be settled by arbitration. A neutral third party could be invoked.

Neutral states could join either side. Provided they were not already members of the other league.

The peace stabilised the two-bloc system. Athens accepted that it could not hold mainland Greek territory by land; Sparta accepted that Athens dominated the sea and the islands. Both sides treated the empire as Athenian internal business (the Samian revolt of 440 BC was therefore not a casus belli for Sparta, although Sparta debated intervention).

The Samian revolt as the test of the peace (440 to 439 BC)

The Samian revolt of 440 to 439 BC was the first test of the Thirty Years' Peace. Samos was one of the few remaining ship-providing allies. It revolted after Athenian intervention in a Samian dispute with Miletus. Pericles led the suppression in person.

The siege. Eight months. The Samian fleet was defeated at Tragia; the city was reduced. Athens stripped Samos of its walls and fleet, took hostages, and imposed a war indemnity of 1,300 talents.

Sparta's debate. Sparta convened the Peloponnesian League to discuss intervention. Corinth opposed intervention (out of legal scrupulousness about the empire as Athenian internal business). Sparta did not act. The peace held.

The end of the period (440 BC)

By 440 BC the Greek world had been reshaped:

Persia. Withdrew from the Aegean after the Peace of Callias (around 449 BC). Persian ambitions in mainland Greece had ended.

Athens. The dominant maritime power, the leading polis (30,000 to 50,000 adult male citizens), the imperial centre, the cultural capital.

Sparta. The leading land power in the Peloponnese, troubled by the helot question, conservative and cautious.

The empire. Around 200 to 400 tribute-paying allies; 600 talents of annual tribute; the Athenian Tribute Lists; the building program in progress; the radical democracy.

The tensions. The Spartan-Athenian rivalry, the Corinthian commercial interests, the resentments of subject cities. The 446 BC settlement was a pause, not a resolution.

The significance of the period

Military. Greece checked the largest empire of its time. The wars produced the conviction that the polis system could resist any external threat.

Political: democracy. The radical Athenian democracy was the most participatory ancient government. Its institutions (the boule, the Assembly, the popular courts, state pay) became the model and the counter-model of later political thought.

Political: empire. The Delian-Athenian system was the first sustained large-scale Greek political unit. It pioneered tribute administration, federated naval command, and imperial coinage.

Cultural. Classical Greek culture (tragedy, sculpture, philosophy, historiography) emerged in this period. The Parthenon, the Oresteia, Herodotus's Histories, the Pythagorean and Eleatic philosophies, the medical writings of the Hippocratic school all dated to or began in the period.

Ideological. The contrast between Greek freedom and Persian despotism became foundational. The Greek/barbarian distinction shaped later European thought.

Strategic. The two-bloc system (Athens by sea, Sparta by land) defined Greek politics for the next half century. The Peloponnesian War of 431 BC was its consequence.

The sources

Thucydides, Pentecontaetia (1.89 to 117). The major source.

Diodorus Siculus 11 to 12. First-century BC summary, useful for events Thucydides omits.

Plutarch, Pericles, Cimon, and Aristides. Later lives.

Inscriptions. The Athenian Tribute Lists, the Chalcis Decree (446 BC), the Erythrae Decree, the Coinage Decree.

Aristophanes. Comic references in plays from the 420s BC look back on the Periclean Athens.

Historiography

Russell Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (1972). Standard reconstruction.

Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (1969). Treats the Peloponnesian War origins in the Pentecontaetia.

G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972). Defends the empire and traces the war to Spartan fear.

Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia (1979). The Spartan side.

Christian Meier, Athens (1990). Cultural and political synthesis.

How to read a source on this topic

Section IV sources on the First Peloponnesian War and the Thirty Years' Peace typically include extracts from Thucydides 1, the inscribed decrees (Chalcis, Erythrae), or Plutarch. Three reading habits.

First, follow the chronology. The First Peloponnesian War is a series of campaigns over 14 years; reconstruct the order.

First, distinguish Persian and Spartan settlements. The Peace of Callias (around 449 BC) is with Persia; the Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC) is with Sparta. They are different.

Third, read the inscriptions as evidence of imperial reach. The Chalcis Decree (446 BC) shows the loyalty oath; the Tribute Lists show the fiscal extraction; the Coinage Decree shows the commercial integration.

Common exam traps

Treating the "First Peloponnesian War" as a single battle. It was a 14-year series of campaigns from the Egyptian expedition to the Euboean revolt.

Confusing the Peace of Callias and the Thirty Years' Peace. Callias is with Persia (around 449 BC); the Thirty Years' Peace is with Sparta (446 BC).

Forgetting the long walls. The walls of 461 to 457 BC made Athens a fortified naval base; without them the Periclean strategy fails.

Underestimating Sparta's caution. The Spartan king Pleistoanax withdrew from Attica in 446 BC; Sparta did not intervene at Samos in 440 BC. Sparta acted reluctantly even when provoked.

In one sentence

The First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC) saw Athens build the long walls connecting the city to the Piraeus, lose 250 ships and 8,000 men in the Egyptian disaster of 454 BC, win control of central Greece at Oenophyta in 457 BC, lose it at Coronea in 447 BC and Euboea in 446 BC, conclude the Peace of Callias with Persia around 449 BC and the Thirty Years' Peace with Sparta in 446 BC, and confirm the two-bloc system of an Athenian maritime empire and a Peloponnesian land confederacy that, by 440 BC and after the suppression of the Samian revolt, defined the Greek world and the path to the Peloponnesian War of 431 BC.