91 pages • 3 hours read
ThucydidesHistory of the Peloponnesian War
Nonfiction | Book | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Book 5 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: “Battle of Amphipolis, 422 BC”(Chapters 1-12)
A pro-democracy faction in Amphipolis revolts against its ruling oligarchy. Cleon leads troops in support of the democrats and Brasidas in support of the oligarchs. Thucydides describes Brasidas’ strategy and the battle, which ends with a Peloponnesian victory. Brasidas and Cleon are killed. The people of Amphipolis honor Brasidas for his skill and bravery.
Summary: “Peace of Nicias, 422-1 BC” (Chapters 13-24)
After the battle, both sides want peace. Spartan King Pleistoanax and Nicias of Athens conduct negotiations and establish both a peace treaty and an alliance. Thucydides reproduces the terms and also explains his method for dating events: He measures time according to the seasons and the number of years that have passed since the war’s onset.
Summary: “Negotiations with Argos, 421 BC” (Chapters 25-39)
Thucydides explains how he was able to study the period: After the fall of Amphipolis, which he failed to prevent as an Athenian general, he was exiled and thus able to view the war from both sides.
Following the treaty and alliance, Athens and Sparta almost immediately become suspicious of each other. Corinth and other Peloponnesian allies agitate against the peace treaty. Corinth seeks a defensive alliance with Argos, which aspired to assume leadership in the Peloponnese despite being democratic (unlike the mostly oligarchic region). Athenian and Peloponnesian allies engage in various intrigues, with some Spartan allies transferring their allegiance to Argos. Incoming Spartan ephors do not support the treaty with Athens. Boeotians, Corinthians, and Megarians try to establish treaties among themselves but fail due to procrastination and neglect. Sparta struggles to accommodate the Boeotians’ desire for an alliance without breaking its existing treaty with Athens.
Summary: “Alliance between Athens and Argos, 420 BC” (Chapters 40-51)
After Sparta and Athens establish their alliance, Argos fears becoming isolated and enters negotiations with Sparta, but they fail to make an agreement. Sparta returns Athenian prisoners, but the Athenians feel cheated due to Sparta’s treaty with the Boeotians and other grievances. Feeling disrespected by the Spartans because they negotiated the peace treaty through Nicias and Laches, Alicibiades reaches out to the Argives. Alcibiades’ political machinations trick Spartan envoys. Athens makes a treaty and alliance with the Argives without violating their existing ones with Sparta. Olympic Games are held during the summer, but the Eleans do not allow Sparta to participate, owing to a grievance between the two. After the games, the Argives seek an alliance with Corinth, but an earthquake cuts the negotiations short. The twelfth year of the war ends with battles fought among the allies.
Summary: “Campaigns in the Peloponnese, 419-8 BC” (Chapters 52-62)
The Boeotians anger Sparta by taking over Heraclea. With the Argives’ backing, Alcibiades marches his army through the Peloponnese. He and the Argives contrive to justify war against the Epidaurians. Athens invites representatives from the cities in conflict to meet in Mantinea, but they reach no agreement, and the Argives resume their destruction of Epidaurus, though they do not capture it. Political intrigues, largely manipulated by Alcibiades, continue in the region, and more attacks are planned.
Summary: “Battle of Mantinea, 418-7 BC” (Chapters 63-83)
Spartans and their Arcadian allies, led by Agis, invade Mantinea. The Argives and Spartans prepare to face each other. Thucydides describes the battle, calling it “the greatest [...] among the Hellenic states,” and adding that “it was fought by the most renowned cities in Hellas” (394). Sparta and its allies win, having suffered far fewer losses than their opponents. Their victory redeems them in the eyes of their allies, who had been critical of the Spartans’ previous losses. At the end of the summer, the Athenians and their allies build a wall around Epidaurus. Pro-Spartan and pro-democracy factions debate in Argos, and the former convinces the Argives to make a treaty with Sparta and give up their alliance with Athens. Oligarchy is established in Argos, and the Argives tell Athens to vacate Epidaurus. However, the Argive democrats overthrow the oligarchy and renew their alliance with Athens. The Athenians blockade Macedonia after Perdiccas fails the Athenians as an ally.
Summary: “The Melian Dialogue, 416-5 BC” (Chapters 84-116)
The following summer, Athens sends an expedition against Melos, a Spartan colony that has refused to join the Athenian alliance with the other islands. The Melians do not allow the Athenians to speak before the people but ask them to make their statement to the governing council. Athens attempts to compel them to join the alliance. Melos responds that they are being asked to choose between freedom and slavery. They wish to remain neutral friends with Athens, but Athens replies that this will make them look weak before their other subject states. Athens advises Melos not to be foolish: They are weaker and should save their lives by capitulating to Athens’ demands. The Melians decide to remain neutral. Athens sieges the city, eventually compelling the Melians to surrender. All the males are killed and the women and children enslaved. Athens sends colonists to repopulate the area.
The Spartans plan an invasion of Argos but withdraw when “sacrifices for crossing the frontier” turn out unfavorable (408).
Book 5 Analysis
Book 5 spans a longer stretch of the war than the previous three books, covering years ten through sixteen. During this period, the Peace of Nicias was ostensibly in effect, though fighting continued throughout the Hellenic world. Three pivotal events of Book 5 are the battles of Amphipolis and Mantinea and Athens’ destruction of Melos.
Thucydides devotes considerable attention to describing the battles of Amphipolis and Mantinea and the forces employed in them. In the case of both cities, internal conflicts between oligarchic and democratic factions draws the two larger powers, Sparta and Athens, into their orbit, and large-scale battles are fought. Brasidas’ brash tactics propel the Spartans to victory at Amphipolis, though his death in battle is a costly loss for the Spartans. Thucydides provides elaborate details of battle preparations at Mantinea as well as numbers of troops and how he calculated them, battle tactics, and the fierce commitment of both armies. The result of the battle—oligarchic victory, a treaty with Sparta, and the expulsion of Athens from Epidaurus—proves short-lived. The democratic faction overthrows the oligarchs and renews Mantinea’s treaty with Athens, thereby demonstrating the fragility of human achievements.
Athens’ destruction of Melos is considered one of the worst atrocities of the war. With the Mytilenian dialogue of Book 3, Thucydides presents the arguments of two Athenians in the form of speeches, one in favor and the other opposed. Curiously, the Melian dialogue appears as a dramatic debate between Athenians and Melians. The arguments each side presents are fairly abstract, with Athens refusing to entertain questions of justice and instead focusing on the fact that Athens is more powerful than Melos and will exercise that power in its own interests. It is in Athens’ interests for Melos to be absorbed into the Athenian alliance; otherwise, Athens will look weak among its other subject states. Because Melos is weaker, it is in its best interest to submit. Melos refuses to do so, and Athens massacres the island. While the negotiations and massacre are considered factually accurate, it has been suggested that Thucydides invented the entire dialogue in order to meditate on the relationship between empire, power, and corruption.
Thucydides pauses in Book 5 to discuss his method for dating the war. The two dating challenges he attempted to reconcile were first that each city had its own calendar and its own names for the months of the year and second that the war’s causes stretched back to well before the first hostilities broke out. His year zero is what modern historians call 431 BC, the year Sparta issues its formal declaration of war.
Related Titles
By Thucydides
