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ThucydidesA 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.
Athens reacts to the fate of the Sicilian expedition with shock and disbelief but refuses to give in. The winter following the Sicilian disaster, “the whole of Hellas” turns against Athens (539). The Spartans are eager to defeat Athens and assume leadership of Hellas. Sparta’s King Agis plans to build a naval fleet with allies’ contributions. He also incites a revolt at Lesbos. Athens redirects all available funds to rebuilding their navy.
A faction from Chios secretly asks Sparta to aid a potential revolt from Athens. Persian Tissaphernes supports the Chians’ request. He hopes to align with Sparta to further damage Athens, a longtime Persian enemy. Sparta elects to align with Chios, though most Chians are ignorant of the secret negotiations. Athens becomes suspicious and discovers Chios’ intent to revolt. A naval battle takes place near the Isthmus of Corinth. Athens’ victory discourages Sparta, but Alicibiades rallies them. Athenian and Peloponnesian fleets skirmish, and the Peloponnesians escape. Alcibiades arrives in Chios to encourage their revolt. In a panic, Athens draws on reserve funds to assemble a fleet to send to Chios. Alcibiades leads a Peloponnesian force to Miletus to encourage them to revolt. Additional cities, including Rhodes, also revolt.
With Athenian support, Samos overthrows its ruling class. Other Athenian actions include counterattacking in Lesbos, blockading Miletus, and attacking Chios, quelling its uprising and ravaging the island. A combined Athenian and Argive force defeats a force of Peloponnesians, Milesians, and Chians. The Peloponnesians sail to Miletus, and Athenian commander Phrynichus retreats, a wise decision,according to Thucydides. Lesbos requests support from Peloponnesian and Chian allies to attempt a second revolt, but they refuse. The Chians fight among themselves. Sparta’s Astyochus initially rejects a Chian request for assistance, but after Chios’ slaves defect to Athens, he agrees to help.
Athenian and Peloponnesian fleets engage in a naval battle near the isthmus, at Cnidus, and the Athenians are forced to flee when the full Peloponnesian fleet arrives. Tissaphernes angers his Peloponnesian allies by reducing payments he promised them. Believing the Persians benefit more from their treaty, Sparta renegotiates it. A third attempt to demand a better treaty with Persia angers Tissaphernes, and he cuts off contact with Sparta.
The Peloponnese becomes suspicious of Alicibiades and orders him put to death. He joins forces with Tissaphernes, advising him to let the Hellenes “wear each other out” then align with a weakened Athens (562). Alcibiades’ ulterior motive is that he wants to be recalled to Athens and believes friendship with Tissaphernes represents his best chance. Alcibiades informs an Athenian contingent on the island of Samos that he is willing to return to an oligarchic Athens that has overthrown the “corrupt democracy” (564). Pisander and others sympathetic to oligarchy in Athens push to restore Alcibiades, arguing it is their best chance to establish a friendship with Tissaphernes, which may be their only hope of defeating the Peloponnesians. Though initially opposed, the people capitulate.
Athens blockades the Chians, and famine ensues. Athenian attempts to negotiate with Tissaphernes stall, as he intentionally makes unreasonable demands to delay the process. Athens becomes angry with Alcibiades and cuts off talks. Tissaphernes makes a new, more favorable treaty with the Peloponnesians. Athens loses territory to the Boeotians, who plot revolt in Euboea. Athenian oligarchs encourage Samian locals to establish an oligarchy while Pisander travels the region, overthrowing democracies and installing oligarchies. In Athens, the Four Hundred (an oligarchic government) assumes power, killing supporters of democracy and introducing a new constitution. They ask King Agis of Sparta to establish peace, but no concrete agreement is formed.
At Samos, the tide turns against oligarchy. The pro-democracy crew of an Athenian ship called Paralus helps Samos’ pro-democracy faction stop the coup. The Athenian navy then pledges with the Samians to continue fighting for democracy and against the Peloponnesians. They recall Alcibiades at Samos and elect him general, believing he can deliver Tissaphernes as an ally. The Peloponnesians incite revolt in Byzantium, a territory in Asia Minor, and become suspicious of Tissaphernes, whose payments continue to be inconsistent. The Spartans are divided on their views of Tissaphernes.
Envoys to Samos from the Athenian oligarchy are met with fury and suspicion. Thucydides says that Alcibiades helped his country by bringing under control the angry mob that wanted to confront the oligarchic embassy in Piraeus, which would have left Ionia and the Hellespont vulnerable to the Spartans. The Argives arrive with the Paralus’ crew and pledge support to the democrats. Athenians are split on their view of how the oligarchy is being run. Athenian hoplites conflict with the oligarchy, and the Four Hundred’s representatives meet with them to urge for calm. They receive news of an approaching Peloponnesian fleet and rush to defend the city. The Spartans sail to Euboea, where they achieve a decisive victory, sparking panic in Athens, but the Spartans are too cautious to capitalize on Athens being left defenseless. The Four Hundred are deposed in favor of the Five Thousand, another oligarchic government. Alicibiades is recalled to Athens and encourages the army to carry on the war.
Though the Peloponnesians and their allies have a larger fleet, Athens routs them in a naval battle at Cynossema. Heartened by their victory, the Athenians regain their faith in their superiority at sea and believe “final victory” is still possible (604). Tissaphernes realizes his relationship with the Peloponnesians is troubled and travels to the Hellespont to meet them, first stopping at Ephesus to “sacrifice to Artemis” (605).
Book 8 discusses the nineteenth through the twenty-first years of the war, breaking off abruptly in 411, with an Athenian naval victory. Thucydides is believed to have died around 400, after the end of the war in 404, and while still in the process of completing his work. While other books in the history may have been rough drafts, Book 8 in particular may have been little more than a rough collection of notes. The book’s main events are concentrated in Attica and the Aegean islands, especially Samos and Chios.
Chios is known for its naval prowess and, as such, is a critical ally for Athens, especially given the loss of the navy in Sicily. Unlike other Athenian allies, Chios is not required to pay a tribute, as it instead provides ships. Its revolt is calamitous for Athens, which fears other allies following the lead of “the greatest city among them” (546). However, Chios’ loyalties are divided, with some favoring democracy and others oligarchy, leading to internal instability and strife, a recurring motif of the book. Athens is able to siege the city, which causes famine and, ultimately, defeat.
Samos also seesaws between democracy and oligarchy, with democracy eventually prevailing. The Athenian forces there remain loyal to it even after Athens itself succumbs to oligarchy, where the democracy that Pericles held up as an example to all of Greece twenty-one years earlier succumbs to chaos and instability. The return of Alcibiades to Athens, contradictorily engineered through machinations and intrigues at times directly against Athens’ interests, brings new strength to the city, and they recover with a narrow naval victory in Cynossema. The book ends there, in mid-sentence.The Athenians would continue to rebuild and rebound until 406, when Alcibiades leaves Athens. After a series of defeats, famine forces Athens to surrender to Sparta in 404, bringing the Golden Age of Athens to an end.
By Thucydides