A Tale of Two City-States

I remember years ago reading (or was I just thinking?) that the age of Thucydides was over. His Peloponnesian War, the history of the devastating strife between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century B.C., was a text for the times during the confrontation between the United States and the USSR. No less a figure than Secretary of State George C. Marshall, at no other time than in 1947, at the start of the Cold War, said that to understand the international issues of the day it was necessary to study the Peloponnesian War. After the end of the Cold War in 1991, and with the replacement of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry with a world of ethnic, national, and religious blocs, it seemed that we had entered the era of another Greek writer, Herodotus, whose Histories describes a mosaic of international relations; maybe even more so in the era of the Global War on Terror. But now, great power rivalry is back, as the United States and its allies face formidable opposition led by China. We turn once again for wisdom and perspective, therefore, to the history of the competition between Athens and Sparta. To quote Godfather III, "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

Enter Adrian Goldsworthy, author of a new book on the rivalry between Athens and Sparta. The reader is in the best of hands. Goldsworthy combines the expertise of the scholar that he is with the common touch of the author that he has become. He is one of the very best historians of the ancient world writing for a popular audience.

His mission is not merely antiquarian. The author understands that the issues raised by ancient history continue to affect us today. "War is still with us," he writes, "politics is still with us, and the readiness of neighbours to bicker and disagree, even to vilify each other under the conviction that they alone are right, has not dimmed since the fifth century BC."

Goldsworthy casts his net widely. He surveys the longue durée, beginning in 1400 B.C. but quickly advancing to 700 B.C., when the story of the two cities gets going. The heart of the book is in the Classical era, especially the fifth century B.C., when the rivalry between Athens and Sparta dominated the Greek horizon. The ancient Greek world was comprised of roughly 1,000 city-states; Goldsworthy explains clearly why he focuses on only two of them. He writes: "Classical Greece has had a profound influence on the history and culture of the Western world, and two cities and one era stand at the heart of this."

The book leads up to the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.); the origins, aftermath, and conflict itself comprise somewhat less than half the narrative. The first section of the book is devoted to the rise of the two cities, and the second section to their joint effort in fighting the Persian Empire, culminating in the defeat of Persia's invasion of Greece in 480-479 B.C. The allocation is proper. United like two oxen leading a cart, Athens and Sparta enjoyed their finest hour in defending Greece and expelling the invader. John Stuart Mill once said the Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.), in which Athens defeated an abortive Persian attempt to crush its most troublesome Greek opponent, was a greater event in British history than the Battle of Hastings (1066), which replaced Anglo-Saxon with Norman kings on the throne. An exaggeration, but it would be hard to overemphasize the importance for the future of the West of Greece's stand for freedom, both at Marathon and in later battles such as Thermopylae and Salamis (both in 480 B.C.) and at Platea and Mycale (both in 479 B.C.).

Likewise, it is appropriate that Goldsworthy starts at the beginning and traces the history explaining the different paths to greatness that each of the two Greek city-states took. Sparta was a conservative land power, cautious about entanglements abroad due in no small part to demographic factors, the massive imbalance between its large unfree population and small number of citizens. Athens was an energetic sea power whose democratic political system fostered boldness and whose comparatively small population of slaves freed it from the domestic police burden that tethered Sparta to its homeland. Note also that Athenian slaves were foreigners and divided among themselves while Sparta's helots were fellow Greeks living on their ancestral lands and so more likely to unite and rebel against the Spartans who had conquered them.

Athens and Sparta enjoyed a moment of cooperation, but the subject of this book is competition. Unity against Persia proved fragile. Athens became an imperial power. Sparta, bitter and afraid as it saw its star waning, disputed Athens's rise. Each state had a set of allies, and the Greek world became divided into two power blocs. Years of contention ended up in the Peloponnesian War, a 27-year-long struggle, now brutal, now desultory, a conflict that damaged both states. Athens lost the war. It was devastated and suffered long-lasting demographic, military, and cultural blows. Only its democracy was strengthened; first, however, came a civil war in the wake of defeat. Sparta won the war but lost the peace. Less than 40 years after its victory celebration it saw its power broken in a new battle. Sparta never recovered. Athens renewed its democracy and restored its prosperity, but it never again enjoyed the military power it once knew.

Although best known as a political and military historian, Goldsworthy pays attention to cultural factors. He cites ambition, competition, and pride and the quest for honor, glory, and prestige as motivators of each of the two states. The Greeks, he said, insisted on their worth as individuals and as members of a community that enjoyed the honor it was due. Greek city-states fought each other in their seemingly petty and endless wars because they would have been ashamed not to. When challenged by the invasion of their land by another city-state's army, the defenders might have stayed sheltered behind their walls. That, however, would have hurt more than their coffers, which would have been diminished by the ravaging of their crops; it would have hurt their sense of honor. Goldsworthy writes: "Brave men, men of worth, did not accept such a humiliation."

Soldiers took pride in the position they held in the battle line, while states took pride in autonomy and status. Pride, he writes, both motivated the two states not to give in to the Persians and not to make concessions to each other. He writes of the years after the Greco-Persian wars: "Athenians wanted to be seen at the very least as the Spartans' equals, and the Spartans did not wish to accept this."

Nowadays there is a temptation to see war and politics in terms of a balance sheet. "It's the economy, stupid," to quote a memorable line by an American campaign consultant. To be sure, Thucydides considers advantage to be an important motivator for Greek leaders. He adds fear to the list as well, and Goldsworthy too takes these two factors into account. Yet honor mattered and still does today. Even people in the developed world maintain at least a certain sense of honor. In other cultures, men live and die in the avoidance of humiliation and the pursuit of prestige. We in the West fail to recognize this truth at our peril. The study of ancient Greek history, and this powerful book, offer a corrective.

Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece
by Adrian Goldsworthy
Basic Books, 640 pp., $40

Barry Strauss is Corliss Page Dean Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies Emeritus at Cornell University. He is the author of, most recently, Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire (Simon & Schuster, 2025).

The post A Tale of Two City-States appeared first on .