The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [83]
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FLEXING MUSCLES
Corcyra (Corfu) and Megara, 440–432 BC
Remember, too, that the reason why Athens has the greatest name in all the world is because she has never given in to adversity, but has spent more life and labour in warfare than any other state, thus winning the greatest power that has ever existed in history, such a power that will be remembered for ever by posterity, even if now (since all things are born to decay) there should come a time when we were forced to yield: yet still it will be remembered that of all the Hellenic powers, we held the widest sway over the Hellenes, that we stood firm in the greatest wars against their combined forces and against individual states, that we lived in a city which had been perfectly equipped in every direction and which was the greatest in Hellas.
Thucydides, 2.64.31
CLAMBERING DOWN TO THE REMAINS OF Athens’ Long Walls is tricky. This archaeological site is the wrong side of the tracks. The massive limestone blocks, laid between 459 and 457 BC, are now sandwiched between the railway, a dirty canal and an industrial plant bristling with CCTV cameras. An arterial road moans overhead. Old fag packets stick to the mortar.
The Long Walls, you will remember, were built two decades after the city walls to connect Athens to its ocean-mouth, at Piraeus harbour. Although five million tourists come to Athens every year, there are none at this spot. The site is off-putting. These defensive stones don’t reflect the afterglow of the Athenian ‘Golden Age’, a time remembered as egalitarian, free and high-minded. The walls tell us that Athens was indeed a fortress city; that those who came in and out were strictly monitored and controlled. Socrates lived during some of the most volatile decades in Greek history. The city and its citizens needed protecting. The stone ring also guarded Athens’ precious Piraeus harbour, Athens’ bustling second city, the ministate from which Athenian oarsmen rowed out to claim new territories in the name of demokratia.
Back in the dark days of Persian invasions there were only two city-states from the 700 or so in Hellas that, when commanded to by the Medes, refused to submit tributes of earth and water: they were Athens and Sparta. Both were united, both were torn apart by their extraordinary sense of themselves. Although separated by rivers, mountains and plains, the connection between the two was intimate. When the Persians were amassing for the Battle of Marathon, it was an Athenian, Pheidippides, who had run the 153 miles, in under two days, to beg the Spartans to come to Athenian aid. But ever since, each culture had vied to prove that they had been dealt the stronger hand. And now that Athens had an ideology – a new thing called democracy – it was with democratic superiority that she took on Spartan supremacy.
The two city-states were spoiling for a fight. The port of Piraeus became extra-busy. A new section was hived off for the exclusive use of the Athenian navy – you can still peer down on its solidly built walls that today run under the throbbing peripheral road. Those surviving soldiers of the conflicts against Persia (Marathon, Salamis, Plataea), now in their seventies and eighties – the ‘old courage’ so lauded by Aristophanes – were asked by the young, gym-hard generation of citizens who had trained to fight day in, day out for their opinion on the best battle strategies. And Athens and Sparta quickly found reasons to become affronted by one another.
The result of this antipathy was a Total War that would engulf the rest of Socrates’ life and, indeed, the whole of the region.
First the gentle harbours of Corcyra (modern-day Corfu) were bludgeoned.
One summer’s morning in 433 BC the inhabitants of that island woke in the blue hour before dawn to a fearful sound: the rhythmic wash of warships at full speed. The Corinthians and the Corcyrans were thrashing it out for control of trade routes and territories – but Athens,