The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [84]
When the Corinthians and Corcyrans came to clash, there would be thirty-three Athenian triremes in the fray. In a curious, edgy boxing match, around the rocks to the south of the island (called Sybota), which appear to bleed and bubble from the mainland into the sea, each city-state unfurled its sails and attempted to demonstrate that it was the most powerful in the ring. Of course the ripples from those grappling boats would spread wide. Worried that the Corinthians might use the fracas to galvanise their own allies against Athenian interests, the Athenian democrats took pre-emptive action. And, as ever with such conflicts, those with their fingers over the red button found that they needed to persuade themselves there were many reasons for aggression, many justifications for feeling threatened. On the seas outside Corcyra vindication was provided in the form of wooden boats from a small town just 30 miles west of Athens called Megara. Megara was an ally of Athens. Corinth was a powerful city-state, but even the strong need more firepower, and bobbing within its fleet were a number of Megarian ships.
Mediocre, modest Megara was to be a flashpoint; a signal flare that could not be ignored, a small place that determined a massive historical event.
Modern Megara has a rather listless landscape. On my last visit the liveliest event was a coach-outing of Greek widows led by a stern Orthodox priest. Megara lies in the no-man’s-land in between the clamour of Athens and the embracing curves of the Corinthian gulf. It seems to have little going for it. Today Megara is where, they scoff in nearby cafés, ‘men work for chicken-feed’. The land looks unpromisingly stony – in the fourth century BC Isocrates jibed that Megara ‘farmed rocks’. But appearances can be deceiving, and somehow, through careful use of salt reserves, by keeping enough sheep alive, making cloth tunics popular with workers, by being en route (and having access to a gentle bay that provides easy docking for boats), by sending out ships of colonists to the Black Sea to found useful little colonies such as Byzantium, the Megarians came to mean something.
And within months of the Battle of Sybota in the blue seas around Corcyra, Athens started to bully them. The relationship between the two city-states was already not what could be described as warm. In 445 Megarians had massacred the Athenian garrison. The outrage had always rankled. Around 432 Pericles proposed a strange law.3 He suggested that Megarian traders and shoppers should be banned from Athenian markets, and he wanted to prevent Megarian ships from docking in any harbour of any member of the Delian League. His proposal was accepted. This was a trade embargo, sanctions of a most debilitating kind, a political insult. None in the region could ignore the fact that Athens was really throwing its weight about now. The ‘Megarian Decree’ became an excuse for outright war.
Gangrenous gossip in Athens, as the Peloponnesian War proved itself to be a bad one, blamed Aspasia – once again. It was said that Aspasia ran a whorehouse, a sex-academy. When two of her prostitute-hostesses were abducted by Megarians, the dominatrix from Miletus got her gimpy general, Pericles, to retaliate – they said.
From this began the Great War in all Hellas – from three cock-sucking sluts.4
The blood of the