Epidamnus had been founded, or as the Greeks put it, “colonized” by the island of Corcyra, a maritime polis lower down the coast. It boasted a fleet of 120 triremes, which, most unusually, it maintained in peacetime. It was the region’s most formidable sea power after Athens. As we have seen, from the eighth century new Hellenic communities had been established around the Mediterranean in large numbers. Unlike modern colonies, they were independent of their mother polis, but were expected to be respectful, friendly, and cooperative. They might ask it for help in time of trouble.
This is what the citizens of Epidamnus did. They sent an embassy to Corcyra that begged for support in negotiating a peace with the old regime outside their gates. But the Corcyraeans refused even to listen to the envoys. Not knowing what to do, the Epidamnians asked the oracle at Delphi for advice. The god advised them to apply to the rich mercantile state of Corinth, the founder of Corcyra and so the “grandmother” of Epidamnus.
This guidance was thoroughly irresponsible, for the international experts at Delphi must have known that Corinth and Corcyra were not on speaking terms. The islanders looked down on their founder, claiming that they were much stronger militarily and that their wealth put them on a level with the greatest Hellenic states.
The Corinthians were delighted to disoblige their colony and sent a force of soldiers and volunteer settlers from various different poleis, who rescued the democratic regime at Epidamnus from its attackers. They had no strategic interests at stake and their motive was simply to annoy Corcyra. In this they succeeded, only too well.
In a furious reaction the island polis sent forty warships to besiege Epidamnus and proposed that the quarrel be put out to arbitration. The Corinthians refused and with help from their allies assembled seventy-five warships and two thousand hoplites. With their remaining eighty triremes the Corcyraeans met the Corinthian fleet and routed it off the headland of Actium. Epidamnus surrendered and the aristocracy was restored.
No mercy was shown the defeated: all the soldiers and settlers sent by Corinth were executed except for Corinthian citizens, who were kept on as prisoners and bargaining counters. Corcyra now commanded the Ionian Sea and sailed around damaging the allies of Corinth.
Feelings ran high in Corinth and the authorities there could not just let matters rest. They spent the next two years building warships and recruiting crews in the Peloponnese. The Corcyraeans heard of this and panicked. They had no allies of their own and unlike Corinth were not members of the formidable Peloponnesian confederation. Where could they find a powerful friend? There was only one feasible answer—Athens.
So in 433 a Corcyraean embassy made its way to Athens to seek support. The Corinthians got wind of this and were alarmed. They instantly sent an embassy of their own. Both of them put their respective cases to the ecclesia. A decision would not be easy. According to the terms of the Thirty Years Peace, a signatory was entitled to ally itself with any state that was not already affiliated either to the Spartans or to the Athenians. But common sense argued that it would be against the spirit of the treaty, if not the letter, for one side to ally itself with a state such as Corcyra that was already at war with a member of the other.
At first sight the affair was a local one and should have been of little interest to Athens. The demos was not spoiling for a fight and the Corinthians hoped for an abstention. As it turned out, the ecclesia voted to help Corcyra. On mature consideration, there was a good reason for this unexpected outcome. If there was one thing Athens could not permit it was a shift in the maritime balance of power, and that was what a large new Corinthian fleet signified.
However, the ecclesia did not go the whole way. After two debates it decided on a policy of minimum deterrence and offered no more than a defensive alliance. Athens would fight Corinth only if it attacked Corcyra and ordered a token squadron of ten triremes to sail to the island. To reassure the Peloponnesians, Lacedaemonius, son of the pro-Spartan Cimon, was appointed its commander. This was certainly an attempt to avoid breaching the treaty and we may detect the hand of Pericles behind these dispositions. He would do what he could to avoid war, or at least the blame for war.
Events now followed their course. A large Corinthian fleet of 150 triremes, the result of all that preparation, sailed against 110 Corcyraeans. The Corcyraeans were worsted, so the Athenian flotilla intervened. Mystifyingly the Corinthians then withdrew. An explanation soon presented itself; the ecclesia had had second thoughts and twenty additional Athenian triremes had appeared on the horizon as reinforcements. Discretion being the better part of valor, the Corinthians returned home the next day. On their way they captured a Corcyraean colony, Anactorium, a place in the Ambracian Gulf, and installed settlers.
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The international crisis deepened. Corinth turned its anger from Corcyra to Athens and Pericles decided he needed to take precautionary measures on the peninsula of Chalcidice in the northwestern Aegean. This was an important staging post on the way to the Black Sea and all its cities were members of the Delian League.
Unfortunately, one of these was a Corinthian colony called Potidaea. Athens ordered it to pull down some of its fortifications and to abolish its practice of appointing Corinthian officials. It refused and revolted. Prompted by the neighboring king of Macedon, all Chalcidice followed suit. Corinth, anxious not to be seen to break the peace, recruited an international “volunteer” corps to help the rebels. Athens sent out an expeditionary force, won a battle against the Potidaeans and the volunteers, and placed the city under siege.
The situation was delicate. Pericles took what he saw as a diplomatic step that, without the threat of violence, would warn off allies of Corinth and Sparta from interfering in Athens’s business. The little state of Megara, friendly to Corinth on its western frontier, had been for many years on extremely bad terms with its much bigger eastern neighbor, Athens. The ecclesia passed a decree excluding Megarian ships and goods from all ports in the Athenian empire. For an exporter of cheap woolen goods around the Mediterranean the embargo would bring economic collapse.
Pericles probably intended his démarche to calm the situation, but in fact the effect was incendiary. Ten years later the comic writer Aristophanes set out the common opinion of how the war between Athens and Sparta began. In his play Peace the god Hermes is asked who caused the war. He replies that Pericles was frightened that he would follow his friends and associates and face prosecution in the courts.
Before anything could happen to him, he threw a little spark into the City marked “Megarian Decree” and in a moment it was all ablaze, with him fanning the flames, and the smoke drew tears from the eyes of every Greek, at home or abroad…nobody could halt the disaster and Peace just vanished.
The notion that Pericles started the war only for personal reasons is highly implausible. However, it is true that politicians have been known to elide personal and public motives for action. The waning of his popularity may have formed the background to a hardening of Pericles’ foreign policy. Adventures abroad are often popular with voters.
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The cautious Spartans were not bellicose and, for the avoidance of doubt, they sent to Delphi to ask the god whether it would be wise for them to go to war. Apollo replied that if they fought with all their might they would win, and that he would be on their side—a surprisingly firm prediction (did money change hands?). Then in autumn 432 they convened a conference to discuss the deteriorating international situation and to decide if Athens had broken the Thirty Years Peace. Although Corinth and Megara complained bitterly about their treatment, it was not altogether clear that it had done so. If anyone was guilty of a breach it was Corinth, which had meddled more or less openly in Chalcidice.