Latest / The History of Greece: Philosophy, Empire, and Endless Reinvention — Fexingo History / The End of Athens: Lysander, the Thirty Tyrants, and Sparta's Brutal Victory
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Athens' rise, its golden age, its plague, its wild card Alcibiades. But all of that was building toward one thing — the end of the Peloponnesian War. And it didn't end well for Athens. Luna: I know they lost eventually, but the details are hazy for me. Lucas: Right. So after Alcibiades' final exile in 406 BCE, Athens was running out of options. They still had a navy, but they were low on funds, low on allies, and low on competent commanders. Meanwhile, Sparta had found a secret weapon — a general named Lysander. Lucas: Lysander was a brilliant strategist, but also ruthless and deeply ambitious. He wasn't a king or even from one of the two royal families — he was a mothax, a sort of lower-class Spartan who rose through merit. And he understood something his predecessors didn't: to beat Athens, you had to beat them at sea. Luna: Wait, Sparta was a land power. How did they suddenly get a navy? Lucas: Persian gold. The Persians, remember, had been playing both sides for decades. But around 407 BCE, the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger decided to back Sparta. He gave Lysander massive funding to build a fleet. And Lysander used it to win a series of victories. Lucas: The first big one was at Notium in 406 BCE, where he caught the Athenian fleet off guard and sank or captured many ships. That victory got Alcibiades blamed and exiled for the last time. But Lysander's term as commander expired, and a new Spartan admiral took over — and promptly lost at the Battle of Arginusae. Luna: So the war went back and forth? Lucas: It did, but then the Spartans did something unprecedented. They broke their own law and reappointed Lysander as commander — technically as a vice-admiral, but everyone knew he was in charge. And in 405 BCE, he delivered the knockout blow at Aegospotami. Lucas: Aegospotami is on the Hellespont, the narrow strait that connects the Aegean to the Black Sea. Athens depended on grain shipments from the Black Sea. Lysander anchored near the Athenian fleet and just waited. The Athenians, overconfident or careless, beached their ships every day to get supplies. And every day, Lysander held back. Lucas: On the fifth day, when the Athenian crews had scattered ashore, Lysander struck. He captured almost the entire fleet — 160 ships — and executed perhaps 3,000 Athenian sailors. It was a massacre. Luna: That's brutal. And Athens had no navy left? Lucas: None. Lysander then sailed to Athens and blockaded the city by sea while the Spartan army camped outside the Long Walls. Inside, famine set in quickly. Thucydides had died earlier, but Xenophon picks up the story — he describes people dying in the streets. Luna: How long did they hold out? Lucas: About six months. By March 404 BCE, Athens surrendered. The terms were harsh — the Long Walls and the fortifications of Piraeus were torn down. The Athenian empire was dissolved. The navy was reduced to twelve ships. And Athens had to become an ally of Sparta. Lucas: But the worst part came next. Lysander imposed a new government — the Thirty Tyrants. This was a pro-Spartan oligarchy of thirty Athenians, led by Critias, a former student of Socrates who had turned into a violent extremist. Luna: Critias was a student of Socrates? That's a strange connection. Lucas: It is. Critias was also Plato's cousin, so he looms large in the philosophical tradition as a cautionary tale. Under the Thirty, Athens became a police state. They executed about 1,500 people, many of them wealthy democrats, and banished thousands more. They confiscated property, and they had a secret police force that just killed people in the streets. Luna: How did anyone survive that? Lucas: Some fled. One of them was Thrasybulus, a democratic leader who had been a trierarch — a ship captain — during the war. He gathered exiles in Thebes and then, in 403 BCE, led a small force back to Attica. They seized the fort of Phyle, and then, in a battle at Munychia, they defeated the forces of the Thirty. Lucas: Critias was killed in that battle. The Thirty were overthrown, and a new board of Ten took over briefly. But Thrasybulus pushed for reconciliation. He declared an amnesty — an unusually generous one for ancient Greece — that forbade prosecutions for crimes committed during the tyranny. Democracy was restored. Luna: An amnesty? That's surprisingly progressive. Lucas: It was. And it worked, mostly. Athens stabilized. But the war left deep scars. The trial and execution of Socrates in 399 BCE is often seen as a symptom of that trauma — the democracy, still nervous, lashing out at a perceived critic. Luna: So the war that started over a trade dispute ended with Athens' walls torn down and its democracy nearly destroyed. Lucas: Exactly. And Sparta's victory didn't last long either. Their hegemony over Greece only lasted about thirty years before Thebes rose up and crushed them at Leuctra. But that's a story for another episode.