Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / The Piraeus Walls: How Athens Built Its Long Corridors to the Sea
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know we've spent a lot of time in Athens — the battles, the plagues, the political experiments. But one thing that's easy to overlook is how the city actually survived as a maritime power. Luna: You mean the Long Walls? Lucas: Exactly. The Long Walls connecting Athens to Piraeus — and originally also to Phaleron. They weren't just walls; they were a strategic lifeline. Built in the mid-5th century, they turned Athens into an island, even though it was landlocked. Luna: How long were they? Lucas: The main Piraeus wall stretched about 8 kilometers — roughly 5 miles — from the city to the port. And there were actually three walls at one point: the northern wall, the southern wall, and the Phaleric wall. The idea was to secure a corridor so that if an enemy army besieged Athens, they could still bring in grain and supplies from the sea. Luna: So it's like a fortified highway. Lucas: Pretty much. And the building materials tell their own story. After the Persian destruction of Athens in 480/479 BCE, the Athenians urgently rebuilt their city walls using whatever was at hand — including grave stelae and broken temple blocks. Themistocles is said to have pushed that through, even when Sparta objected. Luna: Why would Sparta object to Athens having walls? Lucas: Sparta feared a fortified Athens would become too independent and powerful. They even sent envoys to argue that a walled Athens could be a refuge for a Persian garrison if the Persians ever returned. Themistocles famously stalled them while the wall was built just high enough to defend. By the time the Spartans realized what was happening, it was too late. Luna: That's such a Themistocles move — clever and underhanded. Lucas: It was. But the Long Walls we think of today — the ones that became the backbone of Athenian strategy — were built later, around 461–456 BCE, under Cimon and then Pericles. They were a massive public works project, partly funded by the Delian League treasury. And they fundamentally changed Athenian warfare. Luna: In what way? Lucas: Before the walls, Athens was vulnerable to a siege: cut off from the sea, they'd starve. After the walls, they could simply retreat behind them, refuse battle, and let their fleet keep trading and raiding. Pericles famously used this strategy in the early Peloponnesian War. He told the Athenians to abandon their farms and crowd inside the walls, trusting the navy to keep them fed. Luna: But that backfired when the plague hit. Lucas: Right — the overcrowding inside the walls made the plague of 430 BCE far worse. Thucydides describes people dying in the streets, with no space even for proper burials. The walls that were supposed to save Athens became a death trap. Still, the strategy itself was sound: without the walls, Athens would have fallen much sooner. Luna: So they were both a blessing and a curse. Lucas: Exactly. And they remained central to Athenian identity right up to the end of the Peloponnesian War. In 404 BCE, after the Spartan siege and the surrender of Athens, one of the first things the victors demanded was the demolition of the Long Walls. It was a symbolic act — to the sound of flute-girls, reportedly, and the Spartans celebrated that 'freedom had come to Greece'. Luna: That's brutal. To watch your own walls torn down. Lucas: But they didn't stay down. Just a decade later, in 393 BCE, the Athenian general Conon — who had been fighting with the Persians — returned and rebuilt them with Persian gold. So the walls rose again, and Athens once again had its corridor to the sea. It's a testament to how crucial they were: without them, Athens couldn't be a major power. Luna: It reminds me of how we keep coming back to this idea of defending what you've built. And that's actually a nice segue to something — we deliberately don't run ads on these episodes. It's a choice. And if you like that we can go deep into things like Athenian wall-building without interrupting you, the link to support that choice is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small way to keep this project listener-supported. We don't do sponsors; we just do history. And if that matters to you, the coffee link is there. But back to the walls — there's a great archaeological detail. Luna: What's that? Lucas: You can still see traces of the Long Walls in modern Piraeus and Athens. One stretch survives near the train station at Piraeus — it's just a low mound of stone, but you can make out the width. The walls were about 5-6 meters thick at the base, and they had towers at regular intervals. Walking along them, you'd have been inside a kind of stone tunnel, with guards patrolling the top. Luna: Were they ever attacked directly? Lucas: Not often, because they were so well defended. But in 404 BCE, the Spartans didn't try to storm the walls; they simply blockaded Athens by land and sea until the city starved. And later, in the 4th century, the walls were strengthened with a ditch and a palisade. They were maintained until the Roman conquest in 86 BCE, when Sulla demolished them again. Luna: So they had a long life — nearly 400 years. Lucas: Yes. And that's a testament to how fundamental they were to Athenian strategy. The walls weren't just passive defenses; they were an expression of Athenian power — the ability to project force across the Aegean while staying safe at home. They made the city a kind of sea-creature, as one historian put it, with its head in the city and its body in the water. Luna: That's a beautiful image. And it really shows how much thought went into their design. Lucas: Absolutely. And there's a political angle too. The walls were a symbol of democratic Athens: they were built by citizen labor, paid for by the allied tribute. They represented the collective will of the demos to defend its autonomy. The oligarchs who overthrew democracy in 411 and 404 sometimes wanted to abandon the walls as a concession to Sparta, but the people always insisted on keeping them. Luna: So the walls were literally a part of the democracy. Lucas: Exactly. They were the physical embodiment of the city's determination to remain free — and to control its own destiny. And that's what makes their story so compelling: it's not just about stones and mortar, but about what a community is willing to build to protect itself. Luna: It makes you think about how different history might have been if Athens hadn't built them. Lucas: Oh, completely. Without the Long Walls, the Peloponnesian War would have been over much sooner. Athens would never have been able to fight on two fronts — or to recover after the Sicilian disaster. They were the city's backbone, and even in ruin, they tell us something about the ambition and resilience of the people who built them.