Revolt of the Lesbians

I am continuing re-reading a translation of Thucydides book “The Peloponnesian War” about the 27 year war between Athens and Sparta back in the fifth century B.C.

In general accounts in textbooks about this war, two tragic events are always mentioned as the major events. The first is the plague that ravaged the cooped up Athenians early in the war. The second is the misguided aggression by Athens on Sicily to recoup their losses after losing the first phase of the war. But the event that most impressed me on my first reading of Thucydides many years ago was the Revolt by the city of Mytilene on the Island of Lesbos, and the Athenian response to it. So far in re-reading, that impression still holds.

Mytilene was an ally of Athens after the Persian invasions of Greece. Athens bit by bit turned her allies into subject states paying tribute. Mytilene on Lesbos and a few other allies remained “independent.” But it was clear that after Athens had subdued everyone else, there would be nothing to stop Athens from tightening its grip on Mytilene. So, when the war between Athens and Sparta broke out, the leaders of Mytilene saw it as an opportunity to get out from under the thumb of Athens. They approached Sparta for help.

As appears almost usual, the Spartans saw other people’s problems as just a lack of leadership. So instead of sending an army or a fleet, they sent one man, Salaethus. The Spartans did later send some ships, but they scurried away at the sight of the Athenian fleet. Apparently, the Spartans figured that one Spartan could provide the leadership that was lacking. Actually, on a number of occasions this seemed to work, one war, send one Spartan. But it does appear also that the Spartans wanted to avoid polluting and corrupting too many of their own by exposing them to the temptations of the outside world. On this score they were usually right, as Spartans who went abroad often succumbed to the different life.

Salaethus first tried to whip the Mytilene upper and middle class into soldiers to break the Athenian siege. This did not work. So he turned to the lower classes, figuring that they would be more used to submission and obeying orders. However, once armed, the lower class Mytilene became a free man, with ideas and opinions. The opinion was that the “leaders” of Mytilene had botched things. They wanted peace with Athens. They forced a conditional surrender to the Athenian commander Paches. The condition was that the fate of the city would be left in the hands of the assembly back in Athens. As it turned out, this was an easy decision for them: kill all of the men and sell all of the women and children as slaves.

After voting this and sending the directive back to Paches at Mytilene, the Athenians began to have a change of heart. Thucydides puts the debate into the mouths of Cleon and Diodotus. There were no longer any Conservatives in Athens it would seem, only Liberals and Liberal Extremists. Cleon, representing the extremist view, shows how easy it is to slip from a Liberal position into Fascism. Diodotus argues that the people of Mytilene should be spared, not out of compassion, but because it is expedient. They should not want people to feel they need to fight to the death against Athens because that is what they will get if they lose. On why Athenians should change their minds and rescind the order to exterminate the people of Mytilene, Diodotus says, “You punish those who advise you for their bad judgment, but you forgive yourselves for the bad judgment of following their advice.”

The Athenians vote “by a show of hands” to overturn the order to wipe out Mytilene, but it is close. A ship is sent to rescind the order and arrives only in the nick of time. Nevertheless, they kill all of the leading people of Mytilene, give over all of the land of Mytilene to Athenians, and turn the rest of the people into peasant renters. The democracy of Athens was a vicious little democracy. This isn’t to say the Spartans were any better. Their “democracy” was perhaps more equal than that of Athens but on a much narrower base of voters. But the Spartans were equally without compassion. They carried out the same fate on the Plataeans a short time later, when that city surrendered to them. Fortunately, most of the Plataeans had already escaped to Athens beforehand.