Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (17 page)

elegantly sculpted barriers around public plazas or decorative cladding for bulky

protective concrete wal s. . . . The most chil ing example of the new medievalism

is New York’s Freedom Tower, which was once touted as a symbol of enlighten-

ment. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merril , it rests on a

20-story windowless fortified concrete base decorated in prismatic glass panels in a

grotesque attempt to disguise its underlying paranoia. And the brooding, obelisk-

like form above is more of an expression of American hubris than of freedom.

13 Diodorus 11.29.3.

80 Berkey

14 The translation is by C. H. Oldfather in the Loeb Classical Library. See also Tod,

GHI
2.204, 21–51, Lycurgus
Against
Leocrates
80–81. Contra: Theopompus,
FGrHist
115

F153. Russell Meiggs,
The Athenian Empire
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 504–7,

accepts the validity of the Oath of Plataea, while P. J. Rhodes,
CAH
52.34, doubts the

existence of a clause requiring temples to be left in ruins.

15 Jeffrey M. Hurwit,
The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology, and Archaeology from

the Neolithic Era to the Present
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 135–42.

The archaeological evidence of the Persian sack of Athens, and the Agora in particular,

is presented in T. Leslie Shear Jr., “The Persian Destruction of Athens,”
Hesperia
62

(1993): 383–482. See also Homer A. Thompson, “Athens Faces Adversity,”
Hesperia
50

(1981): 343–55. He writes (346), “To sum up: their triumphs in the Persian Wars undoubt-

edly stimulated the Athenians in some of their finest achievements in art, literature and

international affairs. But the evidence of the excavations reminds us that the sack of

480/79 BC caused a long and distressed disruption of the domestic, civic, and religious

life of the city.”

16 Simon Hornblower (
A Commentary on Thucydides
, I [Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1991], s.v. 1.89.3–1.93.2, 135) cites R. A. McNeal (“Historical Methods and Thucydides

1.103.1,”
Historia
19 [1970]: 306–25) on the significance of walls in Thucydides. McNeal

writes (312), “In Thucydides’ elaborate theory of power, a fleet permits commerce,

commerce brings revenues, revenues create treasure, treasure means stability and walls,

and walls permit political domination of weaker states. For Thucydides the wall is the

ultimate symbol of power.” See also Hornblower’s commentary on 1.2.2, where he

quotes from Yvon Garlan (“Fortifications et histoire Greque,” in
Problèmes de la guerre en

Grèce ancienne
, ed. Jean-Pierre Vernant, 245–60 [Paris: Mouton, 1968], quotation at 255)

that “la notion d’enceinte urbaine est inseparable du concept de cite.”

The author of the
Athenaion Politeia
credits both Themistocles and Aristides in the

construction of the circuit walls (23.3–4, trans. P. J. Rhodes [Aristotle,
The Athenian Con-

stitution
(London: Penguin Books, 1984)]):

(3) The champions of the people at this time were Aristides son of Lysimachus

and Themistocles son of Neocles: Themistocles practised the military arts,

while Aristides was skilled in the political arts and was outstanding among his

contemporaries for his uprightness, so the Athenians used the first as a general

and the second as an adviser. (4) The two men were jointly responsible for the

rebuilding of the walls, in spite of being personal opponents; and it was Aris-

tides who saw that the Spartans had gained a bad reputation because of Pausa-

nias and urged the Ionians to break away from the Spartan alliance.

For a discussion of this passage, see P. J. Rhodes,
A Commentary on the Aristotelian
Athe-

naion Politeia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 292–95.

See Diodorus 11.39–40 (incorrectly dated 478–477 BC). Plutarch also emphasizes

the clever manner in which the Athenians launched their ambitious quest for empire

(
Themistocles
19):

No sooner were these great achievements behind him, than he immediately

took in hand the rebuilding and fortification of Athens; according to Theopom-

pus’s account he bribed the Spartan ephors not to oppose his plans, but most

Why Fortifications Endure 81

writers agree that he outwitted them. He arranged a visit to Sparta, giving him-

self the title of ambassador, and the Spartans then complained to him that the

Athenians were fortifying their city, while Polyarchus was sent expressly from

Aegina to confront him with this charge. Themistocles, however, denied it and

told them to send men to Athens to see for themselves; this delay, he calculated,

would gain time for the fortifications to be built, and he was also anxious that

the Athenians should hold the envoys as hostages for his own safety. This was

just how things turned out. The Spartans, when they discovered the truth, did

not retaliate against him, but concealed their resentment and sent him away.

17 Thucydides 1.90.1–3.

18 Thucydides 1.93.1–2.

19 John M. Camp,
The Archaeology of Athens
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

2001), 59–60; Gomme,
HCT
, s.v. 1.93.2, 260–61; Hornblower,
A Commentary on Thucy-

dides
, I, s.v. 1.93.2, 137–38.

20 For a description of these wal s, see Wycherley,
The Stones of Athens
, 13. The Athe-

nians placed unbaked bricks on top of a stone socle, which was “composed of several

courses of massive wel -shaped bricks on either face of a core of rougher stone. The mate-

rial was poros or harder limestone, with increasing use of conglomerate in later phases.”

21 Gomme,
HCT
, s.v. 1.92, 260.

22 See T. 1.1.1: “The preparations of both the combatants were in every department

in the last state of perfection; and he [Thucydides] could see the rest of the Hellenic

race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once having it in con-

templation” (1.18.3):

For a short time the league [the Hellenic League of 481] held together, till the

Spartans and the Athenians quarreled, and made war upon each other with their

allies, a duel into which all the Hellenes sooner or later were drawn, though

some at first might remain neutral. So that the whole period from the Median

war to this, with some peaceful intervals, was spent by each power in war, either

with its rival, or with its own revolted allies, and consequently afforded them

constant practice in military matters, and that experience which is learnt in the

school of danger.

23 Hansen, in
Polis,
writes (95–96):

Already in the Archaic period, then, walls were an important aspect of the

Greek perception of what a
polis
was, and an overview of surviving walls only

serves to strengthen that point. . . . In the written sources, 222
poleis
in all are

referred to as walled in the Archaic and Classical periods, and only in nineteen

cases is it expressly said that a city is unwalled; there are only four
poleis
of which

we know positively that they did not have any walls at the end of the Classical

period: namely, Delphi, Delos, Gortyn and Sparta.

24 Plato
Laws
778d–779b (trans. A. E. Taylor):

As for walls, Megillus, I am of the same mind as your own Sparta. I would leave

them to slumber peacefully in the earth without waking them, and here are

82 Berkey

my reasons. As the oft-quoted line of the poet happily words it, a city’s walls

should be of bronze and iron, not of stone, and we in particular shall cover

ourselves with well-merited ridicule, after taking our young men in annual

procession to the open country to block an enemy’s path by ditches, entrench-

ments, and actual buildings of various kinds—all, if you please, with the notion

of keeping the foe well outside our borders—if we shut ourselves in behind a

wall. A wall is, in the first place, far from conducive to the health of town life

and, what is more, commonly breeds of certain softness of soul in the towns-

men; it invites inhabitants to seek shelter within it and leave the enemy unre-

pulsed, tempts them to neglect effecting their deliverance by unrelaxing nightly

and daily watching, and to fancy they will find a way to real safety by locking

themselves in and going to sleep behind ramparts and bars as though they had

been born to shirk toil, and did not know that the true ease must come from

it, whereas dishonorable ease and sloth will bring forth toil and trouble, or am

I much mistaken.

25 Victor Davis Hanson,
The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. How

Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny
(New York: Free Press, 1999), 72–104. On 101–2,

he writes,

Again, modern students of Greek history, to gain full insight into the real con-

temporary view of Spartan culture, must visit the remains of Messenê, Mega-

lopolis, and Mantinea. That such vast circuits could arise so quickly after the

Spartan defeat at Leuctra and subsequent invasion of Laconia should tell us ex-

actly what Sparta’s neighbors thought about Spartan society. Battlements—the

Berlin Wall and the current fieldworks arising on the American-Mexican border

are good examples—often provide more honest testimony than literary sources

and government proclamation about the respective apprehensions, fears, and

ideologies of the cultures on either side of the ramparts. Just as tremors in the

Soviet Union caused walls to crash in Germany, so too the check on Sparta of-

fered by Epaminondas immediately prompted thousands to go out into the

Peloponnesian countryside to cut and raise stone while they still had the chance.

26 Aristotle
Politica
2.8 (1267b22–30). See R. E. Wycherley,
CAH
52.203–8, and M. Ost-

wald,
CAH
52.315.

27 Thucydides 1.93.3–7.

28 See also the comments of Plutarch on the impact of this policy for the Athenians

(
Themistocles
19):

After this he proceeded to develop the Piraeus as a port, for he had already

taken note of the natural advantages of its harbors and it was his ambition

to unite the whole city to the sea. In this he was to some extent reversing the

policy of the ancient kings of Attica, for they are said to have aimed at drawing

the citizens away from the sea and accustoming them to live not by seafaring

but by tilling and planting the soil. It was they who had spread the legend about

Athena, how when she and Poseidon were contesting the possession of the

country, she produced the sacred olive tree of the Acropolis before the judges

Why Fortifications Endure 83

and so when the verdict. Themistocles, however, did not, as Aristophanes the

comic poet puts it, ‘knead the Piraeus on to the city’; on the contrary, he at-

tached the city to the Piraeus and made the land population dependent on the

sea. The effect of this was to increase the influence of the people at the expense

of the nobility and to fill them with confidence, since the control of policy now

passed into the hands of sailors and boatswains and pilots. This was also the

reason why the platform of the people’s Assembly in the Pnyx, which had been

built so as to look out to sea, was later turned round by the Thirty Tyrants, so

that it faced inland, for they believed that Athens’ naval empire had proved to

be the mother of democracy and that an oligarchy was more easily accepted

by men who tilled the soil.

29 See the new study of the Long Walls by David H. Conwell,
Connecting a City to

the Sea: The History of the Athenian Long Walls
,
Mnemosyne Supplements
, vol. 293 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). After describing the walls’ physical characteristics, nomenclature, and the

local topography where they were situated, Conwell provides a chronological narra-

tive of the walls’ construction and purpose during four phases. He concludes with a

strategic analysis of the Long Walls in Athenian history from their initial construction

to the end of the fourth century.

30 Thucydides 1.107,108.2. Conwel conjectures that the construction was begun as

early as 462–4611 and completed in 458–457. His argument (
Connecting a City to the Sea,

39–54), which attempts to confirm the involvement of Cimon in the project and thereby

substantiate a remark in Plutarch (
Cimon
13.5–7)—that is, in contradiction to Thucydides’

admittedly imprecise chronology (1.107)—and also thereby propose an early date for the

start of construction, fails to address adequately the democratic thrust of this initiative.

The Athenians’ commitment to build the Long Wal s reinforced the polis’s reliance on

the masses of citizens who serviced the fleet. For Cimon to favor this segment of the

Athenian citizen body seems inconsistent with his political views. Cimon, who had re-

cently suffered dishonor stemming from his pro-Spartan policies, was not in a position

of sufficient trust with his fel ow citizens to suggest a project involving so much of the