HISTORY 1M03 Lecture 4: Peloponnesian War
7 Jan 2018
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In 431, the spartan hoplites had marched into attica, expecting to be met by athenian hoplites and to fight the usual battle. But when they got there, they found no athenian hoplites to meet them. We have seen that the polis had arisen as a state of citizen-farmer-soldiers. Fighting was limited to farmers who could afford their own panoply. And it was they who politically made the decisions. So, by common convention, rather than fight a drawn-out war, greek cities agreed to limit their conflicts and allow the differences between them to be settled by one or two set-piece battles. One didn"t need a plan for a war, to conquer or completely reduce another state. Rather than trying to take each other"s cities and territories, the phalanxes of each side would meet each other on an open plain and decide the issue on the field of battle.
