This Military Mistake Nearly Cost Ancient Athens Everything

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, the Greek historian Thucydides describes the Athenian expedition to Sicily of 415–413 B.C. as “by far the most costly and splendid Hellenic force that had ever been sent out by a single city up to that time.” This expedition would also be Athens’s worst disaster: a tactical error that would have fatal consequences.

Six years earlier, in 421 B.C., Athenian general Nicias had achieved a truce in the war that Athens and Sparta had been waging. But many in Athens yearned to resume hostilities. Among them was a young aristocrat called Alcibiades, who was, according to Thucydides, motivated only by wealth and fame. Thucydides recounts that in early 415 B.C., an embassy from the Sicilian city of Segesta (or Egesta in ancient Greek) arrived in Athens. Invited to speak before the citizens, the Segestian ambassadors explained that their city was at war with its neighbors Selinus and Syracuse.

In an attempt to garner military backing, the Segestians warned that if their city were defeated, Syracuse would conquer Sicily in its entirety, and proceed to ally itself with Sparta. They also assured the Athenians that they had the support of other Sicilian cities, and that Segesta would finance the war—both were grave exaggerations. Nicias was unconvinced, and thought it would be foolish to intervene. Alcibiades, however, persuaded the Athenian public that Sicily could prove to be a lucrative source of income.

(The rivalry between ancient Athens and Sparta is infamous—but they may have been more 'frenemies')

In city squares and gymnasiums across Athens, young and old alike began to speak enthusiastically of the potential expedition. Despite Syracuse being some 500 nautical miles away, the citizens supported the idea, convinced that they had a powerful navy and ample financial reserves. The Athenian Ekklesia (assembly) voted to send a fleet to Syracuse, led by Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus.

Then, one morning, amid preparations for the fleet, Athens awoke to find all the city’s hermae (stone pillars bearing the face, torso, and sometimes genitals of the god Hermes) mutilated. Suspicion fell on Alcibiades and his friends. Their arrogance and excess marked them as people of low morals. Thucydides recounts that some Athenians accused them of not only committing this sacrilege but also parodying the secret religious rites known as Eleusinian Mysteries during a night of drunken revelry. Despite the scandal, the Athenians decided that Alcibiades should set sail for Syracuse. He would be tried on his return, if they didn’t recall him sooner.

Off to War

On the day of departure 5,100 hoplites (heavily armed infantry) and about 1,300 light infantry soldiers (including archers and slingers), along with Athenian allies and noncombatant personnel, embarked at dawn. Thucydides tells how all the Athenians went down to the port to bid farewell to their friends and loved ones. A herald led a prayer, a hymn was sung, and libations were offered before the ships weighed anchor. However, upon arriving in Sicily, nothing was as they had expected: Segesta did not have the resources needed to wage a war, nor were the other cities on the island prepared to make an alliance with Athens.

Nicias proposed a brief show of force in support of Segesta before returning to Athens. But Alcibiades and Lamachus favored remaining in Sicily to assault Syracuse. So the Athenians moved their army to Catania, north of Syracuse, which became their center of operations. At Catana, an Athenian herald arrived on the Salaminia, a sacred trireme, with orders for Alcibiades to return to Athens to stand trial. Alcibiades appeared to have complied and immediately set sail. But after he anchored at Thurii in southern Italy, Alcibiades escaped to Sparta, where he sought asylum. Plutarch writes that Alcibiades, upon learning that the Athenians had sentenced him to death, declared, “I’ll show them that I’m alive.” In an act of defiance, he encouraged the Spartans to send a contingent to Sicily to aid the Syracusans.

(This ancient Greek warship ruled the Mediterranean)

Meanwhile, Nicias and Lamachus attacked Hyccara, a village in the north of the island, and enslaved its inhabitants to raise money. They then advanced by sea from Catana toward Syracuse, landing on a beach south of the city’s Great Harbor. At dawn, they launched a surprise attack, but failed and withdrew to spend the winter in Catana.

In the spring of 414 B.C., the Athenians landed in Syracuse once again. Nicias set about besieging the city, ordering the construction of forts and walls across the Epipolae plateau, a strategic high ground. Thucydides recounts how the Syracusans built their own defensive walls, while they charged the Athenians. Lamachus was killed in one of these clashes, and Nicias appealed to Athens to send help.

The Arrival of Gylippus

The tide truly turned against the Athenians when Spartan general Gylippus arrived. The Athenians hadn’t finished constructing their siege walls, and the Spartans were able to meet with the Syracusans. That summer, Gylippus razed the Athenian fortifications and then pushed the Athenians back to their base at Plemmyrion (south of the Bay of Syracuse).

The next year, Athenian reinforcements arrived. Demosthenes, their commander, attempted to recapture the Epipolae plateau in a night raid, but many Athenian hoplites, unfamiliar with the terrain, fell to their deaths in the darkness. Shortly before, Gylippus had taken Plemmyrion and seized provisions, supplies, and even trireme rigging. Then, the Syracusans blocked the exit from the bay, trapping what remained of the Athenian fleet inside, where they suffered a definitive defeat.

The Athenians began to retreat on foot toward Catana with some 40,000 men, leaving behind the wounded. They were attacked along the way, and on the sixth day of the march, Gylippus cut off Demosthenes’ retreat. Nicias was able to continue, but when his men reached the Assinarus River, the soldiers, wild with thirst, rushed forward in disorder. This is when Gylippus’s men struck. As Thucydides recounts, the slaughter left many bodies “piled one upon another in the stream.” Nicias surrendered.

Gylippus led the captured army to Syracuse, where Nicias and Demosthenes were executed. The Athenians and their allies were then imprisoned in the city’s quarries. Thucydides describes in graphic detail how many of the prisoners, crammed into a deep and narrow gorge, died of disease, hunger, or thirst, and that their bodies were left rotting among the excrement, with the “intolerable stenches.” According to Thucydides, never had Athenians suffered such a defeat: “Their fleet, their army, everything was destroyed, and few out of many returned home.”

The Athenians, who remembered the splendor with which the formidable expedition had set out, lamented its pathetic end. This was an unmitigated disaster, which paved the way for the final defeat of Athens at the hands of Sparta less than 10 years later.