A Swift Fall for a Once-Mighty Naval Power

For nearly three decades they fought—Athens, the dominant naval power, and Sparta, the dominant land force—locked in a protracted struggle for control of the Aegean Sea and the flourishing Hellenic world that rimmed its shores. From Plataea to Pylos, from Amphipolis to Cyzicus, the Peloponnesian War of 431 to 404 BC would pull the various Greek city-states (as well as bordering powers) into the maw of combat, allied with one or the other of the two major foes.

The long years of strife and strain took their toll on Athens’ much-vaunted democracy. Turbulence, recriminations, executions, and an erosion of confidence were rattling the Athenians’ enlightened, forward-thinking experiment in representative governance. But militarily at least, by the last decade of the 5th century BC the fickle gods of fortune seemed once again to be favoring the Athenians—a welcome turnaround after their ill-fated Sicilian quagmire had hit the skids with the disastrous defeat at Syracuse several years prior.

In the wake of that catastrophe, Athens had sought to bounce back with an ambitious shipbuilding program, and it began to pay off with some victories at sea. A fresh new Athenian fleet of some 200 powerful triremes now plied the waves, bestowing to the Athenians a restored sense of prestige and Aegean naval overlordship.

But Sparta throughout had been learning warfare’s lessons and honing its martial acumen—at sea as well as on land—and had emerged as a maritime power to be reckoned with in its own right. And if there were a commanding officer in the Aegean who now seemed heir to the Athenian naval greats of old such as the legendary Themistocles, it was no Athenian, but the general who commanded Sparta’s fleet—a shrewd and insightful strategist named Lysander. Up and down the Aegean, Lysander’s fleet was sailing where it pleased, seemingly uncatchable, bedeviling Athenian interests and allies.

And in the waning days of summer in 405 BC, Lysander posed his most existential threat to Athens yet: It was time for the great grain fleets to come lumbering down from the Bosporus, laden with the essential foodstuffs Athens needed to survive. To intercept those grain transports would be akin to starving out Athens.

And now, the whole costly war that had dragged on for a generation would come down to one final showdown—in a body of water that, to this day, has a strategic importance that far dwarfs its size. It draws the line between Europe and Asia Minor. It serves as crucial conduit from the Black Sea region to the world’s water routes. In antiquity, this narrow strait was called the Hellespont, in modern times, the Dardanelles—by dint of sheer geography a perpetual crossroads of history. (See “Decision and Disaster at the Dardanelles,”)

The Athenian fleet’s crucial mission was to ensure those grain shipments threaded the Hellespont needle unmolested. So when word came that Lysander’s fleet was heading there, the Athenians hastened to intercept the enemy, to guard the narrow channel from Lysander’s depredations and, ideally, to crush his fleet once and for all.

The Athenian fleet—led by six generals on a daily command rotation (democratic, perhaps, but not necessarily ideal)—reached the Hellespont only to discover that Lysander’s fleet had captured the city of Lampsacus—right below the entrance to the Hellespont, on the Asia Minor side. The Athenians positioned themselves across the channel and farther up on the European side, beaching their triremes along a stretch where two rivers came down and gave the place its name: “Goat Rivers”—Aegospotami.

 From here, they sailed out at dawn, crossing the Hellespont to take on the enemy. Lined up in battle formation across the harbor entrance of Lampsacus, they stood to the ready, offering battle to Lysander’s powerful fleet. In response, Lysander proceeded to . . . do nothing. The Athenian ships waited for hours, their rowers in constant maneuver to hold the battle line. Finally, they gave up, sailed back across to Aegospotami, and broke for lunch.

At dawn on the second morning, they tried again. Again, Lysander ignored their challenge. It was unclear if his ships had even been readied for battle. Again, the Athenians sailed back to their base, frustrated and thwarted. And so the pattern repeated for a third day, and a fourth: Sail across at dawn, seek an engagement in vain, return. All the while, the repetitive monotony was leading to a dull stupor of ennui and slackening discipline.

On the fifth day, the Athenian fleet replayed the same pattern. And once it headed back, again in frustration, Lysander sprang his trap.

What the Athenians did not realize was that every day, Lysander had been sending out spy ships to trail them back to Aegospotami, to observe them beaching their triremes, leaving them unmanned and unready, and taking the afternoons off. They had been lulled into a numbing daily pattern—a pattern that Lysander now broke with shocking suddenness.

His fleet had been battle-ready all along. The sun’s flashing reflection on a bright bronze shield conveyed the spy ship’s signal: The Athenians had let their guard down for the day. With oarsmen rowing full-tilt, Lysander’s force crossed the Hellespont with alacrity. The triremes briefly landed out of sight along a cove to disembark Spartan soldiers spoiling for a fight. They stormed ashore and took the high ground, ready to pounce. Lysander’s triremes got underway again, rounded the promontory, and proceeded to utterly destroy the Athenian Navy.

One Athenian squadron, at least, was afloat, but now it found itself heading straight for the onrushing juggernaut of Lysander’s fleet and turned tail. The attacking ships worked their way along the beach, snagging the unmanned Athenian triremes with grappling irons and yanking them into the water, with the Athenians, now roused, running about in a hapless panic. Lysander led troops ashore and tore into them. The Spartan troops that had been landed earlier now came boiling down into the fray as well. Only a handful of the Athenian ships managed to get off the beach and escape. The rest were crushed with extreme prejudice. Lysander executed 3,000 Athenian prisoners, including all the generals. But thousands more prisoners remained; Lysander had other plans for them.

Back in Athens, the terrible news began filtering in. The Aegospotami survivors arrived, as did other Athenian refugees, soldiers, merchants, and others, flooding the city by the shipload, having been expelled by Lysander as he extended his conquests after the battle. In each fallen city, he spared the Athenians on the condition that they head back to Athens—and trying to take any food with them would be punishable by death.

The once-dazzling city now found itself crammed with refugees—and no food shipments. Lysander would starve them into submission. Proud Athens held out until the following spring, and then Lysander arrived in triumph.

He abolished democracy and replaced it with an oligarchy—hand-picked from the top percent of the wealthiest citizens. His oligarch puppets would come to be known as the Thirty Tyrants. At Lysander’s bidding they destroyed all the salient reminders of Athens’ democratic legacy—taking particular pains to wipe out any remnant symbols of its navy.

But the oligarchs in their authoritarian zeal would go too far, and within a year, a resistance movement had sprung up. Athenians by the thousands rallied to the resistance leader, Thrasybulus. Even the Spartan overlords came to realize that the people would take no more. The oligarchy was ignominiously disbanded. Democracy was restored.

Athens had passed its zenith. It had lost the Battle of Aegospotami and, thus, the Peloponnesian War. But in the end, in its darkest hour, it had won a perhaps far more important war: the war against the tyranny of the oligarchs.