The Sicilian Expedition was an Athenian military campaign in Sicily from 415 to 413 BC during the Peloponnesian War. It pitted Athens and its allies against Syracuse, supported by Sparta and Corinth. The expedition ended in a devastating defeat for the Athenians and severely weakened their position in the war.
The expedition was hampered from the outset by uncertainty over its objectives and command structure. Political manoeuvring in Athens expanded an originally modest force of twenty ships into a massive armada, while the expedition's principal advocate, Alcibiades, was recalled to Athens to stand trial before the fleet had even reached Sicily. Despite these setbacks, the Athenians achieved early successes. Syracuse, the most powerful state in Sicily, responded slowly to the threat and was nearly surrounded and besieged before the arrival of reinforcements under the Spartan general Gylippus, who galvanised the city's resistance. Thereafter, the Athenians gradually lost the initiative. Although a large reinforcing armada from Athens briefly restored their advantage, a disastrous assault on a strategic high point and a series of crippling naval defeats undermined both their military effectiveness and morale. A final attempt to evacuate the army failed, and nearly the entire expeditionary force was killed, captured, or sold into slavery.
The consequences of the defeat were immense. Two hundred ships and thousands of soldiers, a significant portion of Athens' military resources, were lost in a single campaign. The disaster encouraged Athens' enemies in mainland Greece and Persia to intensify their efforts against the city, while revolts broke out among Athenian allies in the Aegean. Some historians regard the expedition's failure as the turning point of the war, although Athens continued fighting for another decade. Thucydides observed that contemporaries were astonished not that Athens eventually lost the war, but that it was able to continue fighting for so long after suffering such catastrophic losses. Although Athens rebuilt much of its fleet, the loss of experienced soldiers and sailors proved far more difficult to replace.
Background
Athens and Sicily
Although Athens had never involved itself deeply in Sicilian affairs, it had ties there before the onset of the Peloponnesian War, dating back to at least the mid-5th century BC. To small Sicilian cities, Athens was a potential counter to the powerful city of Syracuse, which was strong enough to potentially dominate the island. Syracuse, like Sparta and its Peloponnesian allies, was a Dorian city, while most of Athens's allies on the island were Ionian. Another source of conflict was the close relationship of Syracuse and other Dorian cities of the west to Athens's great commercial rival, Corinth. To the Athenians, Sicily was a threat—an unencumbered Syracuse might send grain or other aid to the Peloponnesians—as well as a venue for possible conquests.
In 427 BC, Athens had sent twenty ships, under the command of Laches, in response to an appeal for help from Leontini. That expedition, operating from a base at Rhegium, remained in the area for several years, fighting alongside Athens's local allies against the Syracusans and their allies, without achieving any dramatic successes. In 425, the Athenians planned to reinforce their contingent with an additional forty triremes, but that fleet never reached Sicily, as it became caught up in the pivotal Battle of Pylos on the way there. By the time that fleet reached Sicily in late summer, Athens's Sicilian allies had grown weary of stalemated warfare, and agreed to negotiate with Syracuse and its allies. At the Congress of Gela, the Sicilian cities made peace on the basis of "Sicily for the Sicilians", and the Athenian fleet left for home.
State of the war
In 415, Athens and Sparta had been formally at peace since 421, when the Peace of Nicias had brought the Archidamian War to a close. The terms of that peace, however, had never been fulfilled; Sparta had never surrendered Amphipolis to Athens, as required by the treaty, and in return the Athenians had held Pylos. More recently, Athenian and Spartan troops had fought at the Battle of Mantinea in 418, with Athens supporting Argos, Mantinea, and other Peloponnesian cities in an attempt to establish a stable anti-Spartan alliance in the Peloponnese. That attempt, largely orchestrated by the Athenian nobleman Alcibiades, would have destroyed Sparta's control over the Peloponnesian League had it succeeded. Alcibiades rebounded politically from this defeat, and was elected as a general in the spring of 417. Control of Athens' foreign policy remained divided between a "peace party" (or pro-Spartan party) led by Nicias, and a "war party" led by Alcibiades.
Dispatch of the expedition
Appeal from Segesta
The peace established in Sicily at the Congress of Gela did not last long. Shortly after the Congress, Syracuse intervened in an episode of civil strife between the democratic and oligarchic parties in Leontini, supporting the oligarchs. Before too long, the prospect of foreign domination had united the Leontinians, and the two parties united in war against Syracuse. Athens had sent an emissary to Sicily in 422 to sound out the possibility of renewing the war against Syracuse, but achieved nothing. In 416, however, a second Sicilian conflict provided the invitation Athens had sought in 422. The city of Segesta—an Athenian ally in the 420s—went to war against Selinus and, after losing an initial battle, sent to Athens for help. In order to win the Athenians' support, the Segestaeans claimed that they were capable of funding much of the cost of sending a fleet, offering 60 talents of uncoined silver up front, and tricking Athenian ambassadors into believing that the city was more prosperous than it actually was, by making sure that the ambassadors saw all their golden and other valuable objects in a way as if these were just part of what they had.
The debate
At Athens, the Segestan ambassadors presented their case for intervention to the assembly, where debate over the proposal quickly divided along traditional factional lines. The assembly eventually approved an expedition composed of sixty triremes, without hoplite accompaniment, commanded by Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus. Thucydides reports that Nicias had been appointed against his preference, but offers no further detail regarding that debate.
Five days after that first debate, a second assembly was held to arrange the logistics of the expedition. There, Nicias attempted to persuade the assembly to overturn its previous decision regarding whether to send an expedition at all. Over the course of several speeches, Nicias raised a series of different arguments against the expedition. He reminded the Athenians that they would be leaving powerful enemies behind them if they sent a force to Sicily, and warned that they would be opening hostilities with enemies too difficult and numerous to conquer and rule. Nicias also attacked Alcibiades's credibility, claiming that he and his allies were inexperienced and self-aggrandizing young men eager to lead Athens into war for their own ends.
In response, Alcibiades dismissed the attack on himself by pointing to the good he had done for Athens as a private citizen and public leader. He rebutted Nicias's warnings about the plan for the expedition by reminding the Athenians of their obligation to their Sicilian allies, appealing to the enterprising spirit that had won Athens her empire, and pointing out that many states on Sicily would support Athens in her operations there.
The assembly was clearly leaning towards Alcibiades's side, so Nicias, judging them unlikely to cancel the expedition if he argued against it directly, chose a different tactic. He described the wealth and power of the Sicilian cities Athens would be challenging, and stated that a larger expedition than previously approved would be required, expecting that the prospect of approving such a massive expenditure would prove unappealing to the citizenry. Contrary to Nicias's plan, the assembly enthusiastically embraced his proposal, and passed a motion allowing the generals to arrange for a force of over 100 ships and 5,000 hoplites. Nicias's ploy had failed badly. His misreading of the assembly had altered the strategic situation; whereas the loss of 60 ships would have been painful but bearable, the loss of the larger force would be catastrophic. According to Donald Kagan, "Without Nicias' intervention there would have been an Athenian expedition against Sicily in 415, but there could not have been a disaster."
Destruction of the hermai
After lengthy preparations, the fleet was ready to sail. The night before they were to leave, someone destroyed many of the hermai—the stone markers representing Hermes, placed around the city for good luck. This event was taken very seriously by the Athenian people as it was considered a bad omen for the expedition, as well as evidence of a revolutionary conspiracy to overthrow the government. According to Plutarch, Androcles, a political enemy of Alcibiades, used false witness to claim that Alcibiades and his friends were responsible. Alcibiades volunteered to be put on trial under penalty of death in order to prove his innocence (wanting to avoid his enemies charging him, in his absence, with more false information), but this request was denied.
He was otherwise extremely popular and had the support of the entire army; he had also gained the support of Argos and Mantinea during the preparations. He was not charged, and the fleet sailed the next day. His opponents, however, waited for Alcibiades to set sail before they leveled the charges against him. This was because the army, his main source of support, would be absent, and his supporters would be outnumbered when the votes were cast.
Reaction in Syracuse
Many people in Syracuse, the richest and most powerful city of Sicily, felt that the Athenians were in fact coming to attack them under the pretense of aiding Segesta in a minor war. The Syracusan general Hermocrates suggested that they ask for help from other Sicilian cities, and from Carthage. He also wanted to meet the Athenian fleet in the Ionian Sea before they arrived. Others argued that Athens was no threat to Syracuse, and some people did not believe there was a fleet at all, because Athens would not be so foolish as to attack them while they were still at war with Sparta. Athenagoras accused Hermocrates and others of attempting to instill fear among the population and trying to overthrow the government.
Three generals, three strategies
At the first assembly that authorized the expedition, the Athenians named Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus as its commanders; that decision remained unchanged at the second assembly. Alcibiades was the expedition's leading proponent, and the leader of the war party, Nicias its leading critic and the leader of the peace party. Lamachus, meanwhile, was a fifty-year-old career soldier, of whom the longest extant portrayal is a series of scenes in Aristophanes' The Acharnians that satirize him as a braggadocious, perpetually impoverished warrior. The reasons for the Athenians' choice are not recorded, but the assembly may have been seeking to balance the aggressive young leader with a more conservative older figure, with Lamachus added for his military expertise.
In practice, each of the three generals proposed a different strategy. Nicias proposed a narrowly circumscribed expedition; he felt that the fleet should sail to Selinus and force a settlement between Selinus and Segesta. After that, he proposed to briefly show the flag around Sicily and then return home, unless the Segestans were willing to pay for the full cost of the expanded expedition. Alcibiades proposed to first attempt to win over allies on the island through diplomacy, and then attack Selinus and Syracuse. Lamachus, meanwhile, proposed taking advantage of the element of surprise by sailing directly to Syracuse and giving battle outside the city. Such a sudden attack, he felt, would catch the Syracusans off guard and possibly induce their quick surrender. Eventually, however, Lamachus settled the three-way division of opinion by endorsing Alcibiades's plan.
Course of the expedition
Athenian landing
The Athenian fleet first sailed to Corcyra to meet up with their allies, and the ships were divided into three sections, one for each commander. Three of the ships were sent ahead to look for allies in Sicily. The fleet at this point consisted of 134 triremes (100 of which were from Athens), 5,100 hoplites (of which 2,200 were Athenians), 480 archers, 700 slingers, 120 other light troops, and 30 cavalry, as well as 130 other supply ships and all the crews of the triremes and other non-combatants.
They had little luck finding allies along the coast of southern Italy and, when the three other ships returned, they learned that Segesta did not have the money they promised. Nicias had expected this, but the other commanders were dismayed. Nicias suggested they make a show of force and then return home, while Alcibiades said they should encourage revolts against Syracuse, and then attack Syracuse and Selinus. Lamachus said they should attack Syracuse right away, as it was the predominant city-state in Sicily and had clearly been taken unawares by the Athenians' presence.
The fleet proceeded to Catania, where an Athenian ship arrived to inform Alcibiades that he was under arrest, not only for the destruction of the hermai, but also for supposedly profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries. Alcibiades agreed to return in his ship, but when they stopped in southern Italy at Thurii, he escaped and sailed to the Peloponnese, where he sought refuge in Sparta. Athens passed a death sentence in absentia, his guilt seemingly proven. In Sparta, Alcibiades gave the members of the Peloponnesian League critical information on the Athenian Empire.