Principles:
- One person can make the difference between victory and defeat
- Specialised training and knowledge are the most precious commodity in the execution of strategy
- If Alcibiades would have done it, run away
Alcibiades, infamous Athenian politician and desperado who
would ultimately work for each of the three major powers of the Aegean,
sometimes more than once, is possibly more responsible than anyone else for the
downfall of Athens. In his first career
in Athenian politics, he was an orator of great power and good at building
patriotic jingoism around wild and doubtful schemes. His most doubtful scheme was to muster one of
the greatest amphibious forces the world had ever seen to attack the city-state
of Syracuse in Sicily. Athens at this
time was in the middle of a major war with Sparta. Syracuse was not involved, but had to be
taken out because... well, none of the reasons given sound really plausible,
except that Athens wasn’t doing too well against Sparta, but the one thing they
were good at was attacking smaller cities and stealing their riches.
The Syracusan reaction to the most powerful navy in the
known world coming to their doorstep was roughly the same level of bewilderment
as you might experience if one of the contestants in the middle of a boxing
match suddenly left the ring and started punching a member of the audience for
no apparent reason. The Syracusans had
little military experience, but they could build a wall, so they did that, and
sent ambassadors to Sparta to beg for help.
Sparta, despite its reputation, could be extremely
conservative in its military commitments (there’s a reason why the movie 300 is not called 15, 205). Their weakness was
that they had very few militarily-trained Equals, on whose numbers and
reputation their external security (against the many peoples they managed to
tick off), and internal security (against their large population of enslaved
Helots), depended. Thus, they were
actually very squeamish about losing Equals in large numbers, or worse, being
seen to lose battles.
Enter Alcibiades, who by this time had defected to Sparta to
avoid a death sentence for sacrilege, the first of many such changes of side
during his career. He persuaded the
Spartan kings of the need for immediate action.
Act they did- by sending all of four ships.
Fortunately for Syracuse, one of these ships contained
Gylippus, a Spartan general. Gylippus
landed, rallied his forces and attempted to link up with the Syracusans. After some trial and error, he realised they were
fair to middling soldiers, but Gylippus publicly attributed their early failure
to his own tactical error and inspired them with the confidence they needed to
prevent the Athenians from encircling their city with a second wall. Gylippus’ strategy thereafter was twofold:
unite the island of Sicily in the defence of Syracuse, and train the Syracusans
in the Spartan way of war.
Gylippus was a resounding success, turning the armies of
Sicily into a force capable of defeating the preeminent power of the ancient
world on land and at sea. He proved both
the value of training and the impact of the right person in the right place. He then tried to embezzle the proceeds of
victory and was exiled from Sparta, proving that even a great strategist can be
done in by one major character flaw.
As for Alcibiades, having “served” Athens, Sparta, Persia,
and then Athens again, he died a pauper in exile, probably at the hands of one
of the many thousands of people who wanted the smooth-tongued philandering snake
dead.
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