This is the second part in our two-part special on the Peloponnesian War. To read the first, see here.
Late in the summer of 418 BC, if Thucydides is to be trusted, a message reached the Spartan capital of Lacedaemon from those known to be ‘serviceable’ to the Spartans at the Arcadian pólıs of Tegea (in the mountainous centre of the Peloponnese). If they did not quickly show up in force, they were told, there would be a revolution and the city would go over to the anti-Lacedaemonian coalition that had formed around their rivals the Argives.
This was a grave matter for the Spartans, who controlled the southern Peloponnese. As we have seen, their way of life rested on Lacedaemon’s subjection of the Messenians occupying the Pamisos valley, across the Taygetus massif from the Eurotas valley in Laconia, where the Spartans themselves resided. These Messenians were a nation in bondage, functioning as sharecroppers, or helots; and apt to revolt at any time. They were also far more numerous than the Spartans, and the chief road linking the two river basins ran through a district in south-central Arcadia not far from Tegea. The Argive coalition – named after the city of Argos, in the eastern Peloponnese – had the support of the Athenians. It included two of Sparta’s erstwhile allies – the Eleans and the citizens of Mantineia, which lay in Arcadia just to the north of Tegea. If the last of these cities joined the coalition, Lacedaemon’s very existence would come into question.
It is not then surprising that, in response to this emergency, a relief force of Spartiates, their Lacedaemonian subject-allies the períoıkoı, and their helots immediately set out from Sparta. Word went out for the Arcadians still in alliance with the Lacedaemonians to join them at Tegea. Messengers were dispatched to Sparta’s more-distant allies – the Corinthians, Boeotians, Phocians, and Locrians – asking that they, too, come as soon as possible; and, though Thucydides does not mention it, couriers were no doubt sent on similar errands elsewhere.
War Classics – Wellington in the Peninsula