Valor, Virtue, and Victory: Brasidas of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War
Introduction
In his seminal work, The Peloponnesian War, the ancient historian Thucydides employed numerous characters from that conflict as devices to reveal competing aspects of human nature. Among these varied political and military personalities, the Spartan general Brasidas emerged as a definitive figure who illustrated the strengths and weaknesses of not only his own city-state’s “national character,” but also that of his great maritime enemy, the Athenian Empire. As an energetic infantry officer who fought to secure Peloponnesian interests through irregular strategies during the initial Archidamian phase of the war, the innovative field commander personified the best aspects of his peoples’ martial education and piety. However, in a remarkable fusion of Hellenic qualities, he enhanced this conservatism with aspects of Athenian audacity and charisma that allowed him to achieve outsized strategic impact on the war.
The resulting portrayal of Brasidas facilitated a nuanced commentary on the extremes and excesses of a violent and bitter war that Thucydides called the “greatest movement known in history.” As defined by the two dominant city states’ leaders at the onset of conflict, the unorthodox commander shaped the early course of the war by combining Sparta’s tradition of “wise moderation” with Athens’s more ambitious “spectacle of daring.” Throughout the long chronical of this struggle for mastery of Hellas, Thucydides deployed Brasidas not only to juxtapose his distinctive qualities against friend and foe, but also to illustrate competing motivations that compelled Sparta and Athens to embrace hegemony. For the Spartans, also called Lacedaemons, his efforts to achieve what he called “liberation for the Hellenes” would serve his polis well and propel Sparta through its darkest days of the war.
Competing Societal Characters
Any understanding of Brasidas, as perhaps the most Athenian of the Spartans in Thucydides’ history, begins with a more expansive appreciation of the bitter confrontation of societal characteristics that defined and drove the course of the war. Reflecting a commentary on the nexus of imperial struggle and human nature, personalities like Brasidas, in addition to an array of statesmen, generals, and envoys from opposing sides, emerge as instructive characters in a larger drama that eventually encompassed and scarred all of Greece. Thus with Sparta ostensibly endorsing the ideal of Hellenic moderation and Athens representing the potential of Hellenic dynamism, the historian adeptly utilizes the Spartan commander to bring the competing energies and hard political interests of the dominant city-states into sharp relief.
Thucydides, who served as an Athenian strategos early in the war, emphasized the theme of Spartan traditionalism and deliberation in order to establish the contrast between Sparta and Athens. Throughout the work, the author consistently implied Sparta to be the just actor in his panoramic narrative, creating a sometimes hypocritical foil for the specter of Athenian naval imperialism that was increasingly dominating the peoples of the Aegean Sea. This description of traditionalism began with praise of cultural artifacts, where Thucydides associated the Spartans’ “modest style of dressing” and preference for “contending naked” in games with “modern ideas” that represented Hellenic propriety. He likewise lauded the Spartan elites’ attempts to “assimilate their way of life to that of the common people,” as if to separate them from the ostentatious Athenians and the even more opulent and notoriously despotic Persians.
The historian translates this individual modesty into societal character, citing the Lacedaemons as the only great power who “knew how to be wise in prosperity” while noting that “the more security” Sparta gained “the greater it grew.” Beginning in book one, Thucydides utilized speeches of the Spartan King, Archidamus, and his allies the Corinthians, to establish this conservative nature. In 432 B.C., as the Corinthians attempted to shame Sparta into declaring war against Athens for siding with their Corcyrean enemies, they accuse the famed warriors of being inclined to, “attempt less than is justified by your power,” and argued that they suffered from “a total want of invention.” As if to cement this idea, Thucydides then allowed the king to agree, but in a different context. When cautioning against hasty hostilities, Archidamus claimed that Spartans “alone do not become insolent in success” and lauded his society for suffering “less than others in misfortune.” He further explained that “it is our sense of order that makes us so.”
In a marked contrast with this Spartan moderation, Thucydides revealed the scope of Athenian dynamism with equal documentation. Intending to delineate the “wide difference between the two characters” of Hellas’s two greatest powers, he constructed an array of speeches to define Athens’s enterprising and aggrandizing nature. The Corinthians, as before, offered perhaps the most critical commentary on this subject. Again attempting to provoke Sparta, they warned of “the establishment in Hellas of a tyrant state” and declared that the Athenians, with their desire for imperial domination, “take no rest and allow none to anyone else.” As for Athenian audacity, the Corinthians described them as “addicted to innovation” and argued that their “designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution.” The envoy finally accused that the people of Athens were “adventurous beyond their power” and “daring beyond their judgment.”
From an opposing perspective, others justified Athens’ rise to power for well deserved excellence. The great statesman Pericles, architect of his city’s war strategy, offered a more admirable interpretation of his peoples’ innate nature. In his famed Funeral Oration, the “first citizen of Athens” proclaimed that his people had “forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring” and boasted that, “in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle.” He then asserted that Athens was “the school of Hellas,” while lauding the individual Athenian citizen as “equal to so many emergencies” and “graced by so happy a versatility.” Pericles further defended his city’s ability to “provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business” and to “cultivate refinement without extravagance.” Later in the chronicle, the Athenian demagogue Cleon emphasized the fickle nature of the citizen assembly, perhaps hypocritically, by complaining that it was driven by “cleverness and intellectual rivalry.”
These competing national characters, those of traditional moderation and progressive dynamism, manifested in a vivid contrast of virtues associated with hegemonic rule. From the very commencement of the war, each of the great cities led and expanded their alliances under precarious, and often contradictory, justifications, bringing acute issues of morality between master and subject to the fore. With this tension defining the work, Thucydides subtly evoked Sparta as the “liberators of Hellas,” despite the self-serving and pragmatic nature of its foreign policy, and even asserted that the Lacedaemons had brought “freedom from tyrants” in the Persian Wars. Conversely, he recorded that the majority of Hellenic opinion moved against Athens by subjects “who wished to escape from her empire” or those who “were apprehensive of being absorbed by it.” The careers of Brasidas and his Athenian rivals, as generals who fought to extend liberation and domination, illustrated the tensions of imperial rule.
Brasidas and Martial Virtue
With such a rich landscape of contrasting ideals, motivations, and contradictions established by Thucydides as the foundational narrative of his work, Brasidas arrived to bring further definition to the Hellenic scene. Revealed as a man who risked everything for both his city’s benefit and the cause of liberty, a picture emerges of an energetic and perceptive field commander who personified many of the best Lacedaemon qualities while moving beyond Sparta’s traditional weaknesses. According to Thucydides’ own assessment, Brasidas demonstrated “moderation in all his conduct” and showed himself to be “so good a man at all points” that potential allies found him attractive and compelling, making him an idealized martial projection of Archidamus’ vision of the “warlike and wise” Spartan warrior.
As a leading strategos during the first decade of the war that began with his initial courageous service at Methone in 431 and ended with his Homeric death at Amphipolis in 422, Brasidas added the martial quality of audacity to buttress and improve the ideal of Lacedaemon deliberation. Portrayed as a man of heroic stature time and time again, his wartime exploits included impetuously preserving the allied city of Methone through a hazardous charge in the opening year of the conflict; valorously fighting Athenian troops in disadvantageous tactical positions at Pylos and Spakteria in 425; and selflessly defending the allied city of Amphipolis to the north of Athens just before the Peace of Nicias. Throughout these campaigns, Brasidas was notable for his insightful planning, decisive decisions, rapid marches, sudden attacks, and unique ability to train and inspire seemingly inferior allied troops to fight with conviction on behalf of the Peloponnesian League.
Further appreciation of Brasidas as a reflection of Spartan values must include closer examination of his personal military abilities. While Sparta’s intense warrior culture may at first glance appear extreme, especially in comparison with a more cosmopolitan and democratic polis like Athens, it actually represented the very heart of Lacedaemon moderation. Explained by Thucydides through the words of Archidamus in the introductory Archeology, the warrior king proclaimed that Spartans are not innately unique from other men, but rather that “superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school.” He also emphasized that Lacedaemons were, “warlike because self-control contains honor as a chief constraint.” In this sense, Spartan discipline and resolve were contrasted with the Athenian propensity to become, as criticized by Thucydides, “insolently elated” or “victims to a panic” according to the fortunes of war.
Brasidas exemplified this theme of Spartan martial prowess when he imparted his stern education, gained in the brutal agora and in the ranks of the Spartan heavy infantry, to the allies that he recruited to weaken Athenian power in northern Greece. Speaking to a mix of helots, citizens, and mercenaries in 423 on the eve of battle in the Chalcidice region, the general explained how “bravery” stems not from superior numbers, but instead from “superiority in the field.” He then emphasized the “regular order” which their opponents lacked and criticized the adversary’s obsession with “outward appearance” and proclivity for “loud yelling.” In comparison, with a nod the attributes that made the Spartan corps of peers seemingly invincible in battle, Brasidas gave a final command to his phalanx of anxious infantrymen: “stand your ground therefore when they advance, and wait your opportunity to retire in good order.”
This talent for transforming lesser soldiers into quality troops by way of superior training and genuine inspiration revealed itself again as Brasidas prepared his coalition for what would be his final battle. As the Peloponnesian-led coalition prepared to repel an impending assault against Amphipolis by a vengeful Athenian force under the populist Cleon in 422, the Spartan commander first assured his men that they would “see me already upon them, as is likely, dealing terror among them.” He then exhorted the nervous troops to, “show yourself a brave man, as a Spartiate should,” and compelled them to recall that “zeal, honor, and obedience mark the good soldier.” Despite sustaining a mortal wound, Thucydides noted that Brasidas “lived long enough to hear of the victory of his troops,” allowing him to realize the triumph of the Spartan method, even when imparted to non-Lacedaemons, over the fear and chaos of war.
While Brasidas’s repeated instances of effective combat leadership personified the traditional Spartan strengths of discipline and resolve, he simultaneously overcame the persistent critique, as portrayed by Thucydides, of “slowness and procrastination” that often marked their military strategy and foreign policy. In contrast, as demonstrated in the rapidity and decisiveness of his campaigns across Hellas, the exceptional general embraced a very Athenian flavor of audacity that brought decisiveness to his peoples’ careful deliberation. Thus the historian, who described numerous characters in vivid detail, was drawn to praise Brasidas in terms not ascribed to any other Spartan in the book, writing that the newly gained allies were “eager to have a man so energetic as he,” and that “his service abroad proved of the utmost use to his country.”
Contrasting Hegemonic Narratives
This combination of Spartan education and Athenian daring invited several illustrative comparisons. On the Lacedaemon side, Brasidas’ improvised campaigns across northwestern Hellas, in addition to his audacious action at Pylos where he shouted for his fleet to “shiver their vessels and force a landing,” stood in marked contrast with the more conservative maneuvers of the main Spartan army. Time and time again, the Spartan kings Archidamus and Agis led their famous infantry phalanxes to “ravage the plain” of Attica without ever dissuading Athens from Pericles’s directive for his citizenry to, “not go out to battle, but to come into the city and guard it, and get ready their fleet.” If not for the plague that devastated Athens and the damaging ambitions of Cleon and Alcibiades, it is possible that the Spartan kings’ conventional strategy would have failed to yield ultimate victory over their well-fortified and seafaring adversary.
In a vivid contrast of both scope and effect, Brasidas’s economized campaigns in the Thracian region threatened to impede Athens crucial grain supply and remove tributary states from the empire—all without risking the integrity of the irreplaceable Spartan corps of peers. Through a combination of audacity, deception, and astute diplomacy, the general managed to bring several key Athenian subject cities into revolt while capturing others through force. At the culmination of the general’s career in 422 when he charged to victory and death at the city of Amphipolis, his final achievement was to shatter an Athenian expeditionary force under Cleon. In this manner, Brasidas, as Thucydides’ most dynamic Spartan, was perhaps more comparable to the energetic Athenian general Demosthenes than to his peer commanders at home.
In addition to combining discipline and audacity on the battlefield, Brasidas embodied the convergence of two other competing attributes: Spartan piety and Athenian charisma. Beginning with the former, the general publicly revered the deities, and even more importantly, portrayed an attractive modesty of character. In 424, as he stormed the Athenian controlled fortress of Lecythus in the Chaldician region, Brasidas proclaimed that he would give “thirty silver pieces” to the “man first on the wall.” Upon seizing the heights, however, he decided that the victory could not have been accomplished by “human agency” and instead donated the money to the temple of Athena. Brasidas then razed the town and declared it to be “consecrated ground.” The victorious Spartan then “put to the sword all he found,” revealing his capacity for ruthlessness.
While this reverence to Athena may have been calculated to produce the appearance of piety, Thucydides nevertheless juxtaposed Brasidas’s actions against other leaders who devolved into sacrilege. Foremost amongst these stood the political chameleon Alcibiades, an Athenian aristocrat who’s “private life” gave “offense to everyone.” In terms of sheer impiety, the charismatic military leader was indicted by the Athenian assembly while away with the Sicilian Expedition in 415 for, “sacrilege in the matter of the Mysteries and of the Hermae,” where accusers said that he profaned divine ceremonies and statues. The resulting dismissal of Alcibiades from shared command of the “most costly and splendid Hellenic force that had ever been sent out,” and his subsequent exile from Athens, stood in marked contrast with Brasidas, who’s public modestly coincided with a glorious victory at the height of his military career.
Despite this apparent lesson in the merits of humility and veneration, Brasidas’s appeal extended beyond sacred reverence and into the sphere of public reputation. When describing the admirable impression that the Spartan made on other Hellenes as he campaigned to expand the Peloponnesian confederacy in northeastern Greece, Thucydides wrote that he was already “known by experience to some” and “by hearsay to others,” and that it was this reputation that “mainly created an esteem for the Spartans among the allies of Athens.” In a rare instance of unequivocally lionizing a prominent personality, the historian, who personally observed many of the events of the Peloponnesian War, then argued that Brasidas engendered such admiration of his personal conduct “as to leave behind him the conviction that the rest were like him.”
This portrayal of Brasidas as a paragon of piety and modesty found further contrast with another Lacedaemon of great fame: the disgraced general Pausanias. Though Thucydides wrote that he was once “held in high honor by the Hellenes as the hero of Plataea” after he commanded the Hellenic alliance that defeated the massive Persian invasion of 479, the author carefully related how Pausanias swiftly fell from power and into corruption following his great victory. When given post-war command over a Pan-Hellenic confederacy at the strategically located Hellespont far beyond the restraining influence of Lacedaemon culture, the famous general “became prouder than ever,” developed a “violent temper,” and fell under Persian influence. Rival factions back in Sparta subsequently arrested the scandalized general, leading to an agonizing death by starvation when they imprisoned him in a temple where he had sought sanctuary.
More importantly, these character flaws served as “the principal reason why the confederacy went over to the Athenians,” thus setting Sparta’s great rival on its violent course for empire. In contrast to Pausanias, the less famous Brasidas was shown to be impervious to foreign corruption, and through his “valor and conduct,” had a beneficial influence on prospective allies. As the embodiment of Sparta’s best ideals, Thucydides deduced that his “just and moderate conduct towards the cities generally succeeded in persuading many to revolt.” With such adept diplomacy, the general convinced the strategically-positioned cities of Acanthus, Amphipolis, and Toroni, in addition to a network of lesser towns and villages across northern Greece, to abandon Athens in favor of a seemingly more benign military alliance with Sparta.
While Brasidas’s deployment of personal moderation under the gaze of potential allies arguably equaled the value of entire regiments, the Spartan strategos further enhanced his peoples’ character with another distinctly Athenian quality: demagogic charisma. Just before he delivered a moving speech to the Acanthians, who were a people on the Athos peninsula in northern Hellas that he had successfully enticed to join the Peloponnesian League, Thucydides described the commander as “not being a bad speaker for a Spartan.” This comment underscored how the author appreciated the famously laconic nature of Lacedaemon oratory and again placed the “seductive arguments of Brasidas” in direct comparison with the early, and ultimately unsuccessful, speeches of Archidamus that failed to keep Sparta out of the war.
Brasidas’s charismatic oratory is thus emphasized in several speeches where he skillfully motivated allied Hellenes to achieve his city’s military objectives. As before, this capacity for persuasion found the Spartan general in direct contrast with Alcibiades. At first glance, within the context of persuasive public speaking, both men were seen to be extremely capable at bringing audiences over to their agenda. Alcibiades, who learned rhetoric and logic from Socrates, demonstrated this ability by forming of the Argos alliance in 419, speaking in the assembly to propel the Sicilian Expedition four years later, and in his seminal speech at Sparta following exile from Athens. Brasidas, on the other hand, proved his rhetorical skills in his appeal to a potential ally called Acanthus, to his soldiers on the eve of battle in the Chalcidice region in 423, and finally at Amphipolis the next year when he convinced the city to fight.
The Spartan general’s longest oratory in the history, which he again delivered to the “popular party” of Acanthus, emerged as an example of particularly compelling address that had immediate political ramifications. As he made the case for accepting Spartan leadership, the general wove moral and civic themes of Hellenic liberation into a compelling argument to rise up against Athenian imperial domination. The following quote, in which Thucydides revealed the Spartan commander’s unique ability to describe new realities, concluded the speech: “Endeavor, therefore, to decide wisely, and strive to begin the work of liberation for the Hellenes, and gain for yourselves endless renown” in order to “cover your commonwealth with glory.”
Despite the similarly effective charismas of Brasidas and Alcibiades, the effects of their demagoguery had divergent results. For the Spartan commander, his speeches brought tangible benefits to his home city while creating immediate strategic crises for Athens. While he had been dispatched to ostensibly “free Hellas” from the yoke of Athenian imperialism, he practically inspired the northern cities to fight and sacrifice in ways that benefited Spartan geopolitical interests. Alcibiades, in contrast, instigated several major campaigns that ended in disaster for the Athenian people. When he helped create a coalition in 419 to challenge Spartan power on land, the Peloponnesians crushed the allied army at the Battle of Mantinea. Later, when Alcibiades inspired a massive armada to conquer Sicily, the unprecedented investment in ships and men by his city ended with “a destruction so complete not being thought credible.”
Valor, Virtue, and Victory
Given this panorama of narratives, Brasidas’s achievements and death emerged as an insightful commentary on the nature of human conflict. When describing the instability of Greece during the decades-long war between Sparta and Athens, Thucydides famously wrote that “war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that brings most men’s characters to a level with their fortunes.” It is likely then, as the historian employed Brasidas to illuminate the full spectrum of Hellenic values, that the Spartan’s career exemplified this timeless observation. As a traditional Spartiate, his severe education and cultural moderation allowed him to negotiate “many and terrible” sufferings as “the whole Hellenic world was convulsed.” As a charismatic field commander, his dynamism, when expressed within the limits of “self control,” demonstrated how personal excellence can coexist with reverent behavior.
It seems, then, that Thucydides established in the person of Brasidas a versatile literary foil that was simultaneously both disciplined and daring, both pious and charismatic. As the historian contrasted the unconventional Spartan general against the opposing societal characteristics described by Archidamus and Pericles, and subtly compared him to grasping leaders like Cleon and Alcibiades, the author revealed extremes of the “nature of mankind” as represented by Hellas’s competing powers. On one side, the traditional-minded Sparta was found to hold an admirable moderation, lacking only the potential of Brasidas’s daring and innovation to unleash its potential. On the other, Athens was shown to be afflicted by the extremities its own dynamism, needing the practical restraint of a figure like the Lacedaemon commander.
In the subsequent collision of values, Thucydides found his greatest tension within the competing narratives of imperial hegemony. While Brasidas’s leadership and sacrifice emerged as the polar opposite to the Athenian declaration at Melios that, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” his relationship to his own city was more nuanced. Even as the general fought to “liberate” potential allies from the Athenian Empire, Thucydides wrote that the Spartan ephors planned to “offer in exchange” the very same cities for a negotiated peace and prisoner repatriation—revealing that Sparta valued its own interests over principles of freedom and justice. In this context, Brasidas was shown to be the personification of altruistic virtue, standing above the realism of geopolitical interests. Since the author never indicates that the general intended to betray his professed ideas, he is portrayed with a purity of intent that was absent from his more pragmatic and duplicitous home government.
This personal commitment to the ideals of Hellenic freedom culminated with Brasidas’s heroic demise at the Second Battle of Amphipolis in 422. The event occurred when, after a large Athenian force had landed to capture the important coastal city, the Spartan officer led his allied troops in a surprise attack that preempted the aggressors’ plans and resulted in a decisive Peloponnese victory. In a final endorsement, Thucydides wrote that the Amphipolians, seeking to honor the strategos who had trained, inspired, and led their soldiers with such distinction, “attended in arms and buried Brasidas at the public expense in the city.” Then, in an act of praise not allowed to any other Hellene in the history, the victorious allies deified the Spartan by committing to “ever afterwards sacrifice to him as a hero.” They finally granted to Brasidas “the honor of games and annual offerings,” bringing a measure of immortality to his legacy.
The resulting portrayal of the character Brasidas as the Spartan who had “been sent out to free Hellas” established the final juxtaposition for the narrative arc that defined the great contest between Sparta and Athens. Throughout Thucydides’ expansive history, he described how nearly every other general met with tragic deaths that symbolized either their own faults or the excesses or weaknesses of their people. For the Athenians, the intrepid Demosthenes and the virtuous Nicias found ignominious ends during Athens’s hour of greatest folly in Sicily. The demagogue Cleon, who was the “most violent man in Athens,” later died in the same battle as Brasidas, but without any virtue or significance to mark his death. And finally, Alcibiades, the personification of corrupt “license,” eventually died in Persia as a spurned expatriate at the hand of an assassin when both he and his defeated city paid the price for unbridled “aggrandizement.”
The symbolic deaths of these men, in addition to the uninspiring leadership of Archidamus and the meteoric fall of Pausanias, placed Brasidas’s Homeric ending in a singular light. While each of them at times matched the Spartan general in personal courage, dedication to piety, or sheer charismatic appeal, none of them measured against Thucydides’ more balanced portrayal of the “preserver” of Amphipolis. They and their societies found vivid contrast with the commander who brought the “severest school” to foreign helots and mercenaries; their imperialistic intentions paled against the general who came, “not to hurt but to free the Hellenes.” Thus in the illuminating life and death of Brasidas, the finest Spartan values of moderation were enhanced with the most useful aspects of Athenian dynamism. In the timeless reflection that emerged, perhaps we find the ideal representation of the most virtuous and valorous citizen-soldier.
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