Peace (9 page)

Tyrants, not necessarily cruel rulers, but who took and held power by force, barely ruled chaotic Athens through the fifth century. One of their progeny, Cleisthenes, ushered Athens into its golden age by continuing the reforms Solon had started, though he self-consciously styled them
isonomic
, equality in law, rather than
democratic
, rule by the people. Other city-states then began emulating Athens' isonomic model or were made to by Athenians, which Spartans started to see as a threat to their authoritarian ways. The Athenian rhetorician Isocrates (436–338 BCE) said of his polis' political prowess during this period:

. . . we established the same polity in the other states as in Athens itself – a polity which I see no need to extol at greater length, since I can tell the truth about it in a word: They continued to live under this regime for seventy years, and, during this time, they experienced no tyrannies, they were free from the domination of the barbarians, they were untroubled by internal factions, and they were at peace with all the world.
²⁶

In the same rhetorical vein, the age's great charismatic leader Pericles (c. 495–429 BCE) called the Athens he knew the “School of Greece,” though it was only partly the school of domestic peace, if at all. At its worst, Athens under Solon's exclusivist democratic system was detrimental to domestic peace because it vested too much power in the whims of a minority while prohibiting the majority from participating in the very political processes by which they were excluded. The result was a cycle of
coups and tyrannies through which “lawless ferocity and violence” became the norm in historian Polybius' words (
c
. 203–120 BCE).
²⁷
At its best, Athens under Cleisthenes' isonomic restructuring promoted peace by turning potentially violent conflicts between opposing constituents into non-violent political struggles.

Sparta, not Athens, was the guiding light of the many leagues between Ancient Greek city-states, for the only valid pretext for inter-polis peace proved to be uniting to face a common enemy, as exemplified in the Peloponnesian, Hellenic and Delian Leagues. The first of these, which flourished during the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, was formed by Sparta to stop a rival from regaining power after defeat and to curtail another's ascendancy. To these ends, Spartans used their skill in war as a bargaining chip, bringing Corinth into the League by overthrowing its tyrant upon request and securing Elis' control over the Olympic Games by trouncing all of its competitors. A turning point in the history of Sparta's foreign war and peace strategies came when war broke out with Tegea (
c
. 560 BCE). Sparta strategically limited the decisive battle to the frontiers in order keep the polis intact as a League ally after submission, which Tegea then became – among the earliest known instances of intentionally limiting warfare for the sake of post-war peace. In return for accepting Spartan hegemony, particularly but not only in matters of foreign policy, League members were promised protection from non-member aggressors, which now principally meant Persia. The Greco-Persian Wars (
c
. 500–450 BCE) showcased many of the League's strengths, notably the effective cooperation, determination and military might of Greeks if and when they worked together. But the Wars also exposed many of the League's deficiencies, including its erratic gatherings usually called only by Sparta, inconsistent financial and material support and disproportionate participation in its missions.

Towards the Wars' end, the Peloponnesian League gave way to the short-lived Hellenic League, which of necessity combined Sparta's army and Athens' navy to amphibiously deter Persia. When Pausanias, the new League's Spartan military commander, was stripped of power for conspiring with the Persians (
c
. 478 BCE), Athens was handed the Hellenic helm and proceeded to reform the League along more isonomic than authoritarian lines. Seeing Athens' hegemony as a threat to its power, Sparta broke away from the Hellenic League and reformed the Peloponnesian League along its original lines. In 477 BCE, city-states faithful to Athens reunited in the Delian League, so-called after the sacred polis Delos where it originally met and collected its wealth, in the tradition of the old Amphictyonic League. With Athenian wisdom, Delians called for the termination of hostilities between members, regular meetings and commensurate contributions. But Delians remained Spartan in
spirit. Though early on they deployed diplomats around Greece to enlarge the League, they soon began doing so by force; its isonomic principles faded and began to favor larger members. That the Delian League had become an Athenian Empire became clear when Pericles moved its financial centre from Delos to Athens in 454 BCE, putting the golden in Athens' golden age. An Athenian delegate, Callias, negotiated a peace treaty with the Persians on behalf of the Delian League in 449, by which “all might sail without fear and be at peace,” in Plutarch's account.
²⁸
The operative word here is “sail,” symbolizing Athens and its naval allies. The Peace of Callias was not binding on Sparta and its continental allies, who arguably betrayed Athens in a separate peace with Persia in 387, the King's Peace or the Treaty of Atlantidas, forfeiting centuries of Greek maritime gains.

The benefit of these Leagues, called
symmachiae
, offensive and defensive accords by which both friends and enemies are shared, was that Ancient Greeks explicitly agreed not to fight and to settle disputes diplomatically within them. Permanent ambassadors called
proxenos
represented their city's interests abroad, acting as arbiters and tendering trade treaties. Perpetual war with Persia precludes calling these alliances peaceful, but they were nonetheless among the few ways inter-polis peace was achieved. With the Persian threat temporarily dissipated, the divergence in the Leagues' interests, one land and the other the sea, made each the convenient common enemy the other needed to protect their respective inter-polis peace. In a vain attempt to preserve the status quo, the Leagues agreed to the Thirty Years Peace in 336 BCE to prevent an escalation in ongoing armed conflict. Within five years, however, friction between Sparta and Athens reached a boiling point, Persia sided with Sparta and diplomatic relations deteriorated. The resulting Peloponnesian War (431– 404) was a series of indecisive battles, pitting sea against land power, punctuated by brief periods of peace. Less than halfway into the war, the Athenian spokesman Nicias and Sparta's king negotiated a truce. The events leading up to the Peace of Nicias, which historian Thucydides (
c
. 460–395) aptly called “hollow,” were satirically portrayed in
Peace
by Aristophanes, who pioneered anti-war theatre.
²⁹
Delegates from each side decided its terms, reflecting “the results of a war which neither side had won,” that is, this was more a proclamation of stalemate than peace.
³⁰
In Thucydides' words, the Peace “cannot be reasonably defined as a real peace, since in that period they did not reciprocally return and recover all the things they pledged to do.”
³¹
Neither party to the Peace was satisfied with the performance of the other and, as if inevitably, war flared up again five years later. In the end, downtrodden Sparta and destitute Athens both fell before the region's rising star, Macedon and its Corinthian League. The conquests of Alexander the Great are worth noting here only insofar
as they ushered in Ancient Greece's last great territorial grab, which wholly un-peacefully paved the way for the Roman Empire and, in its footprints, medieval and modern Europe.

The sharply jagged line of political peace in Ancient Greece should not detract from the smoother though no less curved one drawn by its famous philosophers. Thucydides argued that “speaking as they do the same language, [Greeks] should end their disputes by the means of heralds and messengers, and by any way rather than fighting.”
³²
Philosophy proved to be one of those ways. How peace principles, if they exist, should be put in practice by individuals in society, if they can, are just a few of the questions raised and divergently answered. Philosophers before Socrates are usually grouped together for their materialist rather than mythological (as in Hesiod's) explanations of the universe and humanity's place within it. Thales, credited with being the first such thinker, devised a scheme to unite Greek cities into one state, keeping their autonomy but coordinated from a capital. Empedocles developed the theory of the four universal elements (water, fire, earth and air) being united by the attractive force of love and separated by the repulsive force of strife. Relations between these elements as between humans unfold in four phases. In the first love dominates, in the second love and strife compete for supremacy, in the third strife triumphs and in the last love trumps strife, an unending cycle. In Pythagoras' theory of universal harmony, based on the study of rigorous yet mystic mathematical formulas and astronomical observations, violence and war are aberrations of a creative cosmic order he called the One, which humanity can learn about and live by. An early biographer claims “So much did he hate killing and killers that not only did he refuse to eat the meat of slaughtered animals but he avoided the company of cooks and hunters.”
³³
Thus Western philosophies of peace were born.

The historian Herodotus developed a similar concept of universal patterns (
eike
) that, when recognized and acted upon, can improve humanity's lot. He correspondingly sees peace as a universal pattern and war its aberration: “In peace children bury their parents; war violates the universal pattern, causing parents to bury their children.”
³⁴
Heraclitus, in contrast, contended that the universe's true being is flux and that permanence is an illusion. From his metaphoric river, which can never be stepped in twice, it can be inferred that peace and peacemaking violate universal law to the extent they resist change, while “war is the father of all things” insofar as it sires change.
³⁵
The famed Oath of the physician Hippocrates, still invoked today, did more than make medicine a profession distinct from theurgy. Swearing to work “for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment,” physicians must also promise to “keep them from harm and injustice” and “neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it,” nor “make a suggestion to this effect.”
³⁶
His
medical law prescribed both a non-violent code of conduct for practicing medical professionals and collective moral guidelines – also the ethical agenda of modern organizations and conventions. Encapsulating individualistic pathos and collective ethos of pre-Socratic philosophers is Protagoras. He practiced Sophistry (“to become wise”), and was hired as a private tutor or to plead on his client's behalf. The relativistic reasoning and rhetorical skills Protagoras engaged in could be used to argue all sides of any dispute between individuals or groups. A fellow Sophist once remarked that “Philosophy is a machine for attacking the laws,” a nonviolent alternative to weapons.
³⁷
Replacing armed conflict with debate, preventing violence by compromise, and expediting reconciliation through agreement, Sophistic abilities fetched a high price in turbulent Athens. But the open, critical dialogue Protagoras practiced has proved invaluable to peace and conflict resolution throughout history.

Socrates' crux status in the
philosophy of peace
derives from the intellectual and pedagogical traditions culminating in and inaugurated by his star student, Plato. His place in the
history of peace
, however, derives from how he lived and faced his death. Like Protagoras, Socrates promoted open, critical dialogue, took on students and argued cases. Xenophon quotes him saying that “enmities and dangers are inseparable from violence, but persuasion produces the same results. . . who would rather take a man's life than have a live and willing follower?”
³⁸
But unlike Protagoras, he disparaged payment and titles, living as an urban itinerant with an uncanny knack for conversation, fountainhead of his fame and downfall. The Socratic Method named after him consists of pointed questions and answers which aggregately reveal truths or ideas. Directed by individuals, actualized in collective collaboration, the dialectical process Socrates practiced still stands as a paradigm for studying and teaching peace, as well as for making and maintaining it. However, reducing the Method to a formula blinds us to the social significance of his way of life. Socrates' quest for wisdom, and the “good life” lived accordingly, is radically democratic in that anyone can do likewise, regardless of their background. The Socratic paragon is also seditiously isonomic in that everyone begins on an equal footing with the same rights to wisdom and its benefits, like peace. The path Protagoras trampled, Socrates made his own: a total replacement of force with dialogue in daily affairs, used towards social-, not just self-improvement and -empowerment. Harassed but unharmed during the Thirty Tyrants' reign, when Athenians were convicted and executed without trial, only after democracy was restored was he charged with disruptive behavior and corrupting youth. He defended his cause and was found guilty of these capital crimes. Friends tried to convince him to escape; he tried to convince them that injustice, inherently antithetical to peace, cannot be overcome by further injustice.
As his final remonstration, Socrates silently drank the fabled hemlock, making the greatest irony of his life his death. Not an act of civil disobedience, nor passive or non-violent resistance, since he carried out the sentence of killing himself; rather, Socrates' distinctive form of peaceful protest, if it can be so called, turned silence into statement, complicity into defiance, submission into rebellion and surrender into victory.