Battle of Miletus
| date | 412 BC Chr. |
|---|---|
| place | Miletus in Ionia |
| Casus Belli | Ionic defection from the Attic Empire |
| output | fruitless victory of Athens, strategic success of Sparta and Persia |
| consequences | final loss of Ionia, alliance between Sparta and Persia |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
Sparta , Miletus , Persian Empire ; Chios , ( Syracuse ) |
|
| Commander | |
|
Phrynichus , Onomakles , Skironides, Strombichides , Thrasykles |
Tissaphernes , Alkibiades , Therimenes , Hermocrates , ( Chalkideus †) |
| Troop strength | |
| 3,500 hoplites (1,500 from Argos, 1,000 from Athens, 1,000 allies); 48 ships (+ 19 ships) |
approx. 2,000 men (800 Milesian hoplites, also Peloponnesians, Persian mercenaries and cavalry); 55 ships (33 from Peloponnese , 20 from Syracuse, 2 from Selinunte ) (+20 ships from Chios) |
| losses | |
|
300 argeiers |
unknown |
The Battle of Miletus was a battle in the Peloponnesian War in which an expeditionary army of Athens took place in 412 BC. Chr. An alliance of cities Miletus and Chios with Sparta and the Persian Empire faced. Although the Athenians were victorious, the battle hastened the fall of Ionia from the Attic Empire .
Descent of Ionia
After the fall of the Attic expeditionary army in Sicily in 413 BC. The subjects of Athens tried to use the opportunity to free themselves from their dependence. Leading politicians from Chios and Euboia contacted Sparta to offer the transfer of their islands. On the advice of the Athenian defector Alkibiades , it was decided in Sparta to first accept the offer from Chios, whose central position and by no means insignificant fleet offered the chance to move over the other islands and cities of Ionia.
After the arrival of a small auxiliary fleet of only five ships under the leadership of Alcibiades and the Spartan Chalkideus , Chios fell in the summer of 412 BC. From Athens. The Chier then pursued their cause vigorously and in quick succession brought the most important neighbors on the Ionian mainland to join: Erythrai , Klazomenai and Teos . With a fleet reinforced by the Chiern to 20 ships, Chalkideus and Alkibiades then achieved the same success in Miletus.
Blockage of Milets
The Athenians, however, had equipped a new fleet of 19 triremes and gathered them near Samos , which after sighting the passing Chier took up the chase and reached Miletus almost simultaneously, but too late to prevent the apostasy. Rejected by the Milesians, the generals Thrasykles and Strombichides therefore landed on the offshore island of Lade and from there blocked the Chier in the port of Miletus.
After the arrival of Chalcidus, the Persian satrap Tissaphernes went from Lydia to Miletus, where an alliance between Sparta and the great king Darius II was soon established . Chalcideus was not to enjoy the fruits of this agreement for long, however, as he died a little later while defending against an Athenian landing enterprise not far from the sanctuary of Didyma near the Milesian Panormos.
Course of the battle
Against the defection of Ionia, the Athenians assembled a force of 48 ships with 3,500 heavily armed men at the end of the summer , which crossed from their base in Samos to the mainland and camped off Miletus. Phrynichus , Onomakles and Skironides were the commanders of the Athenians, in whose army there were also 1,500 Argeians and 1,000 other allies .
The Milesians advanced against this force with 800 hoplites, supported by the Peloponnesians and Chians who had arrived with Chalkideus and Alkibiades, as well as some Persian soldiers and horsemen under the leadership of the Tissaphernes. As the rulers of the country, the Milesians took the right wing according to military tradition. Opposite them on the Athenian left wing stood the hoplites from Argos, who, as Dorians, felt superior to the Ionians and therefore stormed forward without any particular order, so that they were surprisingly defeated by the local Milesians and lost 300 men.
On the other wing, however, the Athenians and their other allies predominated, first defeating the Peloponnesians and then driving back the Persian mercenaries. Before they could turn against the undefeated Milesians, however, they had withdrawn behind their walls.
After the battle, the Athenians began siege work to seal off the city, believing that the rest of Ionia would soon fall back to them after Miletus had been retaken. In the meantime, however, Alkibiades , who had fought with the Persian cavalry, rode to the next bay in the south, where in the port of Teichiussa he found a Peloponnesian-Sicilian auxiliary fleet with 55 ships under the command of the Spartan Therimenes and the Syracuse Hermocrates , which he lost from the lost Battle reported.
Retreat to Samos
The Attic general Phrynichus had also received news of the arrival of the enemy fleet that night. While his colleagues then wanted to seek an immediate decision at sea, he prevailed in the council of generals with the view that this represented an unnecessary risk after what had already been achieved and that it would be better to break off the siege immediately in order to call at a safe harbor .
When the Peloponnesian-Syracuse fleet reached Miletus the next day, the Athenians had already withdrawn to Samos, leaving their booty behind. The survivors from Argos drove straight home "in anger at their misfortune" in battle.
Follow-up in Caria
Therimenes and Tissaphernes confirmed the Spartan-Persian alliance in Miletus by means of a second treaty, and after they had taken the ships there from Chios to themselves, they set about taking control of the remaining cities of Ionia. At the request of Tissaphernes, they first drove against Iasos in Caria , where the local ruler Amorges , a bastard son of the former satrap Pissouthnes , had rebelled against Persian rule after the execution of his father. Since no one would have thought it possible that the advancing fleet could not be Attic, the defenders let the ships into the port unhindered. The city was conquered and plundered, Amorges captured and handed over to the Persian great king. His mercenaries, mostly from the Peloponnese, enlisted the conquerors in their own army and, under the command of the Spartan Pedaritos, sent them to Erythrai to defend Chios.
meaning
For the historian Thucydides , the Battle of Miletus was an expression of the complete reversal of all previous conditions due to the imponderables of the war: the sea power Athens won the land battle, with the blasé Dorians on both sides defeated by the supposedly inferior Ionians, but then had to face the new fleet give way to the previous land power Sparta.
With the "half victory" of Miletus, Athens finally lost its influence on the fate of Ionia, which fought on the side of Sparta until the end of the war. Argos also fell out as a comrade in Athens. Nevertheless, Thucydides attested to 411 BC In the given situation , strategists Phrynichos murdered Phrynichos on the market in Athens, and had a correct insight into the limited possibilities of the Attic fleet.
After the defection of Chios, the Battle of Miletus was the second important act of arms by Alcibiades in the service of Sparta to the detriment of his hometown Athens. Then he remembered his parentage again and sought a way to return. To this end, he sought in particular to use his friendship with Tissaphernes, founded at Miletus, to thwart the alliance between Sparta and the Persian Empire. He relied on the fact that Tissaphernes had already achieved his main goal with the suppression of the uprising in Caria, a calculation which, however, failed after a year because of the great king's far-reaching plans.
consequences
Sybota - Potidaia - Spartolus - Stratos - Naupactus - Plataea - Olpai - Tanagra - Pylos - Sphacteria - Corinth - Megara - Delion - Amphipolis - Mantinea - Melos - Syracuse - Miletus - Syme - Eretria - Kynossema - Abydos - Kyzikos - Ephesus - Chalcedon - Byzantium - Andros - Notion - Mytilene - Arginus - Aigospotamoi
The united fleet of the Peloponnesians, Ionians and Syracusans was to keep the Athenians in suspense for two more years before they were in the spring of 410 BC. With the battle of Kyzikos by Alkibiades, who in the meantime returned to Athenian service, could at least be temporarily eliminated. The alliance and subsidy treaty concluded in Miletus and renewed several times enabled Sparta, however, to use Persian money to quickly restore its naval power, which was achieved in the battle of Aigospotamoi in 405 BC. BC finally got the upper hand.
After the defeat of Athens and the peace of the year 404 BC. The cities of Ionia became a subject of dispute between Sparta and the Persian Empire, which now demanded the price agreed in Miletus, which Sparta was not prepared to pay. After the Corinthian War , the cities on mainland Asia Minor came with the King's Peace of 386 BC. Again under Persian rule, from which it was not until 334 BC. Were liberated by Alexander the Great .
literature
- Bruno Bleckmann : Athens' path to defeat. The last years of the Peloponnesian War . Leipzig / Stuttgart 1998. ISBN 3-519-07648-9 . [1]
- Donald Kagan : The Peloponnesian War , New York 2003.
- John Francis Lazenby: The Peloponnesian War: a military study , London, New York 2004, pp. 202-206. online at books.google.com
- Lawrence A. Tritle: A new history of the Peloponnesian War , Hong Kong 2010. online at scribd.com