History of the Peloponnesian War

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“What Should We Do About Alcibiades?”

In this activity, students will split up into two groups and debate whether or not to recall Alcibiades to Athens, using critical thinking and collaborative learning to build on their understanding of the political practices of Classical Athens as represented by Thucydides.

Should Alcibiades be recalled to Athens? Imagine that your class is in the Athenian assembly debating this question after Alcibiades’s defection to Persia in 412 BCE. Students will divide into two groups: one group will make the case that Alcibiades should be recalled to Athens, while the other makes the case that he should not. As you develop ideas within your group, consider the following issues:

• Alcibiades’s skill as a general
• Alcibiades’s knowledge of Sparta and their Peloponnesian allies from his time serving with them
• The pollution caused by Alcibiades’s potential involvement in the desecration of the hermae
• Alcibiades’s notorious history of unreliability

Each group will present its side of the argument and be given a chance for rebuttal. Presentations should facilitate respectful discussions on the political climate of Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian War.

Teaching Suggestion: While some students may be inclined to work from memory, it may be helpful to encourage them to use textual support in forming their arguments, drawing on Thucydides’s work to support their cases. This will reinforce their understanding of the content and strengthen their arguments with textual evidence. Consider also challenging students to think about whether Thucydides himself is always reliable or whether he may sometimes have ulterior motives of his own when it comes to how he represents events and figures from the Peloponnesian War.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners, students who may benefit from a more structured or visual approach, and students with executive function differences, consider providing a 2-column research chart with “pros/cons” as the headers. Students might collaborate in small groups to either initiate (brainstorm), complete parts of the task, or accomplish this task together from start to finish. Alternatively, you might consider assigning cooperative group roles and providing students with a completion checklist to help them stay on track. Advanced students may benefit from an additional written component, in which case this Activity could be amended in the form of an argumentative essay.

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Thucydides claims that his historical method is uniquely accurate and trustworthy, distinguishing him from earlier poets as well as earlier historians.

• Do you believe Thucydides is trustworthy as a historian? (topic sentence)
• Discuss 3 examples from the text in which Thucydides either demonstrates his trustworthiness or reveals a bias that undermines his integrity.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, evaluate how Thucydides does or does not live up to the grand claims he makes for his methodology.

2. Thucydides’s work contains 141 speeches. He admits that it was difficult to record these speeches completely and maintain accuracy, but he claims that his method upheld the general sense of the original speeches.

• Select one speech that you think was most likely creatively reconstructed for thematic purposes. Why do you think Thucydides exercised his creativity with this speech? (topic sentence)
• Discuss 3 specific arguments from the speech that support your claim, highlighting ways in which Thucydides uses the speech to bolster thematic elements of his work.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, evaluate Thucydides’s use of speeches in his history.

3. Thucydides praises Pericles’s leadership, asserting that it was under Pericles that Athens reached its greatest heights.

• In what ways was Pericles a better leader than his successors? (topic sentence)
• Discuss 3 examples in which Pericles’s strategies and policies were better for the Athenians than those of his successors. Compare and contrast Pericles with subsequent Athenian politicians and generals such as Cleon, Alcibiades, and Nicias.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, evaluate the qualities of Pericles’s leadership that Thucydides found so admirable.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Thucydides states at the beginning of his work that his history will be a possession for all time. What does he mean by this? What are the qualities of his history that give it such universal appeal, and how do these differentiate Thucydides’s work from the works of his predecessors? Do you agree that his work has achieved lasting importance? In your response, consider what Thucydides says about his own evidence and methodology in the introduction, and why he dismisses poets and prose chroniclers as unreliable. Cite your quotations with book and chapter number.

1. The Mytilenian Debate and the Melian Dialogue take place 11 years apart. Compare and contrast the way the Athenians approach these two events. What is Thucydides suggesting about the nature of Athens and its empire? How is he representing the transformation of the Athenians over the Peloponnesian War? What does a comparison of the Mytilenian Debate and the Melian Dialogue suggest about power and corruption? Cite your quotations with book and chapter number.

2. In Book 7 of Thucydides’s history, the general Nicias insists on waiting for favorable religious signs before proceeding with the Athenian retreat from Sicily. His delays prove fatal for the Athenian force, which is ultimately wiped out by the Sicilians. How does Thucydides represent the impact of religion and the gods on historical events? What power do oracles have in determining outcomes? Does Thucydides himself seem to assign any weight to oracles and divine intervention? Draw on examples from the text as evidence. Cite your quotations with book and chapter number.

Multiple Choice and Long Answer Questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, exams, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. Which two city-states were the primary combatants in the Peloponnesian War?

A) Athens and Sparta

B) Athens and Corinth

C) Thebes and the Peloponnese

D) Plataea and Corinth

2. Which of the following best describes the “true cause” of the war, according to Thucydides?

A) Athens’s restrictions on Megara

B) Spartan fear of the pollution of the Athenian Alcmeonid family

C) Spartan fear of Athens’ growing power and wealth

D) Athenian demands that the Spartans release the helots

3. What was Pericles’s policy to resist Sparta at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War?

A) To retreat behind the “Long Walls” of Athens and rely on their navy

B) To meet the Spartans in battle every time they raided the Attic countryside

C) To try to make peace with Sparta as soon as possible

D) To turn the rest of the Greeks against the Spartans

4. What is the Pentecontaetia?

A) A type of Greek military vessel

B) The name of a Spartan religious festival

C) The Greek name for the Peloponnesian War

D) The roughly 50-year period between the end of the Persian Wars and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War

5. Which Athenian political figure advances the view that democracy is incapable of empire during the Mytilenian Debate?

A) Diodotus

B) Pericles

C) Phormio

D) Cleon

6. What was the name of the treaty that temporarily put an end to the first phase of the Peloponnesian War in 421 BCE?

A) The Peace of Antalcidas

B) The Peace of Nicias

C) The Thirty Years Peace

D) The King’s Peace

7. Which of the following best explains how Nicias’s indecisiveness and superstition contributed to the disastrous outcome of the Sicilian Expedition?

A) Nicias did not ask Alcibiades to come back to help him when he should have.

B) Nicias delayed the Athenian retreat from Sicily because of bad omens.

C) Nicias did not trust valuable information he received from his allies.

D) Nicias believed the gods were going to destroy the Athenians if they became too powerful.

8. Who advised the Spartans to fortify Decelea?

A) Archidamus

B) Alcibiades

C) Brasidas

D) The Corinthians

9. What is the best summary of the Athenian argument for why the Melians should obey them?

A) The Athenians are destined to rule over all the Greeks.

B) The Spartans will treat the Melians worse than the Athenians.

C) The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.

D) The Melians cannot go back on their agreement to support Athens against Sparta.

10. Why did Tissaphernes’s negotiations with the Spartans fail?

A) The Spartans kept trying to renegotiate.

B) Tissaphernes was a lover of Athenian culture.

C) The Persian king ordered him to support Athens instead.

D) The Athenians sent Alcibiades to undermine these negotiations.

11. Why was the Spartan defeat at Sphacteria so shocking?

A) The Spartans were forced to surrender.

B) The Spartans lost their entire navy.

C) Sphacteria was the Spartans’ most important base of operations.

D) The Spartan kings were both captured during the battle.

12. Which of the following is NOT a reason Athens wished to conquer Sicily?

A) Sicily was extremely fertile.

B) They wanted to defend their allies from Syracuse.

C) Syracuse had a good relationship with many of the Dorian city-states in the Peloponnesian League.

D) The Sicilians were putting together a force to invade Attica.

13. Who was the Spartan general who captured the important city of Amphipolis?

A) Brasidas

B) Amphidamus

C) Gylippus

D) Alcibiades

14. What island saw a confrontation between democratic and oligarchic elements around the time that the Four Hundred took power in Athens?

A) Corcyra

B) Lemnos

C) Samos

D) Ceos

15. What kind of government was the council of the Five Thousand?

A) A tyranny

B) A constitutional monarchy

C) A democratic council

D) An oligarchy

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. What is the basic purpose of the introduction or “Archaeology” at the beginning of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War?

2. What does Pericles’s Funeral Oration say about Athenian values at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War?

3. In Thucydides’s view, why are the Four Hundred replaced with the council of the Five Thousand?