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 CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES
ON THE FREUDIAN DEATH DRIVE
Contemporary Perspectives on the Freudian Death Drive provides a sustained
discussion of the death drive from the perspective of different psychoanalytic
traditions. Ever since Freud introduced the notion of the death drive, it has been
the subject of intense debate in psychoanalysis and beyond.
The death drive is arguably the most unse ling psychoanalytic concept.
What this concept points to is more unse ling still. It uniquely illuminates
the forces of destruction and dissolution at work in individuals as well as in
society. This book first introduces Freud’s use of the term, tracing the debates
and developments his ideas have led to. The subsequent essays by leading
Viennese psychoanalysts demonstrate the power of the death drive to illuminate
psychoanalytic theory, clinical practice, and the study of culture. Since this book
originally arose from a conference in Vienna, its final segment is dedicated to
the forced exile of the early Viennese psychoanalysts due to the Nazi threat.
Due to its wide scope and the many perspectives it offers, this book is a tribute
to the disturbing relevance of the death drive today.
Contemporary Perspectives on the Freudian Death Drive is of special interest to
psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, social and cultural scientists, as well as anyone
intending to understand the sources and vicissitudes of human destructiveness.

Victor Blüml is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (Vienna Psychoanalytic

Society/IPA). He is Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychoanalysis and
Psychotherapy of the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. His main research
interests include personality structure, psychotic phenomena, suicidality, and
conceptual issues of psychoanalysis. He has published in numerous publications
including psychiatric and psychoanalytic journals.

Liana Giorgi is a social and political scientist and psychoanalyst in private

practice (Vienna Psychoanalytic Society/IPA). She is the author/editor of Festivals
and the Cultural Public Sphere (Routledge 2011), Democracy in the European Union
(Routledge 2006), and The Post-Socialist Media: What Power the West? (Avebury
1995). She is currently working on a book on the intellectual exchanges between
psychoanalysis, social and political theory.

Daru Huppert is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Austria (Vienna

Psychoanalytic Society/IPA); he has published numerous psychoanalytic
articles on sleep, sexuality, disgust, and shame.
PSYCHOANALYTIC IDEAS AND APPLICATIONS SERIES
IPA Publications Committee
Gabriela Legorreta (Montreal), Chair and General Editor; Dominique
Scarfone (Montreal); Catalina Bronstein (London); Larry Brown (Boston);
Michele Ain (Montevideo); Samuel Arbiser (Buenos Aires); Udo Hock
(Berlin); Rhoda Bawdekar (London), Ex-officio as IPA Publishing Manager;
Paul Crake (London), Ex-officio as IPA Executive Director
Recent titles in the series include
Unpresented States and the Construction of Meaning: Clinical and
Theoretical Contributions
Edited by Howard B. Levine and Gail S. Reed
The Ethical Seduction of the Analytic Situation: The Feminine – Maternal
Origins of Responsibility for the Other
Viviane Chetrit-Vatine
Time for Change: Tracking Transformations in Psychoanalysis –
The Three-Level Model
Edited by Marina Altmann de Litvan
Hostile and Malignant Prejudice: Psychoanalytic Approaches
Edited by Cyril Levitt
Freud and Culture
Eric Smadja
Play, Gender, Therapy: Selected Papers of Eleanor Galenson
Edited by Nellie L. Thompson
Psychopathology of Work: Clinical Observations
Edited by Christophe Dejours
Finding the Body in the Mind: Embodied Memories, Trauma, and Depression
Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber
The Future of Psychoanalysis: The Debate about the Training Analyst System
Edited by Peter Zagermann
The Analytical Process: Journeys and Pathways
Thierry Bokanowski
Psychotic Organisation of the Personality: Psychoanalytic Keys
Antonio Perez-Sanchez
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Virtual Intimacy and Communication in Film
Edited by Andrea Sabbadini, Ilany Kogan and Paola Golinelli
Transformational Processes in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Dreaming, Emotions
and the Present Moment
Lawrence J. Brown
The Psychoanalyst and the Child: From the Consultation to Psychoanalytic
Treatment
Michel Ody
Psychoanalytic Studies on Dysphoria: The False Accord in the Divine
Symphony
Marion M. Oliner
Contemporary Perspectives on the Freudian Death Drive: In Theory, Clinical
Practice and Culture
Edited by Victor Blüml, Liana Giorgi and Daru Huppert
 CONTEMPORARY
PERSPECTIVES ON THE
FREUDIAN DEATH DRIVE
In Theory, Clinical Practice
and Culture
Edited by
Victor Blüml, Liana Giorgi and Daru Huppert
First published 2019
by Routledge
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Blüml, Victor, 1982– editor. | Giorgi, Liana, editor. | Huppert,
Daru, 1973– editor.
Title: Contemporary perspectives on the Freudian death drive : in theory,
clinical practice and culture / edited by Victor Blèuml, Liana Giorgi
and Daru Huppert.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series:
The international psychoanalytic ideas and applications series | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018051581 (print) | LCCN 2018053765 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429054044 (Master) | ISBN 9780429620492 (ePub3) |
ISBN 9780429618345 (MobiPocket) | ISBN 9780429622649 (Pdf) |
ISBN 9780367149338 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780367149345 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Death instinct. | Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939.
Classification: LCC BF175.5.D4 (ebook) | LCC BF175.5.D4 C66 2019 (print) |
DDC 150.19/52—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018051581
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CONTENTS

SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD ix

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xv

INTRODUCTION
The death drive: a brief genealogy of a controversial concept 1
Victor Blüml

PART I
THEORY

CHAPTER 1
The struggle between good and evil: the concept of
the death drive from a Kleinian perspective 25
Hemma Rössler-Schülein

v
vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER 2
Laplanche as a reader of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” 45
Friedl Früh

CHAPTER 3
Unexpected antecedents to the concept of the death drive:
a return to the beginnings 55
Jeanne Wolff Bernstein

PART II
CLINICAL ASPECTS

CHAPTER 4
Is the death drive mute – or do we pretend to be deaf? 69
Sylvia Zwettler-Otte

CHAPTER 5
Is the concept of death drive clinically helpful for
psychoanalysts? 87
Fritz Lackinger

PART III
CULTURE

CHAPTER 6
Vicissitudes of the death drive in culture 105
Elisabeth Skale

CHAPTER 7
In the name of Janus: do we need a dualistic drive theory? 121
August Ruhs

PART IV
HISTORY

CHAPTER 8
The drive that silences: the death drive and the oral
transmission in Viennese psychoanalysis 137
Daru Huppert
 CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER 9
On the history of psychoanalysis in Vienna, with special
focus on the forced emigration of psychoanalysts in 1938 151
Thomas Aichhorn

CHAPTER 10
Liselotte Frankl and Hans Herma: two candidates of the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1938 163
Nadja Pakesch

CHAPTER 11
Remembering Dr Otto Brief 173
Tjark Kunstreich

INDEX 179
SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD

The Publications Commi ee of the International Psychoanalytic Asso-

ciation continues the series Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications with
the present volume, Contemporary Perspectives on the Freudian Death
Drive: In Theory, Clinical Practice and Culture.
The aim of this series is to focus on the work of significant authors
who have made outstanding contributions to the development of the
psychoanalytic field. In so doing, the series will bring forward relevant
ideas and themes, generated during the history of psychoanalysis, that
deserve to be known and discussed by present-day psychoanalysts.
The relationship between psychoanalytic ideas and their applica-
tions needs to be put forward from the perspective of theory, clinical
practice, and research in order to maintain their validity for contempo-
rary psychoanalysis. The Publications Commi ee’s objective is to share
these ideas with the psychoanalytic community and with professionals
in other related disciplines, so as to expand their knowledge and gener-
ate a productive interchange between the text and the reader.
The present volume, Contemporary Perspectives on the Freudian Death
Drive: In Theory, Clinical Practice and Culture, contributes to the Publica-
tions Commi ee’s goal of bringing forward and discussing in depth one
of the most important and controversial concepts in psychoanalysis:

ix
x SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD

the death drive. Perhaps as a consequence of current sociocultural phe-

nomena, such as the effects of climate change, terrorism, and massive
immigration, this concept has received renewed a ention in the last
years. With this in mind, the present work is a timely re-evaluation of
the death drive and, with it, the question of the destructive potential of
human nature.
Starting with Freud’s foundational ideas on the death drive, which
created the “turning point” in his theory of the mind, the authors
then trace the subsequent developments of the concept in psychoana-
lytic theory, proposing threads that can be observed in contemporary
debates on the death drive. The editors’ review of these debates raises
questions concerning the definition of the concept, its conceptual status,
or even the existence of the death drive. The ongoing a ention to this
topic shows that the concept has the potential to create much dialogue
and debate in psychoanalysis. As the authors state: “The notion of the
death drive seems to be very alive.”
Skillfully organized in four parts, this volume first addresses the-
oretical aspects of the death drive from three different perspectives
(British, French, and American). The second part focuses on manifesta-
tions of the death drive in clinical work, while a third part analyzes the
mechanisms of the death drive in contemporary culture and society.
A final part addresses the history of psychoanalysis in Austria and its
connection with the notion of the death drive.
The authors’ thorough overview of current psychoanalytic under-
standing from major psychoanalytic traditions on the topic of the
death drive has resulted in this valuable book. They have succeeded in
reawakening the need to reconsider the debate on the nature of human
destructiveness. I am confident that it will be useful and of much inter-
est not only to the psychoanalytic reader worldwide but to anyone
interested in the complex and significant subject of the death drive. It
will certainly be an important reference point for future debates and
conceptual developments on the subject.
Gabriela Legorreta
Series Editor
Chair, IPA Publications Committee
CONTRIBUTORS

Thomas Aichhorn is a psychoanalyst in private practice, a member of the

Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (VPS/IPA), and an archivist of the VPS. He
lectures and writes on the theory and history of psychoanalysis, on Jean
Laplanche’s General Seduction Theory, on the psychoanalysis of adoles-
cence, and on August Aichhorn’s works and biography. He is editor of
the correspondence of Anna Freud/August Aichhorn and of papers by
August Aichhorn, Rosa Dworschak. and K.R. Eissler.

Victor Blüml, MD, MA, PhD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (Vienna

Psychoanalytic Society/IPA). He is Assistant Professor at the Depart-
ment of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy of the Medical University
of Vienna, Austria. He studied medicine and philosophy in Vienna and
Paris. His main research interests include personality structure, suicidal-
ity, psychotic phenomena, and conceptual issues of psychoanalysis. He
has published in numerous publications including psychiatric and psy-
choanalytic journals.

Friedl Früh is a psychoanalyst (Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, IPA),

training and supervising analyst of the VPS, and head of the train-
ing program in child analysis of the VPS. She has wri en numerous

xi
xii CONTRIBUTORS

publications on Sigmund Freud’s and Jean Laplanche’s theories (e.g.

“The Sexual Breast”).

Liana Giorgi, PhD, is a psychoanalyst at the Vienna Psychoanalytic

Society (VPS/IPA), a social and political scientist working in research
and as a psychoanalyst in private practice. She is a graduate of MIT
(USA) and the University of Cambridge (UK). She has published exten-
sively in the fields of political sociology and European integration; some
titles (as co-author and co-editor) are Festivals and the Cultural Public
Sphere (Routledge 2011) and Democracy in the European Union: Towards
the Emergence of a Public Sphere (Routledge 2006). She is currently work-
ing on a book on the intellectual exchanges between psychoanalysis,
social, and political theory.

Daru Huppert, PhD, is a psychoanalyst (Vienna Psychoanalytic Society/

IPA) in private practice. He studied psychology in New York, Zurich,
and Cambridge, and he also lectured on psychoanalysis at Cambridge
University. He has published several articles on the topics of sexuality
and sleep in psychoanalysis.

Tjark Kunstreich, MA, is a psychoanalyst (Vienna Psychoanalytic Soci-

ety/IPA) and writer. He works in private practice and in the outpatient
clinic of the VPS where he is head of the unit for severely traumatized
patients. He is currently the managing director of the Vienna Psychoan-
alytic Academy, a joint outreach project of the two Vienna IPA-Societies.
He has published on a variety of issues with a focus on trauma, destruc-
tiveness, psychosis, and history, and as well on homosexuality and its
vicissitudes.

Fri Lackinger, PhD, is associate professor for clinical psychology,

psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis at the University of Klagenfurt,
Austria. He is a member as well as training and control analyst of the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Association (VPA) and the IPA. He is also a
training therapist and training supervisor for Psychoanalytic Oriented
Psychotherapy and for Transference Focused Psychotherapy, and pres-
ident of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association since 2015. Lackinger is
editor of a book on psychodynamic psychotherapy with delinquents,
and the author of many articles on clinical and theoretical questions of
psychoanalysis.
 CONTRIBUTORS xiii

Nadja Pakesch, MA, PhD in art history, is a psychoanalyst and member

of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (VPS/IPA) and its working group
on the history of psychoanalysis. She has further training in child and
adolescence psychoanalysis, and has worked with minor unaccompa-
nied refugees in the Integrationshaus Wien for many years. She also
works in private practice.

Hemma Rössler-Schülein, MD, is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, RTP/

IPA research fellow, supervising and training analyst of the Vienna Psy-
choanalytic Society (VPS), medical director of the outpatient clinic of
the VPS (2009–2015), and since 2016 president of the VPS. Her publica-
tions in the field of psychotherapy research and conceptual questions in
psychoanalysis include (with H. Löffler-Stastka) “Psychoanalysis and
Psychoanalytic Oriented Psychotherapy: Differences and Similarities”
in Neuropsychiatrie (2013), and “The Use of Phantasy in the Psychoana-
lytic Process” (2017).

August Ruhs, MD, is an associate professor, psychiatrist, and psycho-

analyst (Vienna Psychoanalytical Association/IPA). From 2007 to 2015
he was president of the VPA, and until 2011 was deputy head of the
Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy at the Medical Uni-
versity of Vienna. He is co-founder and president of the “Neue Wie-
ner Gruppe/Lacan-Schule”; co-editor of the journal texte. psychoanalyse.
ästhetik. kulturkritik; and has published in many publications in the
fields of theoretical, clinical, and applied psychoanalysis.

Elisabeth Skale, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private

practice. She is training analyst at Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (VPS/
IPA); Head of the Department of Theory/History/Culture of the Vienna
Psychoanalytic Academy; and Austrian consultant of the European
Psychoanalytic Film Festival (epff). Her publications are on theoretical
and clinical psychoanalytic issues. She is co-editor (with B. Reith, et.al.)
of Initiating Psychoanalysis-Perspectives (Routledge).

Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, PhD, is past president and supervising and

personal analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
(PINC). She is on the faculty at PINC and at the Sigmund Freud Private
University, Vienna, and the NYU postdoctoral program for psycho-
analysis and psychotherapy. She was the 2008 Fulbright Freud Visiting
xiv CONTRIBUTORS

Scholar in Psychoanalysis at the Freud Museum, Vienna, Austria, and is

the chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Freud Museum, Vienna.
She is a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association. She has pub-
lished numerous articles on the interfaces between psychoanalysis, the
visual arts, film, and Lacan.

Sylvia Zwe ler-O e, MA, PhD, is training analyst of the Vienna Psy-
choanalytic Society (VPS/IPA) and was president of the organization
from 2000 to 2004, now member of the ethics commi ee. At the EPF
Congress 2008 in Vienna she initiated the Forum on Psychoanalysis
and Language. She has published several books in German and Eng-
lish, among them Freud in the Media: The Reception of Psychoanalysis in
Viennese Medical Journals 1895–1938 (2006), The Melody of Separation –
A Psychoanalytic Study of Separation Anxiety (2011), and The Sphinx and
the Riddles of Passion, Love and Sexuality, with contributions by Stefano
Bolognini and Rainer Gross (Preface by Alain Gibeault) (2013).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book initially developed from an international conference enti-

tled “The Aim of all Life is Death – Debating the Death Drive Today”
held in Vienna in July 2016. It was organized by candidates of the two
Viennese psychoanalytic societies (Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and
Vienna Psychoanalytic Association) in collaboration with the Interna-
tional Psychoanalytic Studies Organization (IPSO). We would first like
to thank all those who were directly involved in the organization of
the conference: René Diem, Esther Hutfless, Dago Kogoj, Tjark Kun-
streich, Andrea Naderer, Barbara Pastner, Alberto Storari, and Roman
Widholm. Our thanks also goes to IPSO, especially Nergis Güleç and
Holger Himmighoffen, for their support, as well as to the Vienna Psy-
choanalytic Society and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association, who
supported the conference from the very beginning. We want to express
our special gratitude to Viola Seibert, who was very helpful in all stages
of the organization. The Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna, generously
offered us a lecture hall, in which the last part of the conference took
place. We would like to thank the Publications Commi ee of the Inter-
national Psychoanalytical Association for publishing our book under
the aegis of the IPA, and Gabriela Legore a, the chair of the Commi ee,
for writing the foreword. Charles Bath of Routledge expertly guided the
editing and publication process. It was a pleasure to work with him.
Last but not least, we want to express our gratitude to all the speak-
ers at the conference for their contributions and for their willingness
to substantially revise their work in order to make this publication
possible.

xv
INTRODUCTION

The death drive: a brief genealogy of a

controversial concept

Victor Blüml

Ever since Freud introduced the concept of the death drive1 in “Beyond
the Pleasure Principle” in 1920, it has been the subject of intense and
impassioned debate among psychoanalysts. No other Freudian con-
cept has been as controversially disputed as the idea of a fundamental
force of destructiveness and dissolution. Many analysts regard it as
ungrounded, as too speculative, or, simply, as too pessimistic. How-
ever, for many other analysts the death drive is an indispensable
reference point for thinking about destructive and deadening phenom-
ena encountered in the consulting room and beyond. In recent years
there has even been a resurgence of interest in the topic of the death
drive, which is indicated by an increasing number of relevant articles
published in leading psychoanalytic journals (e.g. Bell, 2015; De Masi,
2015; Falcao, 2015; Penot, 2017). While the underlying reasons for this
renewed a ention to the notion of the death drive are manifold, it seems
plausible that contemporary sociocultural developments contribute to
it. The rise of populist movements on the far right with strong nationalist
and xenophobic tendencies, recurrent terrorist a acks, and mass migra-
tion caused by civil war and political turmoil create an atmosphere of
increasing anxiety and threat. Freud’s “fateful question” as to whether
cultural development could master the human drive of aggression and

1
2 VICTOR BLÜML

self-destruction seems more pressing than ever (Freud, 1930, p. 145):

“The question of the existence of the death drive as part of the core of
human psychology is, unfortunately, a practical and not merely a theo-
retical problem” (Kernberg, 2009, p. 1010).
In this light, the psychoanalytic exploration of the destructive poten-
tial of human nature seems of utmost importance with the notion of the
death drive serving as a focal reference point for a deeper understand-
ing of the psychological mechanisms involved.
Since the debates and discussions on the death drive have contin-
ued for almost a hundred years, any a empt to provide an overview
of this concept necessarily will remain fragmentary and incomplete.
Nevertheless, this introduction aims to sketch some of the main lines in
the debate about this controversial term. As with so many of the basic
psychoanalytic concepts, we first need to return to Freud’s foundational
ideas in order to gain a sense for the original meaning of the notion.
Only then can we trace the subsequent developments, which often take
up one or the other of the originally implied aspects, while deemphasiz-
ing or leaving out others.

Freud and the death drive

When Freud introduced the concept of the death drive in 1920 in

“Beyond the Pleasure Principle”, this was the starting point of his highly
productive and innovative later works. This period notably included
the introduction of the structural model of the psyche, a revised theory
of anxiety and symptom formation, as well as, to return to our topic,
the final dualistic drive theory, with opposing life and death drives.
The motives that led Freud to completely reformulate his fundamental
drive theory are complex and difficult to trace (cf. Laplanche, 1976; May,
2015). First, Freud felt the need to provide a metapsychological basis for
a variety of clinical phenomena that could not readily be accounted for
within the traditional model of the sexual and self-preservation drives.
For example, repetition phenomena like recurring traumatic dreams and
negative therapeutic reactions bear witness to a compulsion to repeat that
lies beyond the workings of the pleasure principle, which hitherto had
been thought to govern all psychic processes. Other salient phenomena
include the merciless superego in melancholia, sadism, and masochism,
as well as forms of destructiveness and hate that cannot be derived from
 INTRODUCTION 3

the vicissitudes of the sexual drive alone. Several authors have high-
lighted the role that the growing number of severely disturbed patients
suffering from non-neurotic disorders in Freud’s clinical experience
played in his re-conceptualization of the drive theory (and, more gener-
ally, in the new developments in his thought after the “turning point” of
1920) (Green, 2010). Another factor, of a more theoretical character, was
Freud’s basic tendency to think in dualistic terms, which had become
threatened by the introduction of narcissism into psychoanalytic theory
in 1914 (Laplanche, 2004). The discovery of the libidinal nature of large
parts of the self-preservative drive led to a crisis in Freud’s thinking; the
danger of a monistic conception of the libido in a Jungian fashion now
loomed large over the metapsychological project. Only via the introduc-
tion of a new fundamental opposition between life and death drives
could the dualistic balance be reinstated, which Freud deemed necessary
to account for the pervasiveness of psychic conflict. Lastly, a growing
scepticism or, more accurately, realism, regarding the powers and limi-
tations of psychoanalytic treatment is thought to have been one of the
decisive factors leading Freud to postulate an innate and fundamental
force opposing psychic growth and improvement.
Turning to the characteristics of this new force, we find in the death
drive the expression of the fundamental tendency of every living being
to return to the inorganic state: “the aim of all life is death” (Freud, 1920,
p. 38, emphasis as in original). The death drive aims at the reduction of
all tension of life, at unbinding and dissolution. Freud saw the death
drive as primarily directed towards the subject itself, its principal aim
being self-destruction. The task of Eros, the great antagonist of the death
drive, is to mitigate the auto-destructive potential of the death drive.

The libido has the task of making the destroying instinct innocuous, and
it fulfils the task by diverting that instinct to a great extent outwards –
soon with the help of a special organic system, the muscular apparatus –
towards objects in the external world. The instinct is then called the
destructive instinct, the instinct for mastery, or the will to power.
(Freud, 1924, p. 163)

To comprehend some of the controversies arising from the introduction

of this drive, it is essential to note that the work of the death drive is
not readily observable; it remains mute and by its very nature conceals
its own activity. Only when it has been diverted outwards and fused
with the life drives does it become discernible in the form of striking
4 VICTOR BLÜML

and loud phenomena, such as aggression and sadism. In the course

of Freud’s later writings a shift takes place; he increasingly pays more
a ention to the aggressive phenomena associated with the death drive
instead of the more subtle and mute aspects originally addressed in
“Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” In this sense, he formulated in 1930:
“This aggressive instinct is the derivative and the main representative
of the death instinct which we have found alongside of Eros and which
shares world-dominion with it” (Freud, 1930, p. 122). Nevertheless, he
always conceptually differentiated between the death drive per se and
aggression as one of its “derivatives” or “representatives.” This dis-
tinction was to become repeatedly blurred by many later analysts who
referred to the notion. Penot (2017) recently addressed this conceptual
tension and argued that the Freudian death drive condenses two sepa-
rate processes, which cannot be easily integrated under the umbrella of
one concept alone, namely, the process of unbinding and dissolution on
the one hand, and on the other hand open aggression and destructivity.
Adding to the complexity of Freud’s idea was his insistence that the
death drive never enters the stage alone, but only appears in the form
of fusions with Eros:

So far as the psycho-analytic field of ideas is concerned, we can only

assume that a very extensive fusion and amalgamation, in varying pro-
portions, of the two classes of instincts takes place, so that we never
have to deal with pure life instincts or pure death instincts but only with
mixtures of them in different amounts.
(Freud, 1924, p. 164)

Besides the primarily mute nature of the death drive, its activity is so
difficult to isolate and identify because of the ever-present element of
Eros in even the most destructive phenomena. “Only by the concurrent
or mutually opposing action of the two primal instincts – Eros and the
death-instinct – never by one or the other alone, can we explain the rich
multiplicity of the phenomena of life” (Freud, 1937, p. 243).
Initially, Freud introduced the notion of the death drive with consid-
erable caution as a “speculation,” which would need further scrutiny
before it could be considered a basic psychoanalytic tenet. But, in the
remaining 18 years of his life, he became increasingly convinced that this
notion was indispensable and soon came to view the death drive as one
of the foundational pillars of psychoanalytic theory: “To begin with it
was only tentatively that I put forward the views I have developed here,
 INTRODUCTION 5

but in the course of time they have gained such a hold upon me that I can
no longer think in any other way” (Freud, 1930, p. 119). Freud’s growing
conviction was not shared by the majority of his colleagues and follow-
ers. On the contrary, the reaction of many analysts of the day ranged
from outward rejection to silent disregard and negligence. The reasons
for the controversial reception of the death drive concept were them-
selves manifold and heterogeneous. Freud believed that this refusal was
not only motivated by scientific or rational considerations alone: “I pre-
sume that a strong affective factor is coming into effect in this rejection”
(Freud, 1933a, p. 103). Much like Freud’s early ideas about the centrality
of sexuality had been met with considerable resistance by his contempo-
raries, his introduction of a fundamental self-destructive force at work in
the individual aroused strong opposition, but this time also within the
analytic circle itself. Martin Bergmann has argued “that Freud’s death
instinct theory had a traumatic impact on the psychoanalytic movement
because it greatly limited the belief in the curative power of our therapeu-
tic work” (Bergmann, 2011, p. 684). The assumption of a death drive also
was a wounding blow for more optimistic views of human nature, which
consider human destructivity primarily as a consequence of frustration.
Therefore, analysts engaged in social revolutionary activities like Wilhelm
Reich and O o Fenichel rejected the idea of a fundamental death drive,
instead highlighting the role of socioeconomic factors in the development
of human destructivity. Many critics of the concept argued that Freud
had introduced the notion primarily because of personal-biographical
reasons. They cite Freud’s deep grief at the loss of his favourite daughter
Sophie and his good friend Anton von Freund at the time of his writ-
ing of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” or the beginnings of his struggles
with cancer as prime motivational forces rather than scientific reasoning
(Ekstein, 1949; Jones, 1957).2
While the reactions just described seem to validate Freud’s observa-
tion about the affective components involved in the acceptance or refusal
of a theoretical argument, it does not exonerate us from a searching
analysis of the issues at stake. We otherwise run the risk of theoretical
self-immunization against any opposing claims. It is therefore necessary
to gain a clearer idea about the conceptual and epistemological status of
the notion of the death drive. Misunderstandings and misconceptions in
this area seem to have been at the core of many objections and controver-
sies regarding the death drive.3 Perhaps unavoidably, Freud himself was
not always clear about these issues, thereby paving the way for future
6 VICTOR BLÜML

misunderstandings. A central difficulty is related to the general character

of Freudian metapsychology. Drive theory was one of the cornerstones
of Freud’s metapsychological conceptions; these conceptions do not refer
to elements or forces that are directly observable in clinical practice but
rather serve as a general and abstract frame of reference that organizes
the observed material. Throughout his life, Freud was keenly aware of
the dangers of ungrounded speculation, yet at the same time he consid-
ered a certain speculative element indispensable to provide a conceptual
basis for the new science of psychoanalysis. This tension is reflected in the
way in which metapsychology can be regarded: it can be considered as
the foundation, upon which the entire system of psychoanalysis was to
be constructed, as well as being seen as “a speculative superstructure of
psycho-analysis, any portion of which can be abandoned or changed with-
out loss or regret the moment its inadequacy has been proved” (Freud,
1925, pp. 32–33). This ambiguous nature of the metapsychological project
is also expressed in Freud’s famous remarks about the status of drives:
“Instincts are mythical entities, magnificent in their indefiniteness. In our
work we cannot for a moment disregard them, yet we are never sure that we
are seeing them clearly” (Freud, 1933a, p. 95). For Freud, drives were part
of the basic concepts and principles of psychoanalysis; due to their foun-
dational nature they eluded further deduction or more precise definitions
(cf. Freud, 1940, p. 159).
Consequently, the status of drive theory became the subject of fierce
debates and intense criticism in many psychoanalytic schools (Schmidt-
Hellerau, 2005). Given the high level of abstraction, a concept such as
the death drive can never be directly inferred from experience, therefore
complicating a empts at proving or refuting it. Empirical facts such as
clinical observations or findings from neighbouring sciences can only
ever provide indicators or indirect support for a theory like the death
drive, never direct proof. Freud himself repeatedly fell into the trap of
seeking to use such findings as direct evidence for the existence of the
entity “death drive,” most prominently by drawing on the biological
discoveries of his day in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” This line of
reasoning could be considered to stand in the tradition of defining the
truth of a concept as “correspondence with reality” and accordingly
to make the presence or absence in empirical reality the sole criterion
for the validity of a concept (cf. Hanly, 1990). Another approach would
instead highlight the role of “internal coherence” within a certain theo-
retical system as the basic element of the truth of a concept (Armengou,
 INTRODUCTION 7

2009; Hanly, 1990). It is not the intention to advocate the abandonment

of a truth-theory of correspondence for psychoanalysis – in fact, any
scientific system needs to take into account both elements of truth – but
it can reasonably be argued that it would constitute a methodological
fallacy to discount a concept like the death drive purely on the grounds
of one empirical finding or the other. In this sense, Schmidt-Hellerau
convincingly states:

That is why a question like “Is there such a thing as a death drive?” (which
is usually answered with “no”) represents a failure in thinking; the ques-
tions can only be “Are there phenomena that we can unite by a notion to
be defined and called the death drive?” and “Does it make sense, or is it
heuristically fruitful, to make use of such a concept?”
(Schmidt-Hellerau, 2005, pp. 999–1000)

Trajectories of the reception of the death drive

The various psychoanalytic traditions gave different answers to these

questions. As stated, the initial reception of the newly introduced con-
cept was rather critical. As Jones put it with regards to Freud’s “Beyond
the Pleasure Principle”:

The book is further noteworthy in being the only one of Freud’s which
has received little acceptance on the part of his followers. Thus of the
fifty or so papers they have since devoted to the topic one observes that
in the first decade only half supported Freud’s theory, in the second
decade only a third, and in the last decade none at all.
( Jones, 1957, p. 287)

Recently, Frank proposed a more nuanced view of the early reception

of the death drive concept (2015). She traced Jones’ statement back to
an article by Brun (1953) and pointed to various inconsistencies in the
appraisal of the magnitude of the initial rejection. Frank argued that
as soon as Freud was able to provide clinical examples for the work-
ings of the death drive (melancholia, guilt feelings) many analysts like
Reik, Alexander, and Nunberg favourably took up the notion. She also
highlighted the role that the forced emigration due to the rise of the
Nazi regime of nearly all analysts who published on the death drive
played for the subsequent history of the discourse on the death drive.
In Germany (and Austria), the reception of the concept was impeded by
8 VICTOR BLÜML

the prevailing effects of the terrors of Nazi rule and associated guilt feel-
ings leading to defence mechanisms like denial at work in society and
within analytic associations. According to Frank, the rejection of the
death drive hypothesis in post-war Germany (and Austria) represents a
reaction formation against the traumatic experiences of the Nazi era. In
other parts of the world, the history of the discourse on the death drive
took different paths, but the impact of the forced emigration of the early
adopters and the dispersal of the Austrian and German analysts can be
observed in many areas and would warrant further research.

British and American perspectives

In Britain, for instance, the concept of the death drive played a sub-
stantial role in the controversial discussions that shook the British
Psychoanalytic Society in the 1940s following the arrival of the Viennese
analysts in London (King & Steiner, 1991). Melanie Klein was undoubt-
edly the most prominent early supporter of the idea of the death drive.
Already in her early psychoanalytic work with children and adolescents
in Berlin she had formed the idea of an “evil principle” accounting for
aggressive and destructive aspects of personality (Frank, 2015). Later
on, most likely influenced by the publication of “Civilization and Its
Discontents” in 1930, with its emphasis on aggression as the primary
derivative of the death drive, she incorporated the notion of the death
drive into her theoretical framework. In the process, Klein partly altered
the meanings and connotations of the term, without always making
these changes explicit, arguably in order to remain loyal to Freud and to
make her ideas more acceptable to the psychoanalytic community (De
Bianchedi et al., 1984). She was not very interested in metapsychologi-
cal speculations or the biological underpinnings of the concept. Klein
was primarily concerned with the psychological dimension of the death
drive and saw the struggle between love and hate or life and death
drives as the origin of psychic development and mental functioning
(Klein, 1958). She used the death drive as a clinical concept in order
to make sense of aggressive and destructive phenomena encountered
in the consulting room. In her view, the workings of the death drive
were not silent or mute but could readily be observed and experienced
in clinical work with patients. For instance, the effects of the work-
ings of the death drive could immediately be felt as anxiety: “I hold
 INTRODUCTION 9

that anxiety arises from the operation of the Death Instinct within the
organism, is felt as fear of annihilation (death) and takes the form of
fear of persecution” (Klein, 1946, p. 100). The fundamental annihila-
tion anxiety caused by the death drive sets in motion various defence
mechanisms like spli ing and projective identification, whereby the
death drive immediately becomes a ached to the object, turning it into
the primary representative of the death drive in the sense of a bad, per-
secuting object. Similarly, she used the concept of the death drive to
account for the severity and cruelty of the archaic superego. Later on,
she highlighted the intricate relation between the death drive and envy,
conceived as a primitive, destructive force aimed at life and life-giving
objects itself (Klein, 1957).
The Kleinian tradition has arguably provided the most fertile ground
for the development of the death drive concept. Other important psy-
choanalysts in Great Britain rejected the idea of an inborn destructive
tendency, e.g. Fairbairn, who viewed aggression as always secondary to
frustration (Chessick, 1992), or Winnico , who found the notion of the
death drive to be “unacceptable” and “unnecessary” (Winnico , 1965).
The prominence given to the concept in the Kleinian school has some-
times been likened to a sort of “differentiating label,” which in turn has
led some authors to imply that not only scientific or clinical reasons
were decisive in the adherence to it but also more ideological motiva-
tions (Armengou, 2009; Spillius, 1994). Nevertheless, the death drive
has shown exceptional “explanatory and clinical usefulness” for many
analysts working in the Kleinian tradition (Beland, 2008). Significant
contributions include the work of Bion on “a acks on linking” and
“arrogance” (Bion, 1958, 1959), Rosenfeld’s concept of “destructive
narcissism” (Rosenfeld, 1971), and articles by Segal (Segal, 1993) and
Feldman (Feldman, 2000). All of these approaches share a turning away
from debates about the facticity of the death drive towards a discussion
of its applicability and usefulness (Danckwardt, 2011). Paradigmati-
cally, Hanna Segal tried to formulate her theory on the conflict between
life and death drives “in purely psychological terms,” distinguishing
two fundamental reactions in relation to the inevitable experience of
needs: “One, to seek satisfaction for the needs: that is life-promoting
and leads to object seeking, love, and eventually object concern. The
other is the drive to annihilate the need, to annihilate the perceiving
experiencing self, as well as anything that is perceived” (Segal, 1993,
p. 55). Segal therefore unties the concept of the death drive from biology
10 VICTOR BLÜML

and positions it firmly in the field of object relations (Beland, 2008; Bell,
2015), primarily in the form of envy: “If the death instinct is a reaction
to a disturbance produced by needs, the object is perceived both as dis-
turbance, the creator of the need, and as the unique object, capable of
disturbance removal. As such, the needed breast is hated and envied”
(Segal, 1993, pp. 59–60). One of the difficulties in discerning the death
drive that Freud had put forward was the impossibility to observe its
workings in isolation from libidinal admixture: “one can suspect [. . .]
that the two kinds of instinct seldom – perhaps never – appear in isola-
tion from each other, but are alloyed with each other in varying and
very different proportions and so become unrecognizable to our judge-
ment” (Freud, 1930, p. 119). Segal in turn postulated that due to the
advances in psychoanalytic technique and the broadening of the spec-
trum of patients treated by analysts it was now possible to “detect the
operation of the death instinct in an almost pure form . . . rather than
in fusion” (Segal, 1993, p. 56). This was mainly made possible by a new
understanding of countertransference, which, in turn, is inseparable
from the overall developments in analytic object relations theory. There
is a constant process of projection and introjection between patient and
analyst, whereby at one point the patient projects his death drive into
the analyst, who then feels paralysis, despair, or aggression; at another
time the analyst becomes the container for all impulses to live, lead-
ing to excessive protectiveness and concern. These descriptions seek to
illustrate the experience-near usage of the concept of the death drive
typical in the Kleinian tradition. While Kleinian analysts using the
death drive in their theoretical and clinical work have repeatedly been
a acked for their “dogmatic rigidity” (Kernberg, 1969) or their purely
“phenomenological” or “metaphorical” use of the notion (Penot, 2017),
there is widespread agreement even among adherents of other psycho-
analytic schools that the Kleinian tradition has been able to provide
some of the most poignant contributions to the analysis of destructive
phenomena so prevalent in the consulting room and beyond (Kernberg,
2009; Mitchell, 1993). It can reasonably be argued that the adoption and
development of the concept of the death drive contributed significantly
to this achievement (Beland, 2008; Bell, 2015).
American psychoanalysis in the form of ego psychology predomi-
nantly rejected the notion of the death drive (Bergmann, 2011). The tone
was set by Hartmann, Kris, and Loewenstein, who did not outwardly
reject the idea but rather sidestepped a detailed discussion of what they
 INTRODUCTION 11

considered primarily to be “biological speculations” of Freud. They

emphasized the importance of a dualistic drive theory, but advocated
an aggressive drive independent of Freud’s original idea of the death
drive (Hartmann, Kris, & Loewenstein, 1947). Subsequently, the notion
of the death drive all but disappeared from the ego-psychological works
in the following decades (Kernberg, 2009; Lazar & Erlich, 1996). How-
ever, the pluralization of psychoanalysis in the United States in recent
decades has also meant that the reception of the death drive concept
has diversified (Cooper, 2008). For example, Kernberg recently made a
case for the importance of the idea of the death drive and the ensuing
debates surrounding it: “The death drive runs deeply against more opti-
mistic views of human nature, based on the assumption that if severe
frustrations or trauma were absent in early development then aggres-
sion would not be a major human problem” (Kernberg, 2009, p. 1009).
While rejecting the death drive in the Freudian sense as a fundamental
force in every individual, he nevertheless found the concept to be clini-
cally useful (Kernberg, 2009): phenomena like sadism and masochism,
repetition compulsion, negative therapeutic reaction, suicide, and vio-
lent and destructive phenomena in groups and society at large provide
ample evidence for a profound self-destructive potential in humanity.
Kernberg wants to reserve the notion of the death drive to very severe
cases of psychopathology, in which hateful aggressivity and perverse
libidinization of aggressive tendencies dominate the clinical picture:
“The death drive, I propose, is not a primary drive, but represents a
significant complication of aggression as a major motivational system,
is central in the therapeutic work with severe psychopathology, and as
such is eminently useful as a concept in the clinical realm” (Kernberg,
2009, p. 1018).

French perspectives

In contrast to the predominantly clinical use of the concept of the death

drive in the Kleinian tradition and in Kernberg’s work, French psy-
choanalysts generally took a more theoretical or metapsychological
approach. Besides Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan was arguably the most
influential analyst to embrace Freud’s notion. While it is beyond the
scope of this overview to do justice to the complex and sophisticated
Lacanian interpretations of the death drive (cf. Ruhs, in this book), it
12 VICTOR BLÜML

is clear that Lacan regarded this concept as central to psychoanalysis:

“For to evade the death instinct in his [Freud’s] doctrine is not to know
his doctrine at all” (Lacan, 1960, p. 679). He was careful to detach the
death drive from any biological roots and initially tried to situate the
self-destructive tendency designated by the death drive in the imagi-
nary dimension of human existence and closely linked it to narcissistic
phenomena and their emergence in the mirror stage. In the 1950s, under
the influence of Saussure’s linguistics and the structuralist ideas of
Lévi-Strauss, Lacan rather saw the death instinct as being profoundly
related to the phenomenon of language or the symbolic order (López,
1996). The signifier, as the “murder of the thing,” introduces a funda-
mental negativity, a lack, into human existence: “The death instinct is
only the mask of the symbolic order” (Lacan, 1954–55, p. 326). In his
late teaching, Lacan finally relates the death drive to the dimension of
the real in the form of jouissance, a form of excessive enjoyment that lies
beyond the pleasure principle. Insofar as all drives strive toward jouis-
sance, Lacan states that “every drive is virtually a death drive” (Lacan,
1966, p. 719). In short, the death drive was central to each of Lacan’s
conceptual innovations, though he was eventually led to question the
dualistic foundation of Freudian drive theory. The binary opposition of
life and the death drives as a form of metaphysical entities was also crit-
icized by another leading French theoretician, Jean Laplanche (1976).
For Laplanche, the struggle between life and death drives was not one
between sexuality and non-sexual aggressivity, but rather was to be
located internal to sexuality itself. Thus he reformulated the antago-
nism as one between the “sexual life and the sexual death drives” and
respectively related them to the psychic mechanisms of binding and
unbinding:

Rather than two hypothetical biological forces, this opposition concerns

two distinct mechanisms in the sphere of human fantasy: the bound
(secondary) process and the unbound (primary) process. Or, more accu-
rately, two principles: the principle of binding, which would introduce
order for the sexual life drives, and the principle of unbinding, which
takes its power from the sexual death drives.
(Laplanche, 2004, p. 456)

Laplanche saw Freud’s introduction of the death drive as primarily

motivated by reasons internal to the development of his thinking and
especially as an answer to the problems Freudian metapsychology was
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the fact by fire-signals from Solygeia. Not being able to hinder the
landing, they despatched forthwith half their forces, under Battus
and Lykophron, to repel the invader, while the remaining half were
left at the harbor of Kenchreæ, on the northern side of Mount
Oneion, to guard the port of Krommyon, outside of the isthmus, in
case it should be attacked by sea. Battus with one lochus of hoplites
threw himself into the village of Solygeia, which was unfortified,
while Lykophron conducted the remaining troops to attack the
Athenians. The battle was first engaged on the Athenian right,
almost immediately after its landing, on the point called
Chersonesus. Here the Athenian hoplites, together with their
Karystian allies, repelled the Corinthian attack, after a stout and
warmly disputed hand-combat of spear and shield: but the
Corinthians, retreating up to a higher point of ground, returned to
the charge, and with the aid of a fresh lochus, drove the Athenians
back to the shore and to their ships: from hence the latter again
turned, and again recovered a partial advantage.[572] The battle was
no less severe on the left wing of the Athenians: but here, after a
contest of some length, the latter gained a more decided victory,
greatly by the aid of their cavalry,—pursuing the Corinthians, who
fled in some disorder to a neighboring hill and there took up a
position.[573] The Athenians were thus victorious throughout the
whole line, with the loss of about forty-seven men, while the
Corinthians had lost two hundred and twelve, together with the
general Lykophron. The victors erected their trophy, stripped the
dead bodies, and buried their own dead.
The Corinthian detachment left at Kenchreæ could not see the
battle, in consequence of the interposing ridge of Mount Oneium:
but it was at last made known to them by the dust of the fugitives,
and they forthwith hastened to help. Reinforcements also came both
from Corinth and from Kenchreæ, and as it seemed, too, from the
neighboring Peloponnesian cities, so that Nikias thought it prudent
to retire aboard his ships, and halt upon some neighboring islands. It
was here first discovered that two of the Athenians slain had not
been picked up for burial; upon which he immediately sent a herald
to solicit a truce, in order to procure these two missing bodies. We
have here a remarkable proof of the sanctity attached to that duty;
for the mere sending of the herald was tantamount to confession of
defeat.[574]
From hence Nikias sailed to Krommyon, where he ravaged the
neighborhood for a few hours and rested for the night. On the next
day he reëmbarked, sailed along the coast of Epidaurus, upon which
he inflicted some damage in passing, and stopped at last on the
peninsula of Methana, between Epidaurus and Trœzen.[575] On this
peninsula he established a permanent garrison, drawing a
fortification across the narrow neck of land which joined it to the
Epidaurian peninsula. This was his last exploit, and he then sailed
home: but the post at Methana long remained as a centre for
pillaging the neighboring regions of Epidaurus, Trœzen, and Halieis.
While Nikias was engaged in this expedition, Eurymedon and
Sophoklês had sailed forward from Pylus with a considerable portion
of that fleet which had been engaged in the capture of Sphakteria,
to the island of Korkyra. It has been already stated that the
democratical government at Korkyra had been suffering severe
pressure and privation from the oligarchical fugitives, who had come
back into the island with a body of barbaric auxiliaries, and
established themselves upon Mount Istônê, not far from the city.[576]
Eurymedon and the Athenians joining the Korkyræans in the city,
attacked and stormed the post on Mount Istônê; while the
vanquished, retiring first to a lofty and inaccessible peak, were
forced to surrender themselves on terms to the Athenians. They
abandoned their mercenary auxiliaries altogether, and only stipulated
that they should themselves be sent to Athens, and left to the
discretion of the Athenian people. Eurymedon, assenting to these
terms, deposited the disarmed prisoners in the neighboring islet of
Ptychia, under the distinct condition that, if a single man tried to
escape, the whole capitulation should be null and void.[577]
Unfortunately for these prisoners, the orders given to Eurymedon
carried him onward straight to Sicily. It was irksome, therefore, to
him to send away a detachment of his squadron to convey these
men to Athens,—while the honors of delivering them there would be
reaped, not by himself, but by the officer to whom they might be
confided: and the Korkyræans in the city, on their part, were equally
anxious that the prisoners should not be sent to Athens; for their
animosity against them was bitter in the extreme, and they were
afraid that the Athenians might spare their lives, so that their
hostility against the island might be again resumed. And thus a
mean jealousy on the part of Eurymedon, combined with revenge
and insecurity on the part of the victorious Korkyræans, brought
about a cruel catastrophe, paralleled nowhere else in Greece, though
too well in keeping with the previous acts of the bloody drama
enacted in this island.
The Korkyræan leaders, seemingly not without the privity of
Eurymedon, sent across to Ptychia fraudulent emissaries under the
guise of friends to the prisoners. These emissaries—assuring the
prisoners that the Athenian commanders, in spite of the convention
signed, were about to hand them over to the Korkyræan people for
destruction—induced some of them to attempt escape in a boat
prepared for the purpose. By concert, the boat was seized in the act
of escaping, so that the terms of the capitulation were really
violated: upon which Eurymedon handed over the prisoners to their
enemies in the island, who imprisoned them all together in one vast
building, under guard of hoplites. From this building they were
drawn out in companies of twenty men each, chained together in
couples, and compelled to march between two lines of hoplites
marshalled on each side of the road. Those who loitered in the
march were hurried on by whips from behind: as they advanced,
their private enemies on both sides singled them out, striking and
piercing them until at length they miserably perished. Three
successive companies were thus destroyed, ere the remaining
prisoners in the interior, who thought merely that their place of
detention was about to be changed, suspected what was passing: at
length they found it out, and one and all then refused either to quit
the building or to permit any one else to enter. They at the same
time piteously implored the intervention of the Athenians, if it were
only to kill them, and thus preserve them from the cruelties of their
merciless countrymen. The latter abstained from attempts to force
the door of the building, but made an aperture in the roof, from
whence they shot down arrows, and poured showers of tiles, upon
the prisoners within; who sought at first to protect themselves, but
at length abandoned themselves to despair, and assisted with their
own hands in the work of destruction. Some of them pierced their
throats with the arrows shot down from the roof: others hung
themselves, either with cords from some bedding which happened to
be in the building, or with strips torn and twisted from their own
garments. Night came on, but the work of destruction, both from
above and within, was continued without intermission, so that before
morning all these wretched men perished, either by the hands of
their enemies or by their own. At daybreak, the Korkyræans entered
the building, piled up the dead bodies on carts, and transported
them out of the city: the exact number we are not told, but
seemingly it cannot have been less than three hundred. The women
who had been taken at Istônê along with these prisoners, were all
sold as slaves.[578]
Thus finished the bloody dissensions in this ill-fated island: for
the oligarchical party were completely annihilated, the democracy
was victorious, and there were no farther violences throughout the
whole war.[579] It will be recollected that these deadly feuds began
with the return of the oligarchical prisoners from Corinth, bringing
along with them projects both of treason and of revolution: they
ended with the annihilation of that party, in the manner above
described; the interval being filled by mutual atrocities and
retaliation, wherein of course the victors had most opportunity of
gratifying their vindictive passions. Eurymedon, after the termination
of these events, proceeded onward with the Athenian squadron to
Sicily: what he did there will be described in a future chapter
devoted to Sicilian affairs exclusively.
 The complete prostration of Ambrakia during the campaign of the
preceding year had left Anaktorium without any defence against the
Akarnanians and Athenian squadron from Naupaktus. They besieged
and took it during the course of the present summer;[580] expelling
the Corinthian proprietors, and repeopling the town and its territory
with Akarnanian settlers from all the townships in the country.
Throughout the maritime empire of Athens matters continued
perfectly tranquil, except that the inhabitants of Chios, during the
course of the autumn, incurred the suspicion of the Athenians from
having recently built a new wall to their city, as if it were done with
the intention of taking the first opportunity to revolt.[581] They
solemnly protested their innocence of any such designs, but the
Athenians were not satisfied without exacting the destruction of the
obnoxious wall. The presence on the opposite continent of an active
band of Mitylenæan exiles, who captured both Rhœteium and
Antandrus during the ensuing spring, probably made the Athenians
more anxious and vigilant on the subject of Chios.[582]
The Athenian regular tribute-gathering squadron circulated
among the maritime subjects, and captured, during the course of
the present autumn, a prisoner of some importance and singularity.
It was a Persian ambassador, Artaphernes, seized at Eion on the
Strymon, in his way to Sparta with despatches from the Great King.
He was brought to Athens, and his despatches, which were at some
length, and written in the Assyrian character, were translated and
made public. The Great King told the Lacedæmonians, in substance,
that he could not comprehend what they meant; for that among the
numerous envoys whom they had sent, no two told the same story.
Accordingly he desired them, if they wished to make themselves
understood, to send some envoys with fresh and plain instructions to
accompany Artaphernes.[583] Such was the substance of the
despatch, conveying a remarkable testimony as to the march of the
Lacedæmonian government in its foreign policy. Had any similar
testimony existed respecting Athens, demonstrating that her foreign
policy was conducted with half as much unsteadiness and stupidity,
ample inferences would have been drawn from it to the discredit of
democracy. But there has been no motive generally to discredit
Lacedæmonian institutions, which included kingship in double
measure,—two parallel lines of hereditary kings: together with an
entire exemption from everything like popular discussion. The
extreme defects in the foreign management of Sparta, revealed by
the despatch of Artaphernes, seem traceable partly to an habitual
faithlessness often noted in the Lacedæmonian character, partly to
the annual change of ephors, so frequently bringing into power men
who strove to undo what had been done by their predecessors, and
still more to the absence of everything like discussion or canvass of
public measures among the citizens. We shall find more than one
example, in the history about to follow, of this disposition on the
part of ephors, not merely to change the policy of their
predecessors, but even to subvert treaties sworn and concluded by
them: and such was the habitual secrecy of Spartan public business,
that in doing this they had neither criticism nor discussion to fear.
Brasidas, when he started from Sparta on the expedition which will
be described in the coming chapter, could not trust the assurances of
the Lacedæmonian executive without binding them by the most
solemn oaths.[584]
The Athenians sent back Artaphernes in a trireme to Ephesus,
and availed themselves of this opportunity for procuring access to
the Great King. They sent envoys along with him, with the intention
that they should accompany him up to Susa: but on reaching Asia,
the news had just arrived that King Artaxerxes had recently died.
Under such circumstances, it was not judged expedient to prosecute
the mission, and the Athenians dropped their design.[585]
Respecting the great monarchy of Persia, during this long interval
of fifty-four years since the repulse of Xerxes from Greece, we have
little information before us except the names of the successive kings.
In the year 465 B.C. Xerxes was assassinated by Artabanus and
Mithridates, through one of those plots of great household officers,
so frequent in oriental palaces. He left two sons, or at least two sons
present and conspicuous among a greater number, Darius and
Artaxerxes. But Artabanus persuaded Artaxerxes that Darius had
been the murderer of Xerxes, and thus prevailed upon him to
revenge his father’s death by becoming an accomplice in killing his
brother Darius: he next tried to assassinate Artaxerxes himself, and
to appropriate the crown. Artaxerxes however, apprized beforehand
of the scheme, either slew Artabanus with his own hand or procured
him to be slain and then reigned (known under the name of
Artaxerxes Longimanus) for forty years, down to the period at which
we are now arrived.[586]
Mention has already been made of the revolt of Egypt from the
dominion of Artaxerxes, under the Libyan prince Inanes, actively
aided by the Athenians. After a few years of success, this revolt was
crushed and Egypt again subjugated, by the energy of the Persian
general Megabyzus, with severe loss to the Athenian forces
engaged. After the peace of Kallias, erroneously called the Kimonian
peace, between the Athenians and the king of Persia, war had not
been since resumed. We read in Ktesias, amidst various anecdotes
seemingly collected at the court of Susa, romantic adventures
ascribed to Megabyzus, his wife Amytis, his mother Amestris, and a
Greek physician of Kos, named Apollonides. Zopyrus son of
Megabyzus, after the death of his father, deserted from Persia and
came as an exile to Athens.[587]
At the death of Artaxerxes Longimanus, the family violences
incident to a Persian succession were again exhibited. His son Xerxes
succeeded him, but was assassinated, after a reign of a few weeks
or months. Another son, Sogdianus, followed, who perished in like
manner after a short interval.[588] Lastly, a third son, Ochus (known
under the name of Darius Nothus), either abler or more fortunate,
kept his crown and life between nineteen and twenty years. By his
queen, the savage Parysatis, he was father to Artaxerxes Mnemon
and Cyrus the younger, both names of interest in reference to
Grecian history, to whom we shall hereafter recur.
 CHAPTER LIII.
EIGHTH YEAR OF THE WAR.

The eighth year of the war, on which we now touch, presents events
of a more important and decisive character than any of the
preceding. In reviewing the preceding years, we observe that though
there is much fighting, with hardship and privation inflicted on both
sides, yet the operations are mostly of a desultory character, not
calculated to determine the event of the war. But the capture of
Sphakteria and its prisoners, coupled with the surrender of the
whole Lacedæmonian fleet, was an event full of consequences and
imposing in the eyes of all Greece. It stimulated the Athenians to a
series of operations, larger and more ambitious than anything which
they had yet conceived; directed, not merely against Sparta in her
own country, but also to the reconquest of that ascendency in
Megara and Bœotia which they had lost on or before the thirty years’
truce. On the other hand, it intimidated so much both the
Lacedæmonians, the revolted Chalkidic allies of Athens in Thrace,
and Perdikkas, king of Macedonia, that between them the expedition
of Brasidas, which struck so serious a blow at the Athenian empire,
was concerted. This year is thus the turning-point of the war. If the
operations of Athens had succeeded, she would have regained
nearly as great a power as she enjoyed before the thirty years’
truce: but it happened that Sparta, or rather the Spartan Brasidas,
was successful, gaining enough to neutralize all the advantages
derived by Athens from the capture of Sphakteria.
The first enterprise undertaken by the Athenians in the course of
the spring was against the island of Kythêra, on the southern coast
of Laconia. It was inhabited by Lacedæmonian Periœki, and
administered by a governor, and garrison of hoplites, annually sent
thither. It was the usual point of landing for merchantmen from
Libya and Egypt; and as it lay very near to Cape Malea, immediately
over against the gulf of Gythium,—the only accessible portion of the
generally inhospitable coast of Laconia,—the chance that it might fall
into the hands of an enemy was considered as so menacing to
Sparta, that some politicians are said to have wished the island at
the bottom of the sea.[589] Nikias, in conjunction with Nikostratus
and Autoklês, conducted thither a fleet of sixty triremes, with two
thousand Athenian hoplites, some few horsemen, and a body of
allies, mainly Milesians. There were in the island two towns,—
Kythêra and Skandeia: the former having a lower town close to the
sea, fronting Cape Malea, and an upper town on the hill above; the
latter, seemingly, on the south or west coast. Both were attacked at
the same time by order of Nikias; ten triremes and a body of
Milesian[590] hoplites disembarked and captured Skandeia; while the
Athenians landed at Kythêra, and drove the inhabitants out of the
lower town into the upper, where they speedily capitulated. A certain
party among them had indeed secretly invited the coming of Nikias,
through which intrigue easy terms were obtained for the inhabitants.
Some few men, indicated by the Kytherians in intelligence with
Nikias, were carried away as prisoners to Athens: but the remainder
were left undisturbed, and enrolled among the tributary allies under
obligation to pay four talents per annum; an Athenian garrison being
placed at Kythêra for the protection of the island. From hence Nikias
employed seven days in descents and inroads upon the coast, near
Helos, Asinê, Aphrodisia, Kotyrta, and elsewhere. The
Lacedæmonian force was disseminated in petty garrisons, which
remained each for the defence of its own separate post, without
uniting to repel the Athenians, so that there was only one action,
and that of little importance, which the Athenians deemed worthy of
a trophy.
In returning home from Kythêra, Nikias first ravaged the small
strip of cultivated land near Epidaurus Limêra, on the rocky eastern
coast of Laconia, and then attacked the Æginetan settlement at
Thyrea, the frontier strip between Laconia and Argolis. This town
and district had been made over by Sparta to the Æginetans, at the
time when they were expelled from their own island by Athens, in
the first year of the war. The new inhabitants, finding the town too
distant from the sea[591] for their maritime habits, were now
employed in constructing a fortification close on the shore; in which
work a Lacedæmonian detachment under Tantalus, on guard in that
neighborhood, was assisting them. When the Athenians landed, both
Æginetans and Lacedæmonians at once abandoned the new
fortification. The former, with the commanding officer, Tantalus,
occupied the upper town of Thyrea; but the Lacedæmonian troops,
not thinking it tenable, refused to take part in the defence, and
retired to the neighboring mountains, in spite of urgent entreaty
from the Æginetans. The Athenians, immediately after landing,
marched up to the town of Thyrea, and carried it by storm, burning
or destroying everything within it: all the Æginetans were either
killed or made prisoners, and even Tantalus, disabled by his wounds,
became prisoner also. From hence the armament returned to
Athens, where a vote was taken as to the disposal of the prisoners.
The Kytherians brought home were distributed for safe custody
among the dependent islands: Tantalus was retained along with the
prisoners from Sphakteria; but a harder fate was reserved for the
Æginetans; they were all put to death, victims to the long-standing
apathy between Athens and Ægina. This cruel act was nothing more
than a strict application of admitted customs of war in those days:
had the Lacedæmonians been the victors, there can be little doubt
that they would have acted with equal rigor.[592]
The occupation of Kythêra, in addition to Pylus, by an Athenian
garrison, following so closely upon the capital disaster in Sphakteria,
produced in the minds of the Spartans feelings of alarm and
depression such as they had never before experienced. Within the
course of a few short months their position had completely changed
from superiority and aggression abroad to insult and insecurity at
home. They anticipated nothing less than incessant foreign attacks
on all their weak points, with every probability of internal defection,
from the standing discontent of the Helots: nor was it unknown to
them, probably, that even Kythêra itself had been lost partly through
betrayal. The capture of Sphakteria had caused peculiar sensations
among the Helots, to whom the Lacedæmonians had addressed both
appeals and promises of emancipation, in order to procure succor for
their hoplites while blockaded in the island; and if the ultimate
surrender of these hoplites had abated the terrors of Lacedæmonian
prowess throughout all Greece, this effect had been produced to a
still greater degree among the oppressed Helots. A refuge at Pylus,
and a nucleus which presented some possibility of expanding into
regenerated Messenia, were now before their eyes; while the
establishment of an Athenian garrison at Kythêra opened a new
channel of communication with the enemies of Sparta, so as to
tempt all the Helots of daring temper to stand forward as liberators
of their enslaved race.[593] The Lacedæmonians, habitually cautious
at all times, felt now as if the tide of fortune had turned decidedly
against them, and acted with confirmed mistrust and dismay,
confining themselves to measures strictly defensive, and organizing
a force of four hundred cavalry, together with a body of bowmen,
beyond their ordinary establishment.
But the precaution which they thought it necessary to take in
regard to the Helots, affords the best measure of their
apprehensions at the moment, and exhibits, indeed, a refinement of
fraud and cruelty rarely equalled in history. Wishing to single out
from the general body such as were most high-couraged and valiant,
the ephors made proclamation, that those Helots, who conceived
themselves to have earned their liberty by distinguished services in
war, might stand forward to claim it. A considerable number obeyed
the call; probably many who had undergone imminent hazards
during the preceding summer, in order to convey provisions to the
blockaded soldiers in Sphakteria.[594] They were examined by the
government, and two thousand of them were selected as fully
worthy of emancipation; which was forthwith bestowed upon them
in public ceremonial, with garlands, visits to the temples, and the full
measure of religious solemnity. The government had now made the
selection which it desired; presently every man among these newly-
enfranchized Helots was made away with, no one knew how.[595] A
stratagem at once so perfidious in the contrivance, so murderous in
the purpose, and so complete in the execution, stands without
parallel in Grecian history,—we might almost say, without a parallel
in any history. It implies a depravity far greater than the rigorous
execution of a barbarous customary law against prisoners of war or
rebels, even in large numbers. The ephors must have employed
numerous instruments, apart from each other, for the performance
of this bloody deed; yet it appears that no certain knowledge could
be obtained of the details; a striking proof of the mysterious
efficiency of this Council of Five, surpassing even that of the Council
of Ten at Venice, as well as of the utter absence of public inquiry or
discussion.
It was while the Lacedæmonians were in this state of uneasiness
at home, that envoys reached them from Perdikkas of Macedonia
and the Chalkidians of Thrace, entreating aid against Athens; who
was considered likely, in her present tide of success, to resume
aggressive measures against them. There were, moreover, other
parties, in the neighboring cities[596] subject to Athens, who secretly
favored the application, engaging to stand forward in open revolt as
soon as any auxiliary force should arrive to warrant their incurring
the hazard. Perdikkas (who had on his hands a dispute with his
kinsman Arrhibæus, prince of the Lynkestæ-Macedonians, which he
was anxious to be enabled to close successfully) and the Chalkidians
offered at the same time to provide the pay and maintenance, as
well as to facilitate the transit, of the troops who might be sent to
them; and what was of still greater importance to the success of the
enterprise, they specially requested that Brasidas might be invested
with the command.[597] He had now recovered from his wounds
received at Pylus, and his reputation for adventurous valor, great as
it was from positive desert, stood out still more conspicuously,
because not a single other Spartan had as yet distinguished himself.
His other great qualities, apart from personal valor, had not yet been
shown, for he had never been in any supreme command. But he
burned with impatience to undertake the operation destined for him
by the envoys; although at this time it must have appeared so
replete with difficulty and danger, that probably no other Spartan
except himself would have entered upon it with the smallest hopes
of success. To raise up embarrassments for Athens, in Thrace, was
an object of great consequence to Sparta, while she also obtained
an opportunity of sending away another large detachment of her
dangerous Helots. Seven hundred of these latter were armed as
hoplites and placed under the orders of Brasidas, but the
Lacedæmonians would not assign to him any of their own proper
forces. With the sanction of the Spartan name, with seven hundred
Helot hoplites, and with such other hoplites as he could raise in
Peloponnesus by means of the funds furnished from the Chalkidians,
Brasidas prepared to undertake this expedition, alike adventurous
and important.
Had the Athenians entertained any suspicion of his design, they
could easily have prevented him from ever reaching Thrace. But they
knew nothing of it until he had actually joined Perdikkas, nor did
they anticipate any serious attack from Sparta, in this moment of her
depression, much less an enterprise far bolder than any which she
had ever been known to undertake. They were now elate with hopes
of conquests to come on their own part, their affairs being so
prosperous and promising that parties favorable to their interests
began to revive, both in Megara and in Bœotia; while Hippokratês
and Demosthenês, the two chief stratêgi for the year, were men of
energy, well qualified both to project and execute military
achievements.
The first opportunity presented itself in regard to Megara. The
inhabitants of that city had been greater sufferers by the war than
any other persons in Greece: they had been the chief cause of
bringing down the war upon Athens, and the Athenians revenged
upon them all the hardships which they themselves endured from
the Lacedæmonian invasion. Twice in every year they laid waste the
Megarid, which bordered upon their own territory; and that too with
such destructive hands throughout its limited extent, that they
intercepted all subsistence from the lands near the town, at the
same time keeping the harbor of Nisæa closely blocked up. Under
such hard conditions the Megarians found much difficulty in
supplying even the primary wants of life.[598] But their case had
now, within the last few months, become still more intolerable by an
intestine commotion in the city, ending in the expulsion of a powerful
body of exiles, who seized and held possession of Pegæ, the
Megarian port in the gulf of Corinth. Probably imports from Pegæ
had been their chief previous resource against the destruction which
came on them from the side of Athens; so that it became scarcely
possible to sustain themselves, when the exiles in Pegæ not only
deprived them of this resource, but took positive part in harassing
them. These exiles were oligarchical, and the government in Megara
had now become more or less democratical: but the privations in the
city presently reached such a height, that several citizens began to
labor for a compromise, whereby the exiles in Pegæ might be
readmitted. It was evident to the leaders in Megara that the bulk of
the citizens could not long sustain the pressure of enemies from
both sides, but it was also their feeling that the exiles in Pegæ, their
bitter political rivals, were worse enemies than the Athenians, and
that the return of these exiles would be a sentence of death to
themselves. To prevent this counter-revolution, they opened a secret
correspondence with Hippokratês and Demosthenês, engaging to
betray both Megara and Nisæa to the Athenians; though Nisæa, the
harbor of Megara, about one mile from the city, was a separate
fortress occupied by a Peloponnesian garrison, and by them
exclusively, as well as the Long Walls, for the purpose of holding
Megara fast to the Lacedæmonian confederacy.[599]
The scheme for surprise was concerted, and what is more
remarkable, in the extreme publicity of all Athenian affairs, and in a
matter to which many persons must have been privy, was kept
secret, until the instant of execution. A large Athenian force, four
thousand hoplites and six hundred cavalry, was appointed to march
at night by the high road through Eleusis to Megara: but Hippokratês
and Demosthenês themselves went on shipboard from Peiræus to
the island of Minôa, which was close against Nisæa, and had been
for some time under occupation by an Athenian garrison. Here
Hippokratês concealed himself with six hundred hoplites, in a hollow
space out of which brick earth had been dug, on the mainland
opposite to Minôa, and not far from the gate in the Long Wall which
opened near the junction of that wall with the ditch and wall
surrounding Nisæa; while Demosthenês, with some light-armed
Platæans and a detachment of active young Athenians, called
Peripoli, and serving as the movable guard of Attica, in their first or
second year of military service, placed himself in ambush in the
sacred precinct of Arês, still closer to the same gate.
To procure that the gate should be opened, was the task of the
conspirators within. Amidst the shifts to which the Megarians had
been reduced in order to obtain supplies, especially since the
blockade of Minôa, predatory exit by night was not omitted. Some of
these conspirators had been in the habit, before the intrigue with
Athens was projected, of carrying out a small sculler-boat by night
upon a cart, through this gate, by permission of the Peloponnesian
commander of Nisæa and the Long Walls. The boat, when thus
brought out, was carried down to the shore along the hollow of the
dry ditch which surrounded the wall of Nisæa, then put to sea for
some nightly enterprise, and was brought back again along the ditch
before daylight in the morning; the gate being opened, by
permission, to let it in. This was the only way by which any Megarian
vessel could get to sea, since the Athenians at Minôa were complete
masters of the harbor. On the night fixed for the surprise, this boat
was carried out and brought back at the usual hour. But the moment
that the gate in the Long Wall was opened to readmit it,
Demosthenês and his comrades sprang forward to force their way
in; the Megarians along with the boat at the same time setting upon
and killing the guards, in order to facilitate his entrance. This active
and determined band were successful in mastering the gate, and
keeping it open until the six hundred hoplites under Hippokratês
came up, and got into the interior space between the Long Walls.
They immediately mounted the walls on each side, every man as he
came in, with little thought of order, to drive off or destroy the
Peloponnesian guards; who, taken by surprise, and fancying that the
Megarians generally were in concert with the enemy against them,—
confirmed, too, in such belief by hearing the Athenian herald
proclaim aloud that every Megarian who chose might take his post in
the line of Athenian hoplites,[600]—made at first some resistance, but
were soon discouraged, and fled into Nisæa. By a little after
daybreak, the Athenians found themselves masters of all the line of
the Long Walls, and under the very gates of Megara,—reinforced by
the larger force which, having marched by land through Eleusis,
arrived at the concerted moment.
Meanwhile, the Megarians within the city were in the greatest
tumult and consternation. But the conspirators, prepared with their
plan, had resolved to propose that the gates should be thrown open,
and that the whole force of the city should be marched out to fight
the Athenians: when once the gates should be open, they
themselves intended to take part with the Athenians, and facilitate
their entrance,—and they had rubbed their bodies over with oil in
order to be visibly distinguished in the eyes of the latter. Their plan
was only frustrated the moment before it was about to be put in
execution, by the divulgation of one of their own comrades. Their
opponents in the city, apprized of what was in contemplation,
hastened to the gate, and intercepted the men rubbed with oil as
they were about to open it. Without betraying any knowledge of the
momentous secret which they had just learned, these opponents
loudly protested against opening the gate and going out to fight an
enemy for whom they had never conceived themselves, even in
moments of greater strength, to be a match in the open field. While
insisting only on the public mischiefs of the measure, they at the
same time planted themselves in arms against the gate, and
declared that they would perish before they would allow it to be
opened. For this obstinate resistance the conspirators were not
prepared, so that they were forced to abandon their design and
leave the gate closed.
 The Athenian generals, who were waiting in expectation that it
would be opened, soon perceived by the delay that their friends
within had been baffled, and immediately resolved to make sure of
Nisæa, which lay behind them; an acquisition important not less in
itself, than as a probable means for the mastery of Megara. They set
about the work with the characteristic rapidity of Athenians. Masons
and tools in abundance were forthwith sent for from Athens, and the
army distributed among themselves the wall of circumvallation round
Nisæa in distinct parts. First, the interior space between the Long
Walls themselves was built across, so as to cut off the
communication with Megara; next, walls were carried out from the
outside of both the Long Walls down to the sea, so as completely to
inclose Nisæa, with its fortifications and ditch. The scattered houses
which formed a sort of ornamented suburb to Nisæa, furnished
bricks for this inclosing circle, or were sometimes even made to form
a part of it as they stood, with the parapets on their roofs; while the
trees were cut down to supply material wherever palisades were
suitable. In a day and a half the work of circumvallation was almost
completed, so that the Peloponnesians in Nisæa saw before them
nothing but a hopeless state of blockade. Deprived of all
communication, they not only fancied that the whole city of Megara
had joined the Athenians, but they were moreover without any
supply of provisions, which had been always furnished to them in
daily rations from the city. Despairing of any speedy relief from
Peloponnesus, they accepted easy terms of capitulation offered to
them by the Athenian generals.[601] After delivering up their arms,
each man among them was to be ransomed for a stipulated price;
we are not told how much, but doubtless a moderate sum. The
Lacedæmonian commander, and such other Lacedæmonians as
might be in Nisæa, were, however, required to surrender themselves
as prisoners to the Athenians, to be held at their disposal. On these
terms Nisæa was surrendered to the Athenians, who cut off its
communication with Megara, by keeping the intermediate space
between the Long Walls effectively blocked up,—walls, of which they
had themselves, in former days, been the original authors.[602]
 Such interruption of communication by the Long Walls indicated
in the minds of the Athenian generals a conviction that Megara was
now out of their reach. But the town in its present distracted state,
would certainly have fallen into their hands,[603] had it not been
snatched from them by the accidental neighborhood and energetic
intervention of Brasidas. That officer, occupied in the levy of troops
for his Thracian expedition, was near Corinth and Sikyon, when he
first learned the surprise and capture of the Long Walls. Partly from
the alarm which the news excited among these Peloponnesian
towns, partly from his own personal influence, he got together a
body of two thousand seven hundred Corinthian hoplites, six
hundred Sikyonian and four hundred Phliasian, besides his own small
army, and marched with this united force to Tripodiskus, in the
Megarid, half-way between Megara and Pegæ, on the road over
Mount Geraneia; having first despatched a pressing summons to the
Bœotians to request that they would meet him at that point with
reinforcements. He trusted by a speedy movement to preserve
Megara, and perhaps even Nisæa; but on reaching Tripodiskus in the
night, he learned that the latter place had already surrendered.
Alarmed for the safety of Megara, he proceeded thither by a night-
march without delay. Taking with him only a chosen band of three
hundred men, he presented himself, without being expected, at the
gates of the city; entreating to be admitted, and offering to lend his
immediate aid for the recovery of Nisæa. One of the two parties in
Megara would have been glad to comply; but the other, knowing well
that in that case the exiles in Pegæ would be brought back upon
them, was prepared for a strenuous resistance, in which case the
Athenian force, still only one mile off, would have been introduced as
auxiliaries. Under these circumstances the two parties came to a
compromise, and mutually agreed to refuse admittance to Brasidas.
They expected that a battle would take place between him and the
Athenians, and each calculated that Megara would follow the
fortunes of the victor.[604]
Returning back without success to Tripodiskus, Brasidas was
joined there early in the morning by two thousand Bœotian hoplites
and six hundred cavalry; for the Bœotians had been put in motion by
the same news as himself, and had even commenced their march,
before his messenger arrived, with such celerity as to have already
reached Platæa.[605] The total force under Brasidas was thus
increased to six thousand hoplites and six hundred cavalry, with
whom he marched straight to the neighborhood of Megara. The
Athenian light troops, dispersed over the plain, were surprised and
driven in by the Bœotian cavalry; but the Athenian cavalry, coming
to their aid, maintained a sharp action with the assailants, wherein,
after some loss on both sides, a slight advantage remained on the
side of the Athenians. They granted a truce for the burial of the
Bœotian officer of cavalry, who was slain with some others. After
this indecisive cavalry skirmish, Brasidas advanced with his main
force into the plain, between Megara and the sea, taking up a
position near to the Athenian hoplites, who were drawn up in battle
array, hard by Nisæa and the Long Walls. He thus offered them
battle if they chose it; but each party expected that the other would
attack and each was unwilling to begin the attack on his own side,
Brasidas was well aware that, if the Athenians refused to fight,
Megara would be preserved from falling into their hands,—which loss
it was his main object to prevent, and which had in fact been
prevented only by his arrival. If he attacked and was beaten, he
would forfeit this advantage,—while, if victorious, he could hardly
hope to gain much more. The Athenian generals on their side
reflected, that they had already secured a material acquisition in
Nisæa, which cut off Megara from their sea; that the army opposed
to them was not only superior in number of hoplites, but composed
of contingents from many different cities, so that no one city
hazarded much in the action; while their own force was all Athenian,
and composed of the best hoplites in Athens, which would render a
defeat severely ruinous to the city: nor did they think it worth while
to encounter this risk, even for the purpose of gaining possession of
Megara. With such views in the leaders on both sides, the two
armies remained for some time in position, each waiting for the
other to attack: at length the Athenians, seeing that no aggressive
movement was contemplated by their opponents, were the first to
retire into Nisæa. Thus left master of the field, Brasidas retired in
triumph to Megara, the gates of which were now opened without
reserve to admit him.[606]
The army of Brasidas, having gained the chief point for which it
was collected, speedily dispersed,—he himself resuming his
preparations for Thrace; while the Athenians on their side also
returned home, leaving an adequate garrison for the occupation
both of Nisæa and of the Long Walls. But the interior of Megara
underwent a complete and violent revolution. While the leaders
friendly to Athens, not thinking it safe to remain, fled forthwith and
sought shelter with the Athenians,[607] the opposite party opened
communication with the exiles at Pegæ and readmitted them into
the city; binding them however, by the most solemn pledges, to
observe absolute amnesty of the past and to study nothing but the
welfare of the common city. The new-comers only kept their pledge
during the interval which elapsed until they acquired power to
violate it with effect. They soon got themselves placed in the chief
commands of state, and found means to turn the military force to
their own purposes. A review and examination of arms, of the
hoplites in the city, having been ordered, the Megarian lochi were so
marshalled and tutored as to enable the leaders to single out such
victims as they thought expedient. They seized many of their most
obnoxious enemies, some of them suspected as accomplices in the
recent conspiracy with Athens: the men thus seized were subjected
to the forms of a public trial, before that which was called a public
assembly; wherein each voter, acting under military terror, was
constrained to give his suffrage openly. All were condemned to death
and executed, to the number of one hundred.[608] The constitution
of Megara was then shaped into an oligarchy of the closest possible
kind, a few of the most violent men taking complete possession of
the government. But they must probably have conducted it with
vigor and prudence for their own purposes, since Thucydidês
remarks that it was rare to see a revolution accomplished by so
small a party, and yet so durable. How long it lasted, he does not
mention. A few months after these incidents, the Megarians
regained possession of their Long Walls, by capture from the
Athenians,[609] to whom indeed they could have been of no material
service, and levelled the whole line of them to the ground: but the
Athenians still retained Nisæa. We may remark, as explaining in part
the durability of this new government, that the truce concluded at
the beginning of the ensuing year must have greatly lightened the
difficulties of any government, whether oligarchical or democratical,
in Megara.
The scheme for surprising Megara had been both laid and
executed with skill, and only miscarried through an accident to which
such schemes are always liable, as well as by the unexpected
celerity of Brasidas. It had, moreover, succeeded so far as to enable
the Athenians to carry Nisæa,—one of the posts which they had
surrendered by the thirty years’ truce, and of considerable positive
value to them: so that it counted on the whole as a victory, leaving
the generals with increased encouragement to turn their activity
elsewhere. Accordingly, very soon after the troops had been brought
back from the Megarid,[610] Hippokratês and Demosthenês concerted
a still more extensive plan for the invasion of Bœotia, in conjunction
with some malcontents in the Bœotian towns, who desired to break
down and democratize the oligarchical governments, and especially
through the agency of a Theban exile named Ptœodôrus.
Demosthenês, with forty triremes, was sent round Peloponnesus to
Naupaktus, with instructions to collect an Akarnanian force, to sail
into the inmost recess of the Corinthian or Krissæan gulf, and to
occupy Siphæ, a maritime town belonging to the Bœotian Thespiæ,
where intelligences had been already established. On the same day,
determined beforehand, Hippokratês engaged to enter Bœotia, with
the main force of Athens, at the southeastern corner of the territory
near Tanagra, and to fortify Delium, the temple of Apollo, on the
coast of the Eubœan strait: while at the same time it was concerted
that some Bœotian and Phocian malcontents should make
themselves masters of Chæroneia on the borders of Phocis. Bœotia
would thus be assailed on three sides at the same moment, so that
the forces of the country would be distracted and unable to
coöperate. Internal movements were farther expected to take place
in some of the cities, such as perhaps to establish democratical
governments and place them at once in alliance with the Athenians.
Accordingly, about the month of August, Demosthenês sailed
from Athens to Naupaktus, where he collected his Akarnanian allies,
—now stronger and more united than ever, since the refractory
inhabitants of Œniadæ had been at length compelled to join their
Akarnanian brethren: moreover, the neighboring Agræans with their
prince Salynthius were also brought into the Athenian alliance. On
the appointed day, seemingly about the beginning of October, he
sailed with a strong force of these allies up to Siphæ, in full
expectation that it would be betrayed to him.[611] But the execution
of this enterprise was less happy than that against Megara. In the
first place, there was a mistake as to the day understood between
Hippokratês and Demosthenês: in the next place, the entire plot was
discovered and betrayed by a Phocian of Phanoteus (bordering on
Chæroneia) named Nicomachus,—communicated first to the
Lacedæmonians and through them to the bœotarchs. Siphæ and
Chæroneia were immediately placed in a state of defence, and
Demosthenês, on arriving at the former place, found not only no
party within it favorable to him, but a formidable Bœotian force
which rendered attack unavailing: moreover, Hippokratês had not yet
begun his march, so that the defenders had nothing to distract their
attention from Siphæ.[612] Under these circumstances, not only was
Demosthenês obliged to withdraw without striking a blow, and to
content himself with an unsuccessful descent upon the territory of
Sikyon,[613] but all the expected internal movements in Bœotia were
prevented from breaking out.
It was not till after the Bœotian troops, having repelled the
attack by sea, had retired from Siphæ, that Hippokratês commenced
his march from Athens to invade the Bœotian territory near Tanagra.
He was probably encouraged by false promises from the Bœotian
exiles, otherwise it seems remarkable that he should have persisted
in executing his part of the scheme alone, after the known failure of
the other part. It was, however, executed in a manner which implies
unusual alacrity and confidence. The whole military population of
Athens was marched into Bœotia, to the neighborhood of Delium,
the eastern coast-extremity of the territory belonging to the Bœotian
town of Tanagra; the expedition comprising all classes, not merely
citizens, but also metics or resident non-freemen, and even non-
resident strangers then by accident at Athens. Of course this
statement must be understood with the reserve of ample guards left
behind for the city: but besides the really effective force of seven
thousand hoplites, and several hundred horsemen, there appear to
have been not less than twenty-five thousand light-armed, half-
armed, or unarmed attendants accompanying the march.[614] The
number of hoplites is here prodigiously great; brought together by
general and indiscriminate proclamation, not selected by a special
choice of the stratêgi out of the names on the muster-roll, as was
usually the case for any distant expedition.[615] As to light-armed,
there was at this time no trained force of that description at Athens,
except a small body of archers. No pains had been taken to organize
either darters or slingers: the hoplites, the horsemen, and the
seamen, constituted the whole effective force of the city. Indeed, it
appears that the Bœotians also were hardly less destitute than the
Athenians of native darters and slingers, since those which they
employed in the subsequent siege of Delium were in great part hired
from the Malian gulf.[616] To employ at one and the same time
heavy-armed and light-armed, was not natural to any Grecian
community, but was a practice which grew up with experience and
necessity. The Athenian feeling, as manifested in the Persæ of
Æschylus a few years after the repulse of Xerxes, proclaims
exclusive pride in the spear and shield, with contempt for the bow:
and it was only during this very year, when alarmed by the Athenian
occupation of Pylus and Kythêra, that the Lacedæmonians, contrary
to their previous custom, had begun to organize a regiment of
archers.[617] The effective manner in which Demosthenês had
employed the light-armed in Sphakteria against the Lacedæmonian
hoplites, was well calculated to teach an instructive lesson as to the
value of the former description of troops.
 The Bœotian Delium,[618] which Hippokratês now intended to
occupy and fortify, was a temple of Apollo, strongly situated and
overhanging the sea, about five miles from Tanagra, and somewhat
more than a mile from the border territory of Orôpus,—a territory
originally Bœotian, but at this time dependent on Athens, and even
partly incorporated in the political community of Athens, under the
name of the Deme of Græa.[619] Orôpus itself was about a day’s
march from Athens, by the road which led through Dekeleia and
Sphendalê, between the mountains Parnês and Phelleus: so that as
the distance to be traversed was so inconsiderable, and the general
feeling of the time was that of confidence, it is probable that men of
all ages, arms, and dispositions crowded to join the march, in part
from mere curiosity and excitement. Hippokratês reached Delium on
the day after he had started from Athens: on the succeeding day he
began his work of fortification, which was completed, all hands
aiding, and tools as well as workmen having been brought along
with the army from Athens, in two days and a half. Having dug a
ditch all round the sacred ground, he threw up the earth in a bank
alongside of the ditch, planting stakes, throwing in fascines, and
adding layers of stone and brick, to keep the work together, and
make it into a rampart of tolerable height and firmness. The
vines[620] round the temple, together with the stakes which served
as supports to them, were cut to obtain wood; the houses adjoining
furnished bricks and stone: the outer temple-buildings themselves
also, on some of the sides, served as they stood to facilitate and
strengthen the defence; but there was one side on which the
annexed building, once a portico, had fallen down: and here the
Athenians constructed some wooden towers as a help to the
defenders. By the middle of the fifth day after leaving Athens, the
work was so nearly completed, that the army quitted Delium, and
began its march homeward, out of Bœotia; halting, after it had
proceeded about a mile and a quarter, within the Athenian territory
of Orôpus. It was here that the hoplites awaited the coming of
Hippokratês, who still remained at Delium, stationing the garrison,
and giving his final orders about future defence; while the greater
number of the light-armed and unarmed, separating from the
hoplites, and seemingly without any anticipation of the coming
danger, continued their return-march to Athens.[621] Their position
was probably about the western extremity of the plain of Orôpus, on
the verge of the low heights between that plain and Delium.[622]
During these five days, however, the forces from all parts of
Bœotia had time to muster at Tanagra: and their number was just
completed as the Athenians were beginning their march homeward
from Delium. Contingents had arrived, not only from Thebes and its
dependent townships around, but also from Haliartus, Korôneia,
Orchomenus, Kôpæ, and Thespiæ: that of Tanagra joined on the
spot. The government of the Bœotian confederacy at this time was
vested in eleven bœotarchs,—two chosen from Thebes, the rest in
unknown proportion by the other cities, immediate members of the
confederacy,—and in four senates, or councils, the constitution of
which is not known. Though all the bœotarchs, now assembled at
Tanagra, formed a sort of council of war, yet the supreme command
was vested in Pagondas and Aranthidês, the bœotarchs from
Thebes; either in Pagondas as the senior of the two, or perhaps in
both, alternating with each other day by day.[623] As the Athenians
were evidently in full retreat, and had already passed the border, all
the other bœotarchs, except Pagondas, were unwilling to hazard a
battle[624] on soil not Bœotian, and were disposed to let them return
home without obstruction. Such reluctance is not surprising, when
we reflect that the chances of defeat were considerable, and that
probably some of these bœotarchs were afraid of the increased
power which a victory would lend to the oppressive tendencies of
Thebes. But Pagondas strenuously opposed this proposition, and
carried the soldiers of the various cities along with him, even in
opposition to the sentiments of their separate leaders, in favor of
immediately fighting. He called them apart and addressed them by
separate divisions, in order that all might not quit their arms at one
and the same moment.[625] He characterized the sentiment of the
other bœotarchs as an unworthy manifestation of weakness, which,
when properly considered, had not even the recommendation of
superior prudence. For the Athenians had just invaded the country,
and built a fort for the purpose of continuous devastation; nor were
they less enemies on one side of the border than on the other.
Moreover, they were the most restless and encroaching of all
enemies; and the Bœotians, who had the misfortune to be their
neighbors, could only be secure against them by the most resolute
promptitude in defending themselves, as well as in returning the
blows first given. If they wished to protect their autonomy and their
property against the condition of slavery under which their neighbors
in Eubœa had long suffered, as well as so many other portions of
Greece, their only chance was to march onward and beat these
invaders, following the glorious example of their fathers and
predecessors in the field of Korôneia. The sacrifices were favorable
to an advancing movement, and Apollo, whose temple the Athenians
had desecrated by converting it into a fortified place, would lend his
cordial aid to the Bœotian defence.[626]
Finding his exhortations favorably received, Pagondas conducted
the army by a rapid march to a position close to the Athenians. He
was anxious to fight them before they should have retreated farther;
and, moreover, the day was nearly spent,—it was already late in the
afternoon. Having reached a spot where he was only separated from
the Athenians by a hill, which prevented either army from seeing the
other, he marshalled his troops in the array proper for fighting. The
Theban hoplites, with their dependent allies, ranged in a depth of
not less than twenty-five shields, occupied the right wing: the
hoplites of Haliartus, Korôneia, Kôpæ, and its neighborhood, were in
the centre: those of Thespiæ, Tanagra, and Orchomenus, on the
left; for Orchomenus, being the second city in Bœotia next to
Thebes, obtained a second post of honor at the opposite extremity
of the line. Each contingent adopted its own mode of marshalling
the hoplites, and its own depth of files: on this point there was no
uniformity, a remarkable proof of the prevalence of dissentient
custom in Greece, and how much each town, even among
confederates, stood apart as a separate unit.[627] Thucydidês
specifies only the prodigious depth of the Theban hoplites;
respecting the rest, he merely intimates that no common rule was
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