In 404 BCE, Athens surrendered to Sparta. Xenophon says the Long Walls came down to flute-girls’ music, and the Thirty Tyrants took power. The white city by the blue sea fell quiet.
What Happened
The last winter tightened like a rope. With the fleet gone, grain scarce, and allies peeling away, Athens sought terms. In spring 404 BCE, the city surrendered. Xenophon’s history captures the scene: the Long Walls—those stone arteries between Athens and Piraeus—were torn down “to the music of flute-girls,” celebration in Sparta’s key, elegy in Athens’ [3][11].
The sound of hammers on stone echoed down the Thriasian Plain. Dust rose; the azure slice of sea beyond Piraeus looked suddenly farther away. Sparta installed an oligarchic board—the Thirty Tyrants—to run Athens. The Agora’s juries quieted; the Pnyx’s debates stopped; fear replaced the clatter of allotment machines [3][11].
The regime moved quickly, purging enemies, exiling others, and aligning policy with Spartan interests. In Piraeus, docks stood idle; the pentekoste customs posts had nothing left to skim. On the Acropolis, the Parthenon still shone, white and implacable, a monument now to a city without a fleet [15].
The surrender rearranged Greece’s map. Spartan hegemony replaced Athenian, and the memory of Athenian power became both warning and yearning. The treaty terms ended the war; they also opened a struggle inside Athens about what kind of city it would be without empire.
In exile, a group of democrats gathered resolve. Among them: Thrasybulus, a commander with a talent for timing. He watched the Thirty’s cruelties add up. He counted friends, arms, and places to strike.
The Long Walls lay flat. The city’s spine was broken. Its heart still beat.
Why This Matters
Surrender ended the Peloponnesian War and dismantled Athens’ maritime system—no walls, no fleet, no customs revenue. Oligarchy replaced democracy under Spartan oversight, reversing Athens’ political model [3][11].
Within Collapse and Democratic Recovery, this is the trough: institutions silenced, empire gone. Yet the very speed of the Thirty’s repression seeded the counter-movement that would restore democracy and redefine Athens as a city-state, not a hegemon [3].
Strategically, the fall confirmed that the war’s true hinge was sea control: remove ships, and walls become symbols, not defenses. Culturally, it left monuments standing as mute witnesses to a finished age [11][15].
Historians quote Xenophon’s flute-girls to capture the mixture of triumph and tragedy that attends the end of empires—policy reduced to ritual, and ritual reduced to noise [3].
Event in Context
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People Involved
Key figures who played a role in Surrender of Athens; Long Walls Demolished
Lysander
Lysander, a canny Spartan admiral, turned Persian gold and relentless discipline into victory at sea. Rising to command in 407 BCE, he secured support from Cyrus the Younger and remade Spartan strategy with harmosts and oligarchic boards across the Aegean. In 405 he destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami, then starved Athens into surrender as flutes sounded over the Long Walls’ demolition. Installing the Thirty Tyrants, he tried to lock Sparta’s gains into a network of client regimes. He stands in this timeline as the antagonist who proved a maritime democracy could be defeated by a shrewder navy and an empire of debt and fear.
Thrasybulus
Thrasybulus was a bold Athenian admiral and stalwart of democracy. In 411–410 BCE he rallied the fleet at Samos against oligarchic conspirators, helped recall Alcibiades, and won critical naval victories at Cynossema and Cyzicus that kept Athens alive during the Ionian War. After the city’s surrender and the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, he gathered exiles at Phyle, seized the Piraeus, and won at Munychia in 403, forcing a reconciliation that restored the democracy and proclaimed a durable amnesty. His career threads this timeline: he used sea power to defend a civic order, then reclaimed that order on land when the fleet and walls had fallen.
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