FORUM

By 424 BCE, Sparta and Athens were locked in stalemate. Athens ruled the sea and refused to face the Spartan army in the field. That was anathema to the Spartan way of war: march out, meet the enemy, break him in combat, and return home at the end of the campaign season. When Athens wouldn’t come out to fight, Sparta was left scratching its head.

Enter Brasidas, a Spartan officer who was done waiting for Athens to meet them on the field. He was never a typical Spartan. He was eloquent in a culture that prized silence, and he had already saved a city with 100 men and lost his shield at Pylos. Instead of marching on the walls of Athens again, he proposed going hundreds of miles north to wage a guerrilla war against the cities that fed Athens its tribute, timber and gold, where the Athenian fleet couldn’t protect them.

The Spartan regime was wary of his irregular warfare plan. They authorized it mostly because it cost them nothing. He asked for no Spartiates. He marched with 700 armed helots, the serfs Sparta feared most, and about 1,000 hired mercenaries. It was an army of outcasts, led by one.

Brasidas used speed, surprise and violence of action. Acanthus opened its gates after a single speech. Amphipolis, the jewel of Athens’ northern empire, fell to a night march through a snowstorm. Torone fell in the dark, and Scione revolted to his side.

Sparta’s response was not gratitude. The leadership denied him reinforcements and signed a truce over his head. He kept fighting. In 422 BCE he died defeating the Athenian army at Amphipolis, and the city honored him as its founder. When envoys praised him as the best of Sparta, his own mother said he was a good man, but Sparta had many better. The institution never claimed him. History did.

The hard case market has its own Athens: a legacy power that hasn’t had to innovate in decades. We’re not going to fight them on their terms. We’re going around them.

This is an insurgency.