FROM WAR WITHOUT TO WAR WITHIN
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The Persian Empire of Darius the Great, 522–486 BC (note the
capitol, Persepolis)
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"In 499 B.C. the Greek cities of Ionia rebelled against Persian rule. The Persian king, Darius, crushed the revolt and sacked Miletus. Darius invaded Greece to punish Athens for the support of the failed revolt in Ionia. A first Persian invasion failed when the Persian fleet was destroyed in a storm off Mount Athos. A second expedition was decisively beaten by the Athenians and their allies on land at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.
Xerxes, Darius' son and successor, launched a third expedition on a massive scale on land and sea. To avoid the risk of losing the fleet in a storm Xerxes ordered a canal to be dug through the Athos peninsula, a notoriously stormy area. As the army advanced along the Thracian coast Persian diplomats attempted to persuade the Greeks to submit. Many cities and the Greek oracle at Delphi decided to accept Persian terms, but some twenty cities, under the leadership of Sparta, refused to yield.
On August, 480 B.C., 300 Spartans and 5 600 other warriors died at Thermoplylae in a vain attempt to stop the Persian advance. Then, as Xerxes' army marched south, the Athenians were compelled to evacuate the city, which was burned by the Persians.
Yet the Persians had difficulty in supplying their army and Xerxes decided to attack the Greek fleet, which had taken refuge in the Strait of Salamis near Athens. In the narrow Strait, the superior Persian fleet became disorganised and the Greeks, by skillful maneuvering, were able to win a decisive victory. Xerxes ordered an immediate retreat to prevent his army from being trapped.
A token army was left in Greece but this force was destroyed the following year at the Battle of Plataea. After this defeat the Persians abandoned their expansionist aims and the independence of Greek civilization was secured." From http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/maptext_n2/perswar.html.
After the defeat of the Persians in two major waves of war (and in part because of the boost in reputation these battles brought), Athens' power greatly increased. Whereas Sparta had been the major power in the alliance of Greek city states stretching from what is now Italy to north Africa, after the war the Athenians rose to dominance.
The 200,000 people of Athens, along with their allies, had asserted themselves as a powerful entity against the massive Persian empire (see map above). And they'd established themselves as a relatively unified city or polis -- setting up a democratic system of government that "cut across old tribal and local loyalties and handed over power to the people" (Brown, 13).
Thought the voting citizenry (the demos in the democracy) was made up of only the 40,000 free-born male citizens, the system the Athenians set up preempted the return to power of the "tyrants" (monarchs like Pisistratus, ousted around 510 BC) or the old landed families (oligarchy).
But with increased power, came increased tension. Athens (a maritime force) and Sparta (with it's land empire) were longtime rivals. While they were all Greeks, they spoke Greek with different dialects, dividing the Ionian Athenians from the Dorians of Sparta and Corinth. And the rise of this new "democracy" didn't sit well with the Spartan oligarchs.
By 433 B.C. the two cities and their allies were at war.
By 405 B. C., and the defeat of the Athenian navy at Aegospotamos, Sparta took over. Lysander installed an oligarchy in Athens, and the great age of Athens was past.
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| Ian Mladjov's Map of Greece During the Peloponnesian War (431-421) |
Pisistratus (ruling 560-510 BC)
Tragedy contests at the City Dionysia (possibly as early as 534 BC)
Darius of Persia (522-496 BC)
Persian War or Greco-Persian War (499-449 BC)
Pericles (c. 495-430 BC)
Parthenon (construction started in 447)
Odeon (construction in 440s)
Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC)
polis = city state
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