A Survey of Greek History<BR>© 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady<BR>Department of Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR>750 Invention of the Hoplite Phalanx<BR>Spartan conquest of Messenia - Sparta subjects the inhabitants of the<BR>neighboring area of Messenia to<BR>slave status, calling them helots<BR>War of the Lelantine Plain - many of the fledgling poleis from throughout<BR>the Greek world take sides in<BR>a war between Chalkis and Eritrea over the Lelantine plain, which separates<BR>them<BR>650 Second Messenian War - Sparta reacts to a Messenian resurgence by<BR>imposing a strict military regime<BR>on its own citizens<BR>650-550 Rise of Tyranny at Sicyon, Corinth, and Miletus - individual<BR>aristocrats, with popular support, seize<BR>power from other aristocrats by unconventional means<BR>633 Conspiracy of Cylon - an attempt to seize power by a would-be tyrant in<BR>Athens is brutally suppressed<BR>622 Lawcode of Draco - Athens' first law code, which is known for the<BR>severity of its punishments<BR>594 Reforms of Solon - an Athenian moderate brings in wide-ranging reforms<BR>in order to defuse strife<BR>between Athens' rich and poor<BR>566-511 Tyranny of Peisistratus and his sons - Peisistratus seizes power<BR>three times and promotes Athenian<BR>unity and commerce<BR>508 Reforms of Cleisthenes - constitutional changes relieve regional<BR>tensions in Athens and form the basis<BR>of Athens' democracy<BR>490 Battle of Marathon - without Spartan help, Athenian hoplites repulse a<BR>Persian invasion<BR>480 Battle of Salamis - led by the genius of the Athenian Themistocles, the<BR>Greek fleet defeats its much<BR>larger Persian enemy<BR>431-404 Peloponnesian War - Sparta reacts to Athenian imperial ambitions by<BR>fighting Athens in an on again,<BR>off again war that ends in total Athenian defeat<BR>395-387 Corinthian War - Greek cities unite with Persian help to contain<BR>Spartan imperial ambitions<BR>371 Battle of Leuctra - led by the genius of Epaminondas, Thebes defeats<BR>Sparta and puts an end to Spartan<BR>military dominance<BR>362 Battle of Mantinea - Theban ambitions are checked by the death of<BR>Epaminondas<BR>357-355 Social War - Athens' allies revolt, checking Athens' power<BR>355-346 Sacred War - seizure of the Panhellenic sanctuary at Delphi embroils<BR>every Greek power and leads to<BR>the entrance of Philip of Macedon in Greek affairs<BR>338 Battle of Chaeronea - Philip of Macedon defeats a combined army of Greek<BR>poleis, ending the age of the<BR>polis<BR>323 Death of Alexander the Great - after leading Greek and Macedonian to<BR>victory over the entire Persian<BR>empire, Alexander dies in Babylon<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR>1. Introduction<BR>Greek Politics and the Polis<BR>The Greeks' greatest accomplishment in the area of politics was the polis<BR>itself. It so<BR>dominated the lives of the Greeks during the period 800-323 BCE that<BR>Aristotle (384-<BR>322), one of the greatest philosophers of all time, assumed that a human<BR>being was by<BR>nature a political animal; the polis was for him the natural way for humans<BR>to live.<BR>The polis was both a city and an independent state, and there were hundreds<BR>of poleis<BR>littered around what we know today as Greece, as well as the western coast<BR>of Turkey,<BR>the Black Sea, North Africa, Sicily, Italy and even southern France.<BR>Inspired by the acquisition of writing from the Near East, the polis emerged<BR>with<BR>Greek civilization itself. It did not yield as the primary form of political<BR>organization<BR>in the Greek world until it was overrun by the Macedonians and their kings<BR>Philip and<BR>Alexander in the mid to late fourth century BCE. The indomitable pride that<BR>the<BR>Greeks took in the economic and political autonomy of their poleis stemmed<BR>not only<BR>from their geography, which isolated many settlements on the Greek<BR>peninsula, but<BR>also from the pride that each individual Greek took in owning his own land,<BR>working<BR>it, and defending it. The coming of the Iron Age in Greece in the eighth<BR>century BCE<BR>enabled individual farmers to bring more land under cultivation and thus to<BR>provide<BR>more wealth. It also allowed them to arm themselves with the iron weapons<BR>( hopla)<BR>that made them a fighting force surpassing the aristocratic chieftains who<BR>had done<BR>the fighting before and had thus dominated the rest of the people. Soon it<BR>was<BR>discovered, moreover, that the hoplite soldier fought most effectively in a<BR>tightly<BR>packed formation, a phalanx.<BR>This phalanx became the basis for political organization in Greece. The<BR>soldiers<BR>who donned their armor and defended their polis could not be denied<BR>political rights.<BR>Because everyone in the phalanx was tightly linked together and shared equal<BR>responsibility for its success, equality was an essential idea for the Greek<BR>polis.<BR>Different cities developed this system in different ways, however, and<BR>Greece saw<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>3<BR>aristocracies, oligarchies, tyrannies and democracies, all based on<BR>differing notions of<BR>equality. The Spartans, for instance, who faced a native slave population,<BR>devoted<BR>themselves almost entirely to hoplite training as a means to ensure their<BR>security. The<BR>Athenians, on the other hand, found room for their own lower classes,<BR>eventually by<BR>finding them a significant military role in the manning of their fleets of<BR>triremes,<BR>which were the basis of their naval empire. Even without the financial means<BR>to own<BR>armor, the rowers won political claims for themselves, which gave Athens the<BR>most<BR>thoroughgoing democracy the western world has ever seen. Though the<BR>Athenians<BR>had slaves, and their women enjoyed only limited political rights, the<BR>Athenian<BR>experiment in direct voice and vote in both the assembly and the popular law<BR>courts<BR>and their distribution of administrative responsibilities through lotteries<BR>went further<BR>in empowering the people than any modern system ever has.<BR>Early Greek Civilization<BR>As early as 2000 BCE, the Greeks settled a mountainous country with a jagged<BR>coastline<BR>in which arable land was largely confined to small pockets able to sustain<BR>only small<BR>settlements. Mountain passes within Greece were largely impassable, except<BR>by foot<BR>and pack animal, and each settlement developed a keen sense of independence.<BR>Few<BR>were very far from the sea, and the Greek desire to supplement their meager<BR>food<BR>production from vines, olives and cereals, as well as their need for metals<BR>and timber,<BR>led them to trade far beyond the confines of Greece itself, mostly to the<BR>Black Sea,<BR>Egypt and Sicily. Most of the settlements extended over a combination of<BR>coastline,<BR>arable land and hillside or mountain, many of the people migrating through<BR>the year<BR>from one area to another. Many families came to possess a combination of<BR>small<BR>parcels of land at different elevations and with differing climatic<BR>conditions; this<BR>diversity lessened the risks associated with varying weather conditions from<BR>year to<BR>year. In some settlements, however, where people migrated less, divisions<BR>were<BR>created among coastal people, farmers and mountain herdsmen.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>4<BR>When the Greeks looked back from the historical period (after 800 BCE) to<BR>the<BR>legendary origins of their own civilization, they could trace a few vestiges<BR>of the<BR>Minoan civilization of the second millenium BCE in the stories of King<BR>Minos, his<BR>labyrinthine palace at Knossos on the southern island of Crete, and the<BR>half-man/halfbull<BR>monster, the Minotaur, that dwelled in it. Perhaps they also had some access<BR>to<BR>remains of the art of the Minoans, in which the bull is prominent. But most<BR>of the<BR>stories of early Greek legend take place on the Greek mainland at places<BR>like Argos,<BR>Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes, and Athens. And of course, the greatest legend of<BR>all, that of<BR>the Trojan War, drew in a city from across the Aegean sea, Troy. These were<BR>the<BR>stories of Heracles and his Twelve Labors, who was born in Thebes to a<BR>family from<BR>Argos; Perseus of Argos and his quest to slay the Gorgon; Oedipus of Thebes<BR>and his<BR>tragic involvement with his mother and father; and of course, Theseus of<BR>Athens, who<BR>slew the Minotaur.<BR>Heracles fought with the club and bow and arrow, protected by an invincible<BR>lion<BR>skin draped over his head and back. His traditions thus go back probably to<BR>a time<BR>before the use of bronze, which was used for the earliest swords and spears.<BR>He was<BR>very much the individualistic hero who fought alone, not as part of, or even<BR>at the<BR>head of, an army. Perseus' far flown adventures against the Gorgon take him<BR>to<BR>several locations in the Near East and reveal influences from these areas.<BR>After the<BR>revelation of Oedipus' killing of his father and incestuous marriage to his<BR>mother, his<BR>sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, fought over the kingship of Thebes and<BR>assembled other<BR>kings with their armies from various parts of south and central Greece to<BR>fight over<BR>the fortified walls of Thebes. Like the fortified walls of Troy, this image<BR>of large<BR>fortification walls protecting a central citadel is one that later Greeks<BR>and we ourselves<BR>can witness as remains of the Mycenaean civilization of 1600-1200 BCE.<BR>Theseus'<BR>triumph over the Minotaur may be symbolic of the triumph of mainland Greek<BR>civilization over the Minoans. The archaeological record bears out the fact<BR>that the<BR>mainland Greeks overcame the Minoans, even though they adopted many of the<BR>advanced aspects of their civilization. These legendary events recall in a<BR>vague way<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>5<BR>the events of the Greek Bronze Age (3000-1200 BCE). It came to a sudden end<BR>about<BR>1200 BCE, after which Greece spent four centuries in what are now called the<BR>Dark<BR>Ages.<BR>Sources<BR>Powell, Barry B. Classical Myth. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,<BR>1998.<BR>Finley, Moses. I. The World of Odysseus. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1954.<BR>Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey.<BR>Hooker, J.T., Mycenaean Greece. London: Routledge, 1976.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>6<BR>2. The Renewal of Greek Civilization<BR>The Politics of Homer<BR>Toward the end of the eighth century the epic poetry of Homer took shape in<BR>its final<BR>form. For several generations before, oral poets had composed and sung epic<BR>poems<BR>celebrating various aspects of the legendary war against Troy. Now two parts<BR>of that<BR>epic cycle took shape through the skill of a poet, or poets, whom we call<BR>Homer. The<BR>first, the Iliad, focuses on the anger of Achilles, the greatest fighter<BR>among the armies<BR>amassed against Troy. This anger, which is directed at Agamemnon, the<BR>expedition's<BR>commander, leads to Achilles' petulant withdrawal from fighting, with<BR>disastrous<BR>consequences for his friends and allies, including his best friend,<BR>Patroclus, whose<BR>death leads Achilles to rejoin the fight and kill the Trojans' leading<BR>warrior Hector in<BR>the climax of the epic. The second epic, the Odyssey, relates the ten-year<BR>voyage home<BR>of Odysseus, the craftiest of the fighters among the armies amassed against<BR>Troy, and<BR>the struggles of his family anxiously awaiting his return. Along the way he<BR>has<BR>fantastic adventures, loses all his ships and crew, and arrives to find his<BR>home under<BR>siege by men who want to take his place.<BR>The poems of Homer look back several centuries through legend to record<BR>events<BR>from quite a different world. To the extent that their legendary stories do<BR>reflect<BR>historical events, these must be from the time of the Mycenaeans. Not since<BR>that time<BR>had the Greek world been organized into the sort of fortified palaces that<BR>Homer<BR>describes. In fact the archaeological record has even borne out Homer's<BR>description of<BR>a palace at the site of Troy. But the details of Homer's story can hardly<BR>extend back<BR>five hundred years. They are probably descriptions inspired by the social<BR>and political<BR>organization from Homer's own time, and from that of the oral poets from<BR>whom he<BR>inherited so much of his material.<BR>Near the same time that Homer was composing his poetry, Hesiod employed the<BR>same metrical pattern in writing two poems with an altogether different<BR>focus. In the<BR>Theogony he adopted several stories from Near Eastern traditions in order to<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>7<BR>systematize and explain the origins of the Greek gods. In his Works and<BR>Days, he<BR>reuses some of these myths in an elaborate lesson in morals addressed to his<BR>disloyal<BR>brother.<BR>In order for the poetry of Homer and Hesiod to be preserved in a set form<BR>(and in<BR>the case of Hesiod perhaps even for it to be composed at all) there had to<BR>be writing.<BR>The syllabic Linear B script of the Mycenaeans had died out with them. The<BR>epic<BR>poetry of Homer had been developed by oral poets, but with Greek contacts<BR>with the<BR>Near East came the adoption of an alphabetic writing system. There are<BR>debates about<BR>where exactly the transmission of the alphabet took place and who was<BR>involved, but it<BR>is clear that once the transmission was made, the alphabet spread quickly<BR>throughout<BR>the Greek speaking world, from southern Italy to Cyprus. Unlike Linear B,<BR>which was<BR>apparently used largely only for administrative reasons and for trade, the<BR>new Greek<BR>alphabet shows signs of having been devoted largely to poetry, especially<BR>Homer's.<BR>One of our earliest samples, from Pithecussae, an island off southern Italy,<BR>makes a<BR>reference to Nestor, one of Homer's characters, and to Aphrodite, the<BR>goddess of love.<BR>It seems likely that the cup was used for drinking parties, which included<BR>the recitation<BR>of Homer's poetry.<BR>The social and political organization in Homer's poetry is a mixture of<BR>institutions,<BR>some of which extend back to the Mycenaeans while others must reflect his<BR>own times.<BR>For one thing, Homer didn't know anything about "Greeks" (Hellenes), the<BR>people of<BR>later times who were united by language and religion. The collected armies<BR>that attack<BR>Troy are variously called Achaeans, Argives, or Danaans, and individual<BR>groups<BR>among them are identified from their home areas, such as Crete, Sparta, or<BR>Salamis.<BR>But they speak the same language and worship the same gods as their enemies<BR>the<BR>Trojans and many of the Trojans' allies, though some of the Trojan allies,<BR>like the<BR>Carians, are foreign speakers.<BR>The army consists of a collection of groups led by individual noblemen,<BR>called<BR>"kings" or basileis. Homer also uses the Mycenaean term wanax, "lord", but<BR>it is not<BR>used by any other sources from that time. Agamemnon as wanax is the<BR>commander in<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>8<BR>chief, but in some ways he is simply a first among equals. He has the<BR>greatest wealth<BR>and the most soldiers and ships of any of the Argive commanders, but they<BR>are all<BR>more or less free to follow his leadership or not. They are there to serve<BR>their own<BR>interests and as a favor to him, not because he can compel them. They have<BR>meetings<BR>before the assembled armies in which various leaders take up a scepter,<BR>which<BR>signifies the right to speak. They want to achieve a consensus, but because<BR>of the size<BR>of Agamemnon's army, what he himself ultimately decides carries great<BR>weight.<BR>Nevertheless, a commander like Achilles can disagree with him vehemently and<BR>go off<BR>to sulk without Agamenon being able to coerce him. On the other hand, when<BR>Thersites, an upstart commoner without the support of an army, tries to<BR>dress down<BR>Agamemnon and the other Argive leaders, he is silenced with a box around the<BR>ears.<BR>Free speech had its limits in the Homeric world.<BR>In the Odyssey, Odysseus marks the mid-afternoon by saying that it is "when<BR>a man<BR>rises from the agora (the assembly place) for dinner after deciding disputes<BR>of young<BR>men seeking judgment" ( Od. 12.339-440). The public day was then over. It is<BR>significant that judicial activity played such a large role in the public<BR>life of Homer's<BR>time that he used it as a way to establish the time of day. In the Iliad,<BR>when the god<BR>Hephaestus decorates a new shield for the hero Achilles, he inscribes two<BR>cities<BR>( poleis), a city at war and a city at peace. In the city at peace he<BR>illustrates two scenes,<BR>one a wedding procession and the other a judicial scene, further<BR>confirmation of the<BR>centrality of justice for early Greek civic life.1<BR>In the modern world homicide is a criminal matter and prosecuted by the<BR>state. In<BR>Homer's world it is a matter between the killer, who seems in the Shield<BR>scene to have<BR>accepted blame for the man's death and wants to make reparation (rather than<BR>go into<BR>exile), and a survivor of the dead man, who has up to now refused any<BR>compensation,<BR>or blood-price. There is no question of his trying to take vengeance on his<BR>own. In<BR>cases where the killer was really evil and considered a threat to the<BR>community, it<BR>would not have been a judicial matter at all: the man would simply have been<BR>driven<BR>out, or killed. Here the men have been unable to reconcile their<BR>differences, but they<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>9<BR>both seek out a third party in the assembly place to render a judgment and<BR>bring their<BR>dispute to an end. Although the procedure seems to be recognized by all,<BR>there are no<BR>laws to govern what should be done. The tradition of paying a blood-price<BR>might have<BR>played a role, but it did not determine the situation. Instead, a group of<BR>elderly<BR>aristocrats each propose their own judgment. The two men in dispute have<BR>each<BR>contributed a weight of gold, and they themselves will decide which of the<BR>judgments<BR>they can both live with.<BR>Greek Expansion<BR>As the economy and population of the Greek world grew in the eighth and<BR>seventh<BR>centuries, various changes occurred in the political landscape. Increasing<BR>population<BR>created pressures on the land base, and increasing economic activity created<BR>a wealth<BR>of various goods for trade, as well as a hunger for new goods and raw<BR>materials.<BR>Despite the Greek determination for self-sufficiency, the economic activity<BR>of the<BR>individual household, or oikos, no longer satisfied the needs of its<BR>members. There<BR>was thus more trade between households and an increased specialization of<BR>trades.<BR>The need for a central, urban market where these new, specialized goods<BR>could be<BR>traded gave rise to an urban population and thus an identification with a<BR>particular<BR>urban center. The Greek polis was born, an autonomous population based on an<BR>urban core, what we usually understand as the "city-state".<BR>The principal characteristic of the polis was the agora, the gathering place<BR>or<BR>market. It was normally located close to a religious sanctuary, where people<BR>gathered<BR>for festive occasions anyway. The original function of the agora was as a<BR>gathering<BR>place for trading between households and for discussion of common points of<BR>interest.<BR>It was essentially an open area upon which various temporary structures<BR>might be set<BR>up, like tables and booths for trading or a tent structure for dramatic<BR>presentations or<BR>festive dancing. It had to remain open, however, for common use. Any<BR>privatization<BR>would frustrate its function as a communal gathering place. Manufacturing<BR>was also<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>10<BR>done close to this area, where bronze, iron, ceramics and leather might be<BR>worked<BR>more economically than they could be in an individual house.<BR>Rising population levels and interests in trading led many Greek cities to<BR>resettle<BR>parts of their populations away, in less populated areas on the fringes of<BR>the Greek<BR>world, on the boarders with other peoples, in North Africa, Sicily, France,<BR>Spain, and<BR>the Black Sea. These were not colonies on the later, Roman model, in which<BR>the new<BR>settlements were largely governed by the home cities. Each new settlement<BR>immediately became an independent polis. It certainly had ethnic and<BR>traditional ties<BR>with its mother city, but in general these were quickly forgotten if the<BR>interests of the<BR>new settlement were contrary to those of its parent. The methods of<BR>selection for the<BR>settlers and the way they organized their settlements could vary a great<BR>deal. The<BR>settlements thus offered an area for experimentation in the way that the<BR>polis was<BR>governed. For instance, the privileges of large, landed wealth that tended<BR>to keep<BR>power in the hands of relatively few aristocrats in the original cities were<BR>not present<BR>in the new settlements, where land tended initially to be divided evenly.<BR>Those with<BR>ability and leadership skills could rise to the top more easily.<BR>Another consequence of the resettlement movement was that as the Greeks came<BR>into contact increasingly with non-Greek speaking peoples, they gained a<BR>heightened<BR>sense of their own Greek identity, their language, religion and cultural<BR>commonalities.<BR>The oracular shrine of the god Apollo at Delphi was regularly consulted<BR>about where<BR>new settlements should be located. Since Greeks considered Delphi the center<BR>of the<BR>world and gathered there for consultation about many issues, the oracle<BR>could serve as<BR>an important clearinghouse of information. Greek self-consciousness gave an<BR>added<BR>boost to the great festival games also. Participants in the Olympic Games,<BR>which were<BR>held every four years at Olympia in the northwest Peloponnese from 776 BCE,<BR>had to<BR>speak Greek and worship the Olympian gods.<BR>The political structure of the polis was also greatly transformed by the<BR>technology<BR>of warfare. The affordability and strength of iron weapons meant that every<BR>Greek<BR>farmer of moderate means could own his own weaponry. The aristocrats who had<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>11<BR>formerly dominated because only they could afford durable weaponry now found<BR>that<BR>their advantage was neutralized. Moreover, the new middle-class farmers who<BR>owned<BR>their own weapons, the hoplites, found that they could fight most<BR>effectively when<BR>they were tightly massed in a phalanx formation, their overlapping shields<BR>providing<BR>maximal mutual protection. With military force came political demands: the<BR>hoplites<BR>demanded a say in government.<BR>In many of the most economically active cities, where social and economic<BR>mobility<BR>most undermined the traditional political power structure, the way was<BR>opened for a<BR>particularly ambitious person, usually one of the aristocrats, to champion<BR>the cause of<BR>this new class against the aristocrats. The experience of Cypselus at<BR>Corinth was<BR>typical. Corinth was thriving as a result of its strategic trading location<BR>on the isthmus<BR>between central Greece and the Peloponnese. Travelers by land and sea used<BR>the<BR>isthmus, and the Corinthians developed strong trading relationships.<BR>Cypselus used<BR>his position as a military leader to topple the domination of the city by<BR>his mother's<BR>family, the Bacchiads. Like Pheidon of Argos, Cypselus took power in an<BR>unprecedented way. He thus earned the designation "tyrant". But he was a<BR>champion<BR>of the people and was able to concentrate the city's resources on public<BR>enterprises,<BR>public works and festivals. In time, the usefulness of the institution of<BR>the tyranny as a<BR>protector of the popular interests wore out. The tyrant, or his son or<BR>grandson, had to<BR>spend more time protecting his own power than in doing truly useful things<BR>for the<BR>people. He often resorted to cruel means, which left the Greeks with a bad<BR>taste<BR>regarding tyrants. But tyrants usually had popular support at the beginning.<BR>Sources<BR>Andrewes, Antony. The Greek Tyrants. London: Hutchinson's University<BR>Library,<BR>1956.<BR>Boardman, John. The Greeks Overseas. Their Early Colonies and Trade. London:<BR>Thames and Hudson, 1980.<BR>Grant, Michael, The Rise of the Greeks. New York: Scribner's, 1987.<BR>Snodgrass, Anthony. Archaic Greece. The Age of Experiment. London: Dent,<BR>1980.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>12<BR>3. The Challenges of the Archaic World<BR>Sparta and Athens came up with very different solutions to the challenges<BR>facing the<BR>early Greek poleis. In the eighth century the two were in many ways similar,<BR>both<BR>dominated by aristocratic families who led the cities both militarily and<BR>culturally. But<BR>the two cities had differences too. The Attic countryside surrounding Athens<BR>was very<BR>accessible from the outside, and the political identification of its<BR>citizens was fairly<BR>weak. Despite the synoikism, the political unification of Attica under the<BR>legendary<BR>Theseus, only the ancient religious ties to Athena and her sanctuary on<BR>Athens'<BR>Acropolis drew the Athenians together. Economic inequalities among those<BR>living<BR>along the coast, those on the larger inland plains and those in the hills<BR>seemed more<BR>important than Athenian identity and unity. Sparta, on the other hand, was<BR>in Laconia,<BR>an out of the way corner of the Peloponnese, the large peninsula that forms<BR>southern<BR>Greece. It had a large, indigenous population of slaves, the helots, whom<BR>the Spartans<BR>had suppressed in their earliest history and on whose labors they depended<BR>for their<BR>livelihood. Although Laconia is relatively large, only those living in the<BR>few closely<BR>neighboring settlements in its center on the Eurotas River were recognized<BR>as<BR>Spartans. Although ethnically similar, the people inhabiting the surrounding<BR>areas<BR>were referred to as perioikoi, "those living around".<BR>In the course of the eighth and seventh centuries, instead of sending out<BR>settlements<BR>abroad in order to alleviate population pressures and develop trading<BR>opportunities,<BR>the Spartans took another strategy. They conquered the neighboring area of<BR>Messenia,<BR>on the western side of Mt. Taygetus, in a war that lasted about twenty years<BR>(740-720<BR>BCE). But when they attempted to overpower their northern neighbors in<BR>Argos, the<BR>Spartans lost a disastrous battle at Hysiae in 669 BCE. They lost so many<BR>men that they<BR>were almost powerless when Messenia revolted, and they were forced into<BR>another<BR>thirty-year war against the Messenians (650-620 BCE) during which they<BR>committed<BR>themselves to military pursuits in an extraordinary way. Sparta became a<BR>very closed<BR>society, intensely jealous of its security and suspicious of outside<BR>influences.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>13<BR>The Second Messenian War also brought political reforms. The wealth of<BR>Messenia,<BR>which had originally been allotted only to the wealthy, was now allotted<BR>equally to<BR>every male Spartan at birth. They considered themselves homoioi, "equals".<BR>There<BR>were no doubt still inequalities, which became painfully clear in times to<BR>come, but<BR>equality among the Spartans was the great idea of the Spartan political<BR>system. As in<BR>other Greek poleis, it stemmed from the idea that within the Spartan hoplite<BR>phalanx<BR>each man was equal. Each Spartan male was assigned to one of a number of<BR>eating<BR>clubs, sysitia, to which he made contributions from his land allotment, and<BR>he<BR>identified himself more with them than with his family or geographical area.<BR>Sparta's constitution was ascribed to a legendary lawgiver, Lycurgus, who<BR>was<BR>inspired by an oracle of the god Apollo. The ancient sources differ widely<BR>over when<BR>Lycurgus lived and what exactly he did, but Plutarch provides the text of an<BR>early<BR>document, known as the Great Rhetra, which seems genuine, if not altogether<BR>clear.2<BR>Sparta had a mixed constitution. Within groupings of "tribes" and "obes",<BR>the<BR>specific configurations of which remain a mystery, their constitution had<BR>royal,<BR>aristocratic and democratic elements. Its two kings, who came from the same<BR>two<BR>families generation after generation, the Agiads and Eurypontids, provided<BR>the royal<BR>element. They led Sparta's armies in war and were given various other<BR>privileges.<BR>The Gerousia, or senate, had twenty-eight members, besides the kings. They<BR>were all<BR>over sixty years of age and elected for life by the assembly from the most<BR>noble<BR>households. In providing the aristocratic element, the Gerousia prepared<BR>measures<BR>for discussion before the assemblies. It also heard criminal cases. As the<BR>Rhetra's later<BR>clause suggests, the Gerousia also gained the power to overturn decisions of<BR>the<BR>assembly. So the democratic element (" damos" is the form of demos in the<BR>Spartan<BR>dialect, which is called Dorian), which was originally sovereign, later had<BR>its powers<BR>checked. All male Spartan citizens over thirty who had completed Sparta's<BR>famously<BR>rigorous training and education, known as the agogê, and were members of one<BR>of the<BR>sysitia formed the assembly. The Babyca and Knakion were locations. The<BR>biographer<BR>Plutarch speculated that the assembly should be held in a somewhat remote<BR>spot, so<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>14<BR>that there would be no distractions. The Assembly did not officially discuss<BR>the<BR>measures presented to it by the Gerousia; it only voted for or against. But<BR>some<BR>informal discussion must have taken place.<BR>Missing from the Great Rhetra but well known in the historical period was<BR>the<BR>annually elected board of five ephors, who were "overseers" of the kings.<BR>Each month<BR>they exchanged oaths with the kings to uphold their rule so long as the<BR>kings reigned<BR>according to the laws. Most scholars believe that the ephors were<BR>established<BR>sometime later than the Great Rhetra. However, their office may have existed<BR>from<BR>the beginning but been seen originally only as an accessory to the kingship,<BR>as a sort of<BR>unofficial means of communication between the kings and the deliberative<BR>bodies in<BR>executive matters.<BR>The Development of Athens<BR>Athens developed more slowly than many other Greek states, including Sparta,<BR>but<BR>once its development gathered momentum, the size of its population and<BR>landmass led<BR>it to become one of the most dominant poleis. Evidence for the clearing of<BR>graves from<BR>the Athenian agora about 700 BCE suggests that Athens' identity as a civic<BR>center was<BR>increasing about this time. At some point, alongside or in place of the<BR>traditional office<BR>of basileus, "king", there developed that of the annually elected archon,<BR>"ruler" or<BR>"magistrate," who had executive responsibility. Originally elected for life,<BR>then for ten<BR>years, by 682 BCE, the archonship became an annually elected office. In<BR>time, Athens<BR>selected three such annually elected archons, the eponymous archon, who gave<BR>his<BR>name to the year in which he served, the archon basileus, who took over many<BR>of the<BR>traditional and religious roles of the king, and the polemarch, who had<BR>responsibility<BR>for war. However, only members of the wealthiest families could be elected<BR>to these<BR>offices. They were the Eupatrids, "sons of good fathers." After their year<BR>of elective<BR>office the archons joined the Areopagus Council, which ruled the city.<BR>Later, six more<BR>annually elected magistrates were added, the thesmothetai, whose name<BR>suggests that<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>15<BR>they originally had some responsibility connected with recording laws or<BR>judicial<BR>decisions.<BR>Besides their geographical divisions, Athenians were also divided ethnically<BR>into<BR>four divisions that were common to all Ionian Greeks. Athens had no<BR>indigenous slave<BR>population like the Spartan helots, so there was only social stratification<BR>among the<BR>Athenians themselves. Some Athenians were enslaved to others. The slaves<BR>were<BR>referred to as hektemoroi or "sixth-parters", though the exact meaning of<BR>this term is<BR>unclear. Presumably they paid a rent of one-sixth, or perhaps five-sixths,<BR>of the<BR>harvest on the land they worked. If they got behind, they could be sold as<BR>slaves, even<BR>away from Athens.<BR>Athens was also being challenged by its neighbors, like Megara, and had a<BR>need for<BR>the sort of hoplite soldiers that could only be supplied by a thriving<BR>middle class. This<BR>created tensions of the sort that were being resolved in many poleis by the<BR>seizure of<BR>power by tyrants, who championed the causes of the common people against the<BR>aristocrats. In Athens, about 630 BCE, an aristocrat and Olympic victor<BR>named Cylon,<BR>who was married to the daughter of the tyrant of Megara, tried to seize<BR>power by<BR>taking control of Athens' Acropolis. After his coup had failed, Kylon's<BR>supporters<BR>sought refuge as suppliants, invoking the protection of the gods. They were<BR>told by<BR>Athens' magistrates that their suppliancy was recognized and that they<BR>should come<BR>down from the Acropolis. But when they did so they were massacred. A trial<BR>was<BR>held and the eponymous archon Megacles and his entire family, the<BR>Alcmeonids, were<BR>banished from Athens in order to rid the city of the religious pollution, or<BR>miasma.<BR>Even the family's graves were dug up and their contents removed from<BR>Athenian<BR>territory. In time the Alcmeonids returned to Athens, and many of Athens'<BR>most<BR>illustrious leaders, including Cleisthenes, Pericles and Alcibiades belonged<BR>to this<BR>family, which was nonetheless haunted by the miasma.<BR>One consequence of Kylon's attempted coup was the setting down for the first<BR>time<BR>of a set of laws for Athens, the so-called Constitution of Draco. This now<BR>written form<BR>of Athens' traditional laws was a major step in the administration of<BR>justice and might<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>16<BR>have lessened the power of Athens' aristocrats, but the laws were later<BR>regarded as<BR>having been very harsh (which resulted in the English word "draconian"<BR>referring to<BR>harshness). Draco's laws did little to alleviate the tensions that Athens<BR>faced. Only one<BR>part of his law code survived, that concerning homicide, a part of which was<BR>later<BR>inscribed during a reorganization of Athens' laws.3<BR>As tensions continued to rise, relief was sought finally in 594 by turning<BR>the city<BR>over temporarily to a single man as both "archon and reconciler." This man<BR>was<BR>Solon. He used poetry to communicate his ideas about the nature of Athens'<BR>problems<BR>and his solutions for them. Much of this poetry survives. In it, Solon talks<BR>about the<BR>marker stones, or "horoi", that indicated that land was "enslaved", about<BR>Athenians<BR>who were enslaved and sold abroad, about the "crooked judgements" that led<BR>to this<BR>enslavement. His principal methods of solving the problem were the<BR>seisachtheia, the<BR>"shaking off of burdens" by which he presumably cancelled debts, his<BR>reorganization<BR>of the class system by wealth rather than birth, and his empowerment of the<BR>courts as<BR>a check against the power of the magistrates.<BR>The seisachtheia forbade the enslavement of Athenians resulting from debt,<BR>and it<BR>freed and repatriated many who had been enslaved. The reorganization of<BR>Athens'<BR>classes broke down some of the antiquated power structures and gave<BR>recognition to<BR>the upwardly mobile members of the new mercantile and manufacturing classes.<BR>According to Solon's system, the Athenians were divided into four classes by<BR>wealth.<BR>The pentacosiomedimnoi, or 500-bushel class, were the wealthiest. The<BR>Hippeis, or<BR>Knights, could produce at least four hundred bushels from their land. The<BR>Zeugitae,<BR>or Yoke Class, could produce two hundred bushels, and the Thetes, or<BR>Laborers, were<BR>the lowest, and most numerous class. Although only members of the highest<BR>classes<BR>could be elected to office in Athens, Solon allowed "anyone who wishes" (not<BR>just the<BR>victim) to seek restitution for injustices. He also allowed for appeal of<BR>any decision to<BR>the law courts, in which all the classes participated, and he gave many more<BR>rights to<BR>the lower classes. In the law courts, the poorer classes could use their<BR>numbers to<BR>check the power of the rich.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>17<BR>Solon might have used his enormous powers to become tyrant, but he<BR>consciously<BR>resisted that temptation. After reforming Athens' political system, he left<BR>the city for<BR>ten years. Despite the breadth of Solon's reforms and the huge respect that<BR>his name<BR>was given in later generations, however, Athens' political strife, or<BR>stasis, continued,<BR>based mainly on geographical inequalities. In some years no chief<BR>magistrate, or<BR>archon, was elected. One archon who was elected to the annual office<BR>attempted to<BR>stay on, and did so for three years before he was removed. From 580 BCE a<BR>temporary solution was found through the appointment of a board of ten, who<BR>served<BR>jointly as archon. The board consisted of five aristocrats, three farmers<BR>and two<BR>laborers. The three groups represented not just economic divisions but also<BR>Athens'<BR>geographical divisions. These were the central plain, where the wealthiest<BR>landowners<BR>were, the shore line, with its less wealthy farm land, and those from<BR>"beyond the hills,"<BR>whose leaders likely came from the towns beyond the ring of mountains<BR>surrounding<BR>Athens itself. The last group actually included a wide range of people,<BR>laborers,<BR>tradesmen, those freed from slavery by Solon's cancellation of debts, and<BR>recent<BR>immigrants. Many were refugees from the prosperous and advanced coastline of<BR>Asia<BR>Minor, which was coming under the control of the Lydians, and, after 547<BR>BCE, the<BR>Persians.<BR>Peisistratus' rise to power as tyrant was by no means smooth. He rose first<BR>through a bit of political chicanery, staging an assault on himself to<BR>justify getting a<BR>bodyguard and then using it to seize power in 561 BCE. After five years he<BR>was<BR>thrown out, but he soon returned with the help of a marriage alliance with<BR>the<BR>daughter of the leader of the shore group. When he refused to consummate the<BR>marriage after six years, however, he was again driven out. He returned<BR>finally in 546<BR>BCE at the head of an army of friends and mercenaries and drove out his<BR>opponents.<BR>During his ten years away from Athens, Peisistratus had fostered a great<BR>number of<BR>connections throughout Greece, which he continued to utilize during his<BR>tyranny.<BR>The Peisistratid tyranny, that of Peisistratus and his sons Hippias and<BR>Hipparchus<BR>who succeeded on his death in 527, was obviously not a time in which Athens'<BR>politics<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>18<BR>could develop at an institutional level very much. Peisistratus and his<BR>friends and<BR>family were in control even though he allowed the normal mechanisms<BR>instituted by<BR>Solon to function. The archons were always elected under their supervision<BR>and<BR>usually from their ranks. This meant that the Areopagus Council, which had<BR>effective<BR>legislative control, was gradually filled up with Peisistratus' people. But<BR>in less<BR>obvious ways their tyranny was crucial for the development of Athens'<BR>democracy.<BR>Peisistratus imposed a tax of five percent on all produce and used the<BR>proceeds to<BR>finance a large public works program. This served to increase the role of<BR>the polis in<BR>Athens' economy, to provide a new sort of employment, and to achieve a great<BR>degree<BR>of economic stability and prosperity. Peisistratus also cleared Athens'<BR>agora of private<BR>dwellings in order to achieve a proper civic center. He began the minting of<BR>Athenian<BR>coinage, and he also used legislation and loans at especially good rates to<BR>keep all<BR>agricultural land under production in the most effective ways. Under his<BR>leadership<BR>Athens' farmland shifted somewhat away from grains and into olives, whose<BR>oil could<BR>be processed and sold abroad at a much higher added value. He also sent out<BR>travelling courts through the countryside of Attica, so that the polis took<BR>over judicial<BR>functions from local aristocrats. Besides building programs on the Acropolis<BR>and in<BR>the central agora, Peisistratus and his sons also put polis money behind the<BR>large<BR>festivals, like the yearly Panathenaia, which was celebrated with extra<BR>vigor every<BR>fourth year, and the Dionysia, where Athens' theatrical traditions were<BR>born. Besides<BR>making him popular, these actions fostered a stronger sense of Athenian<BR>identity than<BR>had existed before. Instead of relying on the aristocrats, Athenians now<BR>relied on their<BR>polis to pursue prosperity.<BR>In 514 Athens' tyranny changed. One of the sons of Peisistratus, Hipparchus,<BR>was<BR>assassinated, and as a result, his brother Hippias imposed harsh measures on<BR>the<BR>Athenians, harsh enough for the Athenians ever after to condemn even the<BR>notion of<BR>tyranny. The family of Alcmeonids, which had led the shore group in Athens<BR>before<BR>being driven out by Peisistratus, managed to persuade the Spartans to rid<BR>Greece of<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>19<BR>tyrants, so the Spartans marched on Athens and eventually forced Hippias to<BR>withdraw. He went to Asia Minor and enjoyed the protection of the Persians.<BR>In Athens, with the withdrawal of the Peisistratids, Athens' old regional<BR>conflicts<BR>began to resurface. Legislation was introduced to outlaw "those of impure<BR>descent",<BR>which meant the immigrants from Asia Minor and the Alcmeonids, whose family<BR>still<BR>suffered from the miasma associated with the massacre of the followers of<BR>Cylon over<BR>a century before. The legislation was resisted, but tensions remained,<BR>principally<BR>between the Alcmeonids and the other old aristocrats. These tensions were<BR>resolved<BR>when Cleisthenes, the leader of the Alcmeonids, "brought the demos into his<BR>hetairia."<BR>At least this is the language that was later used. In this context, " demos"<BR>refers to the<BR>mass of citizens in the lower classes; " hetairia" refers to the<BR>aristocratic social clubs<BR>that formed the basis of political alliances in Athens. The demos had been<BR>the<BR>backbone of the Peisistratids' support until their tyranny became despotic.<BR>Now it<BR>would govern itself.<BR>Despite attempts by aristocrats to reenlist the Spartans to drive the<BR>Alcmeonids<BR>out, the demos insisted on its independence, and after shedding some<BR>aristocratic blood<BR>and besieging the Spartans on the Acropolis, they allowed the Spartans to<BR>withdraw<BR>and won their democracy. Cleisthenes was the reformer who gave Athens'<BR>democracy<BR>its definitive shape, although we know very little about his life,<BR>especially after he was<BR>elected archon in 508. His most important step was to redefine Athenian<BR>citizenship.<BR>From now on, the Athenians would no longer be divided by the traditional<BR>divisions<BR>into four tribes, which were dominated by the aristocrats with their<BR>brotherhoods, or<BR>phratries, and their control of many of Athens' priesthoods. Instead, the<BR>Athenians<BR>now had ten tribes, membership in which depended entirely on geography, on<BR>which<BR>demos (town or area) they lived in. (The word for town was also " demos",<BR>but<BR>modern scholars call these towns or areas "demes" [pronounced " deems"] in<BR>order to<BR>distinguish them from the demos, which became either the mass of citizens of<BR>the<BR>lower classes or the entire citizen body. Since Athenian politics<BR>increasingly worked<BR>on the principle of one man/one vote, and the lower classes greatly<BR>outnumbered the<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>20<BR>upper classes, these two meanings were not that distinct in practice.) To<BR>cut through<BR>Athens' geographical strife, Cleisthenes constructed each of his ten tribes<BR>from the 139<BR>or so demes in the city center, along the shore, and from the rich plains<BR>areas. The<BR>three thirds of each tribe consisted of demes from each of these areas. To<BR>cut across<BR>Athens' old family squabbles, Athenians began to identify themselves not<BR>with their<BR>patronymic, their father's name, which identified their family, but with<BR>their demotic<BR>name, which identified their deme.<BR>At eighteen years of age, every Athenian male was taken by his father before<BR>his<BR>local deme assembly, which voted on whether to accept him as a member. Once<BR>accepted, he spent the next two years in military training and on garrison<BR>duty with<BR>the other members of his tribe, drawn from all three of Athens' regions. The<BR>sort of<BR>close male bonding that this arrangement encouraged, which was maintained<BR>through<BR>entire lifetimes, served to break down Athens' geographical tensions.<BR>Each of Athens' ten tribes elected fifty members to Athens' Council, or<BR>Boulê, which<BR>was expanded from four hundred to five hundred members. To make up the<BR>fifty,<BR>each deme elected a specific number of Council members each year. This<BR>Council met<BR>very regularly and oversaw the administration of the polis, as well as<BR>preparing<BR>motions to go before Athens' Assembly, or Ecclesia, which was the sovereign<BR>body,<BR>making all the important decisions. All Athenian males over eighteen took<BR>part in the<BR>Assembly. The political year was divided into ten "months", during each of<BR>which the<BR>Council members from each tribe formed an executive body, a prytanis, which<BR>governed the city. Each day one of the fifty would officially be "president"<BR>.<BR>Athens' courts were also selected by tribes. Each year 6000 Athenians took<BR>the<BR>Heliastic oath to serve as judges, and each day the courts sat, up to 5000<BR>of them were<BR>called to serve in courts that could number from hundreds to thousands. A<BR>very<BR>elaborate lottery system was used for the selection of judges, or dikastai,<BR>immediately<BR>before they heard and decided their cases. This procedure, and the great<BR>numbers<BR>involved, ensured that the judges could not be bribed.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>21<BR>Cleisthenes is also said to have introduced ostracism, no doubt to prevent<BR>the<BR>return of tyranny. Each year at the same time, the Athenian assembly voted<BR>whether<BR>to conduct an ostracism. If the vote passed, then one month later every<BR>Athenian<BR>citizen went to the agora and deposited a piece of broken pot, an ostrakon,<BR>on which he<BR>had written the name of someone he wanted to see ostracized. If enough votes<BR>were<BR>cast, then the "winner" was required to leave Athens for a period of ten<BR>years. He<BR>need not have done anything wrong. In fact, some sources report that the<BR>individual<BR>was ostracized simply because his greatness disturbed the political balance<BR>of the<BR>democracy. Except for the period 480-450 BCE, however, few people were ever<BR>actually ostracized in Athens. But the potential for the use of ostracism<BR>was thought to<BR>be an indication of the strength of Athens' democracy.<BR>In the early years of Athens' Cleisthenic democracy, much power must still<BR>have<BR>been in the hands of the Areopagus, whose members, as former magistrates,<BR>all<BR>belonged to the wealthiest classes. Its role was to protect the<BR>constitution, which could<BR>give it quite far reaching powers. The power of the demos, the "democracy",<BR>although<BR>officially sovereign through the Assembly of all Athenian citizens, still<BR>had to establish<BR>itself in practice. But the label that Cleisthenes' reforms took, isonomia,<BR>"equality<BR>before the laws" or "a legal system based on equality", laid the foundation<BR>for Athens'<BR>demos to achieve its sovereignty in practice as well as formally.<BR>Sources<BR>Hooker, J. T. The Ancient Spartans. London: Dent, 1980.<BR>Finley, Moses I. Democracy Ancient &amp; Modern. New Brinswick, NJ: Rutgers<BR>University press, 1985.<BR>Starr, Chester G. Individual and Community: The Rise of the Polis, 800-500<BR>B.C.<BR>Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.<BR>Stockton, David. The Classical Athenian Democracy. New York: Oxford<BR>University<BR>Press, 1990.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>22<BR>4. The Greeks and the Persians<BR>In 490 BCE at Marathon, on the northern coast of Attica, the Athenians<BR>repulsed a task<BR>force of Persians intent on gaining their submission and on re-imposing on<BR>them the<BR>rule of the tyrant Hippias, who had been forced from Athens 21 years before.<BR>That<BR>Athens could block both the Persians and the return of tyranny gave a<BR>tremendous<BR>morale boost to their still budding democratic constitution. They had<BR>adopted it in<BR>506, but they still had jitters about those who might aim at tyranny. That<BR>they won this<BR>victory without the help of the Spartans, the foremost warriors of the Greek<BR>world<BR>and the leaders of the Hellenic League, helped establish the Athenians' own<BR>claim to be<BR>an effective, independent fighting force. Athens was clearly the leading<BR>city among the<BR>Ionian Greeks, who lived on the central islands of the Aegean and on the<BR>coast of<BR>Turkey, and the Athenians had already established influence around the<BR>Hellespont<BR>and on Lemnos. But they had lacked confidence in themselves in comparison to<BR>the<BR>Spartans, their superior Dorian cousins. After Marathon, they were much more<BR>confident.<BR>In 480 the Persians attacked again, this time with a much larger force.<BR>There were<BR>questions about where to meet them in battle. Many from the Peloponnese<BR>thought<BR>that the Greeks should withdraw to their southern pennisula and block the<BR>Persians at<BR>the isthmus. That would have left Athens and many other poleis out. But the<BR>Spartan<BR>king Leonidas heroically led his elite bodyguard of 300 experienced hoplites<BR>north to<BR>Thermopylae, a narrow pass between north and central Greece. If he were<BR>killed, he<BR>thought, the Spartans would have to fight to the end to avenge him. For a<BR>time<BR>Leonidas' force, with contingents from several other poleis, managed to hold<BR>the pass.<BR>But after several days the Persians found a way around the pass. The Greeks<BR>would<BR>soon have been surrounded. Leonidas sent the other Greeks away and made a<BR>desperate stand against the Persians, sacrificing himself and his men for<BR>Greek unity.<BR>Afterwards, at the island of Salamis, near Athens, a combined Greek navy<BR>managed<BR>to defeat a much larger fleet of ships under Persian command. Although<BR>Sparta<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>23<BR>technically commanded the Greek fleet, it was recognized as a united<BR>fighting force.<BR>The Athenians had provided the most ships, their naval rivals from the<BR>island of<BR>Aegina were recognized as having fought best, and the tactical guile of one<BR>Athenian<BR>commander, Themistocles, was given large credit for the Greek victory and<BR>for<BR>maintaining Greek unity in trying circumstances.4 The fact that the<BR>Athenians first<BR>abandoned their city to the ravages of the Persians and then still fought<BR>alongside the<BR>rest of the Greeks gave them even more respect. They put Greek interests<BR>before their<BR>own.<BR>In 479 the Greeks met and defeated the much larger Persian land forces at<BR>Plataea,<BR>on the border between Attica and Boeotia. Here again the Greek forces worked<BR>effectively together, the Athenians showing themselves to be every bit as<BR>competent on<BR>the field as the Spartans. At almost the same time, across the Aegean at<BR>Mycale, the<BR>Greek fleet again defeated the Persians. While the Persians could still<BR>dominate the<BR>many Greek cities that spotted the coastline of western Turkey, they would<BR>never<BR>again attempt an assault on the Greek mainland.<BR>At the next Olympic games, in 476, which were the preeminent event to be<BR>shared<BR>by the entire Greek-speaking world, everyone, from every Greek polis,<BR>applauded<BR>Themistocles as the brains behind the Greek victory. There were criticisms<BR>only<BR>against the poleis that had refused to participate in the combined Greek<BR>forces, like<BR>Corcyra and Syracuse, and those cities that appeared to have given up to the<BR>Persians<BR>without an adequate fight, like Thebes.<BR>The stage seemed to be set for a period of prosperous Panhellenism, the idea<BR>of a<BR>united Greece. And there are many indications that these united<BR>accomplishments held<BR>a strong psychological grip over the Greek world. Long after there would be<BR>references to "the Marathon men" who had repulsed the Persians. The Athenian<BR>Acropolis, whose monumental buildings had been destroyed by the Persians,<BR>was left<BR>unreconstructed for a long time in commemoration of what "the barbarians"<BR>had<BR>done. And even when its buildings were rebuilt, conscious memorials of the<BR>conflict<BR>with the Persians were included. The columns of the old Parthenon were<BR>embedded in<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>24<BR>a prominent place on the side of the Acropolis, and 192 figures were<BR>included in the<BR>new Parthenon's frieze, one for each of the Athenian dead at Marathon. The<BR>metope<BR>sculptures celebrate the battles of Greek heroes against monsters, forces of<BR>savagery<BR>that represent the barbarian threat. Persia had become a point for<BR>comparison for the<BR>Greeks: from now on the world was divided into Greeks and barbarians,<BR>non-Greeks,<BR>who were understood to be the Persians.<BR>So the Greeks gained a sense of Greece, Hellas, and what it meant to be<BR>Greeks,<BR>Hellenes.<BR>Greek Disunity<BR>After the Greek victories at Plataea and Mycale in 479 BCE, the Hellenic<BR>League was<BR>poised to pursue a vendetta against the Persians and drive them out of the<BR>Greek<BR>world entirely. The Athenians then organized the Delian League, which united<BR>the<BR>Ionians of the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor. Sparta and its<BR>Peloponnesian allies, who were mostly Dorian, did not join. The Hellenic<BR>League<BR>continued to exist until 462 BCE, but the Delian League took over the fight<BR>against<BR>Persia, and Athens was its hegemon, or leader.<BR>Athens had no political parties, so it is impossible to look for a cohesive<BR>policy with<BR>which any group can be identified. But in the early years of the Delian<BR>League there<BR>were at least four areas in which Athenian views could diverge. The first<BR>was in<BR>regard to pursuing antagonisms against Persia. Sparta, with its large helot<BR>population<BR>to control at home and its commitment to land-based hoplite warfare, had<BR>left the field<BR>open for the Athenians to assume leadership in this area. Following<BR>Aristides, the<BR>Athenians accepted Greek hegemony, or leadership, against the Persians<BR>without<BR>exception. But there were nuances to this: some states in 480 had gone over<BR>to the<BR>Persian side; were they to be punished, excluded from the Greek councils?<BR>One of<BR>these was the Amphictyonic Council, which administered the sanctuary and<BR>oracle at<BR>Delphi. The Spartans wanted to expel the "medizers" from this Council, those<BR>who<BR>had collaborated with the Persians, or Medes. Themistocles used up a great<BR>deal of the<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>25<BR>goodwill the Spartans felt for him after Salamis by opposing the Spartans on<BR>this<BR>point.<BR>The second area for divergence was with regard to Sparta and the Greek<BR>alliance.<BR>The Persians had sacked Athens twice, in 480 and 479, and the city had been<BR>in ruins.<BR>Although the Acropolis was left largely unrestored as a memorial of the<BR>Persian<BR>destruction, which the Spartans encouraged, Themistocles took a leading role<BR>in refortifying<BR>Athens despite Spartan opposition. But he also suggested burning the Greek<BR>fleet in order to ensure Athenian naval dominance. In this his sometime<BR>friend and<BR>enemy Aristides stood against him. Sparta soon withdrew from involvement in<BR>the<BR>Greek alliance because its regent, Pausanias, misbehaved and discredited the<BR>Spartans.<BR>A related area involved attempts by Athens to achieve influence beyond its<BR>borders.<BR>Even before the Persian incursions, the Athenian Miltiades established a<BR>principality in<BR>the Chersonese. Miltiades then won great acclaim by leading the Athenians at<BR>Marathon. But his further attempts at expansionism, at Paros, had been a<BR>failure, and<BR>he died in disgrace long before the battle of Salamis in 480.<BR>The fourth area of divergence was in politics at home. In the aftermath of<BR>Salamis,<BR>the aristocratic council of the Areopagus, consisting of former archons, had<BR>the upper<BR>hand. Its leadership had proved decisive in organizing the Athenian<BR>resistance to the<BR>Persians. But there was a change in the offing. In 487, the selection of<BR>magistrates was<BR>changed from election to selection by lottery. This meant that although the<BR>older<BR>members of the Areopagus had all enjoyed sufficient popularity, at least at<BR>one time, to<BR>have been chosen to lead the Athenians, the more recent members held their<BR>positions<BR>only by the luck of the draw. They had no political capital upon which to<BR>base their<BR>Council's authority. On the other hand, Athens' new naval dominance gave its<BR>navy's<BR>rowers huge new political importance. Democratic politicians, like<BR>Themistocles,<BR>made use of this new political force. They had to act through the mechanisms<BR>of the<BR>polis, since they had no money of their own. Aristocratic politicians could<BR>dispense<BR>largesse as they wished, and they could themselves finance ships for Athens'<BR>fleets.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>26<BR>After organizing the Delian League, Aristides faded quickly from the scene.<BR>Themistocles held the upper hand. But his arrogance toward the other Greeks<BR>and his<BR>lack of a pure Athenian aristocratic pedigree quickly led to a loss of<BR>political support,<BR>especially in a city still dominated by the aristocratic Areopagus. The new<BR>political and<BR>military star was Cimon, the son of Miltiades, who had impeccable<BR>aristocratic<BR>credentials and ambitions for Athens and the Delian League. After expelling<BR>the<BR>Spartan renegade Pausanias from Byzantium, he had captured Eion, in northern<BR>Greece and then the island of Skyros, near Euboea. These two places had<BR>perhaps been<BR>pockets of particularly pro-Persian sympathizers. Nevertheless, they were<BR>Greek<BR>states, and there was some unease about the Greek alliance attacking other<BR>Greeks.<BR>Then Cimon moved against Carystos and finally Naxos, which revolted in the<BR>early<BR>460s. The first great battle against the Persians after Mycale in 479 did<BR>not occur until<BR>the naval battle of the Eurymedon River in 467. But the possibilities of<BR>exploiting this<BR>victory were forestalled. The Greek fleet turned back to suppress a revolt<BR>by the island<BR>of Thasos in 465.<BR>Themistocles was ostracized sometime in the mid-470s, just as he had had<BR>Aristides<BR>ostracized some years before. Once out of the city he was powerless to act<BR>against<BR>those at home who brought charges against him. The playwright Aeschylus<BR>produced<BR>his Persians in 472 celebrating Themistocles' moment of triumph at Salamis.<BR>But it was<BR>not enough. Themistocles was forced to flee from his sanctuary at Argos, and<BR>after an<BR>epic chase across the Greek world in search of refuge, he finally ended up<BR>in the<BR>Persian king's court.<BR>Cimon had rock solid support among Athens' upper classes. He was one of<BR>them,<BR>he was enormously successful as a general, and he managed to allay the<BR>tendencies of<BR>some in the state to provoke the inevitable confrontation with Sparta over<BR>the manner<BR>of Athens' leadership over the Greek states. Sparta cannot have been very<BR>pleased<BR>when Cimon led the Delian fleet against Carystos and Naxos, but it was<BR>powerless to<BR>do anything. However, when Cimon and the fleet besieged Thasos in 465 and<BR>the<BR>island's inhabitants appealed to Sparta for help, the Spartans "secretly"<BR>offered to<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>27<BR>invade Attica, which would have forced Cimon to break off his attack. Thus<BR>one pillar<BR>of Cimon's support was undercut. His leadership could no longer be seen to<BR>exclude<BR>the possibility of Spartan aggression. The small landowners in the Attic<BR>countryside,<BR>the backbone of Athens' hoplite class, must have protested loudly, and<BR>started looking<BR>for someone to take a more militant line against the Spartans.<BR>The Spartans were prevented from attacking Attica by a revolt of their helot<BR>population in their own hinterland, at Ithome in Messenia, and by an<BR>earthquake.<BR>These events also gave Cimon an opportunity: he would lead the Athenians to<BR>Sparta's<BR>aid and thereby win back their goodwill. In their moment of distress, the<BR>Spartans<BR>invited him to come. Cimon led 4000 troops into Spartan territory, but the<BR>actual<BR>appearance of this unprecedented sight, Athenian soldiers in Spartan<BR>territory,<BR>spooked the Spartans, who were now in any case recovering on their own. The<BR>Athenians were a potentially subversive presence, and they were shamefully<BR>told to go<BR>home.<BR>The Athenian demos itself got spooked, which caused a great change in<BR>policy.<BR>Alliances were forged with Sparta's rival Argos and with Thessaly.<BR>Antagonism with<BR>Megara, on the border with Attica and thus a potential buffer, came to an<BR>end. Cimon<BR>was ostracized. The Areopagus, which had championed Cimon, lost many of its<BR>political and legal functions, which were shifted to the Council and<BR>Assembly.<BR>Aeschylus, the playwright who had earlier celebrated the Athenian victory<BR>over<BR>Salamis in order to ease anger against Themistocles, now wrote about how the<BR>Areopagus was originally instituted as a homicide court, which was now the<BR>only<BR>function it had left. The Areopagus had had sweeping powers "to preserve the<BR>constitution" by hearing cases against magistrates and generals. These were<BR>now<BR>given to the more representative assemblies. So were the dokimasia and the<BR>euthyna,<BR>by which magistrates were scrutinized and audited at the beginning and end<BR>of their<BR>terms. And the senior magistrates would no longer try cases at all; all<BR>legal<BR>proceedings would now go straight to the popular law courts.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>28<BR>The author of these democratizing reforms in 462 BCE was Ephialtes, an<BR>aristocrat<BR>with an impeccable record, but a devoted democrat. Soon after his reforms,<BR>however,<BR>he was assassinated. His role as the champion of the democrats was taken<BR>over by<BR>Pericles, who went on to dominate Athenian politics for more than thirty<BR>years. One<BR>of Pericles' first reforms was to introduce payment for participation in<BR>Athens' juries.<BR>Unlike in our own day, Athenian jurists could not be compelled to<BR>participate, so<BR>unless they received some compensation, only those who could afford to take<BR>time<BR>away from their other responsibilities could participate. With jury pay,<BR>Pericles saw<BR>to it that the lower classes could judge cases as well. In 457 he opened the<BR>holding of<BR>the senior magistracies to the zeugitae. In 451 he introduced a law<BR>requiring that to be<BR>recognized as an Athenian citizen, a man had to show that both his parents<BR>had been<BR>Athenians.<BR>Under Pericles' leadership, Athenian relations with Sparta continued to<BR>sour.<BR>Athens' assistance to Megara in severing its ties to the Spartans and the<BR>other<BR>Peloponnesians led to what is now called the First Peloponnesian War<BR>(460-445 BCE).<BR>Athens now built its Long Walls, which connected Athens with its harbor at<BR>Piraeus.<BR>In 457, the Spartans marched north into Boeotia in an attempt to shore up<BR>their allies in<BR>Thebes. The Athenians confronted them at Tanagra and lost, but the Spartan<BR>losses<BR>were also considerable and forced them to withdraw. The next year Athens<BR>retook<BR>Boeotia and dominated it for the next ten years.<BR>Athens' hostility to Persia had not yet wavered. In 459, 200 Athenian ships<BR>ventured to Egypt to support a revolt against the Persians. Like other<BR>revolts against<BR>the great Persian king, this one enjoyed temporary success, but in 454 it<BR>collapsed and<BR>Athens' entire expedition, including fifty more ships that had been sent out<BR>as<BR>reinforcements, were lost. It was a huge disaster, which led to two<BR>significant events.<BR>First, citing the possibility of a renewed Persian threat, Athens moved the<BR>treasury of<BR>the Delian League from Delos to Athens. Second, in about 450 Athens ended<BR>its<BR>hostilities with Persia with the so-called Peace of Callias. Despite the end<BR>of the war<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>29<BR>against Persia, however, Athens continued to insist that its allies<BR>contribute to the<BR>upkeep of its fleet. The Delian League had become the Athenian Empire.<BR>In 447 Athens' ambitions to maintain a hold over Boeotia and thus hold an<BR>empire<BR>on land as well as on the sea were ended when the Spartans again defeated<BR>them, this<BR>time at Coronea in Boeotia. Soon a peace treaty was also concluded. Sparta<BR>was to<BR>lead the Greeks of the Peloponnese and Boeotia, and Athens was to have its<BR>naval<BR>empire. The peace treaty required that trials involving Athenians and allies<BR>be held at<BR>Athens, and it imposed Athenian silver coinage, weights and measures on all<BR>its allies.<BR>Those allies that were deemed recalcitrant could expect to have a colony of<BR>Athenian<BR>cleruchs, stakeholders, placed nearby. The cleruchies allowed the Athenians<BR>to keep an<BR>eye on things and provided a home for some of Athens' burgeoning population.<BR>Sources<BR>Green, Peter, The Greco-Persian Wars. Berkeley: University of California<BR>Press, 1996.<BR>Herodotus, The Histories. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.<BR>McGregor, Malcolm F. The Athenians and Their Empire. Vancouver: University<BR>of<BR>British Columbia Press, 1987.<BR>Meiggs, R. The Athenian Empire. Oxford: Oxford University press, 1972.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>30<BR>5. The Great Peloponnesian War<BR>The peace treaty concluded between Athens and Sparta in 446 interrupted<BR>hostilities<BR>without resolving the causes of the dispute between the two powers. It gave<BR>Athens a<BR>free hand to dominate its subject allies, one that it exercised quite<BR>brutally against the<BR>island of Samos in 440. But in general the Athenians did not try to extend<BR>their<BR>domination over new areas. Pericles, who was both Athens' leading politician<BR>and its<BR>most authoritative general, was quite happy to let Athens' enjoy the wealth<BR>and<BR>dominance it already had. In the mid 440s he embarked on a massive building<BR><BR>program that gave Athens the physical attributes to match its imperial<BR>power,<BR>buildings like the Parthenon and Propylaea on the Acropolis and the<BR>Hephaesteon<BR>near the agora. There are suggestions that he sent bribes to the Spartans to<BR>soften<BR>their hostility. But the Spartans themselves had little reason to react. The<BR>Athenians<BR>were not imposing on their territory. The Spartans' austere lifestyle, which<BR>included<BR>avoiding the outside world as much as possible, meant that Athens was little<BR>direct<BR>threat to them.<BR>But Sparta did lead an alliance of states known as the Peloponnesian League,<BR>which<BR>included Thebes, which saw itself as the leader of Boeotia, Megara, which<BR>bordered<BR>Athens, and Corinth, which, as a maritime trading state had ambitions that<BR>naturally<BR>conflicted with Athens' from time to time. Boeotia also bordered on Attica,<BR>Athens'<BR>territory, and the Athenians had strong relations with the Boeotian state of<BR>Plataea,<BR>which was near the border with Attica and resented Thebes' ambitions.<BR>Corinth lay the groundwork for war. Athens had allied itself in 434 with<BR>Corcyra,<BR>an island colony of Corinth that lay on the route between Greece and the<BR>rich trading<BR>area of Sicily and southern Italy. The Athenians then joined the Corcyraeans<BR>in a sea<BR>battle against Corinth, which allowed the island to sever its ties to its<BR>mother city.<BR>Since Corinth had been very active in the colonization movement of previous<BR>centuries, this scenario was likely to repeat itself. In fact, Potidaea, one<BR>of Athens'<BR>subject allies on the coast of the northern Aegean area known as the<BR>Chalcidice, was<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>31<BR>also a colony of Corinth, and it still received its annual magistrates from<BR>the mother<BR>city. The Athenians demanded that Potidaea sever these ties with Corinth,<BR>and made<BR>several other demands besides. The Potidaeans refused and they and the<BR>Corinthians<BR>appealed to Sparta for help. The Spartans probably could have been dissuaded<BR>from<BR>declaring war if Athens had softened its antagonism against Megara, whose<BR>markets it<BR>was blockading as a result of a border dispute. Nevertheless, the<BR>contemporary<BR>Athenian historian Thucydides is probably right that war could ultimately<BR>not be<BR>avoided so long as Athens' ambitions threatened the other Greeks. Modern<BR>historians<BR>have seen these ambitions in economic terms, citing Athens' needs for grain<BR>from the<BR>Black Sea, minerals from the northern Aegean, and timber from Thrace and<BR>Macedonia.<BR>Thebes and Plataea caused the actual outbreak of war. The Plataeans, after<BR>repulsing a Theban attempt to seize control of their city, massacred 180<BR>Theban<BR>prisoners. Anticipating a Theban reprisal, the Plateans sought Athenian<BR>help, while<BR>the Thebans turned to Sparta. Pericles dictated Athens' strategy at the<BR>beginning of the<BR>war. The Athenians would counter the Spartans' advantage in hoplite warfare<BR>by<BR>refusing to meet them on the battlefield. Instead, the Athenians would<BR>discipline their<BR>impulses to fight, abandon most of the Attic countryside and withdraw behind<BR>the<BR>walls that connected Athens and Piraeus. Its navy and trading fleets would<BR>keep the<BR>city fed and supplied. This discipline would have been difficult under any<BR>circumstances, but the Athenians had not engaged in war on their own<BR>territory for<BR>over a generation, and many of the men of combat age had never experienced<BR>war of<BR>any kind. They had grown up in a city that had seen itself as the foremost<BR>power of<BR>Greece. The first two years of the war (431-430) proceeded according to<BR>Pericles'<BR>plans. The Spartans invaded Attica during the campaigning season, laid the<BR>country<BR>waste, and withdrew, and the Athenian fleet sailed around the Peloponnese on<BR>raiding<BR>expeditions.<BR>In 429 Athens experienced something entirely unexpected: a plague broke out.<BR>The<BR>crowded conditions of the city and a total lack of knowledge about how to<BR>deal with the<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>32<BR>disease caused the deaths of one quarter to one third of Athens' population,<BR>including<BR>Pericles'. Despite this catastrophe, however, Athens' military situation<BR>remained<BR>much as it had been. What changed was Athens' leadership. Thucydides tends<BR>to see<BR>the change in moral terms, and modern historians tend to follow his<BR>assessment that<BR>Athens' political and military leadership was not up to the standard set by<BR>the great<BR>general who had given Athens leadership for over thirty years. The new<BR>leadership,<BR>which is associated with the names of Nicias and Cleon in particular, is<BR>described as<BR>being led by "demagogues" who pandered to the desires of Athens' demos.<BR>Pericles' death in 429 brought a power vacuum in Athens. He had largely<BR>eliminated his political opponents from the scene. Capable men of the<BR>aristocracy who<BR>felt a calling to public service went into the military, where they were<BR>often away from<BR>Athens for lengthy periods, unable to build popular support with the demos.<BR>In<BR>Athens what had arisen instead was a new kind of politician, not from the<BR>traditional,<BR>landholding aristocracy, but of the demos. The new politicians gained their<BR>wealth<BR>through trade and manufacturing. Their policies were belligerent and they<BR>appealed<BR>to the basest motives of the demos, its jealousy and rapacity. Cleon was one<BR>of these<BR>new politicians. He was the son of a wealthy leather tanner.<BR>The historical tradition is universally hostile to Cleon. But in 425 he was<BR>handed an<BR>extraordinary piece of luck. His bravado and aggressiveness were rewarded<BR>with his<BR>being able to take credit for the capture of several hundred Spartans on the<BR>island of<BR>Sphacteria, which led the Spartans to sue for peace. Although their plea was<BR>rejected,<BR>because of Cleon, the prisoners prevented the Spartans from attacking Attica<BR>for the<BR>next four years. The Athenians responded by increasing the tribute they<BR>demanded<BR>from their allies, and times were good for the Athenian demos. Attempts were<BR>even<BR>made to make incursions by land into Boeotia.<BR>Despite Cleon's successes, he was not able to win over everyone. Some<BR>believe that<BR>Athens with its authority invested in an amateur, democratic assembly, had<BR>need for<BR>people, like Cleon, who devoted themselves to mastering the intricacies of<BR>the empire<BR>and its administration. As Cleon is made to say in the Mytilenean Debate,<BR>which was<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>33<BR>recorded by the historian Thucydides, "a democracy cannot run an empire."<BR>Cleon<BR>knew how much money and resources were needed for the empire, especially for<BR>his<BR>generous doles to the jury courts. In this context, the comic poet<BR>Aristophanes<BR>renewed his attacks on Cleon. He had criticized him in his earlier plays,<BR>been sued by<BR>Cleon and convicted, but he went at it again.<BR>The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition<BR>The deaths of Cleon and Brasidas at Amphipolis in 422 BCE removed the most<BR>belligerent leaders from both Athens and Sparta. Nicias, who had made<BR>windfall<BR>profits from silver mining, took over the leadership of Athens. Although he<BR>catered to<BR>the will of the demos as much as anyone, he was sympathetic to the<BR>aristocrats and<BR>farmers who wanted peace. Since the Spartans wanted peace also, he was able<BR>to<BR>achieve a peace treaty in 421 BCE without much trouble, and the peace was<BR>named for<BR>him. Although there are disputes about this what was achieved in this first,<BR>ten-year<BR>part of the Peloponnesian War, it seems pretty clear that despite the losses<BR>of the<BR>plague the Athenians were the winners. All they had wanted was to continue<BR>to hold<BR>their empire, and they had achieved this.<BR>But there were restive people in Athens, anxious to put their own mark on<BR>Athens'<BR>glory. Although Athens and Sparta had achieved a peace treaty, the issues<BR>that<BR>separated them were still present. A protégé of Pericles, Alcibiades,<BR>organized a<BR>coalition of poleis in the Peloponnese to check Sparta's dominance over that<BR>peninsula.<BR>In 418, the armies of Argos, Mantinea and Elis fought the Spartans at<BR>Mantinea and<BR>lost. In 416 the Athenians approached almost the only Aegean island that was<BR>not part<BR>of its alliance, Melos, and demanded that it join. The Melians were<BR>ethnically Dorian,<BR>in fact they were very closely tied with the Spartans. They refused an<BR>Athenian<BR>ultimatum in a debate that was dramatized by the historian Thucydides as the<BR>"Melian<BR>Dialogue". After a siege, the Athenians killed all the Melian men and sold<BR>their woman<BR>and children into slavery.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>34<BR>The expedition against Melos was only a preliminary, however, for Athens',<BR>and<BR>Alcibiades', greatest ambition: the launching of a fleet to take control of<BR>the island of<BR>Sicily. Nicias opposed the expedition. But his estimate that it would<BR>require too many<BR>ships, men and resources, which he exaggerated in an attempt to discourage<BR>the<BR>Athenians, was to his surprise approved. And to make matters worse, he was<BR>chosen,<BR>against his wishes, as one of the three generals to lead the expedition of<BR>94 triremes,<BR>4500 hoplite soldiers, and countless supporting vessels. Nicias, Alcibiades<BR>and<BR>Lamachus made preparations to set off on the largest naval expedition ever<BR>by any<BR>Greek polis. Shortly before the expedition left, however, accusations were<BR>made<BR>against Alcibiades that he had profaned the mystery rituals of the cult of<BR>Demeter at<BR>Eleusis by performing them as part of a drunken party. It was also taken as<BR>a bad<BR>omen that somebody cut the phalluses off of many of the small statues of the<BR>god<BR>Hermes, called "herms", that were located throughout the city.<BR>Alcibiades was able temporarily to face down the accusations against him,<BR>but once<BR>the expedition was launched and he was away, they resurfaced and Alcibiades<BR>was<BR>recalled. Because so many of his political supporters were with the fleet,<BR>he knew he<BR>would have a bad time of it at home, so instead of going to Athens, he went<BR>to Argos,<BR>and eventually to Sparta. Without him, the expedition to Sicily suffered<BR>from<BR>indecisiveness. Nicias had to lead it, and he opposed the whole venture. The<BR>Athenians attacked Syracuse, on the east coast of Sicily, and they might<BR>have won. But<BR>the Syracusans called on the Spartans for help, and the Spartans were quite<BR>happy to<BR>renew their war against Athens. By 413 the entire expedition to Sicily was<BR>wiped out,<BR>including further reinforcements sent out from Athens.<BR>Meanwhile in Sparta, Alcibiades recommended that in their renewed war the<BR>Spartans set up a permanent garrison in Athenian territory at Decelea, and<BR>they<BR>followed his advice. From Decelea the Spartans were able to harass the<BR>Athenians<BR>continuously for the next ten years, preventing them from making use of the<BR>countryside of Attica.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>35<BR>Oligarchy of the Four Hundred<BR>The Sicilian disaster led to turmoil both within Athens and among its<BR>allies, who now<BR>saw the city as weak. With Persian and Spartan help many revolted. At Athens<BR>there<BR>was anger at the democratic leaders and at the fortune-tellers who had urged<BR>on the<BR>expedition. Ten men were appointed as probouloi to preside over measures of<BR>economic stringency, a move taken to be a first step toward oligarchy. The<BR>reserve of<BR>1000 talents set aside on the Acropolis was employed.<BR>The reasons for the move to oligarchy are explained by Thucydides. There was<BR>a<BR>perception that Athens could not survive unless the Persian king stopped<BR>financing the<BR>Spartans and began helping the Athenians. The Persian king would not do<BR>this, it was<BR>argued, unless Athens adopted an oligarchic government. Alcibiades, who had<BR>fled<BR>from the Spartans and was now advising the Persian governor Tissaphernes,<BR>put the<BR>plan to the aristocratically minded generals with the Athenian forces at<BR>Samos, like<BR>Pisander. He hoped that the plan might bring about his return to Athens.<BR>Initially the<BR>democrats both at Samos and at Athens were timid. Androcles, a leading<BR>democrat<BR>who had been responsible for the exile of Alcibiades, was assassinated. The<BR>oligarchs<BR>were highly organized, employing the connections cultivated in their<BR>drinking clubs,<BR>the hetairiai.<BR>A special Assembly was called outside Athens at Colonus, which voted to hand<BR>over<BR>power to a new Council of Four Hundred. The conservative politician and<BR>sophist<BR>Antiphon was in charge. The number 400 was selected because it echoed that<BR>of the<BR>Solonian Council that predated Cleisthenes'. The new Councilors showed up at<BR>the<BR>Council House in Athens with a large armed escort and dismissed the<BR>democratically<BR>selected Council of 500. There was a promise given that power would<BR>ultimately be in<BR>the hands of an Assembly of 5000, a number limited to those who could serve<BR>the city<BR>either financially or by bearing hoplite weapons. The lower class thetes who<BR>manned<BR>the fleet were thus to be excluded.<BR>The oligarchs hesitated over recalling Alcibiades, so he made approaches to<BR>the<BR>democrats at Samos, and took his Persian patronage with him. The oligarchs<BR>also<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>36<BR>encouraged those cities that were still subject to them to adopt similarly<BR>oligarchic<BR>governments, but they tended to revolt instead. And although the oligarchs<BR>had<BR>claimed that they would pursue the war against Sparta more efficiently than<BR>the<BR>democrats, once in power they made overtures of peace to the Spartans at<BR>Decelea. The<BR>navy at Samos elected from its numbers Thrasybulus to lead a democratic<BR>reaction.<BR>They elected Alcibiades general, who served as a conciliator. Some of the<BR>oligarchs<BR>were accused of fortifying Eitioneia, near Athens' harbor, to help a Spartan<BR>invasion.<BR>Soon the Four Hundred were deposed, and Athens was again a democracy.<BR>The Tyranny of the Thirty<BR>Led by Alcibiades, the Athenian navy achieved many successes in the years<BR>following<BR>411. The Spartans were even led to offer peace. But the newly restored<BR>democracy,<BR>which was under the influence of a demagogue named Cleophon, only wanted to<BR>pursue war. Alcibiades was welcomed home a hero in 407, but his popularity<BR>with<BR>Athens' fickle democracy did not last long.<BR>Leaving the main body of his forces under the command of his friend<BR>Antiochus,<BR>with orders not to risk a battle, Alcibiades went off with a few of his<BR>ships to<BR>reconnoiter. Although the exact circumstances are unknown, Antiochus was<BR>drawn<BR>into battle and was defeated. The loss was relatively insignificant, but<BR>Alcibiades was<BR>made to take the blame. He was not re-elected general the next year and<BR>chose to<BR>retire.<BR>Despite the loss of this great general, the Athenians enjoyed one last great<BR>victory.<BR>The Spartan commander Lysander put together a fleet of 140 ships and managed<BR>to<BR>destroy 30 Athenian ships in a battle near the island of Lesbos. In<BR>response, the<BR>Athenians took extraordinary steps to assemble the funds necessary to put<BR>together a<BR>new fleet of their own, 150 ships strong. The two fleets met at Arginusae,<BR>near the<BR>Turkish coast, and the Athenians won a decisive victory.<BR>In the aftermath of the battle, however, a storm prevented the Athenian<BR>generals<BR>from staying to recover the dead from the twenty-five ships that were lost.<BR>The<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>37<BR>democratic Assembly responded by convicting the generals of impiety and<BR>executing<BR>them. This procedure was completely unconstitutional, as the philosopher<BR>Socrates,<BR>who happened to be one of those chairing the Assembly meeting that day,<BR>tried to<BR>point out: Athenians could not be condemned to death by the Assembly but<BR>only by a<BR>law court. The execution of the generals, one of whom was actually the son<BR>of the<BR>great general Pericles, had disastrous consequences for Athens' military<BR>prospects,<BR>which were already precarious after the retirement of Alcibiades. Athens<BR>simply did<BR>not have sufficient depth in strategic talent to be able to afford the loss<BR>of these men.<BR>The Spartan commander Lysander took advantage of a lapse is Athenian<BR>strategy<BR>in the Hellespont to surprise the Athenian navy and destroy it in the battle<BR>of<BR>Aegospotami in 405. Only twenty of 180 Athenian ships managed to escape, and<BR>many<BR>of them fled to Cyprus. With the loss of its fleet and three to four<BR>thousand men,<BR>Athens was defenseless. But Lysander did not move immediately to demand<BR>Athens'<BR>surrender. Instead, he moved through the Aegean, replacing democratic<BR>governments<BR>loyal to Athens with oligarchic governments loyal to himself and Sparta and<BR>forcing<BR>the Athenians who lived in and near the various poleis as cleruchs to move<BR>back to<BR>Athens. With its grain supplies cut off by a Spartan embargo, the new<BR>arrivals simply<BR>exacerbated a famine in Athens.<BR>The Athenians held out for eight months, urged on despite the famine by the<BR>demagogue Cleophon. But finally the city capitulated and its Long Walls were<BR>torn<BR>down. The Spartans were not as severe as some of their allies wanted: they<BR>were<BR>demanding Athens' total destruction. Instead, Lysander, as he had done with<BR>many of<BR>the poleis that had been Athens' allies, replaced Athens' democratic<BR>constitution with<BR>an oligarchy of thirty, select Athenians. Because of their brutal behavior<BR>toward their<BR>fellow citizens and others living in Athens, this group became despised and<BR>known<BR>simply as the Thirty or as the Thirty Tyrants.<BR>The erratic behavior of Athens' democracy in the last years of the war, as<BR>well as<BR>the fatigue caused by the war itself, must have made the change in Athens'<BR>constitution<BR>quite appealing to many Athenians. The Thirty were appointed both to run the<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>38<BR>government and to write new laws according to the "ancestral constitution"<BR>( patrios<BR>politeia), which would severely limit the franchise, essentially only to the<BR>hoplite class,<BR>and reform the courts. One of the ways for attacking political opponents in<BR>the<BR>democracy was malicious prosecution, or sykophantia, which the oligarchs<BR>promised<BR>to end.<BR>There were differing views among the Thirty, however. Critias led an<BR>extremist<BR>group that wanted the franchise strictly limited to 3000 citizens and sought<BR>to purge<BR>not only the most extreme democrats and sykophants, most of whom had at any<BR>rate<BR>already fled, but also almost anyone who had prospered under the democracy,<BR>whether citizen or resident foreigner (metic). Theramenes led a more<BR>moderate<BR>group, which was willing to broaden the franchise and rejected the wholesale<BR>violence<BR>of Critias. For his trouble, Theramenes was himself identified as an enemy<BR>of the<BR>oligarchy and executed, along with approximately 1500 other victims of the<BR>Thirty.<BR>A group of democratic exiles had found refuge in Thebes. In 403, led by<BR>Thrasybulus, a relatively small group set out for Athens. After defeating a<BR>small<BR>army at Phyle, on the border of Attica, Thrasybulus' group grew and moved on<BR>to<BR>Athens. The Thirty responded by stationing a Spartan garrison on Athens'<BR>Acropolis,<BR>which made the Athenians even more hostile to them. In a battle fought near<BR>Athens'<BR>port in Piraeus, Critias was killed. Led by their king Pausanias, the<BR>Spartans withdrew<BR>and after some negotiations a reconciliation was achieved among the<BR>Athenians.<BR>Athens' democracy was restored again.<BR>Sources<BR>Connor, W. Robert. New Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens. 1971.<BR>Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>39<BR>6. The Decline of the Polis<BR>Spartan Hegemony<BR>The restoration of democracy in Athens in 403 had little effect in the rest<BR>of Greece,<BR>where Sparta's power was unchallenged. We refer to this as the period of<BR>Spartan<BR>hegemony. The word "hegemony" is based on the Greek word hegemonia, which<BR>means leadership. But hegemony is stronger than leadership. It does not<BR>quite mean<BR>domination, but it tends in that direction.<BR>Through the strategy of their commander Lysander, the Spartans largely<BR>inherited<BR>Athens' empire, with the contributions of its subject allies, to add to its<BR>own<BR>considerable holdings in the Peloponnese. Under Spartan governors, or<BR>harmosts,<BR>councils of ten local citizens, called decarchies, ruled the affairs of the<BR>poleis in<BR>accordance with Spartan interests.<BR>But the Spartans had some decisions to make. In order to defeat the<BR>Athenians,<BR>they had sought and received help from the Persians in exchange for the<BR>Persians<BR>receiving a free hand to dominate the Greeks who lived on the coast of<BR>Turkey. Would<BR>the Spartans abide by their agreements with the Persians, or would they<BR>renew their<BR>role as champions of the Greek world and pursue war against Persia? The<BR>obstacles to<BR>their doing this were no less true in 400 BCE than they had been in 479 BCE.<BR>The basis<BR>of their livelihood was still the labor of the large population of helots,<BR>against whom<BR>the Spartans had to stay ever vigilant. And the Spartan agoge, or training,<BR>which<BR>produced such effective soldiers, also seemed to depend on the Spartans<BR>living only<BR>within their very controlled lifestyle at home. Outside influences could<BR>quite easily<BR>corrupt. Spartans dealing with money for the first time succumbed to the<BR>temptation<BR>to steal. Harmosts given command over foreign populations for the first time<BR>quickly<BR>became tyrants. But the involvement of many Greek mercenaries in a rebellion<BR>led by<BR>Cyrus the Younger in an attempt to seize the Persian throne from his brother<BR>Artaxerxes II in 401 showed the potential strength that a united Greek army<BR>might<BR>have against the Persians. Cyrus' mainly Greek force managed to defeat a<BR>Persian<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>40<BR>army at Cunaxa, deep in Persian territory in Babylonia. Only the death of<BR>Cyrus at<BR>Cunaxa prevented the ten thousand Greek mercenaries from asserting control<BR>The successes of the Spartan commander Lysander became his own undoing. The<BR>personal loyalty that he enjoyed in so many of the cities he had captured<BR>was resented<BR>by the Spartans back home. Because he was not one of Sparta's two kings, his<BR>extraordinary personal power and prestige were viewed as a threat to Spartan<BR>government. He was recalled, and the citizens who formed the many local<BR>decarchies<BR>were dismissed as if they were his personal clients. In 397 BCE, however,<BR>Lysander<BR>returned to some prominence when his boyhood friend Agesilaus was able to<BR>become<BR>king after a disputed succession.<BR>Agesilaus had great plans to pursue war against the Persians. Modeling<BR>himself on<BR>Agamemnon and the legendary Greek expedition against Troy, in 396 he<BR>assembled an<BR>army in the same location in Boeotia where Agamemnon's fleet had<BR>disembarked. But<BR>by this time Sparta's former allies were growing weary of Spartan hegemony,<BR>and the<BR>Thebans marched out and interrupted Agesilaus' preliminary sacrifice. The<BR>expedition<BR>set off nevertheless and won several victories in northwest Turkey.<BR>Agesilaus' successes were cut short, however, by two developments. First, in<BR>395<BR>an Athenian general Conon, who had escaped the disaster at Aegospotami in<BR>405 by<BR>sailing to Cyprus, returned at the head of a Persian fleet and defeated the<BR>Spartans at<BR>Cnidus in the southeastern Aegean. Second, in Greece, the cities of Thebes,<BR>Athens,<BR>Corinth and Argos put aside their differences and united against Sparta.<BR>Agesilaus<BR>had to be called home.<BR>Because so much of the fighting took place near the isthmus of Corinth in an<BR>attempt to restrict Spartan influence to the Peloponnese, the new war has<BR>been called<BR>the Corinthian War. Besides the four Greek poleis, the Persians also joined<BR>in<BR>opposing Sparta. Athens was the prime beneficiary of the Persian aid: it<BR>rebuilt its<BR>Long Walls and refortified its port at Piraeus. Soon the Athenians<BR>reestablished their<BR>influence in many parts of the Aegean, especially in regaining a corridor to<BR>the Black<BR>Sea for its grain supplies. Their renewed power and their imposition of<BR>taxes on all<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>41<BR>maritime trade by their allies made the Persians and the Thebans worried,<BR>however,<BR>and both these powers turned their support to Sparta. By 387 the Spartans<BR>had<BR>managed to block Athens' access to the Black Sea again, and the Athenians<BR>were forced<BR>to accept a peace brokered by the Persian king. Since it was dictated by the<BR>Spartan<BR>Antalcidas, it is variously known as the "King's Peace" or "Peace of<BR>Antalcidas".<BR>The terms of the King's Peace assured the Persians their control of the<BR>Greek cities<BR>in Asia Minor. It was thus seen by many as a betrayal of Greek interests.<BR>Within<BR>Greece, its guiding principle was autonomy: no polis was to impose itself on<BR>any other.<BR>This principle was directly mainly at the Athenians, but it also prevented<BR>the Thebans<BR>from dominating the other cities of Boeotia. It did nothing, however, to<BR>check Sparta's<BR>domination of Messenia. In fact Sparta became the enforcer of the Peace. In<BR>382 a<BR>Spartan commander on his way to northern Greece to break up a league of<BR>states loyal<BR>to Olynthus took the opportunity afforded by a religious celebration in<BR>Thebes to seize<BR>the city's acropolis, which was known as the Cadmeia. The unprovoked nature<BR>of the<BR>attack and its transgression against religious customs led the Spartans to<BR>punish the<BR>commander, but they held on to the Cadmeia. This sort of Spartan<BR>highhandedness led<BR>the Thebans to join with the Athenians and many of Athens' former allies<BR>again to<BR>form what is now called the Second Athenian League. The terms of the League<BR>were<BR>very carefully formulated to abide by the terms of the King's Peace: no<BR>polis would<BR>surrender its autonomy to another. Unlike the Athenian Empire of the fifth<BR>century,<BR>this League was governed not by the Athenian Assembly but by an independent<BR>congress, or synhedrion. At its peak, the League had up to seventy members.<BR>Although the Athenians were clearly the strongest member, especially with<BR>their navy,<BR>they allowed the synhedrion a veto over their actions, and they did not<BR>impose any<BR>cleruchies on their allies.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>42<BR>The Battles of Leuctra and Mantinea<BR>Despite the pious sentiments of 378 BCE establishing the Second Athenian<BR>League<BR>while preserving the autonomy of its individual member states, the tendency<BR>for the<BR>stronger states to dominate the weaker was impossible to escape. Thebes took<BR>advantage of its alliance with Athens to consolidate its hold over Boeotia<BR>through the<BR>Boeotian Confederacy, and Athens itself took greater and greater advantage<BR>of its<BR>hegemony over the maritime poleis. The Spartans were intent on putting a<BR>stop to<BR>Thebes' ambitions. In 375, however, the Thebans under Pelopidas stunned the<BR>Greek<BR>world by defeating a relatively small force of Spartans in a battle at<BR>Tegyra. In 371,<BR>after a failed peace conference in which the Spartans had refused to allow<BR>the Thebans<BR>to settle terms on behalf of all the Boeotians, the Spartans came north with<BR>a force of<BR>over 10,000 hoplites to destroy the Boeotian Confederacy. The Thebans under<BR>Epaminondas met them at Leuctra.<BR>Epaminondas had revolutionized hoplite fighting. He massed his hoplite<BR>phalanx<BR>50 men deep on his left, directly against the Spartan strength. An elite<BR>force, called the<BR>Sacred Band, was in the front ranks of Epaminondas' phalanx. By carefully<BR>timing his<BR>cavalry attack, and taking advantage of Spartan confusion at his unusual<BR>formation,<BR>Epaminondas charged the Spartans at the right moment, killing their king and<BR>forcing<BR>the Spartans to withdraw with heavy losses. The Battle of Leuctra marked the<BR>end of<BR>Spartan military dominance in Greece. Economic problems in Sparta had led to<BR>a<BR>drop in population. Even if they had had the will, the Spartans could no<BR>longer field an<BR>army of sufficient size to dominate. Several cities in the Peloponnese could<BR>celebrate<BR>their liberation from Spartan hegemony.<BR>The next year Epaminondas followed up his victory by invading the<BR>Peloponnese.<BR>But instead of attacking Sparta directly, he led his forces to Messenia, the<BR>source of<BR>Sparta's economic prosperity. He freed Messenia and reestablished it as a<BR>unified<BR>polis. In subsequent years he invaded the Peloponnese repeatedly while<BR>Thebes<BR>enjoyed its brief period of hegemony over the Greek world. Loosely following<BR>the<BR>model that the Thebans had adopted for their Boeotian confederacy,<BR>Epaminondas<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>43<BR>initially encouraged the development of the Arcadian Confederacy as a buffer<BR>to the<BR>Spartans. It had its capital at Megalopolis and included an assembly of ten<BR>thousand, a<BR>council, and magistrates selected according to the size of their home polis.<BR>Soon,<BR>however, the Confederacy became fragmented and its members, encouraged by<BR>Athens, began to resist Theban control. In 362, in an attempt to put down<BR>unrest in the<BR>Peloponnese, Epaminondas was killed in the Battle of Mantinea. In many ways,<BR>the<BR>battle was a Theban victory, but with the loss of its most decisive leader,<BR>Thebes' time<BR>of hegemony was over.<BR>The Social War (357-355 BCE) and the Sacred War (355-347 BCE)<BR>The historian Xenophon (c. 440-360 BCE) ends his Hellenica, a history of the<BR>period<BR>411-362, by noting the uncertainty that followed the Battle of Mantinea.5<BR>Sparta's time<BR>as a dominant military power had been finished after the Battle of Leuctra<BR>in 371 BCE.<BR>Now Thebes' period of hegemony had passed. Athens was once again the leading<BR>Greek polis, but without ambitions to pursue a war against either a Greek<BR>power or<BR>the Persians. With no threat from any of these quarters either, its<BR>justification for<BR>maintaining an empire seemed to have gone. For the Second Athenian League<BR>had<BR>become an empire. The Athenians were increasingly interested in recovering<BR>Amphipolis, a strategic commercial and mining center on the north coast of<BR>the<BR>Aegean, but this goal would have served only the Athenians, not their<BR>allies.<BR>Discontent among Athens' allies grew until finally, in 357 BCE, Rhodes, Cos,<BR>Chios<BR>and Byzantium revolted in what is now called the Social War, from the Latin<BR>word<BR>socii for "allies". These states were helped and encouraged by Mausolus, the<BR>king of<BR>Caria who acted as the Persian governor, or satrap, for the area. The Social<BR>War<BR>certainly prevented the Athenians from thinking about pursuing a campaign<BR>against<BR>the Persians. The Athenian citizens had long enjoyed the 6revenues generated<BR>by their<BR>League to finance ships and mercenaries to fight on their behalf. They no<BR>longer had<BR>the heart to pursue a war to maintain an empire after their navy lost a<BR>major battle at<BR>Embata in 356 and the Persian king threatened all out war if the Athenians<BR>did not<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>44<BR>restrain their general Chares. Although Athens kept a remnant of its League<BR>in tact,<BR>the loss of four of its major allies -- as well as Lesbos shortly after the<BR>war -- marked<BR>the end of an important chapter in Greek history and politics. The Athenians<BR>were no<BR>longer in a position to export their democratic ideas to other poleis. It<BR>was only a<BR>matter of time before its own democracy was threatened.<BR>The Athenians were not the only polis to rely heavily on mercenaries in the<BR>fourth<BR>century BCE, and this had enormous consequences for Greek political<BR>institutions. The<BR>basis of polis government had been the phalanx of hoplite citizen soldiers<BR>and, in the<BR>case of Athens' democracy, the trireme of citizen rowers. When the soldiers<BR>and<BR>rowers became hired non-citizens, mercenaries, the connection between<BR>citizens'<BR>political rights and military service was broken. Constant warfare led many<BR>Greek<BR>citizens to abandon their farms and drift into service as mercenaries, which<BR>had<BR>agricultural and thus economic consequences, as well as military and<BR>political.<BR>The preeminence of the hoplite soldier was also being challenged by changes<BR>in<BR>military technology and tactics. The citizen farmer had sufficient wealth to<BR>be able to<BR>purchase his own weapons. Now light-armed tactics, which were pioneered by<BR>Pelopidas of Thebes and Iphicrates of Athens, called for more specialized<BR>skills in<BR>archery, slinging, siege operations and the use of the lighter javelin and<BR>shield, or<BR>peltê, of the peltasts. Citizen soldiers rarely had the time or interest to<BR>develope these<BR>skills. Tyrants like Jason of Pherae and Dionysius of Syracuse, as well as<BR>the Persian<BR>king, hired many Greek mercenaries for their armies, an indication that<BR>soldiers were<BR>now fighting less for their poleis and more for individuals, and for money.<BR>In 355 BCE, in response to demands that it stop cultivating sacred land, the<BR>federation of Phocis, which lay between Boeotia and Delphi, seized the<BR>sanctuary of<BR>Apollo at Delphi with the tacit support of Athens. The sanctuary was<BR>protected by a<BR>group of poleis known as the Amphictyonic Council, which included most of<BR>the Greek<BR>poleis but which was dominated by those in Boeotia and Thessaly. This meant<BR>that it<BR>fell to Thebes, as the leader of Boeotia, to recover the sanctuary. But with<BR>the<BR>sanctuary and its huge treasury in their hands, the Phocians had ample funds<BR>with<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>45<BR>which to hire mercenaries. Led by their generals Philomelus and Onomarchus,<BR>the<BR>Phocians fought the Thebans in a long war, which was very costly for the<BR>entire Greek<BR>world. Because it was fought over the religious sanctuary at Delphi, it is<BR>called the<BR>Sacred War. Many of the war's largest battles were fought in Thessaly, where<BR>the<BR>Phocians entered the sphere of Philip of Macedon. By the end of the war,<BR>both Phocis<BR>and Thebes were exhausted, and Philip of Macedon had become the dominant<BR>power<BR>over the Greek world.<BR>Sources<BR>Cargill, Jack. The Second Athenian League. Berkeley: University of<BR>California Press,<BR>1981.<BR>Cartledge, Paul. Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta. London: Duckworth,<BR>1987.<BR>Xenophon, A History of My Times (Hellenica). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>46<BR>7. Philip of Macedon and the Macedonians<BR>To most Greeks, Macedonia was not part of the Greek world. Most of the<BR>Macedonians did not speak Greek, and their social organization was closer to<BR>that of<BR>the Homeric world, with its hereditary kingships and clan chiefs, than it<BR>was to the<BR>contemporary world of the Greek polis. Macedonia was an area rich in timber<BR>and<BR>metals. As far as the Greeks were concerned, its people simply provided a<BR>buffer<BR>between themselves and the even less civilized people who lived beyond<BR>Macedonia. In<BR>fact Philip of Macedon first came to power in 359 BCE after his brother was<BR>killed in<BR>battle against the Illyrians, the inhabitants of modern-day Albania. The<BR>Macedonian<BR>kingship was held by the family of Philip, the Argeads, who traced their<BR>ancestry back<BR>to the great Greek legendary hero Heracles. On that basis, Philip could<BR>claim some<BR>Greekness.<BR>As a boy, Philip spent time in Thebes during the height of that city's<BR>power. (He<BR>was actually a hostage, in Thebes to assure his people's friendliness to the<BR>Thebans.)<BR>He was able to observe how Thebes functioned, and in particular some of the<BR>strategic<BR>and tactical ideas of the general Epaminondas, including his use of the deep<BR>hoplite<BR>phalanx. During the early part of his reign, Philip devoted himself to<BR>reorganizing his<BR>army, instilling greater discipline and modifying their fighting style and<BR>equipment.<BR>Besides the deeper phalanx, Philip introduced the use of the sarissa, a much<BR>longer<BR>spear (perhaps 14 feet long) than that used by the other Greek hoplites. It<BR>gave his men<BR>the advantage of striking their opponents first as their phalanxes clashed.<BR>The sarissa<BR>required both hands, however, so Philip's soldiers had to use a different<BR>sort of shield,<BR>one that rested on the upper left arm without needing the left hand for<BR>support. His<BR>soldiers had no breastplate. By creating this sort of blended soldier,<BR>between the<BR>hoplite and the more lightly armed peltast, Philip blurred the lines between<BR>citizen and<BR>non-citizen soldier. His soldiers could also be much less expensively armed.<BR>Since<BR>Macedonia was a much wider, more open area than most Greeks centers, there<BR>were<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>47<BR>also many more horses available for cavalry. Philip integrated all these<BR>different<BR>elements into a very new fighting force.<BR>For several years after his accession and reorganization of his armies,<BR>Philip was<BR>engaged in securing his northern and western borders. He also took advantage<BR>of<BR>Athens' difficulties in its Social War (357-355 BCE) to capture Amphipolis,<BR>which held a<BR>strategically important location on the river Strymon. Since the Macedonians<BR>practised polygamy, he made several marriage alliances, one of which, to<BR>Olympias, a<BR>niece of the king of Epirus, bore him a son, the future Alexander the Great.<BR>One of his<BR>most important ventures in the shorter term brought him the region known as<BR>the<BR>Krenides, which he reorganized under the name Philippi after himself and<BR>colonized<BR>with Macedonians. Philippi was rich in gold mining, and provided Philip with<BR>a vital<BR>supply of bribe money, which he was able to use very effectively.<BR>Philip entered the Sacred War between Thebes and Phocis in 353. After an<BR>initial<BR>setback, he won a great victory in 352 in the Battle of the Crocus Field,<BR>which gained<BR>him control of Thessaly, an area rich in agriculture and in cavalry. From<BR>there he<BR>besieged Olynthus in 349, the most important city on the northern peninsula<BR>known as<BR>the Chalcidice. Despite several speeches to the Athenian Assembly urging the<BR>Athenians to come to the aid of Olynthus, the Athenian orator Demosthenes<BR>was<BR>unsuccessful and Olynthus capitulated.7 Athens had been officially at war<BR>with Philip<BR>since his seizure of Amphipolis in 357, but except by patrolling the Aegean<BR>coast and<BR>checking Philip's advance into central Greece at Thermopylae in 352, the<BR>Athenians had<BR>been unwilling to take decisive action against Philip's increasing power.<BR>Demosthenes'<BR>political opponent Eubulus had made it illegal even to propose using the<BR>state's funds<BR>for any military expedition unless Athens itself was directly threatened.<BR>Demosthenes<BR>finally even had to urge support of peace negotiations with Philip; They<BR>were<BR>concluded in 346 as the Peace of Philocrates.<BR>Some Athenians, notably the intellectual Isocrates, saw Philip as the true<BR>leader of a<BR>united Greece and urged him to use persuasive tactics to unify Greece for a<BR>renewed<BR>campaign against Persia. But Demosthenes regarded Philip as a threat both to<BR>Athens<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>48<BR>and to the entire Greek political culture that had endured since the eighth<BR>century<BR>BCE. Philip was an autocrat, and he represented a dictatorial form of<BR>politics that was<BR>quite foreign to the Greek world. For instance, he arbitrarily moved great<BR>portions of<BR>his Macedonian population into new settlements in order to achieve his<BR>economic and<BR>strategic goals. Isocrates seems to have had little trouble accommodating<BR>himself to<BR>such a culture, but Demosthenes saw no compromise.<BR>In 342 BCE Philip began a campaign to the east of Macedonia, going beyond<BR>Amphipolis and Philippi to subdue all of Thrace. While besieging Byzantium,<BR>near the<BR>entrance to the Black Sea, Philip intercepted 230 grain ships, 180 of which<BR>were<BR>destined for Athens. Because of this direct attack on Athens' vital food<BR>supply,<BR>Demosthenes was finally able to rouse the Athenians to decisive action, and<BR>the<BR>Persians also joined in. They saw which direction Philip's campaigns were<BR>heading.<BR>But Philip was not greatly worried. He turned his attention first to his<BR>northern<BR>borders and attacked the Scythians, where he was injured.<BR>By 338 Philip had recovered and Demosthenes had managed to put together a<BR>coalition of almost all the Greek poleis, including Sparta, Corinth and<BR>Thebes, as well<BR>as Athens. But at the Battle of Chaeronea, near Thebes, the coalition army<BR>was no<BR>match for Philip's seasoned troops, and his cavalry, led by his son<BR>Alexander, was able<BR>to defeat Thebes' Sacred Band, the Greeks' best fighters, who were wiped<BR>out. Philip's<BR>highly maneuverable phalanxes then defeated the largely defenseless Athenian<BR>hoplites. Demosthenes himself was among them, but he escaped to attempt to<BR>fortify<BR>Athens' defenses.<BR>As it turned out, Philip did not need to attack Athens. The city<BR>surrendered. Philip<BR>might have been much more vindictive to the Athenians, but the city still<BR>had<BR>something he did not, a fleet. He did not want it to fall into the hands of<BR>the Persians.<BR>He imposed a new political order on the Greeks, however, the League of<BR>Corinth, a<BR>sort of federated state with Philip himself as its hegemon, or leader.<BR>Philip had plans<BR>to attack the Persian Empire, so he needed Greek help. He guaranteed the<BR>Greek<BR>poleis freedom from attack and freedom in the running of their own affairs<BR>and in<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>49<BR>commerce so long as they accepted his hegemony. Shortly before the Battle of<BR>Chaeronea the king of Persia had been assassinated, and the instability of<BR>the Persian<BR>empire made it a good time for Philip to attack the Persians. A year later,<BR>in 337, the<BR>Congress, or Synhedrion, of the League of Corinth declared war on Persia and<BR>Philip<BR>sent an advance force to prepare the way for an invasion. But internal<BR>politics got in<BR>the way. In 336 Philip was assassinated by a fellow Macedonian as a result<BR>of court<BR>intrigues and jealousies.<BR>The Campaign of Alexander the Great<BR>Although Alexander the Great is rightly famous for his campaign in Asia, the<BR>beginning of his reign was devoted to asserting his right to succeed Philip,<BR>eliminating<BR>real and potential rivals, and demonstrating once again Macedonia's<BR>dominance over<BR>Greece. As the only fit son of Philip, and one who had demonstrated his<BR>skills both on<BR>and off the battlefield, Alexander was really the only choice. But his<BR>father had been<BR>assassinated, and Alexander took steps to eliminate any potential threats to<BR>himself,<BR>which was a common device in the Macedonian succession. After marching south<BR>late<BR>in 336 BCE to reassert his hegemony over the Corinthian League, Alexander<BR>returned<BR>in 335 to crush a revolt by the city of Thebes. He is said to have destroyed<BR>every house<BR>but that of the famous poet Pindar as a lesson to the rest of the Greeks.<BR>Alexander was<BR>clearly planning to carry out his father's ambition to attack the Persian<BR>Empire, and he<BR>did not want to have to worry about any further uprisings in the Greek<BR>world.<BR>When Alexander set out to cross the Hellespont into Asia in the early spring<BR>of 334,<BR>it is estimated that he had about 50,000 troops, 43,000 foot soldiers and<BR>more than 6000<BR>cavalry. He also had about a thirty-day supply of food, which was carried by<BR>his fleet.<BR>He depended on being re-supplied from the lands that he would conquer. The<BR>Persian<BR>army took up a defensive position on the far side of the Granicus River,<BR>where steep<BR>riverbanks made it very dangerous for the advancing Macedonians. But<BR>Alexander's<BR>cavalry met this challenge and drove the Persians back from the riverbank,<BR>allowing<BR>the foot soldiers to cross the river safely. Alexander took a very direct<BR>part in the<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>50<BR>cavalry fighting. He was injured and had to be rescued by his men. But nine<BR>out of ten<BR>Persians fell in the battle, the remaining two thousand were taken prisoner,<BR>and the<BR>Persian commander committed suicide. After the battle, Alexander made a<BR>point of<BR>visiting the ancient site of Troy. He wished to associate himself as much as<BR>possible<BR>with the legendary hero Achilles, who had been the greatest of the warriors<BR>fighting<BR>against Troy.<BR>Since he was running short of funds, Alexander dismissed his fleet. From now<BR>on<BR>his strategy was based largely on taking away the ports that the Persian<BR>navy needed,<BR>and from which it recruited its ships and men. He established himself at<BR>Ephesus,<BR>about halfway down the coast, and began to lay siege to Halicarnassus to the<BR>south, in<BR>Caria. The siege was successful, except for a few Persians who held out in<BR>the citadel<BR>for several months, and here Alexander adopted a method that he would use<BR>throughout his conquered territory. He reinstated a woman named Ada, whose<BR>rule<BR>had recently been usurped, and had himself adopted as her son. As with the<BR>Greeks,<BR>Alexander was able in this way to employ the form of local government that<BR>was<BR>familiar to the local people. The Persians had also used this method.<BR>Over the winter 334-333 BCE, Alexander dispersed his army, sending the<BR>recently<BR>married men back to Macedonia, another part to Sardis, and taking most of<BR>the men<BR>south along the coast to Lycia, where it was warmer. In this way, no area<BR>was overly<BR>burdened by the presence of his army. The next spring, he assembled his army<BR>at<BR>Gordium, the ancient capital of Phrygia, which had reached its greatest fame<BR>under the<BR>famous king Midas in the eighth century BCE. In Gordium there was a famous<BR>knot of<BR>rope with an ancient prophecy: whoever could untie the rope would rule Asia.<BR>Tradition has it Alexander "cut the Gordian knot" with his sword, giving us<BR>the source<BR>of our expression for solving unsolvable problems.<BR>From Gordium Alexander marched south again to the Mediterranean coast in<BR>Cilicia. Here he was delayed for several months, and he almost died from a<BR>fever.<BR>This delay gave the Persian king Darius time to collect his forces. Like<BR>Alexander<BR>Darius had become king in 336, and he was still consolidating his rule. Many<BR>in Darius'<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>51<BR>army were Greek mercenaries. The two armies maneuvered and delayed, each<BR>wanting to fight on a field that would give it greater advantage. Since the<BR>Persians had<BR>a much larger army, they wanted to fight on an open plain. Alexander wanted<BR>to fight<BR>in a narrow pass. As it turned out, the Persian army circled behind<BR>Alexander and the<BR>two armies met at a relatively narrow point on the coast at Issus in late<BR>333 BCE. It<BR>was a great victory for Alexander. Although they are probably exaggerated,<BR>the<BR>ancient reports say the Persians lost 100,00 and the Macedonians only 500.<BR>Alexander's forces even managed to capture Darius' wife and mother, along<BR>with his<BR>royal camp.<BR>Darius offered peace, but when Alexander demanded that Darius surrender and<BR>recognize Alexander as lord of Asia, the war had to go on. Darius had to<BR>retreat to<BR>attempt to reorganize his armies, but Alexander did not pursue him. Instead,<BR>he<BR>continued his strategy of moving along the Mediterranean coast. Byblos and<BR>Sidon<BR>quickly surrendered, but the city of Tyre, which was situated on an island<BR>just off the<BR>coast, withheld a siege for seven moths. Alexander had his men build a land<BR>bridge out<BR>to the island. And when ships from Rhodes, Lycia, Byblos, Sidon, and<BR>especially from<BR>Cyprus, joined his siege, the city was finally captured. Much of the rest of<BR>332 BCE was<BR>then devoted to a siege of Gaza, further south along the coast, where<BR>Alexander was<BR>again wounded.<BR>Egypt was the home of the oldest civilization in the world, and it had long<BR>resented<BR>Persian domination. Alexander was welcomed there as Pharaoh, and after a<BR>visit to an<BR>oracle of Ammon (Zeus) at an oasis in the Libyan desert, he was recognized<BR>as a son of<BR>the god, and thus a god himself, at least in the eyes of the Egyptians. The<BR>Greeks and<BR>Macedonians in his army were not very happy about Alexander claiming to be a<BR>god,<BR>since that conflicted with their traditions, but Alexander seems to have<BR>accepted this<BR>status in the same way that he adopted the rule and customs of other peoples<BR>he had<BR>captured. On an island in the mouth of the Nile River, Alexander also found<BR>the first,<BR>and most successful, of many cities that he named for himself. Here he was<BR>able to<BR>settle many of his retired or disabled veterans, Macedonians, Greeks and<BR>others. After<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>52<BR>Alexander's death, Alexandria became the capital of the Ptolemaic Empire,<BR>which<BR>lasted until the death of Cleopatra in 31 BCE.<BR>Darius again offered peace terms. Alexander could have all the land he had<BR>conquered and a marriage alliance with the Persian king. But Alexander<BR>rejected these<BR>terms too. He not only wanted revenge for the Persian attacks on Greece, but<BR>he<BR>wanted to take over the entire Persian Empire. Since the direct path to<BR>Persia would<BR>have led through an impenetrable desert in modern-day Jordan and Iraq,<BR>Alexander<BR>retraced his steps up the Mediterranean coast and crossed over modern-day<BR>Syria to<BR>the upper Tigris River.<BR>This time when the armies met in late 331 BCE, Darius chose the battlefield.<BR>It was<BR>at Gaugamela, near the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh. The area was<BR>wide and<BR>level and Darius had even had the land smoothed out to allow for the use of<BR>special<BR>scythed chariots. They were ineffective, however, since Alexander's light<BR>foot soldiers<BR>were able to attack their horses with javelins, and the hoplite phalanxes<BR>could allow<BR>them to pass harmlessly by, kept at a distance by their long sarissas.<BR>Alexander's<BR>cavalry was able to drive a hole through the middle of the Persian line and<BR>forced the<BR>Persian king to flee. This time Alexander chased him, leaving the<BR>battlefield. He did<BR>not catch Darius, but his absence from the battle was of no consequence. His<BR>army<BR>won another great victory. With the Persian king in flight, the great cities<BR>of the<BR>Persian Empire with all their huge wealth, Babylon, Susa, Pasargadae,<BR>Persepolis, and<BR>Ecbatana, were now Alexander's for the taking. Alexander took some time<BR>seizing<BR>these capitals. He had to be careful to keep track of the enormous wealth<BR>that now<BR>came into his possession. At Persepolis in 330, he finally let his troops<BR>help themselves:<BR>they looted the city, killed the men and enslaved the women. As a final act,<BR>Alexander<BR>burned the royal palace, which had been built during the reign of Darius I<BR>in the late<BR>sixth century BCE. This was certainly a symbolic act of retribution against<BR>the<BR>Persians.<BR>But now great questions arose. Would Alexander's army be content and return<BR>to<BR>Macedonia, or would Alexander really take the place of the Persian king and<BR>continue<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>53<BR>his campaign to the east, to the borders of the Persian Empire, and perhaps<BR>beyond?<BR>An Old Guard among his Macedonians wanted to return home. They saw contact<BR>with<BR>Persian culture as a corrupting influence. They objected to Alexander<BR>behaving like a<BR>Persian king. In 330 this led to a series of executions within Alexander's<BR>own ranks.<BR>The Persian king was taken prisoner and subsequently executed by one of his<BR>eastern governors, Bessus. Alexander now pursued this pretender to the<BR>Persian<BR>throne. When he caught him, he had him brutally executed. That was in 329<BR>BCE. In<BR>the very eastern part of what had been the Persian Empire (modern-day<BR>Afghanistan<BR>and Pakistan), stubborn resistance by local peoples kept Alexander<BR>campaigning there<BR>for the next three years. Many of his soldiers were not very happy about<BR>having to<BR>fight so far from home, and Alexander's method of dealing with local<BR>resistance, the<BR>founding of several cities of his veterans in these areas, caused even more<BR>resentment.<BR>Alexander fought his last great pitched battle in 326 BCE on the Hydaspes<BR>River<BR>against an Indian king, Poros. Here his forces even met elephants, but the<BR>result was<BR>the same: Alexander's forces won a great victory. King Poros had taken an<BR>active part<BR>in the fighting, but when he surrendered Alexander welcomed him as a new<BR>ally. The<BR>two fought together against Poros' other enemies. But this was finally too<BR>much for<BR>Alexander's men. They had been away from Macedonia for eight years. The<BR>clothing<BR>they had brought from home was worn out, and their equipment was rusting in<BR>the<BR>monsoon rains. Alexander agreed to turn back.<BR>The return trip was not easy, however. As his troops traveled south along<BR>the<BR>Hydaspes River they faced a hostile population, and Alexander was wounded by<BR>an<BR>arrow that pierced his lung. After recovering he chose a very difficult<BR>route back,<BR>through the Gedrosian desert on the coast of the Arabian Sea. Many of his<BR>people<BR>died. Back in Persia Alexander found that those he had left in charge were<BR>mistreating the local populations, desecrating temples and tombs, and<BR>conspiring in<BR>treasonous activities. He reasserted control and executed many of the worst<BR>offenders.<BR>His own idea was to achieve a blending of cultures. He saw himself not only<BR>as<BR>king of Macedonia and leader ( hegemon) of Greece, but also as a successor<BR>to the kings<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>54<BR>of Persia. At Pasargadae, he therefore took care to restore the plundered<BR>tomb of<BR>Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. At Susa, he held a mass<BR>wedding<BR>between his own leading men and women of the Persian aristocracy, which was<BR>possible because of Macedonians allowed polygamy. He himself married two<BR>Persian<BR>women, daughters of Darius and his predecessor, so that his children might<BR>have<BR>Persian royal pedigrees. Altogether there were some 10,000 mixed marriages,<BR>which<BR>Alexander had performed according to Persian customs. He also enlisted<BR>30,000<BR>Persian youths into his army, dressing them in Macedonian uniforms and<BR>giving them<BR>Macedonian weapons.<BR>The last two years of Alexander's life were spent in Mesopotamia. There were<BR>further rebellions among his Macedonian followers, feelings of resentment at<BR>being<BR>pushed aside by Persians, whom they had conquered. Alexander was able to<BR>deal with<BR>these through threats and bluffs. Slowly the accommodation of the two<BR>cultures to<BR>each other began to take hold. Many ambitious plans were attributed to him,<BR>against<BR>Arabia, the western Mediterranean, and the Caspian Sea, but in 323 BCE<BR>Alexander fell<BR>ill once more with a fever and he died.<BR>The legacy of Alexander has been enormous. The period after 323 BCE is<BR>known as the Hellenistic Period because it was a time in which the language,<BR>culture<BR>and institutions of Greece, Hellas, were spread throughout the Middle East.<BR>It became<BR>"hellenized". But the time for the polis, the independent city-state that<BR>was the central<BR>political institution of the Greek world, was passed. Alexander's top<BR>generals carved<BR>up the territory he had conquered and continued to govern until the Romans<BR>and<BR>Parthians eventually pushed their successors aside centuries later.<BR>Sources<BR>Borza, Eugene N. In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon.<BR>Princeton;<BR>Princeton University Press, 1990.<BR>Plutarch, The Age of Alexander. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.<BR>Sealey, Raphael. Demosthenes and His Time: A Study in Defeat. New York:<BR>Oxford<BR>University Press, 1993.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>55<BR>Further Reading<BR>Aristotle. The Athenian Constitution. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.<BR>Davies, J. K. Democracy and Classical Greece. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard<BR>University<BR>Press, 1993.<BR>Hansen, Mogens H. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes:<BR>Structures,<BR>Principles, and Ideology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.<BR>Hanson, Victor D. The Wars of the Ancient Greeks and Their Invention of<BR>Western<BR>Military Culture. London: Cassell, 1999.<BR>McDowell, Douglas M. The Law in Classical Athens. London: Thames and Hudson,<BR>1978.<BR>Sage, M. Warfare in Ancient Greece: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 1996.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>56<BR>Glossary<BR>agogê - the term used for the Spartan training or upbrinning that emphasized<BR>strict military<BR>discipline.<BR>agora - the gathering place or market, the commercial and political center<BR>of the polis.<BR>archon - lit. "ruler", in Athens a magistrate in one of the senior offices.<BR>Areopagus - the "Hill of Ares", where Athens aristocratic council of former<BR>archons met.<BR>aristocracy - rule by "the best", whether morally, economically or<BR>militarily.<BR>basileus - the king, whether the King of Persia or a magistrate in Athens<BR>responsible for religious<BR>matters.<BR>cleruchs - Athenian "stakeholders" who received a parcel of land near a<BR>potentially hostile ally as<BR>part of a colony<BR>decarchy - a council of ten local rulers who formed an oligarchic government<BR>loyal to Sparta.<BR>dikastai - judges in the Athenian courts, who served as both judge and jury.<BR>dokimasia - the scrutiny performed by the Athenian council of new citizens<BR>and magistrates.<BR>ephors - the "overseers" who served with the Spartan kings.<BR>Eupatrids - "sons of good fathers", the term used to describe early Athenian<BR>aristocrats.<BR>euthyna - the audit performed on all magistrates in Athens as they gave up<BR>their duties.<BR>Gerousia - the council of twenty-eight elders, plus the two kings, at<BR>Sparta.<BR>harmosts - "arrangers", the term for the Spartan governors of subject<BR>cities.<BR>hectemoroi - "sixth-parters", the indentured poor in Athens before the<BR>reforms of Solon.<BR>hegemon - a leader or ruler.<BR>helots - the local slave population in and around Sparta.<BR>hetairia - an aristocratic club.<BR>homoioi - "equals".<BR>hoplite - a soldier armed with the full set of weapons (hopla).<BR>isonomia - "equality in the law", an early term used to describe Athenian<BR>democracy.<BR>Linear B - a syllabic form of writing used by Mycenaean Greeks.<BR>metic - lit. "one dwelling with", a resident foreigner.<BR>oikos - the Greek household, which included slaves.<BR>oligarchy - rule by a few.<BR>ostracism - the Athenian process of banishing a citizen for ten years in<BR>order to preserve political<BR>stability.<BR>Panhellenism - the idea of a united Greece.<BR>peltast - a lightly armed soldier.<BR>perioikoi - "those dwelling around", ethnically akin to the Spartans but not<BR>enjoying Spartan<BR>citizenship.<BR>phalanx - a closely packed formation of hoplite soldiers.<BR>polis - the self-governing city-state.<BR>politeia - the constitution of a polis.<BR>probouloi - councilors given extraordinary powers.<BR>prytanis - a sort of presidency, elected by lot to head the Athenian state.<BR>satrap - a Persian governor.<BR>stasis - political strife.<BR>sykophantia - troublesome litigation, brought for the sake of politics or<BR>intimidation rather than to<BR>right wrongs.<BR>synoikism - the unification of a large area into a single polis.<BR>sysitia - the common dining centers of Sparta.<BR>thesmothetai - senior magistrates in Athens with judicial responsibilities.<BR>trireme - a Greek military ship powered by three banks of rowers on each<BR>side.<BR>tyranny - a form of government formed outside the existing constitution.<BR>wanax - an early Greek term for a lord.<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>57<BR>End Notes<BR>1 A Homicide Trial in the Homeric World<BR>"The people were gathered together in the assembly place, and there a<BR>dispute<BR>had arisen, and two men were disputing about the blood-price<BR>for a man who had died. The one made a claim to pay back in full,<BR>declaring publicly to the village, but the other was refusing to accept<BR>anything.<BR>Both were heading for an arbitrator to get a limit;<BR>and the people were speaking up on either side to help both men.<BR>But the heralds restrained the people, as meanwhile elders<BR>were seated on benches of polished stone in a sacred circle<BR>and took hold in their hands of scepters from the heralds who lift their<BR>voices.<BR>And with these they sprang up, taking turns, and rendered their judgments<BR>and in their midst lay on the ground two weights of gold,<BR>to be given to the one among them who pronounced a judgment most correctly."<BR>Iliad 18.497-508<BR>2 The Spartan Constitution<BR>"Having established a sanctuary of Syllanian Zeus and Athena, having "tribed<BR>tribes and obed<BR>obes," and having established a Gerousia (Senate) of thirty members,<BR>including the (two) chief<BR>leaders (kings), from season to season, they are to hold Assemblies between<BR>Babyca and<BR>Knakion in order to introduce and reject measures. And the damos is to have<BR>lordship and<BR>power." Later a clause was added: "if the damos takes a crooked decision,<BR>the elders and chief<BR>leaders are to be removers."<BR>3 The Law Code of Draco<BR>Even if a man kills another unintentionally, he is exiled. The kings are to<BR>adjudge<BR>responsible for homicide either the actual killer or the planner; and the<BR>Ephetai are to judge<BR>the case. If there is a father or brother or sons, pardon is to be agreed to<BR>by all, or the one<BR>who opposes is to prevail; but if none of these survives, by those up to the<BR>degree of first<BR>cousin, if all are willing to agree to a pardon; the one who opposes is to<BR>prevail; but if none<BR>of these survives, and if he killed unintentionally and the fifty-one, the<BR>Ephetai, decide he<BR>killed unintentionally, let ten phratry members admit him to the country and<BR>let the fiftyone<BR>choose these by rank. And let also those who killed previously be bound by<BR>this law. A<BR>proclamation is to be made against the killer in the agora by the victim's<BR>relatives as far as<BR>the degree of cousin's son and cousin. The prosecution is to be shared by<BR>the cousins and<BR>the cousins' sons and by sons-in-law, fathers-in-law, and phratry members.<BR>4 Themistocles: A Leader with Foresight<BR>The most controversial figure in Greece's struggles against the Persians was<BR>Themistocles (c. 524-459 BCE). One historian, Herodotus, accused him of<BR>corruption;<BR>another, Thucydides, admired him for his far-sightedness and thought him one<BR>of the<BR>greatest men of his generation.<BR>He began the development of Athens' harbor at Piraeus and in 482 he took a<BR>decisive<BR>hand in directing a large surplus from Athens' silver mines to the<BR>enlargement of Athens'<BR>fleet of triremes to 200 ships. In 480 he interpreted a saying of the<BR>oracles of Apollo that<BR>A Survey of Greek History © 2003 Prof. David C. Mirhady, Department of<BR>Humanities, Simon Fraser University<BR><A href="http://www.sfu.ca/classics">http://www.sfu.ca/classics</A><BR>58<BR>predicted Greek victory over the Persians so long as the Greeks put faith in<BR>Athens'<BR>"wooden wall", its fleet of ships. He then led Athens' forces at Artemisium<BR>and at Salamis<BR>and managed to lure the Persians into fighting in the narrow straits of<BR>Salamis, where their<BR>superior numbers only caused confusion. He won tremendous honors around the<BR>Greek<BR>world for these accomplishments.<BR>Despite this glory, within ten years Themistocles lost favor and was<BR>ostracized from<BR>Athens. When evidence appeared that he might have been conspiring with the<BR>Persians, he<BR>was condemned to death by the Athenians and chased out of his refuge in<BR>Argos. He fled<BR>first to the west and then to the east. In a strange twist of irony, he<BR>finally found refuge<BR>again with the king of Persia, his former enemy, who made him a provincial<BR>governor.<BR>Themistocles is one of a number Athenian leaders whose great accomplishments<BR>only seem<BR>to foreshadow their downfall at the hands of their own people.<BR>5 Uncertainty After Mantinea<BR>"When these things had taken place, the opposite of what all men believed<BR>would happen<BR>was brought to pass. For since well-nigh all the people of Greece had come<BR>together and<BR>formed themselves in opposing lines, there was no one who did not suppose<BR>that if a battle<BR>were fought, those who proved victorious would be the rulers and those who<BR>were defeated<BR>would be their subjects; but the deity so ordered it that both parties set<BR>up a trophy as<BR>though victorious and neither tried to hinder those who set them up, that<BR>both gave back<BR>the dead under a truce as though victorious, and both received back their<BR>dead under a<BR>truce as though defeated, and that while each party claimed to be<BR>victorious, [27] neither<BR>was found to be any better off, as regards either additional territory, or<BR>city, or sway, than<BR>before the battle took place; but there was even more confusion and disorder<BR>in Greece<BR>after the battle than before." Xenophon, Hellenica, 7.5.26-7.<BR>6<BR>7 Demosthenes: A Champion of the Democratic Polis<BR>Demosthenes (384-322 BCE) was the most important politician of<BR>fourth-century<BR>BCE Athens and perhaps the greatest orator of the ancient world. Since his<BR>father died<BR>when he was only seven, his first task once achieving legal age was to sue<BR>his guardians in<BR>order to recover his estate. The skills that he demonstrated in preparing<BR>and arguing his<BR>case before Athens' popular courts led to his being in high demand as a<BR>logographer, or<BR>speechwriter, for many others who saw themselves entangled in legal<BR>disputes.<BR>Demosthenes also began to use his skills assisting in prosecutions against<BR>pubic<BR>figures and then in taking on prosecutions himself. By the time he entered<BR>politics,<BR>however, Athens had been on the losing side of the Social War (357-355 BCE),<BR>which entailed<BR>a loss both of power and resources. When threats appeared first from Persia<BR>and later<BR>from Thebes and Macedon, Demosthenes had to advocate restraint and the need<BR>for the<BR>Athenians themselves to commit more resources and decisiveness of their own<BR>to their<BR>military affairs. Nevertheless, his voice became the strongest opponent of<BR>the growth of<BR>Philip of Macedon's power as he delivered a series of speeches, the<BR>Philippics, which have<BR>become classics of political condemnation.<BR>As it turned out, Demosthenes was on the losing side, Philip of Macedon and<BR>his son<BR>Alexander the Great were victorious, but Demosthenes' voice was an important<BR>one for<BR>stating the ideals of Athens and of the Greek city-states.<BR>
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Molti dei e dee della mitologia greca avevano funzione e attributi simili nella mitologia romana. Ecco l'elenco delle divinità più note:

GRECHE - ROMANE

Afrodite - Venere: Dea dell’amore

Apollo - Apollo: Dio della luce, della medicina e della poesia

Ares - Marte: Dio della guerra

Artemide - Diana: Dea della caccia e del parto

Asclepio - Esculapio: Dio della medicina

Atena - Minerva: Dea delle arti, della guerra e della saggezza

Crono - Saturno: Per i greci, padre di Zeus. Nella mitologia romana, anche dio dell’agricoltura

Demetra - Cerere: Dea delle messi

Dioniso - Bacco: Dio del vino, della fertilità e della sfrenatezza

Efesto - Vulcano: Fabbro degli dei e dio del fuoco e della lavorazione dei metalli

Era - Giunone: Protettrice del matrimonio- (greci) sorella e moglie di Zeus, (romani) moglie di Giove

Ermete - Mercurio: Dio della scienza; protettore dei viaggiatori, dei ladri e dei vagabondi

Eros - Cupido: Dio dell’amore

Estia - Vesta: Dea del focolare domestico

Gea - Tellus: Simbolo della terra e madre e moglie (Terra) di Urano

Hipnos - Sonno: Dio del sonno

Plutone/Ade - Dite: Dio degli inferi

Posidone - Nettuno: Dio del mare. Nella mitologia anche dio dei terremoti e dei cavalli

Rea - Opi: Sposa e sorella di Crono

Urano - Urano: Figlio e sposo di Gea e padre dei Titani

Zeus - Giove: Sovrano degli dei

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