Archaic Age of Greece and Near East PDF

During the Archaic Age the peoples of Greece and the Near East exchanged goods and ideas, but the Aegean world was well outside the reach of Near Eastern power rivalries and empire building. This all changed, however, when the Persians conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in 547 b.c. Suddenly the Ae...

During the Archaic Age the peoples of Greece and the Near East exchanged goods and ideas, but the Aegean world was well outside the reach of Near Eastern power rivalries and empire building. This all changed, however, when the Persians conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in 547 b.c. Suddenly the Aegean world became part of Near Eastern politics; the Aegean was no longer an isolated lake. The first phase of the integration of Greece into Near Eastern political and military affairs began as the Persians attempted to establish their western frontier. In 547 b.c. it was not clear how far Persia could or would go. Even for an expanding, conquering people there were limits to their capacities. Strategically their empire suffered geographic weakness in two regions. The first was in the northeast, between the Caspian Sea and the Hindu Kush mountains, where Persia was open to invasion from the nomads of the Eurasian steppe. The second was in the northwest, where Greeks and Macedonians, and beyond them the nomadic Scythians around the Black Sea, posed potential threats. The Ionian Revolt Whether the Persians needed to extend their frontier farther west and north was left undecided after their initial conquest of Asia Minor. One reason for this was that they were busy elsewhere. In 539 b.c. they expanded into Mesopotamia, taking over the Babylonian Empire, and in 525 b.c. they added Egypt and Libya to their dominions. Then in 499 b.c. some of the Ionian Greek states of Asia Minor led by Miletus rebelled. They received a little assistance from Athens and Eretria on the mainland, but Sparta and the other states of Greece prudently refused to become involved. For three years the war carried on indecisively, with the Persians slowly gaining the upper hand. Eventually they succeeded in bringing Miletus under siege, and a great sea battle was fought off the nearby island of Lade in 494 b.c. Almost as soon as the two fleets became engaged, the Samian and Lesbian contingents deserted the Greeks, and the remaining rebels were overwhelmed. Miletus, until then the cultural center of the Greek world, was taken and razed by the Persians, and its population deported or sold into slavery. Chapter 5 The Wars of the Greeks Key Topics Events The intervention of Persia in Greek affairs and the shaky Greek response The consequences of a permanent Persian presence in the Aegea Culture and Society The militarization of Greek society and the military revolution 90 The Ancient World Marathon: The Campaign of 490 b.c. Settling Accounts The Persians still had accounts to settle with Athens and Eretria, the two mainland cities that had been involved in the revolt. Under the command of Datis and Artaphernes, the Persian fleet sailed directly from Samos to Euboea, where Eretria, after a brief siege, was betrayed from within and sacked. Embarking from Eretria, the Persians next crossed the narrow Euboean channel and landed on the plain of Marathon, thereby provoking an anxious and crucial debate in the Athenian Assembly as to whether to go out to meet the Persians or to wait until they arrived before the city itself. When the decision was made to advance to Marathon, a runner was dispatched to Sparta, and the 9,000 hoplites of Athens marched out to meet their enemies. At Marathon they were joined by 1,000 Plataeans, and together the citizens of the two cities confronted the Persians. Several days passed as the Athenian generals debated whether to attack immediately or to wait for the Spartans to arrive. The most powerful personality among the generals and the most experienced in the ways of the Persians was Miltiades, who had been involved with the Persian king Darius in an expedition across the Danube. After much debate he succeeded in persuading his fellow generals not to wait any longer and to follow his proposal for handling the superior numbers of the enemy. When the two forces engaged, the Persians extended their line of battle to envelop the smaller Greek army. Anticipating this action, Miltiades had weakened the center and strengthened the wings so that when the two lines met, the Athenian center gradually gave way, but the wings routed their opponents and closed in from behind on the Persian center. Outmaneuvered, the Persians fled to their ships---losing, according to Herodotus, 6,400 men to the Athenian and Plataean losses of 192. Delayed by the celebration of a religious festival, the Spartans arrived too late for the battle but examined the battlefield and made note of the light weapons of the Persian infantry and the tactics of Miltiades. The Consequences of Marathon The resounding defeat of the Persians in a set battle after the disasters of the Ionian revolt was a surprise to both Persians and Greeks but most of all to the Athenians, who saw their victory as a vindication of their decision to adopt the democratic constitution of Cleisthenes less than 20 years earlier in 508 b.c. They could reflect that it was the Assembly, not the Areopagus Council (ruling council of Athens), that had made the crucial decisions of the war, first to aid the Ionians and then to fight at Marathon. Nevertheless, the significance of the battle should not be exaggerated, either as a vindication of the worth of the Athenian democracy or as a victory over the Persians. The latter had no intention of destroying Athens as they had Eretria but merely wished it to take back the exiled tyrant Hippias and acknowledge the general overlordship of Persia. The Evolution of Athenian Democracy In the decade following the Persian invasion, the democracy of Athens advanced to new levels of citizen participation. In the past the nine archons (magistrates) had been elected from the first two census classes, which guaranteed that the well-to-do would dominate the Areopagus and hold all the important magistracies. In 487 b.c., however, a modification was introduced whereby archons were no longer directly elected but instead were selected by lot from a group of candidates who were directly nominated by the demes (local divisions of Attica). Once the connection between the voting public and the magistracies was broken, the archonship lost its power, and the generalship, which remained directly elective, took its place in terms of political importance. These years were also a time of intense political rivalry and fundamental decision making. The two most prominent figures in Athens were Aristides and Themistocles, who struggled with each other over issues of naval policy and political power. When a rich vein of silver was struck at the mines of Laurium, Themistocles persuaded the people to devote the income to ship construction, and by 480 b.c. Athens had a fleet of some two hundred triremes (oared war ships). Chronology The Greek Wars with Pers Persian conquest of Asia Minor 546 b.c Ionian Rebellion 499--494 b.c Battle of Lade and destruction of Miletus 494 b.c. Battle of Marathon 490 b.c. Invasion of Xerxes 480 b.c Battles of Thermopylae, Artemisium, and Salamis 480 b.c Battles of Plataea and Mycale 479 b.c Delian League founded 478--477 b.c. 91 0 0 50 60 120 Kilometers 100 Miles 408 208 258 Mt. Olympus Corinth Byzantium Troy Sardis Miletus Pylos Sparta Olympia Argos Athens Amphipolis Megalopolis Mantinea Troezen Epidaurus Megara Plataea Thermopylae Naupactus Ambracia Pherae Priene Ephesus Cnidus Chalcidice LYDIA CARIA LACONIA THESSALY BOEOTIA MESSENIA ELIS ACHAEA ATTICA PHOCIS AETOLIA ACARNANIA MACEDONIA Hellespont RHODES DELOS LESBOS ARGINUSAE THERA Bosporus Propontis SAMOS PAROS MELOS CHIOS CORCYRA EUBOEA Gulf of Corinth BLACK SEA SCYROS NAXOS ANDROS COS Cynossema Mycale Mt. Artemisium Methana CYTHERA ZACYNTHOS CEPHALLENIA Sigeum IMBROS Sestos Aegospotami Cyzicus Perinthus THASOS Eion Philippi Olynthus Scione Potidaea Pella Methone Mt. Pangaeus THERMAIC GULF AEGEAN PHRYGIA Marathon Eretria LEMNOS SEA IONIAN SEA 0 0 25 Miles 30 Kilometers BOEOTIA ATTICA Corinth Athens Coronea Leuctra Thebes Plataea Tanagra Delium Oenophyta Decelea Marathon Acharnae Eleusis Megara Piraeus Sunium Minoa Eretria Mt. Pentelicus Mt. Laurium AEGINA SALAMIS Saronic Gulf Corinthian Gulf EUBOEA Classical Greece Athens and its allies Sparta and its allies Neutral 92 The Ancient World Ostracism, the process by which an individual could be exiled for ten years by a majority vote, was used for the first time in 488 b.c.; its purpose was to guard against the overly ambitious or to make a clear-cut decision on conflicting policies advocated by different individuals. By exiling one person the people could endorse the policy of his opponent and ensure themselves clearly defined goals; they also removed an obstacle to attaining those goals. Initially, persons connected with the Peisistratids were ostracized, but in 482 b.c. Aristides, Themistocles' rival, was exiled. By this act the people aligned themselves solidly behind Themistocles' policy of naval expansion and in effect chose him as their commander-in-chief for the anticipated second Persian invasion. The Second Persian Invasion Persian preparations for a major invasion of Greece had been underway since the repulse at Marathon, but a revolt in Egypt in 487 b.c. and the death in the following year of Darius, the Persian king, gave the Greeks a long respite. It was not until 480 b.c. that the Persians, under the leadership of Darius's weak son Xerxes, were ready to march. Competing Strategies On this occasion, Persian aims called for the permanent addition of Greece to the empire. The Greeks, for their part, had to be prepared to cope with an assault by land and sea, though their most serious problems were to be found within their own ranks. Argos, the traditional enemy of Sparta, stood aloof, and north of the isthmus of Corinth only Athens could be depended on. Thessaly agreed to participate, but on the condition that the allies protect it from invasion. When this proved impracticable, the Thessalians promptly went over to the enemy. Thermopylae The line of defense finally chosen was based on Thermopylae on the landward side and Artemisium at the northern tip of Euboea on the seaward. The object of this strategy was to compel Xerxes to choose between forcing his way through the fifty-foot-wide pass of Thermopylae, where Persian cavalry and superiority in numbers would be useless, or marching inland and reaching central Greece by a land route and thus losing contact with the fleet. The Greek strategy meant that it was essential for them to hold both land and sea positions because the loss of either one would lead to a flanking movement. Once the decision was made, the Greeks under the Spartans Leonidas and Eurybiades took up their positions. Leonidas had about 7,000 men with him and Eurybiades 280 ships, of which 147 were Athenian, commanded by Themistocles. Opposing them was an army of enormous proportions and a naval force of over 1,200 Phoenician, Greek, Egyptian, and Carian warships. Fortunately for the Greeks, a storm destroyed 400 of these ships before the first engagement, and an additional 200 were sunk by another storm after an attempt to round Euboea and trap the Greeks at Artemisium. Both the land and sea engagements at Thermopylae and Artemisium lasted a number of days. The Persian land forces could make no headway against the strongly positioned Greeks, and at sea the Greeks held their own despite heavy losses. It was finally the land position that was turned, when on the third day the Persians, with the help of a Greek traitor, succeeded in getting behind Leonidas's army, forcing him to dismiss the bulk of his forces. Only 400 Thebans, 700 Thespians, and three hundred Spartans remained with him to make a final stand. As the battle progressed, the Thebans surrendered, leaving the Spartans and Thespians to fight alone to the end. With the land position Greek Disun Using the example of Phocis and Thessaly, the Greek historian Herodotus candidly gives one of the main reasons why the Greek states chose one side or the other during the second Persian invasion: The Phocians were the only people in this area who had not joined the Persian side, and in my opinion the motive which swayed them was simply and solely their hatred of the Thessalians: for had the Thessalians declared in favor of the Greeks, I believe the men of Phocis would have lined up with the Persians. ---Herodotus, The Histories, 8.30 In the next century Plato, with some exaggeration, called Greek resistance to Persia a "disgrace": If one were to tell the history of that war many nasty charges would have to be brought against Greece. In fact it would be right to say that Greece made no defense of itself at all were it not for the joint actions of Athenians and Spartans in resisting the threatened enslavement. ---Plato, Laws, 3.692E The Wars of the Greeks 93 lost, the fleet had no choice but to retreat, and all of central Greece was abandoned. Despite the heroism displayed at Thermopylae and Artemisium, the Greeks were now in the familiar position of seeing the overwhelming resources of the Persians prevail over their own. There was no hope of defending Attica, so the Athenians evacuated their population to Salamis, Aegina, and Troezen, although a small contingent remained on the Acropolis, hoping to hold it against the Persians. Salamis The decision the Greeks now faced was whether to fight at Salamis or withdraw to the isthmus of Corinth. Themistocles urged the first course and persuaded the Spartan commander to hold firm. For three weeks, hoping that the Persians would attack them in the narrow waters of the bay, the outnumbered Greeks waited, with discontent rising steadily in their ranks. Finally, recognizing that withdrawal was inevitable, Themistocles sent a trusted slave to the Persians with the message that the Greek fleet was preparing to depart and that he was ready to support Xerxes henceforth. The Persians, who were planning to attack anyway, were delighted and believed the news. They immediately sent a blocking force around Salamis to prevent escape and placed troops on an island at the mouth of the bay. There was now no alternative to fighting, but the Greeks, thanks to Themistocles, were able to dictate the terms under which the battle would be fought. At dawn the Persian ships began to move into the narrows, with the Ionian Greeks on the left and the Phoenicians on the right. As they advanced, the huge armada began to crowd into the confined waters of the bay, and the Greeks were able to maneuver against them and ram at will. By nightfall the bulk of the Persian fleet had been put out of action and the hopes of a Persian victory in 480 b.c. were over. It was now late September, and Xerxes, having lost control of the sea and the means of supplying his huge land forces, withdrew to Asia, leaving a substantial contingent behind in Thessaly to continue the war. Between September and August of the next year (479 b.c.), the Greeks managed to preserve their fragile unity. After attempting to seduce Athens from the League, the Persian commander, Mardonius, ordered the razing of the city and then withdrew to Boeotia, where he awaited the arrival of the allies on ground of his own choosing. The main Greek effort was now to be on land. To oppose an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Persians, the Greeks by a supreme effort had assembled about a third of that number, mostly hoplites and light infantry. The commanderin-chief was the Spartan regent Pausanias, and Aristides, Salamis Athenians Allies Spartans Phoenicians Salamis SARONIC GULF GULF OF CORNITH Persian Fleet in Three Lines Ionian Greeks Athens 7 miles Piraeus Psyttaleia Egyptian contingent sails to block west channel to Salamis. The Battle of Salamis, 480 B.C. SCALE OF MILES 0123 N Battle of Salamis 94 The Ancient World who had fought with Themistocles at Marathon, commanded the Athenian contingent. Plataea The problem faced by Pausanias was the same as that of the Athenians at Marathon: how to engage the enemy infantry without first being cut to pieces by the superior Persian cavalry. For several weeks the Greeks waited in the foothills, hoping the Persians would be tempted to attack, all the while suffering incessant cavalry raids and difficulties with supplies. When their main source of water was blocked by a Persian attack, Pausanias decided to withdraw farther up in the hills toward the city of Plataea. The movement was to be executed at night, but it proved to be impossible to coordinate the actions of 100,000 men. When daybreak arrived, the Athenians and Spartans were lagging behind. To all appearances the Greek army was breaking up, and Mardonius ordered an immediate assault. The Persians advanced under a cloud of arrows, but the Spartans, having learned from the Athenian experience at Marathon, waited until the appropriate moment and then charged, with devastating effect. When Mardonius fell, the Persians broke and fled to their camp in the plain. While this battle was going on, the Athenians fought a separate engagement with the Boeotians and drove them from the field. Athenians and Spartans then assaulted the camp and annihilated their disorganized enemies. The battle of Plataea was as much a Spartan victory as Salamis had been an Athenian one, and it was the discipline and valor of the Spartan hoplite phalanx in an extremely difficult situation that turned what looked like certain disaster into victory. The Aftermath: Mycale Probably not more than a few days later another major battle, fought at Mycale in Asia Minor, resulted in the destruction of Persian naval power in Ionia. Although Salamis and Plataea had saved mainland Greece from conquest, Ionia, with its exposed hinterland---even after Mycale---was another problem. The best the Spartans could recommend to the Ionians was that they should abandon Asia altogether, but the Athenians, who had long-standing connections with this part of the world, raised objections. When the Spartans sailed home, the Athenian flotilla under Xanthippus remained behind and with the support of the Asiatic Greeks went on to clear the Persians out of Sestos, a strategic base controlling the Hellespont, Athens's lifeline to the grain-producing Black Sea region. Thus, as early as 479 b.c. the divergent aims, military resources, and social structures of Sparta and Athens were revealed and the fragile unity of the Greeks began to disintegrate. The Military Situation after the Persian Wars From the Persian perspective the expedition of Xerxes had been an embarrassment, but the integrity of the empire was not threatened. The war had been lost as a result of errors, not lack of resources. If anything of importance was settled by the war, it was that henceforth the Persian border with Greece was Asia Minor and preferably included the seacoast. The Greek mainland was not worth conquering. The Greek Dilemma From the Greek point of view, the consequences of victory in the Persian wars were more complicated. The old inter-Greek arrangements of the Archaic Age were forever altered. In the past the freewheeling independence of the various poleis did not threaten the freedom of Greece as a whole. But now, with the Persian threat at hand, this old system no longer worked. In fact, Greek fecklessness had almost lost the war. Some Greeks, such as the historian Thucydides, recognized that the only thing that had saved Hellas was the fact that the Persians made more mistakes than the Greeks did. And there was no assurance that the next time the Greeks would be so lucky. Persia was not going to go away. It remained an active threat, always meddling, always probing. The Greek states therefore needed to decide how to cope with this situation. Were they sufficiently flexible to adjust? Was the freedom of Greece as a whole compatible with the freedom of each individual city? In the end it was the tragedy of the Greeks of the polis age that they were unable to preserve both sets of freedoms. Sparta's Quandary The prestige Sparta enjoyed after the battle of Plataea suggested that it should remain the head of the Greek alliance, but neither the logic of the military situation nor Sparta's own constitution would permit this. A further problem was that, after the battles of Marathon and Salamis, Sparta now had a potential rival in Greece: Athens. Sparta was a hothouse society, so tightly organized that its citizens could not survive long as Spartans outside its immediate environment. This fact was brought home immediately after the war when Leotychidas, the commander of Mycale, was accused of corruption and fled into exile. More important than the inability of individual Spartans to survive outside Sparta was the inability of the Spartan army to operate for long periods away from home. Alone among the Greek states, Sparta depended on the enserfment of the helots, masses of fellow Greeks of a homogeneous background who could be kept under control only by perpetual military surveillance. As a result, the army could never be The Wars of the Greeks 95 absent from Laconia for long without inviting rebellion by the helots. In addition, although Sparta's system of government was ideally designed to satisfy the needs of a nation of soldiers and serfs, it was in every other respect slow and cumbersome, quite incapable of providing the kind of leadership needed by the volatile and anarchic Greek states of the Aegean. Strategic Necessities However, the military problems transcended Spartan limitations as a state. Even if its power had been based on some other, less explosive social arrangement than the serfdom of the helots, Sparta still would not have been able to cope with the situation faced by the Greeks of Asia. After Plataea, defense against the Persians did not call for massive land armies but rather for both large and small fleet operations against widely scattered targets. Persian garrisons continued to maintain footholds in Europe for fifteen years or more after Plataea, and major naval offensives were a possibility until Athens made peace with Persia in 448 b.c. However, the Greeks had to be prepared to handle both massive fleet concentrations of three hundred or more ships, as happened at the battle of the Eurymedon River (ca. 468 b.c.), as well as the endless probing of Persian satraps (provincial governors) looking for weak spots in the Greek defensive screen up and down the coast. Outfactions in the Greek cities were always ready to call in the Persians when bested by their enemies. The Persians were still able to control large segments of Greek Asia through cooperative tyrants and oligarchies. What the Greeks needed was a well-informed central organization that could coordinate strategy and concentrate their scattered forces to counter the enemy's great strength---in short, centralized command and control over military resources. Costly Navies Other factors also made it difficult for a state such as Sparta to provide leadership to the Greeks after the repulse of the Persians. First, the theater of war was now the eastern and northern Aegean, not mainland Greece, where Sparta had traditionally operated. Then, whereas almost any city could field a hoplite phalanx, the same was not true of a fleet of triremes. Sparta was least endowed with the resources necessary to sustain a navy. Ships were extremely expensive. Large crews were needed to operate them, and significant sums of money were required merely to keep the fleet in existence. Even when not in use, hulls had to be maintained, equipment stored, and crews trained. A fleet with its dockyards, arsenals, harbors, and such trained personnel as ship architects and skilled workmen constituted a huge capital investment. The financing of crews was a major burden. The trireme had a complement of two hundred men; a good-size fleet of about two hundred ships required at least forty thousand rowers, marines, and officers (and obviously a much larger population from which to draw their numbers). Unlike hoplites, who were largely self-sustaining and who paid taxes in time of war, many of the rowers would have been propertyless. The state that aspired to naval power had to have either a large population, a lot of money, or both. Naval warfare tended to favor (as it still does) the development of large fleets by the few states that possessed the necessary resources. It is not surprising that by the mid-fifth century b.c. only Athens, Lesbos, Chios, and Samos were making significant contributions in ships to the anti-Persian alliance, with Athens predominating. The Athenian Alliance (Delian League) Athenian Dominance Although the Greek league headed by Sparta remained intact, Athens---with the enthusiastic support of the Greeks in the east---created another alliance, the Delian League, in the winter of 478--477 b.c., whose purpose was both offensive and defensive. It aimed to preserve Greek freedom and to conduct active reprisals against the Persian Empire Persian Immortal. The "Immortals" were an elite unit of 10,000 infantry which served as the body guard of the Persian king. Their name derived from the custom that each time a member of the guard died or fell ill he was immediately replaced by a new recruit. 96 The Ancient World to obtain plunder to offset the expenses of the League. We are not certain of the organizational structure of the alliance. Whatever the arrangement, Athens controlled the decision-making process. Although autonomy was guaranteed to each member, Athens supplied the commanders for all military operations, appointed the League treasurers, and took half of all the loot taken. The amount of contributions was determined by Aristides, who was popular among the allies and whose reputation for honesty had earned him the title "the Just." The meeting places of the League and the treasury were at the Temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos. The League's first actions were to drive the Persians out of Eion, their most important stronghold in northern Greece, and to coerce Naxos back into the League after an attempted secession. When a large fleet of 350 ships supported by an army was assembled in Asia about 468 b.c. by the Persians, Cimon, the son of Miltiades, led the League's forces against it and obtained a complete victory by land and sea at the battle of the Eurymedon. He then went on to the Hellespont, where he cleared out more Persian garrisons. Themistocles's Foresight In the meantime, Themistocles, despite the objections of the Spartans, supervised the rebuilding of the walls of Athens and the fortifications of Piraeus, the port of Athens. It was his genius as well as his downfall to have an extraordinary ability to anticipate the future and then devote all his efforts to bringing others around to his views. He had been able to carry the Athenians with him in the years before the second Persian invasion, and now he espoused an anti-Spartan policy, which at the time was not acceptable to the Athenians. Cimon was solidly pro-Spartan, and in the public debate between the two, Themistocles lost and was ostracized, probably in 472 b.c. When he continued his anti-Spartan activities at Argos, Sparta protested. Pursued by both Athenian and Spartan agents, he fled first to Epirus and then to the Persians, who welcomed him and appointed him governor of the district of Magnesia in Asia Minor, where he died. It turned out that Themistocles's assessment of the situation in the Greek world after Plataea was right: He had correctly interpreted Sparta's resentment at being ousted from the position of leader of the Greeks as well as its growing fear of Athens. Within ten years his policies were taken up and given definitive form by Ephialtes, Pericles, and the radical democrats. The Great War between Athens and Spar The "First" Peloponnesian War (460--446 b.c.) In the late 460s and 450s b.c. some radical alterations were made in the Athenian constitution. These changes were spearheaded by aristocrats Ephialtes and Pericles, but the underlying cause was the way in which the Athenian democracy was developing. Unlike hoplite warfare, which was the preserve of the middle classes, naval warfare called for masses of rowers who had nothing more to offer than their muscle power and their willingness to sit for small wages in cramped spaces for long periods. As Athens's power shifted more and more toward naval operations, the political influence of the rowers of the fleet grew proportionately and was exercised in the Assembly with the assistance of such leaders as Pericles. Radical Democracy at Athens In the mid-460s b.c. the democrats began whittling away at the still-significant power of the Areopagus. In 462 and 461 b.c. they were finally able to pass a series of laws that eliminated the last vestiges of the old aristocratic constitution and inaugurated a fully democratic constitution. The jurisdiction of the Areopagus, which had originally included the right to try magistrates and supervise the administration of the laws, was now transferred to the popular courts and the Council. Only cases of religious significance (these included homicide) were left to that venerable body. At the same time, pay was introduced for the jurors. Shortly afterward (458--457 b.c.) the archonship was opened to the third class, the zeugitae, and arrangements were made for the selection by lot of the councilors from all the citizens, without prior The trireme, of which this is probably a representation, was the first principal warship of Greek fleets in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. Propelled by oars, it was used to ram enemy ships. Because of the lack of adequate illustrations of the vessel, it is still uncertain how the rowers were seated. The Wars of the Greeks 97 election. As Aristotle noted in his analysis of democratic constitutions in the Politics the use of the lot rather than elections was a characteristic of a fully democratic constitution. Cimon and Pericles At the time that these reforms were taking place, Cimon, still the most powerful individual in Athens, was in Laconia helping the Spartans put down the revolt of the helots that had broken out after the disastrous earthquake in 464 b.c. Unfortunately for Cimon, the Spartans, fearing that the "adventurous and revolutionary spirit of the Athenians" (in the words of Thucydides) would affect their own citizens and subjects, sent him and his troops back to Athens ignominiously. The Athenians were enraged, and with the encouragement of Ephialtes and Pericles, Cimon's opponents, formed an alliance with Sparta's enemies Argos and Thessaly. In the following year (461 b.c.) Cimon was ostracized, and the Athenians under new leadership committed themselves to an anti-Spartan policy. Soon after the ostracism of Cimon, Ephialtes was murdered, and his assassins were never identified, although an oligarchic plot was suspected. This left Pericles as the principal spokesman for the new policy and for the democracy at large, a position he held until his death thirty years later. Pericles was the son of Xanthippus, the commander of the Athenian detachment at the battle of Mycale; his mother, Agariste, was the daughter of the famous Cleisthenes, the founder of the Athenian democracy. Despite his aristocratic background, Pericles was a dedicated democrat who was single-minded in his devotion to Athens. Although not a brilliantly original thinker, he was a first-class orator and a capable general. His judgment was sound, and under his guidance Athens flourished. Athenian Power Expands External events accelerated the development of a thoroughgoing anti-Spartan policy in Athens. In 459 b.c., after years of meddling by Corinth, its aggressive neighbor, Megara left the Spartan alliance and sought help from Athens. This was a major coup, as possession of Megara meant control of access to Attica from the Peloponnese, a strategic factor of incalculable importance because the only serious threat to Athens could come from a land invasion by the Spartans and their supporters. With Athens now involved against Corinth, Aegina joined in the fray but was defeated by Athens and, in the following year, incorporated into the Athenian alliance (457 b.c.). The same year a Spartan army operating in Boeotia had difficulty returning home, as the Athenians occupied the exits through the mountains and the coastal route. Some turn coat Athenians persuaded the Spartan commander to attack Athens and attempt to overthrow the democracy before the final stages of the city's fortifications, the Long Walls connecting it with Piraeus, were completed. Although the Spartans were victorious at the bloody battle of Tanagra, they suffered such severe losses that they were forced to withdraw. A few months later another Athenian army marched into Boeotia and, after a victory at Oenophyta, took control of that region. The year 457 b.c. thus marked the high point of Athenian success in Greece. Defeat in Egypt Mainland Greece was not the only theater of war in these years. An inscription recording the names of 177 men from a single Athenian tribe who in one year were killed in action in Cyprus, Egypt, Phoenicia, the Peloponnese, Aegina, and Megara gives an idea of the widespread nature of Athens's military operations. The eastern involvement came about as part of Athens's ongoing policy of protecting the Greeks by weakening Persia whenever possible. Thus, in 460 b.c., when a fleet of ships of the Athenian alliance operating in Cyprus was invited to help the rebel king of Egypt, Inaros, in his fight against the Persians, they accepted quickly. At first all went well. The Phoenician naval forces were defeated, and Memphis was occupied. Then the Persians began to recover, and in 455 b.c. both the Egyptians and Greeks were badly defeated. The latter managed to hold out until the following year but finally surrendered. The defeat in Egypt was a major setback for the Athenian alliance, the first it had suffered since it had been formed twenty years earlier. A mourning Athena reads a list of names of fallen soldiers. 98 The Ancient World With the annihilation of the Egyptian expedition, the Athenians transferred the treasury of the Delian League to Athens for safety (454--453 b.c.) and recalled Cimon. Two years later Athens entered into a five-year treaty with Sparta but by 450 b.c. had recovered sufficiently to send Cimon with two hundred ships to Cyprus, where the Persians were defeated by land and sea. The following year, however, Cimon died. With his death the impulse to continue the war against Persia evaporated. From Alliance to Empire With the removal of the Delian League's treasury to Athens, the allies ceased to meet, and henceforth actions were taken unilaterally by Athens. Yet there had been indications that the alliance would or could turn into an empire from the very beginning. The treasurers of the League, as well as the commanders of its joint forces, had always been Athenian, and the policy of Athens dominated its decision making. Secession was ruled out as an option of League members at an early date, when first Naxos and then Thasos (465 b.c.) were coerced into remaining. The tribute of the alliance was used legitimately to subsidize the Athenian fleet, but the application of funds to rebuild the Athenian temples destroyed by the Persians raised a storm of protest, both inside and outside Athens. Probably in the early 440s b.c. Athenian weights, measures, and coinage were made obligatory throughout the alliance. By 446 b.c., Athens was claiming that all cases involving the death penalty, exile, or loss of civil rights should be subject to appeal to its courts. By mid-century the alliance of Athens and its allies had become an empire. Evaluating the Athenian Empire If the Athenian Empire were to be judged solely by the standards of autonomy and freedom as defined by the Greeks, it could not be justified. Some scholars have argued that the empire benefited the lower classes, wherever they existed, because it protected them from their own rapacious oligarchies. There may have been no great enthusiasm for Athens among the lower classes of the various cities, but it was the lesser of evils to be subject to the Athenian people than to their own wealthy classes.1 To this extent the Athenian Empire may be considered to have been popular among its subjects. Others support the opinion of a contemporary of Thucydides, who said that the allies did not want to be subject to either an oligarchy or a democracy but simply "to be free with whatever kind of government they could get."2 Athenian Reverses During its five-year truce with Sparta, the advantageous arrangements Athens had built up in Greece began to disintegrate. Argos renounced its treaty with Athens in 451 b.c. and made a thirty-year pact with Sparta instead. Then Pericles' proposal for a Panhellenic congress at Athens to discuss the restoration of the temples destroyed by the Persians came to nothing. In 446 b.c. Athens lost Boeotia at the battle of Coronea, and later in the year Euboea and Megara revolted. The former was recovered by the swift action of Pericles, but Megara was lost for good. Athens was once more exposed to a land attack by Sparta. In midwinter of that year, Athens negotiated a new peace treaty with Sparta that was supposed to last for thirty years. The Peloponnesian War (431--404 b.c.) The Corcyraean Entanglement In 435 b.c. Corinth and its colony Corcyra came to blows over a colony established by the latter. The Corcyreans won the battle, but instead of accepting defeat Corinth began building a new fleet. Corcyra, which had traditionally avoided alliances, found itself isolated in the face of a major effort by Corinth and its allies. In desperation Corcyra turned to Athens to seek an alliance. A delegation was sent to present the thorny matter to the Athenian Assembly in 433 b.c. At issue was whether Athens should make an offensive alliance with Corcyra and break the thirty-year treaty with Sparta, make only a defensive alliance with Corcyra and provoke the ire of Corinth, or make no alliance at all and probably see Corcyra's considerable navy fall into the hands of Corinth and the Peloponnesian League. The Athenians settled for the defensive alliance, sending only ten ships to keep an eye on the situation. However, a major battle was fought between the two contestants, and when the Corcyreans were on the verge of defeat, the Athenians intervened. The Corinthians, deprived of their victory, withdrew in a rage. The battle was a major triumph for Athens. Both Corinth and Corcyra had suffered heavily, whereas Athens's fleet came through unscathed, and the thirty-year treaty remained intact. The clash with Corinth made Athens reflect on one of its tributary allies in northern Greece, which was also a colony of Corinth and annually received magistrates from Corinth, the mother city. In an attempt to anticipate Corinthian retaliation in this area, Athens ordered the Potidaeans to get rid of their system of Corinthian magistrates, pull down a section of their wall, and give up hostages. Potidaea refused and obtained the support of Macedonia and Sparta, which promised to invade Attica if the city was attacked. A general revolt in the area began in 432 b.c. Corinthian and other 1. G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 4. 2. Cited by D. W. Bradeen, "The Popularity of the Athenian Empire," Historia 9 (1960):268. The Wars of the Greeks 99 Peloponnesian "volunteers" arrived to help Potidaea, but by the end of the summer all these forces had been beaten, and the city was under siege by the Athenians. The Megarian Decree The final spark that set off the war was the Megarian decree. Athens accused its neighbor Megara of cultivating and thereby violating the sacred land of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis. As punishment, Athens excluded the Megarians from entering the Athenian agora and the harbors of the empire, an action that would have devastated the economy of Megara. Technically the thirty-year treaty had not been infringed, but considerable damage had been done to a member of the Peloponnesian League. These three events---the Corcyrean--Athenian treaty, the siege of Potidaea, and the Megarian decree---provoked a major debate at Sparta. Athens was given an ultimatum to withdraw the Megarian decree and end the siege of Potidaea or face war. To make sure the proposal was rejected, Sparta added the demand that Athens restore the autonomy of Aegina. Understandably, Athens refused to accept these terms. The war came about because Sparta was ready to challenge Athens to prevent any further growth of its power. "The war was made inevitable," said Thucydides in his summary of the causes of the war, "by the growth of Athenian power and the fear this inspired among the Spartans." Pericles's Strategy The strategy Pericles proposed for the conduct of the war was to emphasize Athens's naval strength while husbanding its limited hoplite reserves. Athens had already learned the cost of holding its land approaches through Megara and Boeotia, and Pericles argued that Athens could survive a war with the Peloponnesians only by avoiding major infantry battles and by instead sending naval expeditions to weaken and disrupt the Spartan alliance. According to this strategy, Athens had to be prepared to sacrifice rural Attica to the invaders. Athens would have to behave like an island, relying on its navy to guarantee its food supplies. Accordingly, when the Peloponnesian army appeared in Attica in 431 b.c., the people and their flocks had withdrawn to Euboea or within the Long Walls. Because the Spartans were not prepared for a lengthy siege, they could only ravage the countryside and withdraw. The invasion of Attica was to become an annual occurrence during the long war. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of War The following year a plague broke out in Athens. By the time it ceased in 426 b.c., perhaps one-third of the population had been wiped out. Among those who died was Pericles. Nevertheless, his strategy was still generally followed. Athens set out to harry the enemy by creating a ring of bases on islands and headlands around the Peloponnese and using these to foment rebellion among the helots and the allies of the Spartans. From the island of Minoa, Athens was able to blockade Megara; from Cythera, Athens could intercept ships sailing to Sparta from Africa. Major bases were located at Zacynthos, Cephallenia, Corcyra, Naupactus, and Acarnania, and the forts on the promontories of Pylos and Methana allowed Athens to conduct direct attacks on Messenia and the territories of Epidaurus and Troezen. It was at Pylos that one of the major Athenian successes of the war came in 425 b.c., when a detachment of Spartans was cut off and forced to surrender by the generals Cleon and Demosthenes. Sparta, already hard pressed, sued for peace. Hoping for larger gains and egged on by Cleon, the Athenians refused to come to terms. However, operations thereafter were not so successful. A large force of Athenians was badly defeated at Delium in Boeotia, and in the north the brilliant Spartan general Brasidas successfully provoked Athenian allies to revolt. His success in winning over the important city of Amphipolis led to the banishment of the historian Thucydides, who had the misfortune to be the commander of some Athenian forces in the area at the time. However, Brasidas was killed shortly thereafter in an Athenian attempt to recover Amphipolis. In the same encounter Cleon also died (422 b.c.). Chronology Wars for the Hegem of Greec Peloponnesian War 431--404 b.c Sicilian Expedition 415--413 b. Battle of Arginusae 406 b.c. Battle of Aegospotami 405 b.c. Surrender of Athens 404 b.c Thirty Tyrants at Athens; restoration of the democracy 404--403 b.c. Persia dictates peace in Greece 387 b.c Spartan seizure of Theban acropolis 382 b.c Battle of Leuctra ends Spartan hegemony 371 b.c War with Phocis ends Theban hegemony 355--346 b.c 100 The Ancient World The Peace of Nicias By this time both sides were ready to negotiate, and in 421 b.c., under the terms of the Peace of Nicias (negotiated by the Athenian general of that name), most of the bases captured by Athens around the Peloponnese were to be given up. Sparta in turn was to relinquish claim to the northern cities that had revolted. However, neither side lived up to the terms of the treaty. In addition, Megara, Corinth, and Boeotia refused to sign the agreement; technically they were still at war with Athens. Scione, one of the states that had revolted, was not included in the terms of the treaty, and when it was taken by the Athenians, all the male citizens were executed and the rest of the population sold into slavery. A similar fate befell Melos. The Sicilian Disaster In the first round of the war, Athens fared better than Sparta. The Athenian alliance was practically intact, but Sparta's had been shaken. Sparta needed time to reassemble its forces, and this it managed to do despite the efforts of Alcibiades, a gifted but mercurial relative of Pericles who had risen to power in Athens, to exploit the opposition of Argos to Sparta and use Argos as a means of undermining the Peloponnesian League. When an opportunity arose for Athens to develop alliances in Sicily, Alcibiades persuaded the assembly to send an expedition, despite Nicias's objections that the true interests of Athens lay in the Aegean. From the beginning the expedition was a disaster. Its commanders were an ill-fated trio: the unwilling Nicias, his opponent Alcibiades, and another general by the name of Lamachus. Shortly after they arrived in Sicily, Alcibiades was recalled to face charges of having profaned the Mysteries of Eleusis. Although there was no proof, his freewheeling way of life made him a natural suspect. Rather than face trial, he fled to Sparta. There he advised the Spartans to set up a fortified base at Decelea in Attica and support the Syracusans. Mismanaged from the beginning, the expedition finally succumbed to the poor generalship of Nicias and the unexpected strength of the Syracusans. In all, two hundred ships and forty thousand men were lost by the end of the two-year campaign (415--413 b.c.). Worse, the war with Sparta was resumed in 414 b.c., and in the following year Decelea was fortified. From a position of prestige and strength two years earlier, Athens was suddenly fighting for its life. An Oligarchic Coup Cut off by Decelea from Euboea's food supply and confronting the revolt of its major allies, Lesbos and Chios, Athens seemed at the end of its resources. More alarming, Sparta was now ready to accept financial help from Persia. From 412 b.c. onward the satraps of Asia Minor regularly supplied money for the maintenance of Sparta's fleet. In return, the Spartans turned over the Greeks of Asia to their enemies. Alcibiades, having lost favor at Sparta, transferred his counsels to the Persians and pretended to be in a position to sway the satraps for or against whomever he recommended. Encouraged by this belief, the Athenians entered into negotiations with the Persians and were informed by Alcibiades that if they abandoned their democratic constitution and set up an oligarchy, they would draw Persian support away from the Spartans. Plans were laid accordingly for the introduction of an oligarchy. One group, led by Antiphon and Peisander, favored a narrow oligarchy, but another, led by Theramenes, favored a more liberal arrangement. In 411 b.c., in its temporarily demoralized condition, the Assembly was persuaded to accept an oligarchy in which ostensibly four hundred were involved, but that was in fact controlled by a handful of conspirators. It immediately began negotiations with the Spartans and abolished pay for public services. A plan to introduce a similar oligarchy in Samos, where the bulk of the Athenian fleet was located, failed, and the democracy maintained itself under the leadership of Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus. One of the fleet's first acts was to invite Alcibiades to return, and he was promptly elected to the generalship. A proposition to sail to Athens to restore the democracy was turned down, but it was decided that the four hundred oligarchs had to go. Impressed by the strength of the democracy on Samos, Theramenes turned on the extreme oligarchs. While all this was going on at Athens, the fleet won two important victories at Cynossema and Cyzicus. Athens regained control of the vital grain route through the Hellespont, which it had briefly lost. Encouraged by these successes, Athens restored the full democratic constitution and prepared to carry on the war as before. The Fall of Athens The initiative now passed to the Peloponnesians and the Persians. Sparta had a piece of good fortune when the Persian king sent his able son, Cyrus, to Asia to coordinate efforts against the Athenians and at the same time stumbled upon an able commander in the person of the general Lysander. Athens tried desperately to match the efforts of its enemies and raised money by melting down precious objects of gold and silver and pressing its allies for further contributions. Some successes were achieved, and at Arginusae in 406 b.c. the Spartan fleet under Callicratidas was defeated, though the victory was overshadowed by the aftermath. Because of a storm the generals were able neither to recover the bodies of the dead nor to rescue The Wars of the Greeks 101 survivors in the wrecked ships, and a hysterical assembly condemned the generals to death. The end of the war came swiftly. Lysander, well bankrolled by Cyrus, assembled yet another fleet and surprised the Athenians, who had beached their ships at Aegospotami in the Hellespont. A total of 171 Athenian ships, along with their crews and marine contingents, were taken. Only eight ships under the general Conon escaped. Following the now well-established practice of executing prisoners, Lysander killed the three thousand Athenians he found among the captured crews and released the rest. By the end of the year (405 b.c.), Athens was blockaded by land and sea, and negotiations for peace had begun. Corinth and Thebes proposed that all the Athenian males be massacred and the rest of the population sold into slavery, but Sparta settled for the destruction of the Long Walls, the fortifications of Piraeus, and the abandonment of the empire. The fleet was to be given up, except for twelve triremes, and Athens was compelled to become an ally of Sparta. The terms were accepted, and in 404 b.c. the great war between Sparta and Athens came to an end. The Hegemony of Spart and Thebes Spartan Weakness After its victory over Athens, Sparta was no more capable of coping with being the leader of the Greeks than it had been after the battle of Plataea seventy-five years earlier. Yet by 404 b.c., Sparta had arrived at the conclusion that only by maintaining an empire could its security be ensured. However, the internal and external obstacles were enormous, and the burden of empire destroyed Sparta even more effectively than it did Athens. Sparta's own losses in the Peloponnesian War had been significant. Only about three thousand Spartiates (full citizens) remained, and the numbers continued to decline as a result of constant war and social change. In the past, Sparta had been able to conserve its peculiar society by rigorously isolating itself from the rest of the world. Now that Sparta had made the decision to take Athens's position as peacemaker in the Aegean, it was forced to expose its society to the unsettling influences of normal Greek life. Tribute from the empire and loot from wars poured into Sparta in violation of its traditional norms, and wealth began to concentrate in private hands. More and more of the first-class citizens (the Equals) lost their share of land and dropped out of the ranks of the first class. With so much power and influence at stake, the ephors, kings, and council struggled among themselves, and public policy oscillated between violent extremes. Spartan governors abroad ruled through narrow oligarchies and were almost universally hated. Tyranny at Athens The experience of Athens was probably typical. There a group of oligarchs known as the Thirty Tyrants, led by the extremist Critias, crushed the moderate opposition of Theramenes. They executed fifteen hundred of the democratic leaders and forced five thousand others into exile. Estates were indiscriminately confiscated. It was not long before the exiles, led by Thrasybulus, the democrat who had organized the fleet against the oligarchs in 411 b.c., attempted to return. In 403 b.c. the Thirty Tyrants seized Piraeus. After Critias was killed in fighting, negotiations ensued, and by the end of the year the democracy had been restored. By an act of fine statesmanship, further internal strife was avoided, and amnesty was extended to all but the Thirty Tyrants. Resource Poor Sparta Sparta's most basic problem was its lack of resources for maintaining an empire. It possessed neither the financial superiority nor the manpower needed to control the anarchic world it had inherited from Athens. After the Peloponnesian War, other states recovered with astonishing rapidity. Trade resumed, populations expanded, and soon Sparta found itself only one of many cities with aspirations to empire. Its reputation as a champion of Greek liberties, which to some extent might have compensated for its internal weakness, was tarnished by its blatant betrayal of the Asian Greeks to the Persians during the later years of the Peloponnesian War. More important, the same problems inherent in maintaining naval power that had forced Athens to create an empire---the need for capital for ships and crews---now plagued Sparta. An adequate navy could be maintained only through significant imperial The Arrogance o The Athenians could see no future for themselves except to suffer what they had made other people suffer. There was the example of the citizens of small states whom they had injured \[such as Scione and Melos, whose populations they had massacred or sold into slavery\], not because these states had done something to the Athenians, but because they had acted out of the arrogance of power. ---Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.2.10 102 The Ancient World revenues or Persian subsidies, neither of which was seen as an acceptable alternative by Greek public opinion. The Military Revolution Perhaps the most important problem facing Sparta after the Peloponnesian War was the fact that a military revolution had begun that affected not just Sparta but also all states that had built their power on heavy infantry alone. This revolution was to spell their doom. After years of war, Greece was full of men ready to serve whomever was willing or able to pay their wages. The normal citizen levy of hoplites might suddenly find itself confronted with an experienced body of mercenaries hired by its opponents. While wearing down their enemy's citizen soldiers with their mercenaries, the other side could husband its own citizen manpower resources. Professionalism spread throughout the Greek military world at every level, from the ordinary soldiers to the generals. The century after the Peloponnesian War was a time of mercenaries, rootless soldiers who had loyalty to no city, only to their profession of arms. Like the men in the ranks, generals and their staffs were for hire. Light Infantry: Peltasts In addition to professionalism another reason accounted for the military revolution: The limitations and weaknesses of hoplite warfare had been demonstrated conclusively during the Peloponnesian War. Long contact with Persia in the east and with Sicily in the west, as well as the experience of the war itself, encouraged innovation. Light infantry (peltasts) came to play a progressively larger role in battle. Armed with only shield, dagger, and javelin, these soldiers were trained to run close to the hoplite phalanxes, hurl their javelins, retreat, and then attack again. At Lechaeum in 390 b.c. peltasts under the able leadership of the Athenian general Iphicrates cut to pieces a detachment of regular Spartan hoplites. Other specialized units, such as slingers and archers, also came into play, and cavalry could not be ignored. The Polis Undermined These new forms of warfare, along with increasing professionalism among all ranks, went against traditional Greek practice. Formerly, the ownership of land, service in the military, and citizenship went hand in hand. This meant that property owners were the primary defenders of the state. On the other hand, peltasts came from the poorer classes or from outside of Greece altogether. They were cheaper to arm than hoplites but still needed much training. Hence they tended to be professionals, unattached to their cities or places of origin, unstable elements in an already unstable world. Archery was practiced only in Crete; slingers came from Rhodes; the best light cavalry was Middle Eastern or North African. The army of the future that combined all these elements would be unbeatable; it would also be revolutionary in a military, social, political, and economic sense. Significantly, the advanced states of Greece failed or were incapable of making the transition. Instead, it was backward, despised Macedonia that took the decisive step. The Rise of Thebes In 401 b.c., with Spartan connivance, Cyrus, the Persian viceroy in Asia, raised a large force of Greek mercenaries and attempted to unseat his brother Artaxerxes II, the ruling king of Persia. He failed, and the Greek cities of Asia that had supported Cyrus called in terror upon the Spartans to defend them against Persian reprisals. The Spartans, sensing an opportunity for plunder, sent an army under the king Agesilaus. Although the Spartans were generally successful on land, Spartan naval power was destroyed by the Persian fleet at the battle of cnidus in 394 b.c. By a strange quirk, the commander of the Persian fleet was Conon, the Athenian general who had escaped from the disaster of Aegospotami in 405 b.c. and had fled to the Persians with a handful of ships. With this battle the victory of Sparta over Athens was undone, and Conon was able to go on to help in the rebuilding of the Long Walls at Athens. The King's Peace Meanwhile, Sparta's heavy-handedness, Persian subversion, and the natural tendency of the Greek states to combine against the most powerful had brought about the unlikely coalition of Athens, Corinth, Thebes, Argos, and Euboea against Sparta. Persia aided with lavish subsidies. As a result, Sparta was forced to withdraw its army from Asia and once more abandoned the Greek cities there to the Persians. By 388--387 b.c., Sparta had had enough and sent the envoy Antalcidas to the Persian king to seek a negotiated settlement. Despite the efforts of the allies, represented by Conon, the king favored Sparta, and in 387 b.c. he dictated a peace whose terms were left to Sparta to be enforced: the Peace of Antalcidas, or the King's Peace. Given this breathing space, Sparta devoted its energies to eliminating the most dangerous of the alliances formed against it. Of these, the special understanding between the Boeotian and Chalcidian Leagues and the recent union of Corinth and Argos seemed the most dangerous. Sparta succeeded in all of its efforts, but its garrisoning of the acropolis of Thebes in 382 b.c. in support of a narrow, pro-Spartan oligarchy led to disaster. Two years later a group of Thebans, led by Pelopidas and Epaminondas and The Wars of the Greeks 103 supported by Athenian "volunteers" (because Athens was technically still at peace with Sparta), liberated Thebes. The Battle of Leuctra Gradually the Spartan hold on Boeotia was broken. Athens, making common cause with Thebes, reorganized its maritime empire in 377 b.c. Guaranteeing autonomy of its members, the Second Empire, as it was known, was initially very popular. Under the generalship of Callistratos, Chabrias, and Iphicrates, Spartan sea power was easily contained. Meanwhile, Theban supremacy in central Greece began to worry Athens, and in 374 b.c. Athens sought peace with Sparta. It was of short duration, but alienation from Thebes was growing, and in 371 b.c. a more permanent peace, the Peace of Callias, was negotiated. Freed from the danger of Athenian intervention, Sparta immediately attacked Thebes, and to the astonishment of Greece, the Thebans, led by Pelopidas and Epaminondas, swept their enemies from the field with great slaughter at the battle of Leuctra (371 b.c.). Sparta was reduced to eight hundred full citizens, and its power was at an end. In the winter of 370--369 b.c. and again in 368 b.c., the Thebans and their allies entered the Peloponnese and restored the independence of Messenia, thereby destroying the economic base of Spartan power. Megalopolis, the newly founded capital of the Arcadian League, hemmed in Sparta from the north and barred access to Messenia should Sparta ever contemplate reconquering that region. Thebes's Advantage: Federalism Thebes had thus become the predominant power in Greece and for a brief time maintained its hegemony. Its strength was derived from its federal constitution, which embraced practically all of Boeotia. In an unusual development, the League created an assembly open to all its members, which decided common issues of policy. The individual poleis elected the generals, judges, and financial officers. The democratic basis of the League enabled the Thebans to draw upon a much larger reserve of manpower than either Athens or Sparta or almost any other single city possessed, but Thebes frittered it away after its two great leaders died in battle---Pelopidas in Thessaly in 364 b.c. and Epaminondas at the battle of Mantinea two years later. The immediate cause of Thebes's decline was a war with the minor state of Phocis (Third Sacred War, 355--346 b.c.). By drawing on the resources of the Temple of Delphi, which they had seized, the Phocians were able to hire great numbers of mercenaries. With these they wore down the citizen levies of Thebes. At almost the same time, Athens lost the power it had slowly built up in the new alliance by succumbing to the old temptation of attempting to convert the League into an empire. The Social War (357--355 b.c.) deprived Athens of practically all its allies. Along with Sparta and Thebes, Athens joined the list of states that had exhausted themselves in trying to build empires on bases that were too narrow. Questions 1. What was the result of the expansion of the Persian Empire into the Aegean? What might Greek development have been like (a) without the intervention of the Persians; (b) if the Persians had won? 2. From the Greek viewpoint, which of the three great battles of the Persian Wars---Marathon, Salamis, Plataea---was the most important? 3. Greek response to the Persian invasion was mixed. Some states resisted and some appeased the Persians. Make the case for a city that chose to resist, such as Sparta, and the case for one that opted for appeasement, such as Argos. 4. Discuss the pros and cons of the Delian League in terms of its successes and failures. What good did it accomplish, and what evils did it inflict? 5. What was the connection between the wars of the Greeks throughout the fifth century b.c. and the military revo