If it seems like I'm ignoring the Peloponnesian War, yes, I mainly am, since I've read about it roughly a million times and had to teach it to the ungrateful youth about as often. Maybe I'll say something about the causes later on. Anyway:
At the end of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta put the Thirty Tyrants into power in Athens. They included Critias, former student of Socrates, and Theramenes, a moderate member who was executed during the reign of terror for opposing the murder of inhabitants of the city and the confiscation of their property. See Lysias, Kata Erastosthenes. A force of exiles under Thrasyboulos seized fortified positions close to the city at Phyle and Munichia and defeated a Spartan/oligarchic force before retaking the city after the tyrants fled to Eleusis. This resulted in a general amnesty, and divisions inside the Spartan government (Lysander and Pausanias) resulted in the city mainly being left to its own devices.
The Spartan hegemony, while it lasted, was oppressive and caused rifts with the other states of Greece, resulting in the Corinthian War (395-87) versus an alliance of Thebes, Athens, Corinth, and Argos, which resulted in a return to the status quo. Despite early Spartan victories, such as at Coroneia, they suffered low-level reverses later on and in the islands, which resulted in the Persian-brokered Peace of Antalcidas. Sparta soon dispersed Mantinea and undertook a successful offensive in Chalcidice.
In 379 a rebellious force seized the Cadmea (the acropolis of Thebes) away from the Spartans who had controlled it since 382. This was the first major challenge to the Peloponnesian League, and forced the Spartans to withdraw from Boeotia and campaign against it for the next few years. Athens, reviving quickly, put together the Second Athenian Sea League in 378 to protect itself, its grain tithe at the Bosporus, and the interests of small maritime poleis. Under the leaders Timotheus and Iphicles, they expanded Athenian influence in Corcyra, Thrace, Chalcidice, and inducted new members into the League. The League would be weakened by secessions in the 360s which coincided with a Social War against its allies.
Theban power became worrisome to Athens and Sparta following the destruction of Plataea (372). After a quibble during a peace negotiations, matters came to a head when the Theban army under Epaminondas crushed a Spartan force at Leuctra (371), the first major Spartan defeat on land. Afterwards Thebes stirred up unrest in Arcadia and elsewhere in the Peloponnese; they liberated Messenia from Spartan control in 369, forever weakening Sparta's power base. The resulting peace a couple years later resulted in the dissolution of the Peloponnesian League. Problems with the alliance in Arcadia led to a Theban expedition that ended at Mantinea (362) with an indecisive battle in which Epaminondas was killed.
Philip II rose to power in 360. Involved in conflict with the Illyrians, he expanded into the Chalcidice, taking control of Amphipolis, Potidaea, and Pydna. Athens had insufficient power to oppose him at the time, so this ended in negotiated peace. The rise of Macedon coincided with a series of Sacred Wars in Thessaly and Boeotia in which the Amphictyonic League declared war in response to a series of religious transgressions against Delphi and the management of its money. Philip assisted in campaigns against the Phocians and their allies in 353/2 (Sacred War III) which resulted in his expansion into Thessaly. Afterwards he campaigned in Thrace and conquered Olynthus (348) in Chalcidice (hence the Olynthiacs). Athenian concern about his next move led to the Peace of Philocrates (346).
His control of Greece started with a pro-Macedonian party taking power in Phocis, by which he gained control of Thermopylae (346). He spent the next years fighting in Illyria while Athens was internally divided over how to approach Maceon; the rivalry of Aeschines and Demosthenes flourished around this time, with Demosthenes taking the more stringent approach. They resolved to resist and opposed Philip's campaigns in Epirus (343/2) and near Byzantium (340). After disappointments there and in Thrace, he intervened in the Fourth Sacred War (339-8) against Amphissa; Athens, despite being anti-Amphissa, aligned against him. He outflanked Thermopylae by seizing Elatea, and after negotiations failed, defeated a combined Athenian and Theban force at Chaeronea (338). In the aftermath, he forced the states south of Macedon save Sparta into the League of Corinth, which promptly declared war on Persia.
Philip's son Alexander, of course, would conquer Persia with a combined Greek army and die in Babylon in 323.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Note to Self: The Reforms of Cleisthenes
Cleisthenes (not to be confused with Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon) was an Athenian statesman who carried through a "democratic" reform package in the year 508/7. He was an Alcmaeonid and connected to the Sicyonid dynasty through it. After the expulsion of Hippias (510), he stood as rival to Isagoras, leader of a pro-Spartan faction; after he was exiled, he was recalled when a Spartan force tried to install a pro-Spartan oligarchy. This resulted in a Spartan and allied advance on Athens being repulsed.
Cleisthenes' power base can be explained by a 'regionalist' interpretation of city politics: he was allied with the city faction, while Isagoras was connected to a group in eastern Attica.
Cleisthenes' reform package:
-He split the previous four tribes into ten and distributed the demes (roughly 140 in number) among them. Military organization was based on the tribes; each had a taxiarch and a strategos. This enabled a more even division of service amidst a growing, partially immigrant population.
-He created the Council of Five Hundred, fifty from each tribe with the prytany among them presiding for a month. It prepared business for the public assembly. They were chosen by lot.
-He split Attica into three large regions (city, coast, and interior) and split each into ten trittyes; each tribe had one trittys from each region.
-At this time the nine archons was increased to ten, one elected from each tribe.
-It is possible that he instituted the practice of ostracism.
Cleisthenes' power base can be explained by a 'regionalist' interpretation of city politics: he was allied with the city faction, while Isagoras was connected to a group in eastern Attica.
Cleisthenes' reform package:
-He split the previous four tribes into ten and distributed the demes (roughly 140 in number) among them. Military organization was based on the tribes; each had a taxiarch and a strategos. This enabled a more even division of service amidst a growing, partially immigrant population.
-He created the Council of Five Hundred, fifty from each tribe with the prytany among them presiding for a month. It prepared business for the public assembly. They were chosen by lot.
-He split Attica into three large regions (city, coast, and interior) and split each into ten trittyes; each tribe had one trittys from each region.
-At this time the nine archons was increased to ten, one elected from each tribe.
-It is possible that he instituted the practice of ostracism.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Note to Self: The Pentekontaetia
THE PENTEKONTAETIA
is, roughly put, the period of 50 years between the end of the Persian Wars (which Herodotus puts at the Athenian siege of Sestos 479/8) and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431. It is most noteworthy for the expansion of Athenian (later Athenian-imperial) power under the aegis of the Delian League.
The Delian League was founded in 478 as a confederate pact to provide mutual defense against the fear of a renewed Spartan invasion. The Athenians assessed the member states for the contribution of ships and tribute. At the start of the league, this varied considerably from city to city, but as the Athenians asserted more control, more often it was money/tribute instead of ships, until in 431 only a few major naval powers (Samos, Chios, Lesbos) were providing ships. The treasury was initially held on Delos, and its transference to Athens (in roughly 454) is when historians normally start referring to it as the Athenian Empire.
The League fought in a variety of actions, some offensive, like Cimon's defeat of the Persians in Asia Minor on both land and sea at the Battle of the Eurymedon River in (unknown, but 469/8?), and others punitive, like the successful sieges of Naxos and Miletus after they seceded from the League. The general policy was to secure the Greek islands for the League. Meanwhile, the Spartans were busy combating an expanding Argos, which resulted in outright war by 460. A Messenian revolt of around this time forced the Spartans to concentrate on internal affairs.
At this time the leading figures in Athens were Cimon, a successful military commander and admiral connected to the Alcmaeonidae; standing against him was the mysterious Ephialtes, another commander whose biographical details are lacking. While Cimon was on campaign in 462/1, Ephialtes reformed the Areopagite Council (giving its powers over the constitution to the other assemblies); when Cimon returned and tried to overturn the reforms, he was ostracized. Ephialtes was murdered soon afterward.
The First Peloponnesian War (460-446) started for reasons which are unsatisfactorily explained. Athenian aid to Argos is a likely culprit. Athens was initially successful enough in minor engagements to undertake a disastrous expedition to Egypt (460/59-54); a battle at Tanagra (457) was a Spartan victory and spurred the recall of Cimon and the construction of the Long Walls. Athens successfully besieged Aegina, and Cimon led an attack on Cyprus during which he died in 451/0. Athens was troubled by the failure to set up friendly governments in Boeotia and a revolt of Euboea that was put down by Pericles. The war was ended with the Thirty Years' Peace in 446, which forced Athens to abandon efforts to expand on land in Boeotia and the Megarid.
Pericles' ascendancy occurred during and after his success on Euboea. He presided over a large amount of temple construction, including the Parthenon, with funds allotted from the Delian League; he was supported by an alliance of influential families; his decree ensured that only the child of two citizens would be a citizen; under his control Athens passed a decree requiring that other members of the Delian League use Athenian coins, weights and measures and send their specie to Athens to be minted. A revolt on Samos was crushed in 440/39. Additionally, Athens founded the city of Amphipolis near the Chalcidice in 437/6.
The ultimate breakdown of the peace was due to Spartan concern over Athens' growing power and interventionist policies; the proximal causes are normally described as threefold. The first reason was civil strife in Epidamnos - Corinth attempted to aid one party and Corcyra (the mother city) the other; when Corcyra won the opening engagement, they appealed to Athens for aid. The second was a rebellion of Potidaea in the Chalcidice against Athens, which was helped by Corinth, who also appealed to Sparta for aid. Tension was also brewing because Athens had passed a decree stating that Megara was excluded from Athenian markets and harbors; Sparta's ultimatum had the repeal of this decree as their primary demand. When the Athenians refused to do so and responded intransigently, the Spartans declared war.
is, roughly put, the period of 50 years between the end of the Persian Wars (which Herodotus puts at the Athenian siege of Sestos 479/8) and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431. It is most noteworthy for the expansion of Athenian (later Athenian-imperial) power under the aegis of the Delian League.
The Delian League was founded in 478 as a confederate pact to provide mutual defense against the fear of a renewed Spartan invasion. The Athenians assessed the member states for the contribution of ships and tribute. At the start of the league, this varied considerably from city to city, but as the Athenians asserted more control, more often it was money/tribute instead of ships, until in 431 only a few major naval powers (Samos, Chios, Lesbos) were providing ships. The treasury was initially held on Delos, and its transference to Athens (in roughly 454) is when historians normally start referring to it as the Athenian Empire.
The League fought in a variety of actions, some offensive, like Cimon's defeat of the Persians in Asia Minor on both land and sea at the Battle of the Eurymedon River in (unknown, but 469/8?), and others punitive, like the successful sieges of Naxos and Miletus after they seceded from the League. The general policy was to secure the Greek islands for the League. Meanwhile, the Spartans were busy combating an expanding Argos, which resulted in outright war by 460. A Messenian revolt of around this time forced the Spartans to concentrate on internal affairs.
At this time the leading figures in Athens were Cimon, a successful military commander and admiral connected to the Alcmaeonidae; standing against him was the mysterious Ephialtes, another commander whose biographical details are lacking. While Cimon was on campaign in 462/1, Ephialtes reformed the Areopagite Council (giving its powers over the constitution to the other assemblies); when Cimon returned and tried to overturn the reforms, he was ostracized. Ephialtes was murdered soon afterward.
The First Peloponnesian War (460-446) started for reasons which are unsatisfactorily explained. Athenian aid to Argos is a likely culprit. Athens was initially successful enough in minor engagements to undertake a disastrous expedition to Egypt (460/59-54); a battle at Tanagra (457) was a Spartan victory and spurred the recall of Cimon and the construction of the Long Walls. Athens successfully besieged Aegina, and Cimon led an attack on Cyprus during which he died in 451/0. Athens was troubled by the failure to set up friendly governments in Boeotia and a revolt of Euboea that was put down by Pericles. The war was ended with the Thirty Years' Peace in 446, which forced Athens to abandon efforts to expand on land in Boeotia and the Megarid.
Pericles' ascendancy occurred during and after his success on Euboea. He presided over a large amount of temple construction, including the Parthenon, with funds allotted from the Delian League; he was supported by an alliance of influential families; his decree ensured that only the child of two citizens would be a citizen; under his control Athens passed a decree requiring that other members of the Delian League use Athenian coins, weights and measures and send their specie to Athens to be minted. A revolt on Samos was crushed in 440/39. Additionally, Athens founded the city of Amphipolis near the Chalcidice in 437/6.
The ultimate breakdown of the peace was due to Spartan concern over Athens' growing power and interventionist policies; the proximal causes are normally described as threefold. The first reason was civil strife in Epidamnos - Corinth attempted to aid one party and Corcyra (the mother city) the other; when Corcyra won the opening engagement, they appealed to Athens for aid. The second was a rebellion of Potidaea in the Chalcidice against Athens, which was helped by Corinth, who also appealed to Sparta for aid. Tension was also brewing because Athens had passed a decree stating that Megara was excluded from Athenian markets and harbors; Sparta's ultimatum had the repeal of this decree as their primary demand. When the Athenians refused to do so and responded intransigently, the Spartans declared war.
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