Greeks, Democracy and Slavery (650-501 BCE)
Draconian Athens and Reforms | Solon's Failure and the Tyrant Pisistratus | Sparta versus Democracy in Athens | An imperfect Democracy | Slavery and the Ancient Greeks
Acropolis of Athens
Athens was a city on the water's edge and, unlike Sparta, it was a city of maritime trade and commerce. But like Sparta it was devoted mainly to agriculture. By the 600's BCE (a century that included the fall of the great Assyrian Empire) Athens governed an area of about twenty-five by fifty miles. And with enough land the Athenians prospered for a while. They were emerging from a time when there was no overcrowding. They launched no wars of conquest. They enjoyed peace as well as prosperity.
Like most other cities in the 600s, Athens was authoritarian and divided by economic classes. It was ruled by an oligarchy. Power within Athens and in the surrounding countryside was distributed among local families of wealth, each ruling over the common people in its locality, providing the kind of protection that the Sicilian Mafia would provide people in the 20th century.
Then came change. With success in agriculture in the 600s came a rise in population. There might have been a problem with rains washing away topsoil, reducing the amount of land for farming, but there was definitely the problem of fathers dividing land among their sons. Trouble was brewing in what was essentially a laissez faire economy. Land was divided into smaller and smaller plots. People were plowing land that was only marginally arable, and over-plowing increased soil exhaustion.
Those who owned and worked small plots of land were at times obliged to borrow money to tide themselves over until their next successful harvest. Money was lent at high interest rates, and across Attica small farms became covered with stones on which mortgage bonds were written. Increasingly, small farmers were working the lands of their debtor, giving up a sixth of their crop to those whom they owed wealth, or they were being sold as slaves abroad – diminishing the population only minimally.
Another source of trouble was the one-third in Athens who were foreign slaves. The availability of slave labor bid down wages. Landless freemen could be hired to work in fields or small shops at what some might call starvation wages. City jobs were also occupied by slaves. People of wealth and the city saw themselves as benefiting from slavery. And those with wealth felt no responsibility for those who had grown poor.
In 621 BCE, while unrest was rising among the poor of Athens, a man named Draco led the ruling oligarchy. Draco had existing laws put into writing. He made a legal distinction between intentionally killing someone and accidental homicide. He used state power to intervene in blood feuds. And for almost everything that the ruling elite considered a crime he devised one penalty: death. Not only were rebellion and murder punished by death, so too were idleness and the stealing of vegetables and fruit. It was from Draco's name that the word Draconian would be derived.
If Draco's laws could have been enforced effectively and allowed to work long enough, they might have ended rebellion by killing most of the city's malcontents. But before this could happen, unrest among common Athenians grew, and fearing revolution the elite decided to try appeasement through reform. In the year 594 the elite chose as their leader a 44-year-old fellow aristocrat named Solon. He was one of only a few aristocrats in Athens who was interested in philosophy, and he was religiously devout. He believed in the innate superiority of his own class but he also believed in a justice that was decreed by Zeus for all Athenian citizens.
Solon described Athens as having fallen into "base slavery." Under Solon, slavery was to continue, but he put restrictions on it. Solon prohibited enslavement of the poor and rescued many Athenians who had been sold and sent abroad. He forbade Athenians to sell their children into slavery – except for girls who had committed fornication before marriage. And he made a master responsible for protecting his slaves and liable for his slave's actions.
Solon wished to protect the poor from the rich and the rich from the poor, and using dictatorial powers given him by his fellow aristocrats he overturned Draco's death penalties, except for murder. To preserve the justice of Zeus he increased state intervention in society. He had the state give relief to the poor. He canceled mortgages. He passed a law against debt-bondage. He put an end to tenant farming by returning farms to those who had lost them through debt. And he limited the size of land that any one person could own.
Solon left the aristocracy with much of their land. He also left the aristocracy with top government jobs and seats on ruling bodies. Under his laws only those whose lands produced a certain amount could hold office.
But Solon took a step in the direction of democracy: the Athenian citizen would be given a voice in an assembly. Solon also gave common people a greater role in Athens' system of justice: positions on the city's courts. Judges were chosen by lot so that the poorest people would have their turn sitting with the panel of judges that decided cases. And Solon maintained a check on judges by allowing them to be accused of wrongdoing after their service as judges had ended.
Solon reduced the penalty for idleness to a small fine. He enacted laws to care for widows and orphans. Under Solon it was illegal to strike another person, and parents could be punished for mistreating their children. Under Solon it was illegal to slander others, to use abusive language or to engage in other forms of offensive conduct. Solon outlawed pimping and male prostitution, and he had the city remove the dead from its streets.
Solon's Failure and Rise of the Tyrant Pisistratus
Solon's laws eased the sufferings of the poor and saved others from slipping into degradation. But Athens continued to be overpopulated in relation to the availability of land and the productivity of its agriculture, and common Athenian citizens continued to suffer from or feel threatened by hunger and poverty. Hoping that a rising economy would, as the saying goes, raise all boats, Solon encouraged trade. After this failed to end the unrest he tried to create a spirit of cooperation among the common people by launching military campaigns and building empire. With this, Solon instituted another intrusion by the state into the lives of people: the conscription of males from the ages of eighteen to sixty for military service.
This was not an age when people could change government through elections. When Solon's military aggressions resulted in defeat, unrest at home brought the violent uprising that the elite had long feared – after Solon and his aristocratic allies had ruled for thirty-four years. The uprising was led by a man named Pisistratus, an enterprising aristocrat whom the ruling elite of Athens had driven into exile. While abroad, Pisistratus had gained wealth in mining and timber ventures. With his wealth he had hired an army. And in 560 BCE, with this army and others who saw opportunity in joining a military force, he marched toward Athens and defeated a force that the ruling elite of Athens sent out against him.
Pisistratus took power by having his army occupy a hill overlooking Athens. As the victor over those seen as oppressors, he was popular among the Athenians, but to cut short the possibility of a future rebellion against his power he had his army disarm the populace. And for added security his army took as hostages the sons of leading families, while the head of some families fled into exile. But he left their property unconfiscated, just as the former rulers had left his property unconfiscated after driving him into exile.
Pisistratus tolerated no political party except his own, but he sought continued support from the common people. Like Solon, Pisistratus increased state involvement in social matters. He sponsored religious festivals and public games. He went further than Solon's reforms by taxing everyone equally, eliminating the privilege of lower taxes for the wealthy. And he moved to protect the common farmer from those with wealth by providing them with cheaper loans from the state. With an aggressive foreign policy he supported trade and industry, and he helped trade by building roads. He improved the city's means of obtaining fresh water. He beautified the city by sponsoring sculpture for public places and by improving the city's temples. His policies and interventions gave Athenians full employment and brought renewed prosperity, giving Pisistratus success where Solon had failed.
sparta versus Democracy in Athens
The tyrant Pisistratus died in 527. He was succeeded by his two sons who ruled jointly – more of the succession and dynasty creation common among the propertied.
Among the propertied, passionate opposition to Pisistratus's sons remained. In 514 a young aristocrat assassinated one of the sons. Some other aristocrats attempted but failed to assassinate the surviving son, Hippias. Hippias retaliated with a murderous passion of his own, and some aristocrats fled into exile. At the shrine to the god Apollo at Delphi(about 100 kilometers northeast of Athens) a priest encouraged the exiled aristocrats by suggesting that Apollo was on their side. A leading aristocratic family from Athens, the Alcmaeonidaens, had used their wealth to contribute to Apollo's shrine, and their influence won the support of the city of Sparta against Hippias. To do the will of Apollo, Sparta, in 510, sent an army that defeated Hippias and sent him fleeing to Persia.
Sparta's army put into power an oligarchy of Athenian aristocrats, but most Athenians didn't accept this turn of events. The oligarchy found itself unable to rule and, in 508, progressive members of the upper classes united with commoners, and this coalition of forces amounted to a popular resurgence that was able to overthrow the oligarchy.
The most prominent leader of the resurgence was a rebellious son of the Alcmaeonidaen family, Cleisthenes, who wished to govern in a way that brought more unity among the Athenians. Across recent generations immigration had made Athens a mix of people unrelated by blood, and Cleisthenes extended to many immigrants, and to some slaves, the same rights that Athenian citizens had. He drew up a constitution for Athens that divided Athenians into ten "tribes" based not on blood relations but on where people lived. Each tribe had its own military unit, shrine, priest and assembly. It was an early version of big-tent politics and a step in the direction of giving power to common people. Any member of a tribe could participate in the election of local and state officials. Each tribe sent fifty representatives for one year of service to a city assembly.
The popularity of Cleisthenes' reforms brought new enthusiasm among Athenians for their government and city. This enthusiasm and Cleisthenes' new military organization made Athens stronger militarily, and its strength was soon tested. In 506, Sparta and its Peloponnesian allies invaded Attica hoping to crush the democracy in Athens, which Spartans saw as a defiance of religious tradition. The new politics and morale won over tradition. Athens defeated the invaders and the invaders withdrew. And to stave off any future aggressions from Sparta and its allies, the city of Athens extended its strategy of strength through unity: it allied itself with with Persia.
An Imperfect Democracy
The Athenian democracy had been created on a trust that the average man could be depended upon to do right for his community. It was an orientation that differed from the more intensely religious society of Jews led by an authoritarian priesthood that preached trust and devotion to a wondrous, wise and powerful God. The Greeks did not claim their gods as wise. The gods of the Greeks, for example, were incestuous, while the Greeks abhorred incest. And seeing their gods as more human and with faults of their own, the Greeks were more inclined to put more trust in themselves, which made them more inclined toward democracy.
In Athens, physical training and education was extended to the male children of common families, and it became accepted that boys of commoners should be able to read and write. Schooling was inexpensive because teachers were paid little. Boys started school at the age of seven, and for many it continued for only three or four years, while some others continued until they were eighteen. In addition to reading and writing, the boys studied literature and grammar. They learned poetry by heart, especially the works of Homer. Prose authors were not studied, nor were mathematics and technical subjects. It was not yet a technology-scientific age. Physical education emphasized individual efforts rather than team sports. As before, education in Athens – and elsewhere in Greece – fostered loyalty to the group. It fostered pride in Athens and pride in being Greek as opposed to being "barbarian."
In Athens and some other Greek cities dramas and writing appeared that focused on the human condition rather than the gods. There was a lucid poetry about shared pleasures, love and other feelings. Dramas were written that touched upon human complexity and weakness, including flaws in exemplary heroes. There were insights that modern psychology would build upon: narcissism, the Oedipus complex, phobias and manias.
Mostly it was young men of leisure who were interested in fine literature and worldly knowledge. Democracy brought greater content to common people, but self-interest remained stronger than community interest. Of the forty thousand adult males free to participate in deciding issues, less than a sixth did so. Slaves and women remained without a voice in political affair. In the city's market place one could see poverty, slave drivers, loud peddlers and those who cheated their customers.
Some wealthy Athenians grumbled about the vulgarity of democratic politics. Some of them found democratic government too slow in making judgments and getting things done. The playwright Aristophanes disliked the politically ambitious promising rewards and playing on superstitions.
Athens lacked a professional, responsible, civil service. The functioning of governmental offices remained the special knowledge of a few ambitious politicians who used this knowledge to gain or maintain power and influence. For decades a man had to pass property qualifications to run for high office. Politics and the judiciary in Athens remained under the influence of people of wealth. Venal judges presided at courts of law marked by corruption and perjury. Common people did not have the leisure to serve their city as officials or as members of juries. Not until after 460, when Athens acquired wealth from empire, would people be paid to participate in jury duty or paid to serve as one of the five hundred city council members – pay that would enable common people to leave their work for such activities.
Slavery and the Ancient Greeks
At least as early as the 600s BCE, societies around the Black Sea sold slaves to Greek traders in exchange for luxury goods such as wine and clothing. Many of theses slaves came from Asia Minor, Colchis (today Georgia) and Thrace (today Bulgaria and northeastern Greece). Frequent warring in these areas had created an abundant slave supply, and children sold by desperate parents were part of the supply.
Elites across Greece were inclined to judge poor common folk as innately servile, which mitigated disdain they might have for parents selling their children into slavery. But Herodotus, according to Nell Painter, scolded the Thracians for selling their children for export.
is reported that in Greece profit seekers would scoop up and sell infants that parents had left exposed to die. There were kidnappings to acquire a slave for sale. And there were those who had been born into slavery – the children of slaves and considered the property of the slave master. Female slaves were prohibited from keeping their children, and infants born of master-servant liaison might be destroyed.
If there was a scarcity of slaves on the market their price increased. And the purchase cost of a slave depended on the slave's appearance, age and attitude. The healthy, young, attractive and submissive fetched more money.
Slaves were treated differently according to their purpose. The best treated were the household servants. Only the poorest Athenian family had no domestic slave.
Domestic slaves worked at baking bread, cooking, housekeeping, weaving or nursing, and an unofficial service might include sexuality. Slaves were supervised by the woman of the house and expected to keep the slaves busy. Some domestic slaves were treated almost as if they were a member of the family. Women might become close to their slaves to compensate for their segregation from public affairs and from social gatherings with male guests in their own home. The only public area in which women were allowed to participate was religion, and slave women were allowed to participate in some religious affairs.
Enslaved men were more likely to work in the fields, industrial workshops, as craftsmen or tradesmen or aboard ships at sea – especially as muscle in the city-state's navy. Slaves served as assistants to Greek hoplite (spear-carrying) warriors. A wealthy private citizen might lease slaves to work in a mine or quarry. Athens, according to Nell Irvin Painter, employed between 300 and 1,000 Scythian slaves as policemen. (p. 13)
Slaves were assigned names by their master and not allowed to use their own names.
Walking about town or going on a military campaign, an Athenian aristocrat usually was accompanied by a slave or two
The Greeks at War, 494 to 371 BCE
Journalist-Historians | Greco-Persian War | Competing Empires | Road to the Great War | War and a Question of Genocide | Off and On again War | Athens loses, Sparta Wins | Sparta turns Victory into Defeat
It was an age of people describing events in prose rather than poetry. The Greek writer Herdotus (circa 484–425) worked as a journalist and historian. His was a different kind of writing than would appear in the Old Testament's Book Chronicles. The writer ofChronicles appears to be conveying a religious message to peers in Jerusalem (men who could read). He delivered his message in the tradition of storytellers, beginning with Adam and Eve and eventually reaching David and Solomon. The last events in the Books of Chronicles were during the reign of the Persian Cyrus the Great, which ended in 530 BCE. Biblical scholars estimate that Chronicleswas composed after Herodotus: between 400-250 BCE.
Herodotus chronicled the Greco-Persian War, and he was to be a source for modern scholars. He was a Greek from what today is Turkey, the modern day city of Bodrum, then called Halicarnassus. He has been called the "Father of History" and described as the first historian known to collect his materials systematically and to consider the material's accuracy – hardly the method of ancient oral storytelling. Herodotus attempted to pass along to his readers information unadorned. This included geographical information and descriptions of local ethnicities. He was not writing to praise his gods as priest-writers had, but his view of godly interventions did slip into his writing as in his description of a storm that wrecked much of the Persian fleet as an intervention by Zeus.
Unlike previous storytellers he admitted that he was conveying a personal point of view – that he was being subjective. But he wanted to be fair with those on both sides of a conflict. This made him vulnerable to the prejudices common among the Greeks, and they called him a "barbarian-lover."
Herodotus described the Greco-Persian War like some in the 20th century were to describe the Cold War: a conflict between freedom and slavery. He saw the Persians on the side of slavery and the Greeks on the side of freedom.
Writing about the wars between Persia and the Greek city states, Herodotus claimed to be reporting only that which had been told him, relying on his ability to dismiss what appeared to him as absurd. The problem was that people doing the telling were prone to myths that arose soon after an event. There was not a lot of sophistication around that put people on guard against confusing facts with pleasing interpretations.
Thucydides
The Greek writer Thucydides was approximately 24 years younger than Herodotus and outlived him by 30 years. He chronicled the great war that followed the Greco-Persia of 499-49: the Peloponnesian War of 431-04. Thucydides is considered the first really modern journalist-historian. He surpassed Herodotus in recording events with precision and impartiality. He was an Athenian from a wealthy family and had been educated in rhetoric and philosophy.
He tried to approach his subject with observations and questions rather than preconceptions. He tried to avoid writing propaganda or the distortions created by romanticism. He has been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right. He wrote of what he believed should be a standard for journalists and historians:
He must not be misled by the exaggerated fancies of the poets, or by the tales of chroniclers who seek to please the ear rather than to speak the truth. . . . most of the facts in the lapse of the ages have passed into the region of romance. At such a distance of time he must make up his mind to be satisfied with conclusions resting upon the clearest evidence which can be had. . . . Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to any notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I either saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular enquiry. (Quoted by Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers, p 565.
Greco-Persian War
To 500 BCE the empire of the Persian Achaemenid Dynasty extended to all of Asia Minor, into Thrace and Chalidice. Imperial Persia was generally tolerant of local customs and provided its conquered peoples protection from attacks from wandering warrior tribes. It offered its subjects peace and a stable coinage. But in 499, a desire for self-rule among the Greeks of Asia Minor helped fuel a rebellion against the Persians.
Athens and the city of Eretria (about thirty miles north of Athens), supported the uprising. By 494 the Persians crushed the rebellion, destroying the great city of Miletus, sacking and burning other towns and taking select Greek boys and girls back to Persia. Then, believing that his god-given right to rule should not have been challenged, Persia's King of Kings, Darius the Great, set out to punish Athens and others who had supported the uprising. Darius hoped to extend his rule down the Greek peninsula, and many Greeks opposed to democracy including some Athenians favored submission to the Persians. They saw Persia as a champion of authoritarian rule and expected that Persian rule would include freedom of worship and allow local self-government as it had in Asia MinoR
Those who supported democracy favored resisting the Persians. So too did many Greeks who made their living in industry and trade, fearing that the Persians would give trading favors to rivals such as the Phoenicians – who were subjects of Darius. And the Spartans feared the Persians, believing that if the Persians came to the Greek mainland they would try to eliminate them as a military power.
In the year 490, the Persian fleet sailed across the Aegean Sea and landed a force of many thousand soldiers at Marathon Bay, twenty-six miles by road north of Athens. With the Persians was Hippias, former ruler of Athens, son of Pisistratus, who expected the Persians to return him to power in Athens. The Athenians responded to the threat from Persia by sending troops to Marathon, and it sent a fast runner to Sparta with the news of the Persian landing. Sparta announced that it would join Athens against the Persians. But remaining faithful to their gods, the Spartans waited for the passing of a full moon, and the Athenians had to confront the Persians without them.
Historians write of the heroism among the Greeks during the Persian war. Greeks far and wide, including the Athenians, were inspired by their victory over the great Persian Empire, and they held a religious festival at Delphi as thanksgiving to the gods for the victory at Marathon. And there the oracle of Apollo praised Athens as an eagle "for all time."
Soon it was said that the god Pan had given the Athenians their victory by his causing panic among the Persians. It was said that Pan had done so after having seen a slack in devotion to him among the Athenians and that by giving them victory he was trying to regain their devotion.
But declaring victory was premature. The Greeks had driven off the Persians, but the Persians remained a formidable power. After Darius died in 486, his son and successor, Xerxes, intended to carry out his father's plan to invade the Greek mainland again. Xerxes failed to appreciate adequately the costs that would be incurred by such an expansion or the burdens of maintaining an empire that would be farther reaching. He had trouble enough with the empire as it was. But Xerxes believed in the power of his god, Mazda.
Athens, Sparta and some other Greek city-states expected the return of the Persians. And they did as many others had done before them: they set aside their differences and formed a military alliance. Their alliance was called the Hellenic League and was led by Sparta, still seen as the greatest land-based military power among them. Member cities sent representatives to league congresses, the first of which was held in 481. This congress ended the small wars that were taking place among member cities. And at these congresses, oaths were taken that were supposed to bind the city-states to each other permanently.
Xerxes assembled the greatest military force ever, and in the year 480 he launched his invasion, marching his armies along the coast of Macedonia and down into Greece, while keeping these armies supplied by his navy. Sparta and Thebes sent armies to meet the invaders at Thermopylae, about 20 miles north of Delphi and eighty-five miles northwest of Athens. There they held the Persians at a narrow pass while the league's navy, mostly Athenian, engaged Persian naval forces offshore. The Greek writer Herodotus described the storm that wrecked much of the Persian fleet as an intervention by Zeus, but, inexplicably, Zeus appeared uninterested in helping the Greek cause on land. A traitor among the Greeks showed the Persian foot soldiers a way around the pass at Thermopylae, and the Persians attacked the Greeks from behind. The Thebans surrendered while the Spartans fought and died to the last man. The main force of Persians swarmed through the pass toward Athens. Persia's army overran Attica and Athens, while Athenians fled to the islands ofSalamis, near their port, and Aegina, tens miles to the southwest.
The Athenian navy placed itself between Xerxes' force and the Athenian refugees on the island of Salamis, and it rallied support from numerous coastal Greek cities. Near Salamis, the Athenian navy and its allies won a great naval battle, destroying the Persian fleet – the waters said to be covered with Persian wreckage and blood. With much of the Persian army dependent on ships for supplies, the Persians were forced to march out of Greece and back to Asia Minor. Xerxes had failed. But peace was not declared, and Persia and the Greeks remained at war.
Competing Empires
During their war against Persia, a spirit of unity and brotherhood had arisen among those Greek cities opposed to the Persians, a unity served by their common language, common customs and common religious beliefs. But the spirit of unity didn't last.
A difference arose between Sparta and Athens over the question of continuing their war against Persia. The Athenians were interested in trade with the Greek cities still ruled by Persia, and they wanted to liberate their fellow Greeks from Persian rule. The Spartans were concerned about the many men they had already lost in battle, and they feared that their Helot slaves might take advantage of military losses and rise against them. Sparta and its allies on the Peloponnese peninsula withdrew from the war, leaving Athens as the most influential among those cities continuing the war. Athens created a new league of states – a voluntary association called the Delian League. (Its representatives met on the Island of Delos.) Member states agreed to donate money, ships and crewmen to the war effort and to police the Aegean Sea, and they sent representatives to assemblies where league policies and goals were to be decided.
Athens arrogated to itself the role of policeman within its alliance. According to the Athenian journalist Thucydides, the Athenians were heavy handed in pressuring allies who were "neither accustomed nor willing to undertake protracted toil." Athens forced back into its alliance a city that had broken its oath to remain in the league. It suppressed petty wars within the league and intervened in disputes within member cities, favoring those who supported democracy.
The Athenians were creating an empire. Some Athenians argued that empire was the natural order of things, that if they didn't have the strength to dominate others they would soon be dominated. Some saw empire as a remedy to over-population. Some landless Athenians favored the confiscation of lands abroad as an opportunity to become landowners. Some wealthy Athenians saw in imperialism an opportunity to gain more land. Those Athenians making money from trade supported empire believing that it would benefit them commercially. Some believed that imperialism would provide them jobs, jobs on ships that policed the seas and jobs on the docks that serviced those ships. Some supported empire also because it appeared to guarantee supplies of grain. Many Athenians saw benefit in their city receiving tribute from those city-states that Athens dominated, taxes they would otherwise have to pay.
Athens forced its rule on the island of Scyros (southeast of Attica), the Athenians claiming authority there on the grounds of a discovery in Scyros of the purported bones of a mythical king of Athens, who was said to have migrated there during the Dorian invasions. And claiming that during the Dorian invasions Athenians populated the western coast of Asia Minor, Athenian propaganda portrayed Athens as the mother of cities the Greek cities of Asia Minor. These cities, according to the Athenian imperialists, owed Athens religious homage as was customary between a mother city and its offspring. The Athenians claimed that their goddess Demeter, a goddess of harvest and fertility, had given grain to humanity and that Athens therefore was a benefactor of humanity and was justified in ruling others.
Rather than any kind of a unity or sense of equality among the Greek city-states, a great wars was in the making that would destroy many and damage them all. This was the Great Peloponnesian War, from 431 to 404 BCE.
Road to the Great War
On-again, off-again little wars among the Greeks continued, with Athens fighting to maintain its power and status. Athens intervened in disputes to its north, in Boeotia, where bad governing by democrats had brought rebellion and the return of oligarchs to power. A Boeotian force defeated an Athenian force of a thousand Athenian volunteers, led by men who had mistakenly believed that their small force could subdue the rebellion.
More trouble arose for Athens. In 446, cities on the peninsula-like island of Euboea, to the east of Athens, joined the revolt against Athenian domination. The Athenian leader Pericles was worried about the example that rebellion would set for others in the Athenian empire, and he sent an army and navy to Euboea to crush the rebellion. This inspired still more trouble as the city of Megara, a little northeast of Athens, disliked what it saw as Athenian bullying and joined the anti-Athens rebellion. Pericles withdrew from Euboea to fight Megara. An army from the Peloponnesian League, under a Spartan king, Pleistoanax, responded by invading Attica, but after laying waste to some countryside it withdrew.
Pericles and an army of five thousand infantrymen supported by fifty ships returned to Euboea and subdued the entire island. Athens expelled the inhabitants of Histiaea, in the north of the island, and it sent settlers in their place. But trouble for Athens continued, which Athen met with some success. In 441, Samos, off the coast of Asia Minor, tried to secede from the so-called Athenian alliance. Samos appealed for help from Sparta and the Persians. Sparta remained passive and Persia remained fearful of the Athenian navy. By 339 the Athenian navy was able to blockade Samos and starve it into submission. Samos surrendered its navy. Its defensive walls were torn down. It was forced to pay Athens reparations with money and land. And its oligarchs were exiled and replaced by democrats.
Next came a conflict between Corinth and its colony at Corcyra, an island and city off the northwestern coast of Greece. Corcyra was challenging Corinth's trade monopoly in northwestern Greece and was hampering Corinth's trade with Sicily and southern Italy. In 435 the navies of Corinth and Corcyra battled each other near Corcyra. Corinth lost fifteen ships and some prisoners to Corcyra. Corcyra sold some of the Corinthians into slavery, and Corinth began organizing a bigger attack against Corcyra. To protect itself, Corcyra appealed to Athens and Athens became involved: it accepted Corcyra as an ally. The Corinthians again sailed for Corcyra, with a larger force than before, but victory was snatched from them as the great Athenian fleet appeared. Hatred for Athens among the Corinthians rose to a new high, and the Great Peloponnesian War was a bit closer.
Cities in Chalcidice disliked the extension of Athenian power into their area, and they were ready to support Corinth against Athens. Athens saw revolt coming in one of its subject-ally cities in Chalcidice – Potidaea – and, to prevent the spread of revolt, Athens demanded that Potidaea dismantle its defensive walls and give to Athens some Potidaeans as hostages. Instead, Potidaea sought support from Corinth and the Peloponnesian League. Corinth joined Potidaea and some cities in Chalcidice and Boeotia joined the revolt against Athens. All of Sparta's allies that had grievances against Athens were aroused. Corinth appealed to Sparta, suggesting that if Sparta would not fight for its allies then its allies would seek leadership elsewhere. A meeting of the Peloponnesian League was called, and Sparta sent someone to consult with Apollo at Delphi. The Great War was closer still.
The city of Thebes desired a solid front against Athens, and it sent a delegation and a small force to its neighboring city:Plataea. Violence ensued. Many Plataeans fled to Athens for safety, and Athens sent troops to Plataea. To the enemies of Athens, events at Plataea were a signal for war. Sparta, meanwhile, was encouraged by the Oracle at Delphi, who stated that Apollo was on its side, that if Sparta made war with all its might it would win.
The year was 431 BCE, described by some as the end of Greece's Golden Age. Sparta and its allies invaded Attica, announcing that they were fighting against Athenian imperialism for their independence and for the liberty of Greeks.
The War and a Question of Genocide
Athens began where it had an advantage – with its navy and marines. The leader of Athens, Pericles, let Sparta and its allies advance on land into Attica. People in Attica abandoned their vineyards and farms and fled to safety behind Athens' stone walls. Those with property exposed to the ravages of the enemy were offended by Pericles' strategy. And the strategy of Pericles offended most Athenians. They favored direct and immediate attacks.
Sparta's army didn't try to breach the walls that protected Athens, and when that first year of fighting ended, Sparta withdrew from around Athens, having accomplished nothing more than some harassment, destruction of property and having killed many people.
Athens now had many dead to bury, and Pericles, in his funeral oration, addressed the benefits versus costs of the war by flattering those who had gathered to pay their respects to the dead. He praised their ancestors and fathers for their efforts at having made Athens great and claimed that those who had died had done so for a glorious cause.
The following year, 430 BCE, plague came to Athens, made worse by the overcrowding that had come with people entering the city from the countryside. The plague killed Pericles, and passion influenced the Athenians' choice of a new leader, a man named Cleon, a merchant tanner by trade who was more excitable than had been Pericles. Cleon's desire for vengeance and punishing the enemy matched theirs.
One who did not go along with the public's passion was the playwright Aristophanes. Following a playwright's responsibility to be above common opinion, he depicted Cleon as a demagogue and a rogue. And with his dislike of democracy he expressed his wish that leaders of Athens be chosen by less excitable and more moderate-minded men rather than the public.
Cleon took the toughest of wartime stands against the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos against Athenian domination. In the year 428 (the war's third year) Mytilene led a rebellion against Athens. As the Athenian navy held Mytilene under siege, Cleon told the Athenian Assembly that pity, sentiment and indulgence were fatal to an empire. Brutal measures, he said, were necessary because of the tenacity and malice of their enemies. Punish Mytilene, he advised, or give up your empire and live in the danger of weakness that would accompany this.
Punishment meant killing the men of Mytilene and selling its women and children into slavery – a punishment designed to make others afraid of following Mytilene's example. A member of the assembly, Diodotus, argued against Cleon, claiming that haste and passion were the two things most opposed to good counsel. Haste, he said, usually goes hand in hand with folly and passion usually with a coarseness and narrowness of mind. He described the brutal measures advocated by Cleon as terrorism that would not prevent other subject states from rebelling but would encourage them if they did rebel to fight to the bitter end.
In a close vote the assembly chose to spare Mytilene's population. Athenian marines conquered Mytilene but rather than a genocidal slaughter they merely tore down the city's walls and confiscated its navy. Athens also confiscated Mytilene lands on the shores of mainland Asia Minor, and Athens opened Mytilene to settlement by Athenians. And, as Cleon proposed, Athens had the leaders of Mytilene's revolt executed. The people of Mytilene and others on the island were compelled to be under Athenian domination, but they would be ready to rebel when circumstances improved.
Off and On Again War
In 425 Sparta again invaded Attica – for the fifth time in six years. The Athenian navy subdued a fleet of enemy ships at Navarino Bayon the southwest coast of Peloponnesus and cut off a battalion of Spartans there. Feeling pressured by this setback, Sparta promised Athens peace and requested an armistice – without having consulted its allies. Cleon continued his show of toughness. He rejected Sparta's offer. He wanted to wait for Sparta's unconditional surrender and to press what he saw as his city's advantage. The Athenians took 292 Spartan captives back to Athens as hostages and warned Sparta that they would kill these hostages if Sparta again invaded Attica.
Cleon continued his hard-line ways. Believing that Sparta had been neutralized, Athens attempted a large-scale assault by land against Sparta's Boeotian allies. It was the only major use of land forces by Athens in the war, and the Boeotians defeated them. The sign of weakness that Cleon wanted to avoid was apparent to cities in Chalcidice. They resented an increase in tribute demanded by Athens. Cleon convinced an assembly to allow him to lead a force against the rebellion in Chalcidice. There, Cleon defeated some of the rebellions, but on the way to the city of Amphipolis his bravado failed him. He was killed and his army defeated.
For Athens, demonstrating toughness had not helped the city economically, and now Athens was financially exhausted. Replacing Cleon as the Athenian leader was a more moderate man, a military commander, Nicias, who was willing to end the war. Sparta wanted its hostages back, and in 421, ten years after the Great Peloponnesian War began, Sparta and Athens signed a peace treaty that included a return of prisoners and captured lands. In Athens, rejoicing erupted inspired by weariness of war. The Athenian playwright Euripides, who had also wearied of the war, wrote with enthusiasm in one of his plays: "Down with my spear! Let it be covered with spider webs!"
Allies of Sparta, namely Megara, Corinth and Elis, refused to sign the peace treaty. Desperately wanting peace, Sparta offered Athens an alliance in addition to peace, pledging that it would be an ally of Athens for fifty years. Athens accepted, and the two city-states pledged to defend each other, including Athens helping Sparta should its slaves, the Helots, revolt.
Technically, Megara, Elis and Corinth remained at war with Athens. And Corinth, which had a small empire of its own, was still competing with Athens for advantages in empire. Empire remained as a cause of war, and tensions and sporadic fighting among others continued.
Athens again employed force against rebellion by a city that was a member of its empire. That city was Scione (the western most finger of Chalcidice). Scione wanted freedom from Athenian domination. In 421, Athens killed all of that city's adult males and made slaves of its women and children. It was one of the more notorious events of the war, and as Diodotus had argued in his debate against Cleon, such action brought no advantage to Athens. Other cities that wished to be free of Athenian rule responded to Athenian cruelty at Scione with a greater determination to win their independence.
Within two years of having made peace, Sparta felt it had recovered from war. Attitudes among the Greeks had not changed enough to prevent the return of the Great War. With Athenian imperialism creating tensions and Athens interfering in Peloponnesian affairs, Sparta feared that its alliance with Athens might break down, and it renewed its ties with Corinth, Megara and Elis. Athens asked Sparta to sever its ties with these cities and Sparta refused. In 418, Athens and Sparta went to the assistance of Peloponnesian cities at war with each other, Sparta on one side and Athens on the other, and the armies of Sparta and Athens came to blows. It was the largest land battle since the beginning of the Peloponnesian War – while officially Sparta and Athens were still at peace with each other. The Spartans won easily. The Spartans felt a renewed sense of military superiority and enjoyed a new prestige across Greece
Athens Loses, Sparta Wins
Athens sent a naval expedition to Sicily where the city-states ofSelinus and Segesta were at war against each other, the city of Segesta having sought an alliance with Athens. Athenian trade was booming again and Athenians believed their city had recovered financially. The population of Athens had started growing again, and it had many slaves. Athens still had no sure source of the grain it needed, and some among the Athenians saw remedy in the acquisition of grain from across the Mediterranean Sea to the west, in the region of Sicily and southern Italy. The Athenian assembly saw the request from Segesta as an opportunity to extend their city's power and influence to that part of the world, so the Athenian assembly voted to send a force to Sicily.
Aristophanes was to satirize the expedition in his play The Birds, portraying it as a project by crooks, profiteers and fiddling bureaucrats. Another who opposed the expedition was one of the three men designated as its commander, who consulted with various seers and diviners who prophesied its doom. And supporters of the expedition hired rival oracles who predicted a glorious triumph.
The expedition established itself on land and in the protected waters around Syracuse, and slowly it began to encircle and blockade the city. The expedition won allies among some cities in Sicily, who supplied it with stores of food.
Sparta feared that if Athens succeeded in Sicily, Athens would overshadow Carthage in the western Mediterranean and would become more of a threat. Responding to a request from Syracuse, Sparta and Corinth sent aid, including an able military commander from Sparta, Gylippus, who took charge of Syracuse's defense. Gylippus led a force that broke through the Athenian's blockade and rallied the city's defenders – while the Athenian expedition bungled opportunities.
The expedition proved a failure. Many Athenians lost sons in the expedition, and the citizens of Athens grieved and feared for their city and themselves. News of Athens' defeat in Sicily encouraged Persia to regain control of Asia Minor, and Persia began sending envoys to Sparta in hope of gaining Sparta's assent and cooperation.
Athens' losses also encouraged members of its empire to revolt. From Euboea, Lesbos and Chios went messages to Sparta's King, Agis, stating that they would revolt against Athens as soon as a Peloponnesian fleet appeared off their coasts. Sparta promised the Persians recognition of their control over Greek cities in Asia Minor in exchange for funds for building ships and for hiring men to row these ships, and Sparta sought naval reinforcements from Syracuse. While Athens was building ships to replace what they had lost at Syracuse, Sparta was hoping to build a navy that could neutralize the power of Athens at sea.
Sparta sent ships and troops to the eastern side of the Aegean Sea, and there in the winter of 413/412 the revolts against Athenian rule began. Lesbos signed a treaty with both Sparta and Persia, against Athens. So too did the city of Miletus on the coast of Asia Minor – while Persia was reasserting itself as an arbiter in the region and demanding tributes from local rulers.
For Athens, defeat abroad led to turmoil at home. In 411, while the Athenian navy was in the eastern Aegean, a group in Athens opposed to democracy launched a coup and set up an oligarchy called the Four Hundred. They created a constitution based on nostalgia for ancestral custom, and they began a rule of terror and totalitarianism. The Athenian fleet would have liked to return to Athens to drive the Four Hundred from power, but they believed they were needed where they were, to defend the empire. The Four Hundred sought help from those with whom they shared a disdain for democracy: the Spartans. But before help could arrive from Sparta, the Four Hundred were driven from power by those who called themselves the Five Thousand, and the following year democracy returned to Athens.
With Persian financial resources behind them and a new fleet, Sparta and its allies won a series of military successes, including a victory over the Athenian main fleet. This left Athens surrounded by enemy forces on land and sea and cut off from sources of food. Through the winter of 405-04 Athenians suffered hunger. In the spring of 404 – twenty-seven years after the glorious cause had first begun – Athens surrendered. The Great Peloponnesian War had ended.
Athens was defeated. It fared worse than it might have had it merely pursued trade by mutual agreement and held to alliances based on equality.
Sparta Turns Victory into Defeat
Sparta had been promising to protect the liberty of those threatened by Athens and to restore liberty to those states that had been "enslaved" by Athens. It celebrated its victory over Athens as the dawn of liberty for Greece. But the Spartans were not suited for the task of protecting liberty. Like the Athenians before the war, the Spartans believed in rule by force rather than cooperation. Like many Athenians, they believed that the strong should dominate those who were weaker and that victors should dominate the vanquished.
At the war's end from among Sparta's allies came calls for killing Athenian adult males and enslaving its women and children – as Athens had done to Scione. But Sparta spared the Athenians, claiming that it was doing so because of the good service Athens had provided the cities of Greece generations before in combating Persia's invasions. Sparta, however, had another motive for sparing Athens: they feared that a destroyed Athens would add to the growth in influence of Thebes, just north of Athens
Sparta placed hope in an anti-democratic oligarchy in Athens, and that oligarchy executed some fifteen hundred fellow Athenians whom they considered dangerous. They also executed resident aliens whose wealth they wished to confiscate. And about five hundred democrats fled Athens and became the nucleus of a resistance group based in Thebes.
Sparta left a military force in various cities that supported local aristocratic oligarchies. Violence erupted against these oligarchies, and Sparta's warriors busied themselves in putting down these rebellions.
Amid the turmoil, a coalition of moderate conservatives and democrats managed to overthrow the oligarchy in Athens. Sparta was fighting numerous little wars, and from 395 to 386 it fought against a coalition that included Boeotia, Corinth, Argos and Athens. Then Greeks under Persian rule in Asia Minor rebelled again against Persian rule, and they asked Sparta to act on its claim as the defender of liberty for Greeks. The Spartans had promised Persia that they would recognize Persia's power over the Greeks in Asia Minor, but now Sparta tried to redeem itself as the defender of all Greeks, and it went to war against Persia.
Sparta was discovering the disadvantages of being the supreme defender of Greek liberty. Military actions were weakening it. Persia defeated Sparta's fleet, which ended Sparta's naval superiority among the Greeks. And to the alarm of Sparta and the Persians, Athens – a quarter-century after the end of the Peloponnesian War – was rebuilding its navy. And in 379, benefiting from a degree of recovery, Athens was able to help Theban exiles liberate their city from an oppressive, pro-Spartan oligarchy.
Ultimately, security for Sparta lay not in its physical might but in support it had from other cities. Sparta was generating a lot of animosity toward itself, not only by interfering in local politics but also by using brutal methods to collect tribute they believed was their due as the defender of Greek liberty
In response to the threat of the coalition that was forming against it, Sparta made peace again with Persia, which offended many Greeks. With the Greeks responding to new realities and forgetting the Peloponnesian War, Athens was able to create a maritime confederacy that included most of its former allies. Thebes built its own federation among neighboring cities in Boeotia, and Thebes and Athens fought skirmishes against Sparta.
Sparta, Athens and Thebes attempted negotiations to settle their differences, but the negotiations collapsed over the insistence by Thebes that its federation in Boeotia be recognized. In 371, believing that it was defending its dominant position in Greece, Sparta moved against Thebes by invading Boeotia in force. Sparta by this time had already lost its dominance in Greece, and the Thebans defeated Sparta's army, destroying the myth that Sparta's army was invincible.
Greeks far and wide recognized that Sparta's domination of Greece had ended. New coalitions were formed. Thebes was the strongest military power, and, to check Theban power, Athens joined a coalition with the humbled Sparta and the city-states of Elis, Achaea andMantinea.
Sparta's way of life, meanwhile, had been slipping away. Sparta had lost much in manpower, and many Spartans had lost their enthusiasm for war. Those Spartans traveling beyond their own city on military or diplomatic missions had acquired new attitudes. Outside their own city they were less inhibited, and they lost the forbearance that had been their tradition. They acquired an appetite for possessions. They became more interested in leisure and other pleasures. Trade between Sparta and the outside world had increased, with some Spartans accumulating luxuries. Land in Sparta was begnning to be bought and sold – two-fifths of the landowners being women, the survivors of war. The acquisition of money promoted inequalities among the Spartans. Some were declining into poverty and becoming malcontents. And those who were still wealthy with land feared that these malcontents might make common cause with the Helots.
The birth rate in Greece was rising again, adding to the chaos. There was a loss in Greece's ability to export manufactured goods to pay for the greater need to import food. A ruinous shift in the balance of trade developed against Greece's cities. These conditions gave rise again to numerous Greeks looking for places to emigrate. Desperate young men sold themselves as mercenary soldiers to almost any power.
With all of their heroism, sacrifice, speech about glory and the need to be tough, and their communications with the gods, the Greeks had failed to elevate their well-being.
