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119-466: Sicyon was built on a low triangular plateau about 3 kilometres (two miles) from the Corinthian Gulf . Between the city and its port lay a fertile plain with olive groves and orchards. In Mycenean times , according to Eusebius, Sicyon had been ruled by a line of twenty-six mythical kings and then seven priests of Apollo. The king-list given by Pausanias comprises twenty-four kings, beginning with

238-412: A plateau ( / p l ə ˈ t oʊ , p l æ ˈ t oʊ , ˈ p l æ t oʊ / ; French: [plato] ; pl. : plateaus or plateaux ), also called a high plain or a tableland , is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Often one or more sides have deep hills or escarpments . Plateaus can be formed by

357-511: A Sicyonian contingent fought bravely in the Battle of Mycale , where they lost more men than any other city. Later in the 5th century BC, Sicyon, like Corinth, suffered from the commercial rivalry of Athens in the western seas, and was repeatedly harassed by squadrons of Athenian ships. The Sicyonians fought two battles against the Athenians, first against their admiral Tolmides in 455 BC and then in

476-577: A congress of their allies to discuss the possibility of war with Athens. Sparta's powerful ally Corinth was notably opposed to intervention, and the congress voted against war with Athens. The Athenians crushed the revolt, and peace was maintained. The more immediate events that led to war involved Athens and Corinth. After a defeat by their colony of Corcyra , a sea power that was not allied to either Sparta or Athens, Corinth began to build an allied naval force. Alarmed, Corcyra sought alliance with Athens. Athens discussed with both Corcyra and Corinth, and made

595-549: A defensive alliance with Corcyra. At the Battle of Sybota , a small contingent of Athenian ships played a critical role in preventing a Corinthian fleet from capturing Corcyra. In order to uphold the Thirty Years' Peace, the Athenians were instructed not to intervene in the battle unless it was clear that Corinth would invade Corcyra. However, the Athenian ships participated in the battle, and the arrival of additional Athenian triremes

714-544: A great victory at the Battle of Sphacteria . In a shocking turn of events, 300 Spartan hoplites encircled by Athenian forces surrendered. The Spartan image of invincibility took significant damage. The Athenians jailed Sphacterian hostages in Athens and resolved to execute the captured Spartans if a Peloponnesian army invaded Attica again. After these battles, the Spartan general Brasidas raised an army of allies and helots and marched

833-542: A land attack and subject to Spartan control. According to Thucydides, although the Spartans took no action then, they "secretly felt aggrieved". Conflict between the states flared up again in 465 BC, when a helot revolt broke out in Sparta. The Spartans summoned forces from all of their allies, including Athens, to help them suppress the revolt. Athens sent out a sizable contingent (4,000 hoplites ), but upon its arrival, this force

952-646: A land battle against Pericles with 1000 hoplites in 453 BC. In the Peloponnesian War Sicyon followed the lead of Sparta and Corinth. When these two powers quarrelled during the peace of Nicias , it remained loyal to the Spartans. At the reprise of the war, during the Athenian expedition in Sicily , the Sicyonians contributed 200 pressed hoplites under their commander Sargeus to the force that relieved Syracuse . At

1071-517: A line of tyrants called the Orthagorides after the name of the first ruler Orthagoras. The most important however was the founder's grandson Cleisthenes , the grandfather of the Athenian legislator Cleisthenes , who ruled from 600 to 560 BC. Besides reforming the city's constitution to the advantage of the Ionians and replacing Dorian cults with the worship of Dionysus , Cleisthenes gained a reputation as

1190-469: A minor Spartan victory by their skillful general Lysander at the naval battle of Notium in 406 BC. Alcibiades was not re-elected general by the Athenians and he exiled himself from the city. He would never again lead Athenians in battle. Athens won the naval battle of Arginusae . The Spartan fleet under Callicratidas lost 70 ships and the Athenians lost 25 ships. But, due to bad weather, the Athenians were unable to rescue their stranded crews or finish off

1309-501: A number of other states. For a time during this conflict, Athens controlled not only Megara but also Boeotia . But at its end, a massive Spartan invasion of Attica forced Athens to cede the lands it had won on the Greek mainland, and Athens and Sparta recognized each other's right to control their respective alliance systems. The war was officially ended by the Thirty Years' Peace , signed in

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1428-568: A number of processes, including upwelling of volcanic magma , extrusion of lava , and erosion by water and glaciers . Plateaus are classified according to their surrounding environment as intermontane, piedmont, or continental. A few plateaus may have a small flat top while others have wider ones. Plateaus can be formed by a number of processes, including upwelling of volcanic magma, extrusion of lava, plate tectonics movements, and erosion by water and glaciers. Volcanic plateaus are produced by volcanic activity . The Columbia Plateau in

1547-632: A period now called the Athenian Empire . By mid-century, the Persians had been driven out of the Aegean and had ceded control of vast territories to Athens. Athens had greatly increased its own power; a number of its formerly independent allies were reduced, over the course of the century, to the status of tribute-paying subject states of the Delian League. This tribute was used to fund a powerful fleet and, after

1666-518: A powerful Peloponnesian state that had remained independent of Lacedaemon. With the support of the Athenians, the Argives forged a coalition of democratic states in the Peloponnese, including the powerful states of Mantinea and Elis . Early Spartan attempts to break up the coalition failed, and the leadership of the Spartan king Agis was called into question. Emboldened, the Argives and their allies, with

1785-576: A retreat to Athens, but Nicias at first refused. After additional setbacks, Nicias seemed to agree to a retreat until a bad omen, in the form of a lunar eclipse , delayed withdrawal. The delay was costly and forced the Athenians into a major sea battle in the Great Harbor of Syracuse. The Athenians were thoroughly defeated. Nicias and Demosthenes marched their remaining forces inland in search of friendly allies. The Syracusan cavalry rode them down mercilessly, eventually killing or enslaving all who were left of

1904-542: A river was already there, though not necessarily on exactly the same course. Then, subterranean geological forces caused the land in that part of North America to gradually rise by about a centimeter per year for millions of years. An unusual balance occurred: the river that would become the Colorado River was able to erode into the crust of the Earth at a nearly equal rate to the uplift of the plateau. Now, millions of years later,

2023-511: A short time the town was now called "Demetrias", but eventually the old name prevailed. Demetrius left a garrison in the castle to control the city, and the commander Cleon established another tyrannical regime. After some twenty years he was killed by two rivals, Euthydemus and Timocleidas , who became the new joint tyrants of Sicyon. Their rule ended, probably around the start of the Chremonidean War in 267 BC, when they were expelled by

2142-609: Is divided into three main flat regions: the Bogotá savanna , the valleys of Ubaté and Chiquinquirá , and the valleys of Duitama and Sogamoso . The parallel Sierra of Andes delimit one of the world highest plateaux: the Altiplano , (Spanish for "high plain"), Andean Plateau or Bolivian Plateau. It lies in west-central South America, where the Andes are at their widest, is the most extensive area of high plateau on Earth outside of Tibet. The bulk of

2261-683: Is sometimes called the Roof of Africa due to its height and large area. Another example is the Highveld which is the portion of the South African inland plateau which has an altitude above approximately 1,500 metres, but below 2,100 metres, thus excluding the Lesotho mountain regions. It is home to some of the largest South African urban agglomerations . In Egypt are the Giza Plateau and Galala Mountain , which

2380-417: Is still to be seen in the archaic metal facings found at Olympia . Its pottery, which resembled Corinthian ware , was exported with the latter as far as Etruria . In Sicyon also the art of painting was supposed to have been invented. After the fall of the tyrants their institutions survived until the end of the 6th century BC, when Dorian supremacy was re-established, perhaps by the agency of Sparta under

2499-528: Is the Scottish Highlands . Plateaus are classified according to their surrounding environment. The highest African plateau is the Ethiopian Highlands which cover the central part of Ethiopia. It forms the largest continuous area of its altitude in the continent, with little of its surface falling below 1,500 metres (4,921 ft), while the summits reach heights of up to 4,550 metres (14,928 ft). It

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2618-558: Is the home of more than 70 million people. The Western Plateau , part of the Australian Shield , is an ancient craton covering much of the continent's southwest, an area of some 700,000 square kilometres. It has an average elevation between 305 and 460 metres. The North Island Volcanic Plateau is an area of high land occupying much of the centre of the North Island of New Zealand, with volcanoes, lava plateaus, and crater lakes,

2737-776: The Aegean . He had his satrap Tissaphernes make alliance with Sparta against Athens . In 412 BC, this led to the Persian reconquest of most of Ionia . Tissaphernes also helped fund the Peloponnesian fleet. Facing the resurgence of Athens, from 408 BC, Darius II decided to continue the war against Athens and give stronger support to the Spartans . He sent his son Cyrus the Younger into Asia Minor as satrap of Lydia , Phrygia Major and Cappadocia , and general commander ( Karanos , κἀρανος) of

2856-847: The Deccan Plateau (≈1,900,000 km (730,000 sq mi), elevation 300–600 metres (980–1,970 ft)). A large plateau in North America is the Colorado Plateau , which covers about 337,000 km (130,000 sq mi) in Colorado , Arizona , New Mexico , and Utah . In northern Arizona and southern Utah the Colorado Plateau is bisected by the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon . This came to be over 10 million years ago,

2975-511: The Dorian invasion the city remained subject to Argos , whence its Dorian conquerors had come. The community was now divided into the ordinary three Dorian tribes and an equally privileged tribe of Ionians , besides which a class of serfs ( κορυνηφόροι , korynēphóroi or κατωνακοφόροι , katōnakophóroi ) lived on and worked the land. For some centuries the suzerainty of Argos remained, but after 676 BC Sicyon regained its independence under

3094-794: The Greco-Persian Wars were over. After defeating the Second Persian invasion of Greece in the year 480 BC, Athens led the coalition of Greek city-states that continued the Greco-Persian Wars with attacks on Persian territories in the Aegean and Ionia. What ensued was a period which Thucydides called the Pentecontaetia , in which Athens increasingly became an empire, carrying out an aggressive war against Persia and increasingly dominating other city-states. Athens brought under its control all of Greece except for Sparta and its allies, ushering in

3213-585: The Thirty Tyrants , a reactionary regime set up by Sparta. In 403 BC, the oligarchs were overthrown and a democracy was restored by Thrasybulus . Although the hegemony of Athens was broken, the Attic city completed the recovery of its autonomy in the Corinthian War and continued to play an active role in Greek politics. Sparta was later defeated by Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. A few decades later,

3332-429: The autochthonous Aegialeus . The penultimate king of the list, Agamemnon , compels the submission of Sicyon to Mycenae ; after him comes the Dorian usurper Phalces . Pausanias shares his source with Castor of Rhodes , who used the king-list in compiling tables of history; the common source was convincingly identified by Felix Jacoby as a lost Sicyonica by the late 4th-century poet Menaechmus of Sicyon . After

3451-646: The ephor Chilon , and the city was enrolled in the Peloponnesian League . Henceforth, its policy was usually determined either by Sparta or Corinth . During the Persian Wars , the Sicyonians participated with fifteen triremes in the Battle of Salamis and with 3,000 hoplites in the Battle of Plataea . On the Delphic Serpent Column celebrating the victory Sicyon was named in fifth place after Sparta, Athens, Corinth and Tegea. In September 479 BC

3570-574: The hegemony of the Greek world . The war remained undecided until the later intervention of the Persian Empire in support of Sparta. Led by Lysander , the Spartan fleet (built with Persian subsidies) finally defeated Athens which began a period of Spartan hegemony over Greece. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. The first phase (431–421 BC) was named the Ten Years War, or

3689-552: The " Roof of the World ", which is still being formed by the collisions of the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates . The Tibetan Plateau covers approximately 2,500,000 km (970,000 sq mi), at about 5,000 m (16,000 ft) above sea level. The plateau is sufficiently high to reverse the Hadley cell convection cycles and to drive the monsoons of India towards

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3808-507: The "paradisiac plain of Sicyon". During the early Middle Ages, Sikyon continued to decline. It became a bishop's seat and, judging by its later designation "Hellas," it appears to have become a haven for populations seeking refuge from the settlement of Slavic groups in Greece during the 7th century. Following the Fourth Crusade , the settlement, then known as Vasilika (Basilikata), came under

3927-602: The 17th year of the war, word came to Athens that one of their distant allies in Sicily was under attack from Syracuse, the main city of Sicily. The people of Syracuse were ethnically Dorian (as were the Spartans), while the Athenians, and their ally in Sicilia, were Ionian. The Athenians felt obliged to help their ally. They also held visions, rallied on by Alcibiades , who ultimately led an expedition, of conquering all of Sicily. Syracuse

4046-436: The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica as "insignificant") lies next to the site of ancient and medieval Sikyon. It is now named Sikyona , reflecting the name of the ancient city. Kings largely according to Eusebius's chronicle and other Greco-Roman sources are: Seven priests of Apollo Carneius ruled that follow these kings as rulers according to Eusebius are: Ancient Modern Sicyon has been traditionally identified with

4165-471: The 20-year-old son of Cleinias, conquered the city with a night assault and expelled the last tyrant. Aratus re-established democracy, called back the exiles and brought his city into the Achaean League . This move ended the internal strife and Aratus remained the leading figure of Achaean politics until his death in 213 BC, during a period of great achievements. The prosperity and peaceful condition of Sicyon

4284-435: The Aegean, and Sparta's other allies were also slow to furnish troops or ships. The Ionian states that rebelled expected protection, and many rejoined the Athenian side. The Persians were slow to send promised funds and ships, frustrating battle plans. At the start of the war, the Athenians had prudently put aside some money and 100 ships that were to be used only as a last resort. These ships were then released, and served as

4403-662: The Altiplano lies within Bolivian and Peruvian territory while its southern parts lie in Chile. The Altiplano plateau hosts several cities like Puno, Oruro, El Alto and La Paz the administrative seat of Bolivia. Northeastern Altiplano is more humid than the Southwestern, the latter of which hosts several salares , or salt flats, due to its aridity. At the Bolivia-Peru border lies Lake Titicaca ,

4522-566: The Archidamian War, after the Spartan king Archidamus II , who invaded Attica several times with the full hoplite army of the Peloponnesian League , the alliance network dominated by Sparta (then known as Lacedaemon). The Long Walls of Athens rendered this strategy ineffective, while the superior navy of the Delian League (Athens' alliance) raided the Peloponnesian coast to trigger rebellions within Sparta. The precarious Peace of Nicias

4641-445: The Athenian cause. But instead of attacking, Nicias procrastinated and the campaigning season of 415 BC ended with Syracuse scarcely damaged. With winter approaching, the Athenians withdrew into their quarters and spent the winter gathering allies. The delay allowed Syracuse to request help from Sparta, who sent their general Gylippus to Sicily with reinforcements. Upon arriving, he raised a force from several Sicilian cities, and went to

4760-479: The Athenian fleet, in 405 BC, at the Battle of Aegospotami , destroying 168 ships. Only 12 Athenian ships escaped, and several of these sailed to Cyprus , carrying the strategos (general) Conon , who was anxious not to face the judgment of the Assembly . Facing starvation and disease from the prolonged siege , Athens surrendered in 404 BC, and its allies soon surrendered as well. The democrats at Samos , loyal to

4879-449: The Athenian population died. Athenian manpower was correspondingly drastically reduced and even foreign mercenaries refused to hire themselves out to a city riddled with plague. The fear of plague was so widespread that the Spartan invasion of Attica was abandoned, their troops being unwilling to risk contact with the diseased enemy. After the death of Pericles, the Athenians turned somewhat against his conservative, defensive strategy and to

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4998-415: The Athenians had broken the peace, essentially declaring war. The first years of the Peloponnesian war are known as the Archidamian War (431–421 BC), after Sparta's king Archidamus II . Sparta and its allies, except for Corinth, were almost exclusively land-based, and able to summon large armies which were nearly unbeatable (thanks to the legendary Spartan forces ). The Athenian Empire, although based in

5117-462: The Athenians; but instead of withdrawing, the Athenians sent another hundred ships and another 5,000 troops to Sicily. Under Gylippus, the Syracusans and their allies decisively defeated the Athenians on land; and Gylippus encouraged the Syracusans to build a navy, which defeated the Athenian fleet when they tried to withdraw. The Athenian army tried to withdraw overland to friendlier Sicilian cities, but

5236-566: The Despot Theodore. Finally, Despot Theodore II Palaiologos of the Morea seized Vasilika in 1427, alongside other gains from the Principality of Achaia. The Ottoman Turks invaded and subjugated Corinth and Vasilika, alongside other northern Moreot towns and fortresses, in 1458, two years before completing the conquest of the Morea in 1460–1461. A village named until 1920 Vasiliko (described by

5355-698: The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is at an elevation of about 2,450 m (8,040 ft) above sea level , and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is about 2,150 m (7,050 ft) above sea level. At its deepest, the Colorado River is about 1,830 m (6,000 ft) below the level of the North Rim. Another high-altitude plateau in North America is the Mexican Plateau . With an area of 601,882 km (232,388 sq mi) and average height of 1,825 metres, it

5474-541: The Peloponnese. Athens stretched their military activities into Boeotia and Aetolia , quelled the Mytilenean revolt and began fortifying posts around the Peloponnese. One of these posts was near Pylos on a tiny island called Sphacteria , where the first war turned in Athens's favor. The post off Pylos exploited Sparta's dependence on the helots, slaves who worked the fields while its citizens trained to be soldiers. The Pylos post began attracting helot runaways. In addition,

5593-761: The Peloponnesian League would respect each other's autonomy and internal affairs. A further provocation was Athens in 433/2 BC imposing trade sanctions on Megarian citizens (once more a Spartan ally after the First Peloponnesian War). It was alleged that the Megarians had desecrated the Hiera Orgas . These sanctions, known as the Megarian decree , were largely ignored by Thucydides , but some modern economic historians have noted that forbidding Megara to trade with

5712-537: The Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the fifth century BC and the golden age of Greece . The main historical source for most of the war is the detailed account in The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides . He states that he began writing his history as soon as the war broke out and took his information from first-hand accounts, including events he witnessed himself. An Athenian who fought in

5831-401: The Persian troops. There, Cyrus allied with the Spartan general Lysander . In him, Cyrus found a man willing to help him become king, just as Lysander himself hoped to become absolute ruler of Greece by the aid of the Persian prince. Thus, Cyrus put all his means at the disposal of Lysander in the Peloponnesian War. When Cyrus was recalled to Susa by his dying father Darius , he gave Lysander

5950-573: The Sicilian Expedition, Lacedaemon encouraged the revolt of Athens's tributary allies, and indeed, much of Ionia rose in revolt. The Syracusans sent their fleet to the Peloponnesians, and the Persians decided to support the Spartans with money and ships. Revolt and faction threatened in Athens itself. The Athenians managed to survive for several reasons. First, their foes lacked initiative. Corinth and Syracuse were slow to bring their fleets into

6069-445: The Sicyonian sculpture to a level hardly surpassed anywhere else in Greece. The tyrant Aristratus , a friend of the Macedonian royal family , had himself portrayed by the painter Melanthius aside the goddess of victory Nike on a chariot. In this period Sicyon was the undisputed center of Greek painting with its school attracting famous artists from all over Greece, including the celebrated Apelles and Pausias . In 323 BC Euphron

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6188-405: The Spartan assembly. This debate was also attended by an uninvited delegation from Athens, which also asked to speak, and became the scene of a debate between the Athenians and the Corinthians. Thucydides reports that the Corinthians condemned Sparta's inactivity until then, warning Sparta that if it remained passive, it would soon be outflanked and without allies. In response, the Athenians reminded

6307-420: The Spartan elite forces to defeat them. The result was a complete victory for the Spartans, which rescued their city from the brink of strategic defeat. The democratic alliance was broken up, and most of its members were reincorporated into the Peloponnesian League. With its victory at Mantinea, Sparta pulled itself back from the brink of utter defeat, and re-established its hegemony throughout the Peloponnese. In

6426-407: The Spartan fleet. Despite their victory, these failures caused outrage in Athens and led to a controversial trial . The trial resulted in the execution of six of Athens's top naval commanders. Athens's naval supremacy would now be challenged without several of its most able military leaders and a demoralized navy. Unlike some of his predecessors, the new Spartan general, Lysander, was not a member of

6545-464: The Spartan royal families and was also formidable in naval strategy; he was an artful diplomat, who had even cultivated good personal relationships with the Achaemenid prince Cyrus the Younger , son of Emperor Darius II . Seizing its opportunity, the Spartan fleet sailed at once to the Dardanelles , the source of Athens's grain . Threatened with starvation, the Athenian fleet had no choice but to follow. Through cunning strategy, Lysander totally defeated

6664-413: The Spartans of Athens's record of military success and opposition to Persia, warned them of confronting such a powerful state, and encouraged Sparta to seek arbitration as provided by the Thirty Years' Peace. The Spartan king Archidamus II spoke against the war, but the opinion of the hawkish ephor Sthenelaidas prevailed in the Spartan ecclesia . A majority of the Spartan assembly voted to declare that

6783-401: The Younger , a grandson of the tyrant Euphron, reintroduced a democracy, but was soon conquered by the Macedonians during the Lamian War . When the Macedonian commander Alexander was murdered in Sicyon in 314 BC, his wife Cratesipolis took control of the city and ruled it for six years, until she was induced by king Ptolemy I to hand it over to the Egyptians. Between 308 and 303 BC Sicyon

6902-434: The ancient Greek world. Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the war, was reduced to a state of near-complete subjection, while Sparta became established as the leading power of Greece. The economic costs of the war were felt all across Greece, poverty became widespread in the Peloponnese, while Athens was devastated and never regained its pre-war prosperity. The war also wrought subtler changes to Greek society,

7021-422: The battle, the Athenians obliterated the Spartan fleet, and succeeded in re-establishing the financial basis of the Athenian Empire. Between 410 and 406, Athens won a continuous string of victories, and eventually recovered large portions of its empire. All of this was due, in no small part, to Alcibiades. From 414 BC, Darius II , ruler of the Achaemenid Empire had started to resent increasing Athenian power in

7140-401: The beginning of the 4th century, in the Corinthian war , Sicyon sided again with Sparta and became its base of operations against the allied troops round Corinth. In 369 BC Sicyon was captured and garrisoned by the Thebans in their successful attack on the Peloponnesian League. From 368 to 366 BC Sicyon was ruled by Euphron who first favoured democracy, but then made himself tyrant. Euphron

7259-458: The bitter last, held on slightly longer, and were allowed to flee with their lives. The surrender stripped Athens of its walls, its fleet, and all of its overseas possessions. Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved. However, the Spartans announced their refusal to destroy a city that had done a good service at a time of greatest danger to Greece, and took Athens into their own system. Athens

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7378-463: The chief instigator and general of the First Sacred War (590 BC) in the interests of the Delphians . His successor Aeschines was expelled by the Spartans in 556 BC and Sicyon became an ally of the Lacedaemonians for more than a century. During this time, the Sicyonians developed the various industries for which they were known in antiquity. As the abode of the sculptors Dipoenus and Scyllis it gained pre-eminence in woodcarving and bronze work such as

7497-471: The conflict between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta, each of which supported friendly political factions within other states, made war a common occurrence in the Greek world. Ancient Greek warfare , originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, was transformed into an all-out struggle between city-states , complete with mass atrocities. Shattering religious and cultural taboos, devastating vast swathes of countryside, and destroying whole cities,

7616-414: The conquest of all of Italy and Carthage , and to use the resources and soldiers from these new conquests to conquer the Peloponnese. The Athenian force consisted of over 100 ships and some 5,000 infantry and light-armored troops. Cavalry was limited to about 30 horses, which proved to be no match for the large and highly trained Syracusan cavalry. Upon landing in Sicily, several cities immediately joined

7735-579: The control of the Principality of Achaia and became part of the prince's domain. A castle was erected atop the ruined ancient acropolis by Prince William of Villehardouin (1246–1278), to complement the defenses of Corinth. By 1369, many villages in the vicinity of Vasilika were abandoned due to the raids of Turkish pirates. Together with Corinth, Vasilika was acquired by the Florentine in Angevin service Niccolò Acciaioli , from whom it passed to Donato Acciaioli in 1362. Donato's son Angelo Acciaioli mortgaged Corinth and Vasilika to his cousin Nerio I Acciaioli ,

7854-402: The core of the Athenians' fleet throughout the rest of the war. An oligarchical revolution occurred in Athens, in which a group of 400 seized power. Peace with Sparta might have been possible, but the Athenian fleet, now based on the island of Samos , refused the change. In 411 BC, this fleet engaged the Spartans at the Battle of Syme . The fleet appointed Alcibiades their leader, and continued

7973-580: The crust. Tectonic plateaus are formed by tectonic plate movements which cause uplift, and are normally of a considerable size, and a fairly uniform altitude. Examples are the Deccan Plateau in India and the Meseta Central on the Iberian Peninsula . Plateaus can also be formed by the erosional processes of glaciers on mountain ranges, leaving them sitting between the mountain ranges. Water can also erode mountains and other landforms down into plateaus. Dissected plateaus are highly eroded plateaus cut by rivers and broken by deep narrow valleys. An example

8092-470: The early part of the war, Thucydides was exiled in 423 BC and settled in the Peloponnese, where he spent the rest of the war collecting sources and writing his history. Scholars regard Thucydides as reliable and neutral between the two sides. A partial exception are the lengthy speeches he reports, which Thucydides admits are not accurate records of what was said, but his interpretation of the general arguments presented. The narrative begins several years before

8211-401: The expedition without being tried (many believed in order to better plot against him). After arriving in Sicily, Alcibiades was recalled to Athens for trial. Fearing that he would be unjustly condemned, Alcibiades defected to Sparta and Nicias was placed in charge of the mission. After his defection, Alcibiades claimed to the Spartans that the Athenians planned to use Sicily as a springboard for

8330-475: The fame of Sicyon as an undisputed capital of ancient art. Even this time democracy did not last more than a few years, and in 264 BC Cleinias was slain by his cognate Abantidas , who established his tyranny for twelve years. In 252 BC Abantidas was murdered by two rhetoricians, Aristotle the Dialectician and Deinias of Argos , and his father Paseas took over, only to be murdered after a short rule by another rival named Nicocles . In 251, Aratus of Sicyon ,

8449-420: The fear of a revolt of helots emboldened by the nearby Athenians drove the Spartans to attack the post. Demosthenes outmaneuvered the Spartans in the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and trapped a group of Spartan soldiers on Sphacteria as he waited for them to surrender. But weeks later he proved unable to finish them off. Instead, the inexperienced Cleon boasted in the Assembly that he could end the affair, and did win

8568-401: The fleet. The Athenian fleet, the dominant Greek naval force, went on the offensive, winning at Naupactus . In 430 BC, an outbreak of a plague hit Athens. The plague ravaged the densely packed city, and in the long run, was a significant cause of its final defeat. The plague wiped out over 30,000 citizens, sailors and soldiers, including Pericles and his sons. Roughly one-third to two-thirds of

8687-408: The following year and lost all its empire. Lysander imposed puppet oligarchies on the former members of the Delian League, including Athens, where the regime was known as the Thirty Tyrants . The Peloponnesian War was followed ten years later by the Corinthian War (394–386 BC), which, although it ended inconclusively, helped Athens regain its independence from Sparta. The Peloponnesian War changed

8806-547: The future duke of Athens , by 1372. When Nerio died in 1394, Corinth and Vasilika were inherited by his daughter, Francesca Acciaioli , who had recently married Carlo I Tocco , the count palatine of Cephalonia and Zante . These provisions were contested by Nerio's other daughter, Bartolomea Acciaioli , and her husband, Despot Theodore I Palaiologos of the Morea . Following the ensuing conflict, Francesca and Carlo were only able to retain Vasilika and Megara, while Corinth passed to

8925-457: The future. Outraged, the Corinthians encouraged Potidaea to revolt and assured them that they would ally with them should they revolt from Athens. During the subsequent Battle of Potidaea , the Corinthians unofficially aided Potidaea by sneaking contingents of men into the besieged city to help defend it. This directly violated the Thirty Years' Peace, which stipulated that the Delian League and

9044-658: The gods" in the native tongue of the Pemon , the Indigenous people who inhabit the Gran Sabana . Tepuis can be considered minute plateaus and tend to be found as isolated entities rather than in connected ranges, which makes them the host of a unique array of endemic plant and animal species. Some of the most outstanding tepuis are Neblina , Autana , Auyan and Mount Roraima . They are typically composed of sheer blocks of Precambrian quartz arenite sandstone that rise abruptly from

9163-416: The harvest. Moreover, Spartan slaves, known as helots, needed to be kept under control, and could not be left unsupervised for long. The longest Spartan invasion, in 430 BC, lasted just 40 days. The Athenian strategy was initially guided by the strategos , or general, Pericles , who advised the Athenians to avoid open battle with the far more numerous and better trained Spartan hoplites, relying instead on

9282-466: The hostages for the towns captured by Brasidas, and signed a truce. With the death of Cleon and Brasidas , both zealous war hawks for their nations, the Peace of Nicias was able to last six years. However, it was a time of constant skirmishes in and around the Peloponnese. While the Spartans refrained from action themselves, some of their allies began to talk of revolt. They were supported in this by Argos ,

9401-482: The jungle, giving rise to spectacular natural scenery. Auyán-tepui is the source of Angel Falls , the world's tallest waterfall . The Colombian capital city of Bogota sits on an Andean plateau known as the Altiplano Cundiboyacense roughly the size of Switzerland. Averaging a height of 2,600 m (8,500 ft) above sea level, this northern Andean plateau is situated in the country's eastern range and

9520-537: The largest lake in South America. [REDACTED] Media related to Plateaus at Wikimedia Commons Peloponnesian War The Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), often called simply the Peloponnesian War ( Ancient Greek : Πόλεμος τῶν Πελοποννησίων , romanized :  Pólemos tō̃n Peloponnēsíōn ), was an ancient Greek war fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for

9639-615: The length of Greece to the Athenian colony of Amphipolis in Thrace. Amphipolis controlled several nearby silver mines whose that supplied much of the Athenian war fund. A force led by Thucydides was dispatched but arrived too late to stop Brasidas capturing Amphipolis; Thucydides was exiled for this, and, as a result, had conversations with both sides of the war which inspired him to record its history. Both Brasidas and Cleon were killed in Athenian efforts to retake Amphipolis (see Battle of Amphipolis ). The Spartans and Athenians agreed to exchange

9758-458: The middle of the century, massive public works in Athens, causing resentment. Friction between Athens and the Peloponnesian states, including Sparta, began early in the Pentecontaetia. In the wake of the departure of the Persians from Greece, Sparta sent ambassadors to persuade Athens not to reconstruct their walls, but was rebuffed. Without the walls, Athens would have been defenseless against

9877-446: The mighty Athenian fleet. The Lacedaemonians were not content with simply sending aid to Sicily; they also resolved to take the war to the Athenians. On the advice of Alcibiades, they fortified Decelea , near Athens, and prevented the Athenians from making use of their land year round. The fortification of Decelea prevented overland supplies to Athens, and forced all supplies to be brought in by sea at greater expense. More significantly,

9996-410: The more aggressive strategy of bringing the war to Sparta and its allies. Rising to particular importance in Athenian democracy at this time was Cleon , a leader of the hawkish elements of the Athenian democracy. Led militarily by a clever new general Demosthenes (not to be confused with the later Athenian orator Demosthenes ), the Athenians managed some successes as they continued their naval raids on

10115-588: The most notable of which is the country's largest lake, Lake Taupō . The plateau stretches approximately 100 km east to west and 130 km north to south. The majority of the plateau is more than 600 metres above sea level. A tepui ( / ˈ t ɛ p w i / ), or tepuy ( Spanish: [teˈpuj] ), is a table-top mountain or mesa found in the Guiana Highlands of South America, especially in Venezuela and western Guyana . The word tepui means "house of

10234-460: The mythical Mecone or Mekone, site of the trick at Mecone carried out by Prometheus. Mecone is also described by Callimachus as "the seat of the gods", and as the place where the brother deities Zeus , Poseidon and Hades cast lots for what part of the world each would rule. 37°59′03″N 22°42′40″E  /  37.984104°N 22.711145°E  / 37.984104; 22.711145 Plateau In geology and physical geography ,

10353-508: The nearby silver mines were totally disrupted, with as many as 20,000 Athenian slaves freed by the Spartan hoplites at Decelea. With the treasury and emergency reserve of 1,000 talents dwindling, the Athenians were forced to demand even more tribute from her subject allies, further increasing tensions and the threat of rebellion within the Empire. Corinth, Sparta, and others in the Peloponnesian League sent more reinforcements to Syracuse, to drive off

10472-442: The north-western United States is an example. They may be formed by upwelling of volcanic magma or extrusion of lava. The underlining mechanism in forming plateaus from upwelling starts when magma rises from the mantle , causing the ground to swell upward. In this way, large, flat areas of rock are uplifted to form a plateau. For plateaus formed by extrusion, the rock is built up from lava spreading outward from cracks and weak areas in

10591-511: The peninsula of Attica, spread out across the islands of the Aegean Sea; Athens drew its immense wealth from tribute paid by these islands. Athens maintained its empire through naval power. Thus, the two powers were relatively unable to fight decisive battles. The Spartan strategy during the Archidamian War was to invade the land around Athens. While this invasion deprived Athenians of the productive land around their city, Athens maintained access to

10710-437: The people who elected their leader Cleinias to govern the city on a democratic ground. Two magistrates of these years were the hieromnemoi Sosicles and Euthydamos, known from an inscription at Delphi . The democratic government's most important achievement was the construction of the gymnasium which is attributed to Cleinias. During the same time Xenokrates of Sicyon published his history of art which contributed to spreading

10829-894: The presidency over the Isthmian games ; yet in Cicero 's time it had fallen deep into debt. Under the Roman empire it was quite obscured by the restored cities of Corinth and Patrae ; in Pausanias ' age (150 AD) it was almost desolate. In the 4th century BC the people of Sicyon were the subject of a popular comedy by Menander titled Sikyonioi . William Shakespeare , in his 1606 play Antony and Cleopatra (Act I, Scene 2), notes that Marc Antony 's wife, Fulvia died in Sicyon. Historically, she died there in 40 BC while in rebellion against Octavius Caesar. Friedrich Hölderlin 's novel Hyperion from 1797 starts at

10948-482: The prosperous Athenian empire would have been disastrous for the Megarans, and so have considered the sanctions a contributing causing of the war. Historians who attribute responsibility for the war to Athens cite this event as the main cause. At the request of Corinth, the Spartans summoned members of the Peloponnesian League to Sparta in 432 BC, especially those who had grievances with Athens, to make their complaints to

11067-484: The relief of Syracuse. He took command of the Syracusan troops, and in a series of battles defeated the Athenian forces, and prevented them from invading the city. Nicias then sent word to Athens asking for reinforcements. Demosthenes was chosen and led another fleet to Sicily, joining his forces with those of Nicias. More battles ensued and again, the Syracusans and their allies defeated the Athenians. Demosthenes argued for

11186-422: The revenues from all of his cities of Asia Minor. Cyrus the Younger would later obtain the support of the Spartans in return, after having asked them "to show themselves as good friend to him, as he had been to them during their war against Athens", when he led his own expedition to Susa in 401 BC in order to topple his brother, Artaxerxes II . The faction hostile to Alcibiades triumphed in Athens following

11305-498: The sea, and did not suffer much. Many of the citizens of Attica abandoned their farms and moved inside the Long Walls , which connected Athens to its port of Piraeus . At the end of the first year of the war, Pericles gave his famous Funeral Oration (431 BC). The Spartans also occupied Attica for periods of only three weeks at a time; in the tradition of earlier hoplite warfare, the soldiers were expected to go home to participate in

11424-601: The situation before the war as: "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon , made war inevitable". The nearly 50 years before the War had been marked by the development of Athens as a major power in the Mediterranean world. Its empire began as a small group of city-states, called the Delian League  – from the island of Delos , on which they kept their treasury – that formed to ensure that

11543-849: The south. The Deosai Plains in Pakistan are situated at an average elevation of 4,114 meters (13,497 ft) above sea level. They are considered to be the second highest plateaus in the world. Other major plateaus in Asia are: Najd on the Arabian Peninsula , elevation 762 to 1,525 m (2,500 to 5,003 ft), Armenian Highlands (≈400,000 km (150,000 sq mi), elevation 900–2,100 metres (3,000–6,900 ft)), Iranian Plateau (≈3,700,000 km (1,400,000 sq mi), elevation 300–1,500 metres (980–4,920 ft)), Anatolian Plateau , Mongolian Plateau (≈2,600,000 km (1,000,000 sq mi), elevation 1,000–1,500 metres (3,300–4,900 ft)), and

11662-611: The strategic city of Naupaktos on the Gulf of Corinth . In 459 BC, there was a war between Spartan allies Megara and Corinth , which were neighbors of Athens. Athens took advantage of the war to make an alliance with Megara, giving Athens a critical foothold on the Isthmus of Corinth . A 15-year conflict, commonly known as the First Peloponnesian War , ensued, in which Athens fought intermittently against Sparta, Corinth, Aegina , and

11781-407: The summer of 416 BC, during a truce with Sparta, Athens invaded the neutral island of Melos , and demanded that Melos ally with them against Sparta, or be destroyed. The Melians rejected this, so the Athenian army laid siege to their city and eventually captured it in the winter. After the city's fall, the Athenians executed all the adult men, and sold the women and children into slavery . In

11900-486: The support of a small Athenian force under Alcibiades , moved to seize the city of Tegea , near Sparta. The Battle of Mantinea was the largest land battle within Greece during the Peloponnesian War. The Lacedaemonians, with their neighbors the Tegeans, faced the combined armies of Argos, Athens, Mantinea, and Arcadia . In the battle, the allied coalition scored early successes, but failed to capitalize on them, which allowed

12019-473: The surrounding coastline through enormous glaciers . The polar ice cap is so massive that the echolocation measurements of ice thickness have shown that large areas are below sea level . But, as the ice melts, the land beneath will rebound through isostasy and ultimately rise above sea level. The largest and highest plateau in the world is the Tibetan Plateau , sometimes metaphorically described as

12138-620: The third phase of the war (413–404 BC), named the Decelean War, or the Ionian War, when the Persian Empire supported Sparta to recover the suzerainty of the Greek cities of Asia Minor , incorporated into the Delian League at the end of the Persian Wars . With Persian money, Sparta built a massive fleet under the leadership of Lysander, who won a streak of decisive victories in the Aegean Sea, notably at Aegospotamos , in 405 BC. Athens capitulated

12257-474: The topics of the war's conclusion and aftermath. Born in Athens, Xenophon spent his military career as a mercenary , fighting in the Persian Empire and for Sparta in Asia Minor , Thrace and Greece. Exiled from Athens for these actions, he retired to live in Sparta, where he wrote Hellenica around 40 years after the war had ended. His account is generally considered favourable to Sparta. A briefer account of

12376-659: The walls of Amphipolis and grave of Brasidas , excavated in the 20th century. Some buildings and artworks produced during the war have survived, such as the Erechtheion temple and Grave Stele of Hegeso , both in Athens; these provide no information on military activity but do reflect civilian life during the war. Several plays by the Athenian Aristophanes were written and set during the war (particularly Peace and Lysistrata ), but these are works of comedic fiction with little historical value. Thucydides summarised

12495-434: The war ( Pericles , Nicias , Alcibiades and Lysander ) in his Parallel Lives . Plutarch's focus was on the character and morality of these men, but he does provide some details on the progress of the war that are not recorded elsewhere. Written in the first century AD, Plutarch based his work on earlier accounts which are now lost. More limited information on the war is derived from epigraphy and archaeology , such as

12614-413: The war in Athens's name. Their opposition led to the reinstitution of a democratic government in Athens within two years. Alcibiades, while condemned as a traitor, still carried weight in Athens. He prevented the Athenian fleet from attacking Athens; instead, he helped restore democracy by more subtle pressure. He also persuaded the Athenian fleet to attack the Spartans at the battle of Cyzicus in 410. In

12733-403: The war, explaining why it began, then reports events year-by-year. The main limitation of Thucydides' work is that it is incomplete: the text ends abruptly in 411 BC, seven years before the conclusion of the war. The account was continued by Xenophon , a younger contemporary, in the first book of his Hellenica . This directly follows Thucydides' final sentence and provides a similar record, on

12852-469: The whole war is provided by the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus in books 12 and 13 of his Bibliotheca historica . Written in the first century BC, these books appear to be based heavily (possibly entirely) upon an earlier universal history by Ephorus , written in the century after the war, which is now lost . The Roman-Greek historian Plutarch wrote biographies of four of the major commanders in

12971-405: The winter of 446/5 BC. The Thirty Years' Peace was first tested in 440 BC, when Athens's powerful ally Samos rebelled from its alliance with Athens . The rebels quickly secured the support of a Persian satrap , and Athens faced the prospect of revolts throughout its empire. The Spartans, whose intervention would have been the trigger for a massive war to determine the fate of the empire, called

13090-468: Was "to have the same friends and enemies" as Sparta. The overall effect of the war in Greece proper was to replace the Athenian Empire with a Spartan empire. After the battle of Aegospotami , Sparta took over the Athenian empire and kept all its tribute revenues for itself; Sparta's allies, who had made greater sacrifices in the war than had Sparta, got nothing. For a short time, Athens was ruled by

13209-403: Was dismissed by the Spartans, while those of all the other allies were permitted to remain. According to Thucydides, the Spartans did this out of fear that the Athenians would switch sides and support the helots; the offended Athenians repudiated their alliance with Sparta. When the rebellious helots were finally forced to surrender and permitted to evacuate the state, the Athenians settled them at

13328-410: Was divided and defeated. The entire Athenian fleet was destroyed, and virtually the entire Athenian army was sold into slavery. Following the defeat of the Athenians in Sicily, it was widely believed that the end of the Athenian Empire was at hand. Their treasury was nearly empty, its docks were depleted, and many of the Athenian youth were dead or imprisoned in a foreign land. After the destruction of

13447-469: Was enough to dissuade the Corinthians from exploiting their victory, thus sparing much of the routed Corcyrean and Athenian fleet. Following this, Athens instructed Potidaea in the peninsula of Chalkidiki , a tributary ally of Athens but a colony of Corinth, to tear down its walls, send hostages to Athens, dismiss the Corinthian magistrates from office, and refuse the magistrates that Corinth would send in

13566-504: Was killed in Thebes by a group of Sicyonian aristocrats, but his compatriots buried him in his home town and continued to honour him like the second founder of the city. ref.: BMC 124, Sear sg2774, SNG Cop. 64/65 During the 4th century BC, the city reached its zenith as a centre of art: its school of painting gained fame under Eupompus and attracted the great masters Pamphilus and Apelles as students, while Lysippus and his pupils raised

13685-428: Was not much smaller than Athens, and conquering all of Sicily would bring Athens immense resources. In the final preparations for departure, the hermai (religious statues) of Athens were mutilated by unknown persons, and Alcibiades was charged with religious crimes. Alcibiades demanded that he be put on trial at once, so that he could defend himself before the expedition. However, the Athenians allowed Alcibiades to go on

13804-598: Was once called Gallayat Plateaus, rising 3,300 ft above sea level. Another very large plateau is the icy Antarctic Plateau , which is sometimes referred to as the Polar Plateau or King Haakon VII Plateau, home to the geographic South Pole and the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station , which covers most of East Antarctica where there are no known mountains but rather 3,000 m (9,800 ft) high of superficial ice and which spreads very slowly toward

13923-597: Was only interrupted by an Aetolian raid in 241 BC and an unsuccessful siege at the hands of king Cleomenes III of Sparta in early 224 BC. As a member of the Achaean federation Sicyon remained a stable democracy until the dissolution of the League by the Romans in 146 BC. In this period Sicyon was damaged by two disastrous earthquakes in 153 BC and 141 BC. The destruction of Corinth (146 BC) brought Sicyon an acquisition of territory and

14042-418: Was ruled by two Ptolemaic commanders, first Cleonides and then Philip. In 303 BC Sicyon was conquered by Demetrius Poliorcetes who razed the ancient city in the plain and built a new wall on the ruins of the old Acropolis on the high triangular plateau which resulted sufficient for the reduced populace. The new agora was adorned by a "Painted Stoa" attributed to the king's mistress Lamia , a flute player. For

14161-524: Was signed in 421 BC and lasted until 413 BC. Several proxy battles took place during this period, notably the battle of Mantinea in 418 BC, won by Sparta against an ad-hoc alliance of Elis , Mantinea (both former Spartan allies), Argos , and Athens. The main event was the Sicilian Expedition , between 415 and 413 BC, during which Athens lost almost all its navy in the attempt to capture Syracuse , an ally of Sparta . The Sicilian disaster prompted

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