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151-501: Going back to the early Greeks , Hitchens introduces selected essays of past and present philosophers, scientists, and other thinkers such as Lucretius , Benedict de Spinoza , Charles Darwin , Karl Marx , Mark Twain , George Eliot , Bertrand Russell , Emma Goldman , H. L. Mencken , Albert Einstein , Daniel Dennett , Sam Harris , Victor J. Stenger and Richard Dawkins − with original pieces by Salman Rushdie , Ian McEwan , and Ayaan Hirsi Ali . For Hitchens, "religion invents

302-661: 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 the whole war is provided by the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus in books 12 and 13 of his Bibliotheca historica . Written in

453-409: A believer could not have been made or performed by a non-believer? Hitchens believes we will never cure ourselves of this belief in the divine and the only hope of salvation lies in "our contempt for our own weakness". At 500 pages this excellent anthology is only just portable, but it is the perfect Christmas stocking-filler for the atheist in your life. Classical Greece Classical Greece

604-511: A brief peace came about; then the war resumed to Sparta's advantage. Athens was definitively defeated in 404 BC, and internal Athenian agitations mark the end of the 5th century BC in Greece. Since its beginning, Sparta had been ruled by a diarchy . This meant that Sparta had two kings ruling concurrently throughout its entire history. The two kingships were both hereditary, vested in the Agiad dynasty and

755-584: A chief advisor to the Spartans and began to counsel them on the best way to defeat his native land. Alcibiades persuaded the Spartans to begin building a real navy for the first time—large enough to challenge the Athenian superiority at sea. Additionally, Alcibiades persuaded the Spartans to ally themselves with their traditional foes—the Persians. As noted below, Alcibiades soon found himself in controversy in Sparta when he

906-507: 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, the Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the fifth century BC and

1057-577: 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

1208-469: A declaration of war) would depend on their geographical position. The territory of the city was also divided into thirty trittyes as follows: A tribe consisted of three trittyes, selected at random, one from each of the three groups. Each tribe therefore always acted in the interest of all three sectors. It was this corpus of reforms that allowed the emergence of a wider democracy in the 460s and 450s BC. In Ionia (the modern Aegean coast of Turkey ),

1359-598: 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

1510-544: 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

1661-460: A hegemony, they decided after 403 BC not to support the directives that he had made. Agesilaus came to power by accident at the start of the 4th century BC. This accidental accession meant that, unlike the other Spartan kings, he had the advantage of a Spartan education. The Spartans at this date discovered a conspiracy against the laws of the city conducted by Cinadon and as a result concluded there were too many dangerous worldly elements at work in

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1812-442: 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

1963-463: A major power without regaining its former glory. This empire was powerful but short-lived. In 405 BC, the Spartans were masters of all—of Athens' allies and of Athens itself—and their power was undivided. By the end of the century, they could not even defend their own city. As noted above, in 400 BC, Agesilaus became king of Sparta. The subject of how to reorganize the Athenian Empire as part of

2114-469: 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

2265-477: A number of island cities benefiting from Athens' maritime protection), and other states outside this Athenian Empire. The sources denounce this Athenian supremacy (or hegemony ) as smothering and disadvantageous. After 403 BC, things became more complicated, with a number of cities trying to create similar empires over others, all of which proved short-lived. The first of these turnarounds was managed by Athens as early as 390 BC, allowing it to re-establish itself as

2416-453: 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

2567-577: A number of victories. For most of the first years of his reign, Agesilaus had been engaged in a war against Persia in the Aegean Sea and in Asia Minor. In 394 BC, the Spartan authorities ordered Agesilaus to return to mainland Greece. While Agesilaus had a large part of the Spartan Army in Asia Minor, the Spartan forces protecting the homeland had been attacked by a coalition of forces led by Corinth. At

2718-581: 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

2869-518: 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

3020-508: A pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by Isagoras . But his rival Cleisthenes , with the support of the middle class and aided by pro-democracy citizens, took over. Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506 BC, but could not stop Cleisthenes, now supported by the Athenians. Through Cleisthenes' reforms, the people endowed their city with isonomic institutions—equal rights for all citizens (though only men were citizens)—and established ostracism . The isonomic and isegoric (equal freedom of speech) democracy

3171-513: A problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in "the image of god and the sexually nonconformist as existing in a state of incurable mortal sin that can incidentally cause floods and earthquakes." "The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. Death is certain ... Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There

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3322-576: 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

3473-460: A sceptic about the Sicilian Expedition , he was appointed along with Alcibiades to lead the expedition. However, unlike the expedition against Melos, the citizens of Athens were deeply divided over Alcibiades' proposal for an expedition to far-off Sicily. In June 415 BC, on the very eve of the departure of the Athenian fleet for Sicily, a band of vandals in Athens defaced the many statues of

3624-474: A significant dynamic that was occurring in Greece. While Athens and Sparta fought each other to exhaustion, Thebes was rising to a position of dominance among the various Greek city-states. Peloponnesian War The Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), often called simply the Peloponnesian War ( Ancient Greek : Πόλεμος τῶν Πελοποννησίων , romanized :  Pólemos tō̃n Peloponnēsíōn ),

3775-626: A successful naval expedition against the Aegean islands. In 490 BC, Darius the Great , having suppressed the Ionian cities, sent a Persian fleet to punish the Greeks. (Historians are uncertain about their number of men; accounts vary from 18,000 to 100,000.) They landed in Attica intending to take Athens, but were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by a Greek army of 9,000 Athenian hoplites and 1,000 Plataeans led by

3926-465: A war in which Thebes allied with its old enemy Athens. Then the Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a decisive victory at Leuctra (371 BC). The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban dominance, but Athens herself recovered much of her former power because the supremacy of Thebes was short-lived. With the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea (362 BC)

4077-435: Is continually told, as an unbeliever", he writes, "that it is old-fashioned to rail against the primitive stupidities and cruelties of religion because after all, in these enlightened times, the old superstitions have died away. Nine times out of ten, one will be told not of some dogma of religious certitude but of some instance of charitable or humanitarian work undertaken by a religious person. Of course, this says nothing about

4228-608: Is known as the Peloponnesian League. However, unlike the Hellenic League and the Delian League, this league was not a response to any external threat, Persian or otherwise: it was unabashedly an instrument of Spartan policy aimed at Sparta's security and Spartan dominance over the Peloponnese peninsula. The term "Peloponnesian League" is a misnomer. It was not really a "league" at all. Nor was it really "Peloponnesian". There

4379-486: Is nothing more; but I want nothing more." Hitchens dedicated the anthology to the memory of Primo Levi and prefaces the book with quotes from Levi's If This Is a Man and The Drowned and the Saved . For Hitchens, arguments for atheism can be divided into two main categories: those that dispute the existence of God and those that demonstrate the ill effects of religion . "Religion", he defines, "is, after all, more than

4530-399: 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 the topics of the war's conclusion and aftermath. Born in Athens, Xenophon spent his military career as

4681-776: 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

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4832-455: The Battle of Coronea , Agesilaus and his Spartan Army defeated a Theban force. During the war, Corinth drew support from a coalition of traditional Spartan enemies—Argos, Athens and Thebes. However, when the war descended into guerilla tactics, Sparta decided that it could not fight on two fronts and so chose to ally with Persia. The long Corinthian War finally ended with the Peace of Antalcidas or

4983-489: The Battle of Thermopylae . The Persians left Greece in 479 BC after their defeat at Plataea . Plataea was the final battle of Xerxes' invasion of Greece. After this, the Persians never again tried to invade Greece. With the disappearance of this external threat, cracks appeared in the united front of the Hellenic League. In 477, Athens became the recognised leader of a coalition of city-states that did not include Sparta. This coalition met and formalized their relationship at

5134-466: The Delian League (Athens' alliance) raided the Peloponnesian coast to trigger rebellions within Sparta. The precarious Peace of Nicias 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

5285-523: 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 the situation before

5436-794: 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

5587-534: The Greek Dark Ages and Archaic period and is in turn succeeded by the Hellenistic period . This century is essentially studied from the Athenian outlook because Athens has left us more narratives, plays, and other written works than any of the other ancient Greek states . From the perspective of Athenian culture in classical Greece, the period generally referred to as the 5th century BC extends slightly into

5738-603: The King's Peace , in which the "Great King" of Persia, Artaxerxes II , pronounced a "treaty" of peace between the various city-states of Greece which broke up all "leagues" of city-states on Greek mainland and in the islands of the Aegean Sea . Although this was looked upon as "independence" for some city-states, the effect of the unilateral "treaty" was highly favourable to the interests of the Persian Empire. The Corinthian War revealed

5889-464: The Persian general Mardonius led a campaign through Thrace and Macedonia . He was victorious and again subjugated the former and conquered the latter, but he was wounded and forced to retreat back into Asia Minor. In addition, a fleet of around 1,200 ships that accompanied Mardonius on the expedition was wrecked by a storm off the coast of Mount Athos . Later, the generals Artaphernes and Datis led

6040-585: 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,

6191-407: 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 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

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6342-477: 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 the early part of the war, Thucydides was exiled in 423 BC and settled in

6493-557: The military party, led by Alcibiades . Thus, in 415 BC, Alcibiades found support within the Athenian Assembly for his position when he urged that Athens launch a major expedition against Syracuse , a Peloponnesian ally in Sicily , Magna Graecia . Segesta, a town in Sicily, had requested Athenian assistance in their war with another Sicilian town—the town of Selinus. Although Nicias was

6644-554: 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

6795-629: The 400 to overthrow democracy in Samos failed. Alcibiades was immediately made an admiral ( navarch ) in the Athenian navy. Later, due to democratic pressures, the 400 were replaced by a broader oligarchy called "the 5000". Alcibiades did not immediately return to Athens. In early 410, Alcibiades led an Athenian fleet of 18 triremes against the Persian-financed Spartan fleet at Abydos near the Hellespont . The Battle of Abydos had actually begun before

6946-570: The 6th century BC. In this context, one might consider that the first significant event of this century occurs in 508 BC, with the fall of the last Athenian tyrant and Cleisthenes ' reforms. However, a broader view of the whole Greek world might place its beginning at the Ionian Revolt of 500 BC, the event that provoked the Persian invasion of 492 BC. The Persians were defeated in 490 BC. A second Persian attempt , in 481–479 BC, failed as well, despite having overrun much of modern-day Greece (north of

7097-539: The Aegean Sea, defeating their fleet decisively in the Battle of Mycale ; then in 478 BC the fleet captured Byzantium . At that time Athens enrolled all the island states and some mainland ones into an alliance called the Delian League , so named because its treasury was kept on the sacred island of Delos . The Spartans, although they had taken part in the war, withdrew into isolation afterwards, allowing Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power. In 431 BC war broke out between Athens and Sparta . The war

7248-435: 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

7399-445: 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

7550-479: 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

7701-410: The Athenian general Miltiades . The Persian fleet continued to Athens but, seeing it garrisoned, decided not to attempt an assault. In 480 BC, Darius' successor Xerxes I sent a much more powerful force of 300,000 by land, with 1,207 ships in support, across a double pontoon bridge over the Hellespont . This army took Thrace, before descending on Thessaly and Boeotia, whilst the Persian navy skirted

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7852-449: 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

8003-463: The Athenian-controlled island of Samos . Alcibiades felt that "radical democracy" was his worst enemy. Accordingly, he asked his supporters to initiate a coup to establish an oligarchy in Athens. If the coup were successful Alcibiades promised to return to Athens. In 411, a successful oligarchic coup was mounted in Athens, by a group which became known as "the 400". However, a parallel attempt by

8154-473: 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

8305-462: 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

8456-537: The Battle of Haliartus the Spartans had been defeated by the Theban forces. Worse yet, Lysander, Sparta's chief military leader, had been killed during the battle. This was the start of what became known as the " Corinthian War " (395–387 BC). Upon hearing of the Spartan loss at Haliartus and of the death of Lysander, Agesilaus headed out of Asia Minor, back across the Hellespont, across Thrace and back towards Greece. At

8607-517: The Eurypontid dynasty. According to legend, the respective hereditary lines of these two dynasties sprang from Eurysthenes and Procles , twin descendants of Hercules . They were said to have conquered Sparta two generations after the Trojan War . In 510 BC, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow their king, the tyrant Hippias , son of Peisistratos . Cleomenes I , king of Sparta, put in place

8758-506: The Eurypontid king as Agesilaus II , expelled Leotychidas from the country, and took over all of Agis' estates and property. The end of the Peloponnesian War left Sparta the master of Greece, but the narrow outlook of the Spartan warrior elite did not suit them to this role. Within a few years the democratic party regained power in Athens and in other cities. In 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens , Argos , Thebes , and Corinth,

8909-452: The Greek cities, which included great centres such as Miletus and Halicarnassus , were unable to maintain their independence and came under the rule of the Persian Empire in the mid-6th century BC. In 499 BC that region's Greeks rose in the Ionian Revolt , and Athens and some other Greek cities sent aid, but were quickly forced to back down after defeat in 494 BC at the Battle of Lade . Asia Minor returned to Persian control. In 492 BC,

9060-473: The Greek city-states against the danger of another Persian invasion. The coalition that emerged from the first congress was named the "Hellenic League" and included Sparta. Persia, under Xerxes, invaded Greece in September 481 BC, but the Athenian navy defeated the Persian navy. The Persian land forces were delayed in 480 BC by a much smaller force of 300 Spartans, 400 Thebans and 700 men from Boeotian Thespiae at

9211-496: The Isthmus of Corinth ) at a crucial point during the war following the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Artemisium . The Delian League then formed, under Athenian hegemony and as Athens' instrument. Athens' successes caused several revolts among the allied cities, all of which were put down by force, but Athenian dynamism finally awoke Sparta and brought about the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. After both forces were spent,

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9362-510: The Laurion (a small mountain range near Athens), and the hundreds of talents mined there were used to build 200 warships to combat Aeginetan piracy. A year later, the Greeks, under the Spartan Pausanias , defeated the Persian army at Plataea . The Persians then began to withdraw from Greece, and never attempted an invasion again. The Athenian fleet then turned to chasing the Persians from

9513-729: The Megarian people. The Peloponnesian League accused Athens of violating the Thirty Years Peace through all of the aforementioned actions, and, accordingly, Sparta formally declared war on Athens. Many historians consider these to be merely the immediate causes of the war. They would argue that the underlying cause was the growing resentment on the part of Sparta and its allies at the dominance of Athens over Greek affairs. The war lasted 27 years, partly because Athens (a naval power) and Sparta (a land-based military power) found it difficult to come to grips with each other. Sparta's initial strategy

9664-492: The Peloponnese Peninsula. In the 7th century BC Argos dominated the peninsula. Even in the early 6th century the Argives attempted to control the northeastern part of the peninsula. The rise of Sparta in the 6th century brought Sparta into conflict with Argos. However, with the conquest of the Peloponnesian city-state of Tegea in 550 BC and the defeat of the Argives in 546 BC the Spartans' control began to reach well beyond

9815-504: 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 the war, explaining why it began, then reports events year-by-year. The main limitation of Thucydides' work

9966-541: 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,

10117-698: 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

10268-400: The Peloponnesian War vary from account to account. However three causes are fairly consistent among the ancient historians, namely Thucydides and Plutarch . Prior to the war, Corinth and one of its colonies, Corcyra (modern-day Corfu ), went to war in 435 BC over the new Corcyran colony of Epidamnus . Sparta refused to become involved in the conflict and urged an arbitrated settlement of

10419-401: 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

10570-521: The Persians to dominate the Greek peninsula. Among the war party in Athens, a belief arose that the catastrophic defeat of the military expedition to Sicily in 415–413 could have been avoided if Alcibiades had been allowed to lead the expedition. Thus, despite his treacherous flight to Sparta and his collaboration with Sparta and later with the Persian court, there arose a demand among the war party that Alcibiades be allowed to return to Athens without being arrested. Alcibiades negotiated with his supporters on

10721-573: 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

10872-556: The Spartan Empire provoked much heated debate among Sparta's full citizens. The admiral Lysander felt that the Spartans should rebuild the Athenian empire in such a way that Sparta profited from it. Lysander tended to be too proud to take advice from others. Prior to this, Spartan law forbade the use of all precious metals by private citizens, with transactions being carried out with cumbersome iron ingots (which generally discouraged their accumulation) and all precious metals obtained by

11023-459: 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

11174-420: 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

11325-407: 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

11476-449: The Spartan navy was after the Battle of Abydos, the Persian navy directly assisted the Spartans. Alcibiades then pursued and met the combined Spartan and Persian fleets at the Battle of Cyzicus later in the spring of 410, achieving a significant victory. With the financial help of the Persians, Sparta built a fleet to challenge Athenian naval supremacy. With the new fleet and new military leader Lysander , Sparta attacked Abydos , seizing

11627-570: 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

11778-478: The Spartan state. Agesilaus employed a political dynamic that played on a feeling of pan-Hellenic sentiment and launched a successful campaign against the Persian empire. Once again, the Persian empire played both sides against each other. The Persian Court supported Sparta in the rebuilding of their navy while simultaneously funding the Athenians, who used Persian subsidies to rebuild their long walls (destroyed in 404 BC) as well as to reconstruct their fleet and win

11929-462: 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

12080-399: The action of the vandals would have weakened Alcibiades and the war party in Athens. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Alcibiades would have deliberately defaced the statues of Hermes on the very eve of his departure with the fleet. Such defacement could only have been interpreted as a bad omen for the expedition that he had long advocated. Even before the fleet reached Sicily, word arrived to

12231-474: The arrival of Alcibiades, and had been inclining slightly toward the Athenians. However, with the arrival of Alcibiades, the Athenian victory over the Spartans became a rout. Only the approach of nightfall and the movement of Persian troops to the coast where the Spartans had beached their ships saved the Spartan navy from total destruction. Following Alcibiades' advice, the Persian Empire had been playing Sparta and Athens off against each other. However, as weak as

12382-481: 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

12533-419: The belief in a supreme being. It is the cult of that supreme being and the belief that his or her wishes have been made known or can be determined." He mentions great critics such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine , who perhaps paradoxically regarded religion as an insult to God. "An agnostic does not believe in god, or disbelieve in him", writes Hitchens. Non-belief is not quite unbelief, he explains. "One

12684-575: The belief system involved." Hitchens points out that if Louis Farrakhan 's Nation of Islam (NoI) succeeds in weaning young black men off narcotics, this would not alter the fact that the NoI is a racist crackpot organization. He reminds readers that Hamas – which publishes The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion on its website – won a reputation for its provision of social services. He challenges: which ethical statement made or which action performed by

12835-458: 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

12986-405: The borders of Laconia . As the two coalitions grew, their separate interests kept coming into conflict. Under the influence of King Archidamus II (the Eurypontid king of Sparta from 476 BC through 427 BC), Sparta, in the late summer or early autumn of 446 BC, concluded the Thirty Years Peace with Athens. This treaty took effect the next winter in 445 BC Under the terms of this treaty, Greece

13137-468: The capture of Euboea , bringing most of mainland Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth under Persian control. However, the Athenians had evacuated the city of Athens by sea before Thermopylae, and under the command of Themistocles , they defeated the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis . In 483 BC, during the period of peace between the two Persian invasions, a vein of silver ore had been discovered in

13288-399: The city becoming state property. Without the Spartans' support, Lysander's innovations came into effect and brought a great deal of profit for him—on Samos, for example, festivals known as Lysandreia were organized in his honour. He was recalled to Sparta, and once there did not attend to any important matters. Sparta refused to see Lysander or his successors dominate. Not wanting to establish

13439-553: The city lost its greatest leader and his successors blundered into an ineffectual ten-year war with Phocis . In 346 BC the Thebans appealed to Philip II of Macedon to help them against the Phocians, thus drawing Macedon into Greek affairs for the first time. The Peloponnesian War was a radical turning point for the Greek world. Before 403 BC, the situation was more defined, with Athens and its allies (a zone of domination and stability, with

13590-458: The coast and resupplied the ground troops. The Greek fleet, meanwhile, dashed to block Cape Artemision . After being delayed by Leonidas I , the Spartan king of the Agiad Dynasty, at the Battle of Thermopylae (a battle made famous by the 300 Spartans who faced the entire Persian army), Xerxes advanced into Attica, and captured and burned Athens. The subsequent Battle of Artemisium resulted in

13741-504: The common enemy of the Persian Empire, which was conquered within 13 years during the wars of Alexander the Great , Philip's son. In the context of the art, architecture, and culture of Ancient Greece , the Classical period corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC (the most common dates being the fall of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC). The Classical period in this sense follows

13892-414: 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

14043-402: 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

14194-405: The death of Agis II, Leotychidas attempted to claim the Eurypontid throne for himself, but this was met with an outcry, led by Lysander, who was at the height of his influence in Sparta. Lysander argued that Leotychidas was a bastard and could not inherit the Eurypontid throne; instead he backed the hereditary claim of Agesilaus, son of Agis by another wife. With Lysander's support, Agesilaus became

14345-545: The democracy and appointed in its place an oligarchy called the " Thirty Tyrants " to govern Athens. Meanwhile, in Sparta, Timaea gave birth to a child. The child was given the name Leotychidas, after the great grandfather of Agis II—King Leotychidas of Sparta. However, because of Timaea's alleged affair with Alcibiades, it was widely rumoured that the young Leotychidas was fathered by Alcibiades. Indeed, Agis II refused to acknowledge Leotychidas as his son until he relented, in front of witnesses, on his deathbed in 400 BC. Upon

14496-418: The early defining mathematics, science, artistic thought ( architecture , sculpture), theatre , literature , philosophy , and politics of Western civilization derives from this period of Greek history , which had a powerful influence on the later Roman Empire . Part of the broader era of classical antiquity , the classical Greek era ended after Philip II 's unification of most of the Greek world against

14647-479: The economic growth of the Athenian Empire . Concentration on the Athenian Empire, however, brought Athens into conflict with another Greek state. Ever since the formation of the Delian League in 477 BC, the island of Melos had refused to join. By refusing to join the League, however, Melos reaped the benefits of the League without bearing any of the burdens. In 425 BC, an Athenian army under Cleon attacked Melos to force

14798-456: 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 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

14949-401: 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

15100-471: 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

15251-471: 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 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

15402-441: The fleet that Alcibiades was to be arrested and charged with sacrilege of the statues of Hermes, prompting Alcibiades to flee to Sparta. When the fleet later landed in Sicily and the battle was joined, the expedition was a complete disaster. The entire expeditionary force was lost and Nicias was captured and executed. This was one of the most crushing defeats in the history of Athens. Meanwhile, Alcibiades betrayed Athens and became

15553-401: 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

15704-403: 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

15855-423: The god Hermes that were scattered throughout the city of Athens. This action was blamed on Alcibiades and was seen as a bad omen for the coming campaign. In all likelihood, the coordinated action against the statues of Hermes was the action of the peace party. Having lost the debate on the issue, the peace party was desperate to weaken Alcibiades' hold on the people of Athens. Successfully blaming Alcibiades for

16006-416: 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

16157-435: The holy city of Delos. Thus, the League took the name "Delian League". Its formal purpose was to liberate Greek cities still under Persian control. However, it became increasingly apparent that the Delian League was really a front for Athenian hegemony throughout the Aegean. A competing coalition of Greek city-states centred around Sparta arose, and became more important as the external Persian threat subsided. This coalition

16308-466: 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 ,

16459-430: The island to join the Delian League. However, Melos fought off the attack and was able to maintain its neutrality. Further conflict was inevitable and in the spring of 416 BC the mood of the people in Athens was inclined toward military adventure. The island of Melos provided an outlet for this energy and frustration for the military party. Furthermore, there appeared to be no real opposition to this military expedition from

16610-455: The issue of joining the Delian League is presented by Thucydides in his Melian Dialogue . The debate did not in the end resolve any of the differences between Melos and Athens and Melos was invaded in 416 BC, and soon occupied by Athens. This success on the part of Athens whetted the appetite of the people of Athens for further expansion of the Athenian Empire. Accordingly, the people of Athens were ready for military action and tended to support

16761-468: The latter two former Spartan allies, challenged Sparta's dominance in the Corinthian War , which ended inconclusively in 387 BC. That same year Sparta shocked the Greeks by concluding the Treaty of Antalcidas with Persia. The agreement turned over the Greek cities of Ionia and Cyprus, reversing a hundred years of Greek victories against Persia. Sparta then tried to further weaken the power of Thebes, which led to

16912-407: 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, the conflict between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta, each of which supported friendly political factions within other states, made war

17063-615: 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

17214-458: 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

17365-446: 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,

17516-470: The moderate Athenian leader Nicias concluded the Peace of Nicias (421). In 418 BC, however, conflict between Sparta and the Athenian ally Argos led to a resumption of hostilities. Alcibiades was one of the most influential voices in persuading the Athenians to ally with Argos against the Spartans. At the Mantinea Sparta defeated the combined armies of Athens and her allies. Accordingly, Argos and

17667-410: 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

17818-508: 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

17969-519: The other king was from the Agiad Dynasty. With the signing of the Thirty Years Peace treaty, Archidamus II felt he had successfully prevented Sparta from entering into a war with its neighbours. However, the strong war party in Sparta soon won out and in 431 BC Archidamus was forced to go to war with the Delian League. However, in 427 BC, Archidamus II died and his son, Agis II succeeded to the Eurypontid throne of Sparta. The immediate causes of

18120-518: The peace party. Enforcement of the economic obligations of the Delian League upon rebellious city-states and islands was a means by which continuing trade and prosperity of Athens could be assured. Melos alone among all the Cycladic Islands located in the south-west Aegean Sea had resisted joining the Delian League. This continued rebellion provided a bad example to the rest of the members of the Delian League. The debate between Athens and Melos over

18271-458: 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

18422-403: 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 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

18573-482: 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

18724-484: 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

18875-479: The rest of the Peloponnesus was brought back under the control of Sparta. The return of peace allowed Athens to be diverted from meddling in the affairs of the Peloponnesus and to concentrate on building up the empire and putting their finances in order. Soon trade recovered and tribute began, once again, rolling into Athens. A strong "peace party" arose, which promoted avoidance of war and continued concentration on

19026-422: 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

19177-498: 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

19328-562: 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

19479-514: The strategic initiative. By occupying the Hellespont , the source of Athens' grain imports, Sparta effectively threatened Athens with starvation. In response, Athens sent its last remaining fleet to confront Lysander, but were decisively defeated at Aegospotami (405 BC). The loss of her fleet threatened Athens with bankruptcy. In 404 BC Athens sued for peace, and Sparta dictated a predictably stern settlement: Athens lost her city walls, her fleet, and all of her overseas possessions. Lysander abolished

19630-492: The struggle. In 433 BC, Corcyra sought Athenian assistance in the war. Corinth was known to be a traditional enemy of Athens. However, to further encourage Athens to enter the conflict, Corcyra pointed out how useful a friendly relationship with Corcyra would be, given the strategic locations of Corcyra itself and the colony of Epidamnus on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea. Furthermore, Corcyra promised that Athens would have

19781-407: 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

19932-486: 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

20083-447: The use of Corcyra's navy, the third-largest in Greece. This was too good of an offer for Athens to refuse. Accordingly, Athens signed a defensive alliance with Corcyra. The next year, in 432 BC, Corinth and Athens argued over control of Potidaea (near modern-day Nea Potidaia ), eventually leading to an Athenian siege of Potidaea. In 434–433 BC Athens issued the " Megarian Decrees ", a series of decrees that placed economic sanctions on

20234-580: 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

20385-413: 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

20536-522: The war into three phases. The first phase (431–421 BC) was named the Ten Years War, or 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

20687-405: 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

20838-410: 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

20989-547: Was a period of around 200 years (the 5th and 4th centuries BC) in Ancient Greece , marked by much of the eastern Aegean and northern regions of Greek culture (such as Ionia and Macedonia ) gaining increased autonomy from the Persian Empire ; the peak flourishing of democratic Athens ; the First and Second Peloponnesian Wars ; the Spartan and then Theban hegemonies ; and the expansion of Macedonia under Philip II . Much of

21140-435: Was a struggle not merely between two city-states but rather between two coalitions, or leagues of city-states: the Delian League , led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. The Delian League grew out of the need to present a unified front of all Greek city-states against Persian aggression. In 481 BC, Greek city-states, including Sparta, met in the first of a series of "congresses" that strove to unify all

21291-498: Was accused of having seduced Timaea, the wife of Agis II, the Eurypontid king of Sparta. Accordingly, Alcibiades was required to flee from Sparta and seek the protection of the Persian Court. In the Persian court, Alcibiades now betrayed both Athens and Sparta. He encouraged Persia to give Sparta financial aid to build a navy, advising that long and continuous warfare between Sparta and Athens would weaken both city-states and allow

21442-468: Was an ancient Greek war fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for 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

21593-403: 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

21744-410: 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

21895-469: 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

22046-435: Was first organized into about 130 demes , which became the basic civic element. The 10,000 citizens exercised their power as members of the assembly ( ἐκκλησία , ekklesia ), headed by a council of 500 citizens chosen at random. The city's administrative geography was reworked, in order to create mixed political groups: not federated by local interests linked to the sea, to the city, or to farming, whose decisions (e.g.

22197-486: Was formally divided into two large power zones. Sparta and Athens agreed to stay within their own power zone and not to interfere in the other's. Despite the Thirty Years Peace, it was clear that war was inevitable. As noted above, at all times during its history down to 221 BC, Sparta was a "diarchy" with two kings ruling the city-state concurrently. One line of hereditary kings was from the Eurypontid Dynasty while

22348-417: Was no equality at all between the members, as might be implied by the term "league". Furthermore, most of its members were located outside the Peloponnese Peninsula. The terms "Spartan League" and "Peloponnesian League" are modern terms. Contemporaries instead referred to " Lacedaemonians and their Allies" to describe the "league". The league had its origins in Sparta's conflict with Argos , another city on

22499-428: 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

22650-526: 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 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

22801-429: Was to invade Attica , but the Athenians were able to retreat behind their walls. An outbreak of plague in the city during the siege caused many deaths, including that of Pericles . At the same time the Athenian fleet landed troops in the Peloponnesus, winning battles at Naupactus (429) and Pylos (425). However, these tactics could bring neither side a decisive victory. After several years of inconclusive campaigning,

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