The Athenian Age

Although the Greek city-states frequently fought among themselves, they joined in athletic and religious festivities, such as the Olympic Games. Neighboring states would form a council, called an amphictyony , to arrange such activities.

(490–479 B.C.). In the middle of the sixth century B. C., Cyrus the Great of Persia seized Lydia and Ionia. The advance of his son-in-law, Darius the Great, into Thrace led to the Persian Wars.

In their first invasion of Greece, the Persians were defeated by the Athenians under Miltiades at Marathon (490 B.C.). Anticipating further conflict, the Athenian leader Themistocles started construction of a great navy. A second Persian invasion in 480 was led by Darius' son Xerxes. At the mountain pass of Thermopylae a vastly outnumbered force from Sparta, Thespiae, and Thebes made a heroic but futile stand against the Persians, who captured and burned Athens.

The Greek fleet took refuge at the island of Salamis, where it won a decisive victory over the Persian fleet (480 B.C.). The remaining Persians were defeated by forces under the Spartan commander Pausanias and the Athenians Xanthippus and Aristides. The historian Herodotus devoted his major work to an account of the Persian Wars.

The statesman and orator Pericles became head of the Athenian democratic party about 460 B.C. Although he was virtual ruler of Athens for the next 30 years, Athens was a democracy; his authority rested on popular election and his program was carried out by act of the general assembly. Sparta, firmly under aristocratic rule, saw this democracy as a threat to its own system.

In foreign policy Athens was imperialistic and autocratic. It dominated the Delian League, an alliance of Aegean cities formed for mutual protection, and forced the members to pay tribute. Athens began expanding—to the east by sea, bringing it into conflict with Persia; and to the west on land, where it clashed with the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. Members of the Delian League revolted. Athens became involved in almost ceaseless war, but was able to win most of the battles. In 448 B.C., a peace treaty was signed with Persia and in 445 a truce was made with Sparta. The warfare ended in 443, when Pericles reorganized the defeated Delian League and turned it into the Athenian Empire.

Pericles now turned his attention to making Athens the most beautiful city in Greece. The Parthenon and other temples were erected on the Acropolis. Under his rule, sculpture, drama, poetry, and philosophy flourished. Performances of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were attended by virtually the entire population.

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(431–404 B.C.). Fear of an expanding Athens was shared by all major Greek cities. Fighting started in 433 between Athens and Corinth. In 431 Thebes tried to seize Plataea, a city long allied with Athens, and all Greece erupted in war, with Sparta as Athens' major foe. During the first year, Athens fought vigorously under Pericles, but in the second year plague in the city took many lives. Pericles himself was a victim.

In 421 Nicias, an Athenian leader, negotiated a peace intended to create a 50-year alliance between Athens and Sparta. Instead, Alcibiades, an unscrupulous rival of Nicias, succeeded in leading Athens into resuming the war. Athens launched a tremendous attack against Sicily; it ended in disaster. Revolution broke out and one government after another came to power. Persia took this opportunity to aid Sparta.

The Athenians in the last years of the war were able to win a few victories, but in 405 B.C. their navy, led by Alcibiades, was destroyed by the Spartan navy, led by Lysander. The city was blockaded; starved into submission, it surrendered the following year. The Athenian Empire was dissolved, and Sparta named a group of aristocrats, called the Thirty Tyrants, to rule Athens. Thucydides, an Athenian general, wrote the classic history of the Peloponnesian War.