Classical Greek civilization

Question 1

The Persian Wars

Answer 1

• Between 500 and 386 bc Persia was for the policy-making classes in the largest Greek states a constant preoccupation.
• first phase of that confrontation between Greeks and Persians was the “Ionian revolt” of the Asiatic Greeks against Persia
• Communication between Athens and Ionia in this period is, however, first firmly attested in the other direction, not to Ionia but from it.
• On a longer perspective the struggle against Aegina helped to make Athens a naval power through simple peer-polity pressure. Ancient versions of the Athenian ship-building program, however, put too much onto the Aeginetan factor.
• Athens was not entirely alone in its fight against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 bc. Plataea fought beside Athens, true to the alliance of 519
• The Athenian victory was overwhelming; there were 6,400 Persian casualties to 192 Athenian. (it showed what lethal damage hoplites could do to Persian forces; this encouraging message was not missed by the Spartans who arrived to view the corpses and departed with patronizing congratulations to the Athenians. Second and more important, it was a propaganda victory, celebrated in all the available media)

Question 2

Athenian empire

Answer 2

• The capture of Sestus was one manifestation of Athenian independence from Spartan leadership, which had gone unquestioned by Athens in the Persian Wars of 480–479
• Another manifestation was the energetic building in the early 470s of a proper set of walls for the city of Athens, an episode elaborately described by Thucydides to demonstrate the guile of Themistocles
• The most important consequence of the successful Greek appeal to Athens was the beginning of the Athenian empire, or Delian League
• increasing oppressiveness of the Athenian empire in the second half of its existence (450–404)
• First Peloponnesian War (460–446) should probably be seen as essentially a conflict between Athens and Corinth, with occasional interventions by Sparta
• the first battle of the war, at Halieis in the Gulf of Argolis, was a Corinthian victory, but the next battle, at Cecryphalea (modern Angistrion), went Athens’s way (459)
• Pythagoreanism, a philosophical school and religious brotherhood, flourished in southern Italy.

Question 3

The Peloponnesian War

Answer 3

• Athenian war strategy and the initial conduct of the war are presented by Thucydides very much in personal terms: the focus is on what Pericles, the dominant figure of this time, did or wanted.
• Sparta came as a liberator. That too called for money and ships, but the Spartans had neither accumulated reserves like Athens nor a proper fleet.
• Sparta’s invasion of Attica set the tone of the first half of the Archidamian War (431–421), named after the Spartan king Archidamus II, unfairly in view of the wariness he is said to have expressed at the outset. Athens moved its flocks from Attica across to Euboea, whose economic importance was thus raised further still.
• At the end of this first campaigning year, Pericles delivered an austere but moving speech honouring the fallen men, which has become known as the funeral oration of Pericles.
• The second year of the war, 430, began with another invasion of Attica.
• The blow to Athens’s morale and prestige was perhaps greater than the strictly military reverse, for, with an astonishing capacity for replacement, Athens managed, after a crash building program, to achieve rough naval parity with the Peloponnesians.
• The Law Against Unconstitutional Proposals, a democratic safeguard, was abolished, as was pay for most kinds of political office, and the old Council of Five Hundred was to be replaced by an elected Council of Four Hundred.
• Athenian success continued with further victories in the Hellespontine region, and Alcibiades, who had played a role in these victories, was able to return from exile in 407
• Slaves were necessary for the working of the economy in its mining and agriculture aspects, and they also provided skills for the architectural glorification of the Acropolis.
• Military technology remained surprisingly static in the 5th century. The 7th century, by contrast, had witnessed rapid innovations, such as the introduction of the hoplite and the trireme, which still were the basic instruments of war in the 5th