After the Persian emperor
Cyrus had defeated Lydian king
Croesus and taken over Sardis about
544 BC, he appointed
the Persian Tabalus to govern Sardis and entrusted its treasury
to the Lydian
Pactyes, who raised
a revolt that had to be put down.
Having retaken
Sardis, the Persian troops began attacking
the Ionian cities,
killing the men and enslaving the women
and children of Priene
and plundering Magnesia.
On the Asian continent only Miletus maintained
its
independence, but the other Greek cities
had to pay tribute
and provide soldiers.
Bias of Priene advised the Ionians to emigrate
to the
island of Sardinia to be free; but still having freedom
of commerce, they decided to stay.
The Persians tended to support
local tyrants
as the easiest way to control the Greek cities.
Darius made sure the tribute to Persia
came in regularly
and also got Ionian help in his invasion of
European Scythia.
About 512 BC they crossed the Bosphorus and
then the
Danube River, but the nomadic Scythians
just kept retreating
until their pursuers gave up.
The northern tribes refused to fight
for the Scythians,
because they argued that the Persian
invasion was a
consequence of earlier Scythian aggression
that
did not concern them.
The Greeks were left to guard the bridge
across the Danube,
and Histaeus of Miletus persuaded the other
Ionian tyrants,
although Miltiades disagreed, to remain loyal
to Darius
out of fear of democratic revolts if they did not.
Thus
Darius was able to return to Asia and appointed
Megabazus to command
80,000 men in Europe
to invade Thrace and Macedonia.
In gratitude
for their help and advice, Darius granted
Myrcinus to Histaeus
and Mytilene to Coes, but then
he took Histaeus with him back
to Susa in Persia.
In 500 BC when some aristocrats were expelled from Naxos,
they
fled to Miletus and appealed to Aristagoras,
the nephew and son-in-law
of Histaeus.
Aristagoras suggested asking the Persians for help
and went to Sardis to encourage Artaphernes to take
over Naxos
and the Cyclades islands, and Artaphernes
offered 200 ships with
Megabates as commander.
However, Aristagoras and Megabates quarreled,
and the latter warned the Naxians of the attack,
which then turned
out to be a costly failure.
Fearing he would lose his position
at Miletus and
possibly receiving a slave messenger from his
uncle
Histaeus suggesting he revolt,
Aristagoras called a council and
urged a revolt.
In spite of opposition by the historian Hecataeus,
the Ionians did decide to throw off their Persian
yoke.
To gain popular support Aristagoras offered the Milesians
a
democratic government, and he handed over the tyrants
with him
to their cities, which treated them with leniency
except for Coes,
who was stoned to death at Mytilene.
Then Aristagoras went to
Sparta for aid; but Cleomenes
became concerned when he discovered
that the Persian
capital was three months away; finally his young
daughter
warned him that the bribe offers of Aristagoras
were
going to corrupt him.
So Aristagoras went to Athens, which had
bee
strengthened by democratic reforms; Herodotus wrote that
he had no difficulty convincing 30,000 Athenians,
who appropriated
twenty warships
for the Ionian independence struggle.
In gratitude
for Milesian help long before,
the Eretrians also added five warships.
Aristagoras sent a message to the Paeonians, who had been
deported
to Phrygia, that they should run away
from their Persian
masters, and they did.
The Athenian fleet landed in Ephesus, and they marched
to Sardis,
which they easily defeated; its thatch houses
were burned along
with a temple of Cybele.
Hearing of this, Darius never forgot
that
Athenians and Eretrians burned Sardis.
However, the Persians
caught up with them and defeated them
at Ephesus, ending Athenian
involvement in the revolt.
The Ionians, however, sailed to the
Hellespont, gained control
of Byzantium, and then went back south
to take Caria;
Cyprus rebelled against Persia
as well
but was defeated after one year of independence.
In a
major battle the Carians were defeated with 10,000 killed.
Aristagoras
fled to Myrcinus, where he was killed by Thracians
when he was
besieging one of their towns.
Histaeus persuaded Darius to send
him to Sardis to help;
but suspected of treachery by Artaphernes,
he fled from there to Chios, where he lied that the reason
he
urged the revolt was because Darius intended
to transfer Ionians
to Phoenicia; his messengers to friends
in Sardis were intercepted,
and their recipients were executed.
Wounded in attempting to return
to Miletus, Histaeus gained
some ships at Lesbos and engaged in
piracy at Byzantium
until he was captured and crucified by Artaphernes.
The Ionians decided that each city must defend itself while
they gathered all the ships they could at Lade
which amounted
to 353 triremes.
The expelled tyrants sent messages to their cities
encouraging them to surrender to the Persians.
The Phocaean Dionysius
persuaded the Ionians to put their
forces under his discipline;
but he trained them so ruthlessly
that the seaman stopped obeying
orders.
When they met the Phoenician fleet of 600 ships,
most
of the Samians turned sail for home,
causing the Lesbians and
others to flee also.
The Chians, who had brought a hundred ships,
fought most bravely, capturing some enemy ships
but also losing
many of their own.
Some Chians had to flee on land from Mycale
to Ephesus,
where they were taken for brigands
during a Demeter
festival for women and killed.
Dionysius captured three enemy
ships, sank some cargo
vessels at Phoenicia, and then went to
Sicily,
where he raided non-Greek ships.
After their naval victory the Persians besieged Miletus
and
deported its people to the Persian Gulf.
So profound was the grief
over this Milesian defeat that
at Athens when Phrynichus' tragedy The Capture of Miletus
was performed, people wept,
fined
the author, and banned the play.
A few Milesians, who had escaped,
joined with people
from Samos, who did not want to be under Aeaces
and the
Persians, to go to Sicily, where with the help of Hippocrates
of Gela they took over Zancle while its men
were away attacking
a Sicel town.
The Chersonese tyrant Miltiades did manage to seize
the islands of Lemnos and Imbros for Athens.
The Persians also occupied Caria.
The islands were thoroughly
searched by human chains of men
holding hands, and the best-looking
girls and boys were sent
to the Persian court for the harem or
to be castrated.
Artaphernes ordered all the Ionians to settle
their differences
by arbitration instead of war, and he established
the taxes
they were to pay to Persia,
which were not changed for
the next half century.
The son-in-law of Darius, Mardonius, expelled
irresponsible
tyrants from Ionian cities and set up democratic
institutions,
which Herodotus naturally found surprising.
Mardonius
then crossed over to Europe and
took over the remaining portion
of Macedonia
after a difficult battle with the Thracian Brygi.
However, his fleet was so badly smashed up in a storm
near Mount
Athos, drowning 20,000 men,
that they returned to Asia.
Darius next started demanding earth and water, the tokens of
submission, and the provision of ships from the coastal towns.
Aegina's compliance with this angered the Athenians,
who contacted
Sparta, which had recently defeated Argos
while killing about
6,000 Argives.
To show their resistance to Persian
imperialism
both Athens and Sparta killed the Persian envoys
sent
to ask for submission, a sacrilege to the Greeks.
Both Spartan
kings had to go to Aegina to arrest ten leaders,
who were sent
as hostages to Athens.
Cleomenes, who had bribed the Delphic oracle
to get the other Spartan king Demaratus replaced,
went insane
and killed himself.
Determined to get revenge against Athens and Eretria,
Darius
sent his nephew Artaphernes and the Mede Datis with
a large fleet,
which attacked Naxos, spared the sacred Delos,
and defeated Carystus
and Eretria on the island of Euboea.
The Athenians had sent 4,000
men from Chalcis;
but they were advised to leave when it was clear
that Eretria was doomed.
The city was burned, and its inhabitants
were captured.
Then the Persians landed at Marathon with Hippias,
who had landed there more than a half century before
with his
father Peisistratus.
This time the Athenians were not going to
submit to a tyrant,
especially one imposed on them by Persians.
They sent an appeal to Sparta, which could not respond
until after
the full moon because of a religious festival.
In 490 BC about 9,000 Athenians marched to Marathon,
where
they were joined by a thousand Plataeans.
After several days the
Athenians led by Miltiades launched
an attack on the run to limit
the damage from archers.
The heavy bronze armor of the hoplites
proved superior to the
Persian wicker shields, and they won an
overwhelming victory
against a force at least twice as large that
included cavalry,
which they also lacked.
According to Herodotus
about 6400 Persians were killed
but only 192 Athenians.
Someone
used a shield to signal the Persians, and their ships
headed for
Athens; but the Athenian army was able to march
there first, and
the Persians decided to go home.
Back in Persia, Darius ordered
the Eretrians settled near Susa.
Miltiades was admired so much for this victory that he was
given seventy ships to use against the islands which had
supported
the Persians; but when he used them to settle
a personal vendetta
at Paros and failed to achieve the revenue
he had promised, he
was charged by Xanthippus with treason
for deceiving the people
but was fined instead of executed,
though he soon died of a wound.
Afraid of powerful leaders, the Athenians changed the election
of the archons to a selection by lot from a large number
of those
locally elected, and also in 487 BC they began to
ostracize men
considered friendly to tyranny,
the first being the Peisistratid
Hipparchus
and the second an Alcmaeonid.
Xanthippus was ostracized
and also Aristeides, who was told
by an illiterate man to write
his name on the pottery fragment
only because he was tired of
hearing him called
Aristeides the just; but in 481 BC as the Persian invasion
was coming again
the Athenians recalled all these men
who had been ostracized for
ten years, probably
because it would be safer to have them in
Athens.
The Aeginetans brought suit in Sparta, which decided to
surrender
their king Leotychides to Aegina for the hostages
in Athens; but
the Athenians refused to give up the Aeginetans,
which caused
a war between Athens and Aegina.
This war also enabled Themistocles
to get Athens to fortify
Piraeus as a harbor and begin building
up their navy,
which the state was able to finance
by a supply
of silver recently mined.
When Darius died in 486 BC, his son Xerxes,
after putting down
Egypt, took up his ambition to get revenge
against the Athenians
and prepared for a massive invasion.
Three years were spent digging
a canal cutting off Mount Athos.
Xerxes sent envoys to every city
in Greece
except for Athens and Sparta, demanding submission and
cooperation with his preparations.
The Persian fleet collected
from its empire had 1207 triremes
plus many other ships, and the
number of soldiers
was estimated at 1,700,000.
A bridge was built
over ships across the Bosphorus,
and rivers were drunk dry by
this huge army
that was marching south toward Athens.
In a meeting
at the isthmus a Hellenic alliance was formed
under the leadership
of Sparta that included
Athenians, Corinthians and their allies.
Gelon of Syracuse refused to join unless he was made
commander,
and also because
he had not been helped in his war with Carthage.
Gelon sent three ships with money to be given to Xerxes
if the
Persians were victorious; but when they were not,
the ships brought
the money back.
The Corcyreans promised ships,
but they never
made it to the war.
Crete took the advice of the Delphic oracle
and did not participate.
In Sicily when Terillus had been driven
out of Himera
by the ruler of Acragas, he asked Carthage for help.
Carthage's invasion of Sicily came in the spring of 480 BC
at
the same time Xerxes was entering Europe
and was likely coordinated
by their Phoenician connections.
It was reported that 300,000
Carthaginians were transported,
but the Syracusan army led by
Gelon defeated them,
killed Hamilcar, and collected 200 talents
war indemnity
plus booty from Carthaginian camps.
The Delphic oracle, which had often favored the Persian
interests that had contributed so much wealth, prophesied that
either Sparta would be destroyed
or one of its kings would be
killed.
The pronouncements concerning Athens were even more bleak,
but Themistocles interpreted the "wooden walls" as their
navy
and argued that "divine Salamis" would bring
death
to Persians not to Greeks.
Conflicts between Greek cities such
as Athens and Aegina
were put in abeyance in order to face the Persian threat.
Thessaly would
be the first to be invaded, and the Greeks
sent 10,000 hoplites
to defend the pass at Tempe.
Alexander of Macedonia advised them
to withdraw,
because the Persian
army would slaughter them;
they did withdraw, though it was probably
because the army
of Xerxes took a different route.
Thus Thessaly
submitted and supported the Persians.
Meanwhile it was reported
that 400 Persian ships had been
destroyed in a storm caused by a strong north wind;
the gods seemed
to be favoring the Greeks.
The Greeks decided to defend the narrow pass at Thermopylae
with about 7,000 men, but once again because of a religious
festival
Sparta could only send King Leonidas,
who chose to take his personal
guard of 300.
However, their valiant defense was able to stop
the
Persian army until some of
the Persian "immortals"
were led around behind them
by a mountain path.
The 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians remained
in the pass
and fought to the death, while 400 Thebans surrendered
to
the Persians and were branded on their foreheads as slaves.
The 271 Greek war ships, which had retreated from Artemisium,
returned there after the storm destroyed many Persian
ships;
but when they saw how many enemy ships remained,
they refused
to defend the Euboean strait until the Euboeans
bribed Themistocles
and the other generals with thirty talents.
Learning that the
Persians were coming around to surround them,
the Greeks made
a surprising attack in the afternoon,
taking thirty ships but
also suffering considerable damage.
However, that night another
storm blew against the Persian ships
so badly most of them could
not fight the next day.
Joined by 53 more Athenians ships, the
Greeks were able to
fight the still larger Persian
fleet to a draw the next day;
but they decided they needed to
withdraw,
especially after hearing the news from Thermopylae.
Themistocles had messages carved in the rocks,
where they stopped
for water, urging the Ionians not to make
war on their fathers
but change sides
or refuse to fight for the Persians.
Before his
army inspected the field at Thermopylae,
Xerxes had most of the
20,000 Persian dead buried
in
trenchesso that it would look like
only one thousand Persians
had been killed.
Out of respect for bravery he also had the Greeks
buried.
The Greek ships went to Salamis,
and Athens had to be evacuated.
The Persians marched through Boeotia, burned Thespiae,
and devastated
Attica, as the Persian army was
now given
permission to rape and pillage Greeks who were resisting.
A few poor people tried to hold the Acropolis in Athen
but were
overcome, and it was burned.
The Peloponnesian army was building
a wall across the isthmus.
At a strategy conference most of the
allies wanted to take the
navy to the isthmus to defend the Peloponnesian
peninsula;
but not wanting to lose Salamis, Megara, and Aegina,
Themistocles argued that this would draw the Persian forces
to the Peloponnesus and that they could fight more effectively
in
the narrow strait of Salamis.
He even threatened to take their
200 Athenian ships
and settle in Italy, which changed the mind
of the
Spartan commander Eurybiades.
Themistocles then secretly
sent a message to the
Persian emperor that the Greeks would run
away
if he did not block them.
Soon the general Aristeides brought
the war council
the news that the Persians had surrounded them.
If Xerxes had listened to the advice of Queen Artemisia
of Halicarnassus,
he would have avoided the crucial
naval battle at Salamis; but
he agreed with his male generals.
In this battle confined in the straits of Salamis, the fewer
Greek
ships could use their ability to ram to better advantage;
many Persians who could not swim drowned,
while Greeks swam to
the islands.
This Greek naval victory was the turning point in
the war.
Herodotus quoted the prophecy of Bacis,
the truth of
which he could not deny.
When they shall span the sea with ships from Cynosura
To the holy shore of Artemis of the golden sword,
Wild with hope at the ruin of shining Athens,
Then shall bright Justice quench Excess, the child of Pride,
Dreadful and furious, thinking to swallow up all things.
Bronze shall mingle with bronze, and Aries with blood
Incarnadine the sea; and all-seeing Zeus
And gracious Victory shall bring to
Greece the day of freedom.1
Xerxes decided to return to Asia, leaving a force of 300,000
picked troops with Mardonius.
Themistocles wisely advised the
Greeks not to try to block
the Persians' return, because it would
prolong the war;
he urged Greeks to repair their houses and sow
their land,
and playing both sides, sent a secret message of this
to Xerxes.
Themistocles also secretly extorted money from the
islands
of Andros, Carystus and Paros for having helped the Persians,
but Carystus was destroyed by the Greeks anyway.
On their long
march homeward many Persians died of
dysentery and disease as
they struggled
to find enough to eat and drink.
Artabazus escorted
his emperor out of Europe with 60,000
troops and then went to
put down revolts already occurring
in Potidaea and Olynthus, while
the forces of Mardonius
wintered in Thessaly and Macedonia.
Alexander of Macedonia tried to persuade the Athenians
to make
a separate peace with Persia,
but Aristeides insisted
that their love of freedom would never
allow the Athenians to
capitulate to Xerxes, who had wasted their
land
and burned their temples.
Mardonius recaptured a deserted
Athens a second time
and burned it to the ground.
Meeting at Salamis,
the Athenians stoned to death Lycidas for
proposing that Persian
demands be presented to the people;
Athenian women even stoned
his wife and children.
The Athenians sent a message to Sparta,
requesting that
they join them in the field in expectation of
the enemy's
next invasion, and the Lacedaemonians responded by
sending
5,000 Spartans attended by 35,000 Helots.
Mardonius marched to Thebes, where
his cavalry could fight
to advantage.
The Greek allies that gathered at Plataea
amounted
to about 110,000.
Herodotus estimated that of the Persian
force of 300,000
about 50,000 were Greeks, and these were likely
to flee at a moment's notice.
Some Thebans fought hard, and 300
were killed;
but the rest then ran away to Thebes.
Artabazus,
disagreeing with Mardonius, kept his forces back
and fled before
even engaging the enemy.
Once Mardonius himself was killed, it
became a rout.
According to Herodotus only 3,000 Persians survived
(plus 40,000 who fled with Artabazus),
while only 1360 Greeks
were killed.
Spartan commander Pausanias forbade looting and ordered
the Helots to gather the booty.
Thebes was besieged, taken,
and
its resisting leaders were executed.
Artabazus hurried toward
Byzantium
while losing men to disease and Thracian attacks.
The Persian naval force at
Samos retreated to Mycale near
Miletus and joined the land army,
making 60,000.
Led by Xanthippus and Leotychides, who sent a herald
to appeal to the Ionians, the Greeks, stimulated by the news
of
the victory at Plataea in what Herodotus called the second
Ionian
revolt, defeated the Persian army, which fled to Sardis,
where
Xerxes was preoccupied with court intrigues.
Leotychides and the
Spartans returned with their allies
to the Peloponnese while the
Athenians besieged Sestos
in the Chersonese until the Persians
fled from there.
The ambitions of the Persian
empire had overreached their
capacity to control by force of arms.
With the exception of the early Athenian raid, which burned
Sardis
and greatly escalated the whole conflict,
the Greeks led by Sparta
and Athens had fought mostly
in defense of their homeland and
had prevailed against vast
numbers by superior technology, training,
and mostly by the
human spirit that they were fighting for their
own freedom
and independence while their adversaries were serving
imperial ambitions or were capitulating to its power.
Thanks to
the marvelous research and account by the first
great historian,
Herodotus, the world would never forget
how the Greeks protected
their independence
against imperialist aggression.
Athens had been destroyed in 480 BC, but after the Persian
invasion was defeated the next year, the Athenians began to
rebuild
their walls and to make the Piraeus a major harbor,
persuaded
by Themistocles,
who had championed their victorious navy.
A Spartan
embassy, alarmed by Athenian power, suggested
that they cooperate
in tearing down the fortifications in Greece.
Instead, Themistocles
was sent to Sparta and delayed until the
Athenians had built their
walls.
Then he proposed that the Spartans send some officials
to
inspect the Athenian walls and got the Athenians to hold them
to trade for Themistocles and his embassy.
Themistocles wanted
Athens to make their own decisions
based on their own strength.
Themistocles wanted to set fire to the Greek arsenal so that
Athens
would become master of Greece;
but Aristeides told the assembly
that although nothing could be
more advantageous to Athens, nothing
would be more unjust;
so Athenians, trusting Aristeides the Just,
refused to follow Themistocles' plan.
Pausanias led twenty Peloponnesian ships joined by
thirty Athenian
triremes to win over most of Cyprus
before going on to Byzantium.
Seduced by power and Persian
ways, Pausanias
soon alienated the Greeks by his dictatorial manner
and was recalled to Sparta to stand trial.
However, the diplomacy
and fairness of the Athenian leader
Aristeides the Just won the
Ionians over to the Athenian side.
The contributions assessed
by Aristeides to the league of allies
were deposited on the sacred
island of Delos;
according to Thucydides the original sum was
460 talents.
Acquitted on the major charges, Pausanias got a trireme
on his own and returned to the Hellespont,
where he continued
to intrigue with Xerxes and Artabazus;
he was recalled to Sparta
a second time
and imprisoned but released.
Then he conspired with
Helots by offering them freedom
until a messenger, suspicious
that previous messengers
had been sent to their deaths, opened
his letter and
proved in a conversation overheard by the Spartan
ephors that Pausanias was guilty.
Fearing arrest, Pausanias took
sanctuary in a temple
of Athena, where he was walled in and starved
to death.
While the Athenians were forming the Delian league,
the Spartans
tried to ally themselves with the Amphictionic
league of Thessaly
and northern Greece.
Spartan king Leotychides, however, accepted
bribes from
Aleuad princes but saved his life by fleeing to Tegea.
Spartan hostility toward the states that had capitulated to the
Medes, their rivalry with Argos, and the efforts of Themistocles
blocked an effective alliance.
Eventually Sparta had to fight
and defeat both Tegea and Argos.
Meanwhile Cimon commanded the
Athenians as they captured
and enslaved the inhabitants of Eion
and Scyros.
Both Carystus in Euboea and Naxos were compelled by
force
of arms to rejoin the alliance and contribute money or ships.
Cimon's forces won another major victory when they
destroyed the
entire Phoenician fleet of 200 ships
at the Eurymedon River in
Pamphylia.
Themistocles accused Aristeides of robbing the public
when he actually had been exposing Themistocles
and others for their
corruption.
Then the wealthy got Aristeides exempted from the
fine
if he would tolerate their ways, causing Aristeides to
complain that he was more ashamed of these honors
than of the former sentence.
Themistocles, showing personal arrogance, was ostracized
by the
Athenians and then accused by the Spartans
of conspiring with
Persia.
The hero of Salamis fled to Corcyra and then to Admetus,
king of the Molossi, whose wife helped him plead his case.
Themistocles
ended up in the Persian court of Artaxerxes,
where he learned
Persian to defend himself;
he claimed the reward of two hundred
talents for bringing
in Themistocles and was allowed to live in
Magnesia,
where later according to Plutarch he took poison
rather
than fight against the Greeks.
In Sicily Theron used the slaves captured in the war with
Carthage
to build up Acragas, while his tyrannical son
Thrasydaeus oppressed
the people of Himera.
Gelon died in 478 BC and was succeeded in
Syracuse
by his brother Hieron, who pushed out his other brother
Polyzalus, who turned to Theron; but the poet Simonides
helped
mediate a peace between the brothers.
Hieron with Syracuse's fleet
helped Cyme fight off an attack
by the Etruscans in 474 BC,
a
victory praised in poetry by Pindar.
This poet competed with Bacchylides
in praising the victories
of Sicilian tyrants in the Panhellenic
games
while they basked in the luxury of their courts.
Hieron
deported to Leontini the inhabitants of Catane,
which he renamed
Aetna so that he could found a city
and safeguard his dynasty,
installing his son Deinomenes there.
When Theron died, his son Thrasydaeus misruled Acragas
as he
had Himera and bungled into a losing war with Hieron,
resulting
in Himera's independence
and a free constitution for Acragas in
470 BC.
When Hieron died three years later, his brother Thrasybulus
executed and banished so many citizens to get their property
that
he was overthrown by a revolution supported by
Sicel tribes, followed
by a civil war between the old and new
citizens that included
mercenaries established
by Gelon's dynasty until the strangers
were driven out
and democracy was established.
The tyrants had
wiped out class distinctions though,
and the republics of Sicily
were to thrive
for the next half century.
A revolt of native Sicels
led by Ducetius was eventually
defeated by Syracuse, and he was
exiled to Corinth in 450 BC.
In 476 BC the Delian league attacked Thrace.
Greek ships invaded
Caria in 466 BC.
The next year an Athenian fleet went to put down
a revolt
in Thasos over the silver mines in Thrace, and ten thousand
Athenians colonized Nine Ways on the Strymon River
and called
it Amphipolis.
However, further encroachments were defeated
by
a combined army of Thracians.
Thasos appealed to Sparta for help,
but an earthquake there
stimulated a revolt of the Helots and
the Laconians
around in the third Messenian war.
Besieged more
than two years, the Thiasians had to surrender
their navy, demolish
their walls, give up their mines and rights
in Thrace, and pay
tribute to Athens.
Facing a revolution, Sparta turned to Athens
for help with the
siege of the Ithome stronghold, and in 463 BC
they sent a
force led by Cimon, who said that Greece should not
be
allowed to be lamed, depriving Athens of her yoke fellow;
but
the Spartans became suspicious
and soon asked the Athenians to
leave.
Offended, the Athenians renounced their treaty with the
Spartans against Persia and made an alliance with
Sparta's rival
Argos and Thessaly.
Finally, after ten years according to Thucydides,
the rebels
agreed to leave the Peloponnesian peninsula
and were
aided in settling at Naupactus by Athens.
In Athens Pericles supported the institution of democratic
reforms
that gave more power to the lower classes by making
the council
of 500 chosen by lot only, giving them powers
previously held
by the Areopagite council and by paying those
involved in public
service; farmers could now serve as archons.
According to Plutarch,
Pericles though aristocratic,
took the side of the people in order
to oppose Cimon.
Cimon was accused of being too friendly with
the Spartans
and was ostracized in 461 BC, and Ephialtes, who
had led
the
drive to remove power from the Areopagites, was murdered.
Two years later Argos and Megara joined the Athenian alliance,
and a long wall was built to protect Athens from a land invasion.
This made Corinth and Epidaurus insecure,
and they fought with
Athens at Haliae.
A battle over the island of Cecryphalea brought
in Aegina,
which was supported by Peloponnesians
while Corinthians
attacked Megara.
The Athenians called upon citizens of all ages
led by Myronides
and claimed a victory until the Corinthians
came
back to defeat them.
However, the Athenian siege of Aegina for
two years eventually
triumphed and forced this nearby island to
join the Delian league
and pay a substantial tribute of thirty
talents a year.
Meanwhile the Athenian navy had sent 200 ships to Cyprus
and
then went to support the Egyptian revolt
led by Inaros against Persian rule.
They sailed up
the Nile and took over most of Memphis,
but the Persians held
out in the White Castle.
The Persians got Sparta to engage the
Athenians at Tanagra
over Boeotia in which many on both sides
were killed,
and the Megarid fruit trees were cut down in a victory
claimed by the Lacedaemonians.
However, two months later in the
fall of 457 BC the Athenians
won a battle at Oenophyta and took
over all of Boeotia
except Thebes, enabling Athens to complete
the long walls.
Artaxerxes sent a large army led by Megabyzus
with a
Phoenician fleet, drove the Greeks out of Memphis,
and
pinned them down on Byblos;
only a few Greeks escaped Egypt by
way of Cyrene.
Probably these threats led to moving the league
treasury
from Delos to Athens,
which Aristeides said was not just
but expedient.
Athens conquered Aegina, and the Athenian general
Tolmides
sailed around the Peloponnesian peninsula to capture
the
Corinthian colony Chalcis and secured
Achaean cities into
their alliance.
Cimon then negotiated a truce between Athens and
Sparta
for five years, while Argos made peace
with the Lacedaemonians
for thirty years.
In 451 BC Pericles got an act passed limiting Athenian
citizenship
based on birth.
Six years later when Egypt
sent Athens a gift of
30,000 bushels of wheat, this law was used
to deny
some 5,000 people a share of the grain.
After their victory
in Egypt the Phoenician fleet regained
control of Cyprus, and so Cimon was sent with 200 ships
and besieged
Citium, where he died.
Pericles was supporting Cimon's aggressive
foreign policy
in exchange for having control of domestic issues.
The wealthy Callias negotiated a peace treaty
for Athens with Persia.
Most of the Hellenic
states were now independent of Persia
except on Cyprus, where the Phoenicians still dominated;
both
sides pledged not to send warships into the Aegean Sea.
In a "sacred war" the Spartans took over Delphi before
the
Athenians regained it for the Phocians, who soon deserted
the Athenian alliance because of an oligarchic movement
that was
sweeping Boeotia.
For once Athens went against the advice of Pericles
when Tolmides led an Athenian force to take Chaeronea,
selling
their prisoners as slaves; but the Athenians were
defeated at
Coronea, and Tolmides was killed.
So many hostages were taken
that Boeotia
was lost to the Athenian empire.
Next Euboea revolted,
and Pericles led troops across to
subdue the island and expel
the people of Histiaea,
who had put to death the crew of an Athenian
ship.
Athenian forces, led by Andocides and sent to Megara,
were
massacred by a Peloponnesian army.
Pericles sent ten talents to bribe a Spartan king to prevent
war,
and this "necessary expenditure" became an annual
expense
tolerated and joked about by the Athenians.
Tribute to
the alliance was declining, and in 445 BC the
Athenians, while
retaining Aegina and Naupactus, agreed to
surrender Nisaea, Pagae,
Achaea, and Troezen in a thirty-year
peace treaty with Sparta
that named the allies of each
and left other states free to choose.
Scholars have concluded that the first year after
the peace treaty no tribute was paid,
and Pericles was not elected a general that
year.
Pericles tried to convene a Panhellenic conference in Athens
to restore Greek temples and clear the seas of pirates,
but the
Peloponnesians would not attend.
In 443 BC the rival general of
Pericles named Thucydides
was ostracized, and the leadership of
Pericles
for the next fifteen years was unchallenged.
Pericles and Cleinias, the father of Alcibiades, passed a
decree to organize the collection of tribute, and parties
in Athens argued over the proper use of the tribute money;
Pericles wanted the
artisans to be employed in the vast
projects of public building
on the Acropolis and elsewhere.
The liberal state expenditures
also went
for public gymnasia and baths.
Pericles' friend Damon
called it
"bribing the people with public funds," outspending
what
Cimon could do with his private generosity.
Athenians were
sent to settle in various strategic areas,
particularly the Chersonese,
which controlled the grain
imported from the Euxine (Black Sea).
In the sixth year of the truce Samos attacked
Miletus over
Priene.
The Milesians appealed to Athens, which along with its
allies
Chios and Lesbos, sent ships led by Pericles
to establish
a democracy on Samos.
However, some exiled Samians raised a force
of mercenaries
and were joined in the revolt by Byzantium.
Athens
sent Pericles back with 44 ships
and defeated the Samian fleet.
Samos agreed to pay 1,276 talents in war reparations,
and Byzantium
submitted also.
Fearing the effect comedies would have on foreigners
in Athens,
Pericles had some restraints put on comic drama,
but
they did not last long.
The population in and around Athens in
Attica was
about 315,000, but nearly half of these were slaves.
The glory of Athens was depicted on the awe-inspiring
Parthenon
in the mythic combats of gods and heroes
and celebrated in the
Panathenaic procession.
The Athenians decreed that their allies
must use only
Athenian coins, weights, and measures.
Tribute assessments
were usually made every four years.
Resentment against Pericles
attacked his friends Damon,
the sculptor Pheidias, the philosopher
Anaxagoras,
and his lover Aspasia, but could not remove Pericles
himself.
Though Athens and Sparta had fought each other before,
Thucydides
called the 27-year conflict between the Athenian
empire and the
Lacedaemonians the Peloponnesian War,
which he wrote in his great
history was caused by the growth
of Athenian power and the fear
which that caused in Sparta.
This war, which spread throughout
Greece, was triggered
by a conflict between the Corinthian colony
of Corcyra
and Corcyra's colony at Epidamnus.
When the Epidamnian
democrats drove out the aristocrats,
the latter got foreign enemies
to attack the city, causing the
democrats to appeal to Corcyra.
Not getting help there, they followed the advice of the
Delphic
oracle and turned over the city to Corinth.
The Corcyraeans resented
this and
sent forty ships to besiege Epidamnus.
Neither the Corcyraeans
nor the Corinthians would negotiate
with the other's forces in
place, and Corcyra with another
eighty ships destroyed fifteen
Corinthian ships in a decisive
victory as Epidamnus surrendered;
the foreign troops were
to be sold as slaves, but they were put
to death instead.
The Corcyraean fleet attacked other Corinthian
garrisons,
and Corinth responded with a two-year ship-building
program.
Concerned Corcyra sent representatives to Athens seeking
alliance;
they warned of the threat to Athenian naval supremacy
if Corinth
took over their substantial navy.
Ambassadors from Corinth argued
that Corcyra was in the
wrong and should not be supported in their
crimes,
which would cause Athens to break its treaty with Corinth.
The Corinthians complained that Corcyra was arguing
as though
war was inevitable.
The Athenians agreed only to a defensive alliance
in order
to preserve the peace treaty and sent ten ships to reinforce
Corcyra, but these were followed by twenty more,
which were enough
to cause the Corinthian navy of 150 ships
to retreat after claiming
victory over Corcyra's fleet of 110 ships
in the largest battle
among Greeks up to that time.
On their way home the Corinthians
seized Anactorium and sold
800 Corcyraean prisoners as slaves,
keeping 250 as hostages.
The next conflict also involved a Corinthian colony—
Potidaea,
a tribute-paying ally of Athens.
The Athenians told the Potidaeans
to tear down their southern
walls and stop using Corinthian magistrates;
but when Sparta
promised to invade Attica if Athens attacked Potidaea,
the Potidaeans joined with the Macedonian prince Perdiccas
and
the Chalcidians to revolt from the Athenian empire.
Thirty Athenian
ships had already been sent to Thrace
because of the conflict
with Perdiccas; but hearing of the revolt,
they made an alliance
with him after a siege in order to
attack Potidaea, killing 300
and establishing a blockade.
Pericles had the Athenians pass an economically devastating
decree excluding Megara from trading with their empire.
The Spartan
assembly voted that Athens was wrong in
attacking the Corinthian
colony of Potidaea
and called a conference of their allies.
The
Corinthians accused Athens of depriving states
of their freedom
and recommended invading Attica.
Athenian ambassadors were also
allowed to speak
and argued that they had begun by defending Greeks
against Persian imperialism; but as their power increased,
things
began to change.
Finally there came a time when we were surrounded
by enemies, when we had already crushed some
revolts, when you had lost the friendly feelings
that you used to have for us and had turned against
us and begun to arouse our suspicion:
at this point it was clearly no longer safe for us
to risk letting our empire go, especially as any allies
that left us would go over to you.
And when tremendous dangers are involved
no one can be blamed for looking to his own interest.2
The Athenians asked for arbitration, and the Spartan king
Archidamus
also argued for patience and moderation.
However, when Sthenelaidas,
one of the ephors, posed the
question as to whether Athens had
broken the treaty,
the majority voted for war.
So the Spartans
sent an ultimatum to Athens, demanding that
they lift the siege
of Potidaea, give Aegina her freedom,
and revoke the decree boycotting
Megarians.
In the Athenian assembly Pericles spoke against making any
concessions, saying the Spartans were
refusing their offers of
arbitration.
He said they would give Megara access to their markets
if the Spartans would no longer expel aliens.
However, he would
not allow any allies to be independent
unless they were so at
the time of the peace treaty
and only if the Spartans would give
independence and
free choice of government to their allies.
Thus
neither side would give in, and negotiations ended.
With war declared, 300 Thebans snuck into Plataea at night
and attacked those who supported Athenian alliance.
When the Plataeans
realized how few they were, they attacked
the Thebans and captured
180 of them, executing them.
The thirty-year treaty was now definitely
broken,
and Athens and Sparta both prepared for war.
Although
he seemed to be writing from the Athenian
point of view (being
an Athenian general early in the war),
Thucydides nevertheless
wrote that the people's feelings
were mostly on the side of the
Spartans
as liberators of Hellas (Greece).
The Spartans' messenger
sent to Athens was turned away
by Pericles, because the Spartans
had already
started to march on Attica.
Because King Archidamus
was his friend, Pericles offered
to give his estate to Athens
if it was spared by the enemy.
Without calling an assembly because
of the angry feelings,
Pericles initiated the strategy of withdrawing
the people
and their property from the countryside and refusing
to
engage the enemy on land except with some cavalry.
The people
of Aegina were replaced with Athenian colonists.
The Spartan army
laid waste much of Attica and then withdrew.
Almost every year
they would invade
but with little consequence for the war.
Pericles
led an attack of 100 ships on Megara,
laying waste that area before
returning to Athens.
The Athenians by tradition held a public funeral of the
first
to die in war during the year.
Thucydides gave his version of
what Pericles might have said
in 431 BC, the first year of the
war.
He spoke in pride of their democracy in which everyone
is
equal before the law, and people attain
public responsibility
by ability even if poor.
Pericles contrasted Athenian education
with the restrictions
of the Spartans; yet Athenians do not lack
courage in an
emergency even though they have not
been practicing
for it all the time.
Their love of beauty has not made them extravagant
nor their love of the mind soft.
They consider wealth useful,
not something to boast about.
With its arts and culture Athens
has
become an education for Greece.
Pericles urged them to believe
that happiness
depends on freedom, which depends on courage.
The next year the Peloponnesians invaded Attica again,
and
as the Delphic oracle predicted, death followed the coming
of
the Dorians; but the death turned out to be from the plague,
which
had spread from Ethiopia to Egypt and western Asia.
The extreme
overcrowding in Athens
made the disease devastating.
The people
sent ambassadors to Sparta to make peace;
but when this failed,
they were hopeless.
Pericles tried to encourage their spirits
by considering the
interests of the state more than their private
concerns;
he argued that war is still preferable to slavery.
If
they wanted the privileges of empire, then they must
shoulder the burdens as well; thus they were not really fighting
or freedom
from slavery but to maintain their empire, which
like tyranny
may be wrong to take but dangerous to let go.
Pericles proudly
proclaimed that
Athens is the most powerful state,
because they
have never given in to adversity
and have spent more effort in
warfare than anyone.
Convinced by him, the Athenians sent no more
embassies
to Sparta and devoted themselves to the war.
However,
not all agreed, and Pericles was charged with
corruption and forced
to pay a fine; nonetheless he was
re-elected general and maintained
his leadership
until he died in 429 BC.
One of his last actions
was to urge
repeal of the law restricting citizenship.
Both sides were executing prisoners; but when Potidaea finally
surrendered, the people were allowed to leave.
In 429 BC the Peloponnesians
marched against Plataea,
placing it under siege.
Athens said they
would help; but suffering the plague,
they could not do much.
Some Plataeans tried to escape by climbing the walls,
and 212
made it to Athens; but 200 Plataeans and 25 Athenians
were put
to death, and the city was razed.
Led by Phormio, the Athenians
won a naval victory
in the western sea near Naupactus.
As Archidamus was invading Attica for the third time in 428
BC,
Mytilene and other cities on Lesbos revolted.
Lesbos and Chios
were the only allies of Athens
that still had their own navies.
Mytilene ambassadors made an appeal to the Spartans
and their
allies at the Olympic games, saying that their alliance
with Athens
was supposed to liberate Greeks from Persian
domination, but it
had become subjugation to Athens instead.
Gradually all but Lesbos
and Chios
had become subservient to Athens.
They noted the financial
power of Athens,
which came from the tribute, and pleaded that
this would
become even greater if they were conquered;
but if
the Peloponnesians would help them, the power of Athens
could
be broken, and the Lesbian navy could strengthen them.
The Spartans
and their allies accepted Lesbos into their alliance.
Athens blockaded the two harbors of Mytilene and tried
to raise
more tribute and even instituted property taxes to
support the
war, yielding 200 talents the first year.
Fearing the people would
negotiate separately because of
lack of food, the Mytilene government
capitulated.
More than a thousand leaders of the Mytilene revolt
were sent
to Athens and were eventually executed, but the assembly
also
voted to put to death all the men in Mytilene
and enslave
the women and children.
However, this cruel policy for maintaining
empire promoted
by Cleon was answered by Diodotus, who argued
that this
would not deter others but lead cities not to surrender
and
would alienate other popular parties.
So the Athenians sent
another ship to Mytilene to countermand
the previous order, and
the people of Lesbos were spared,
though much of their land was
given to Athenians.
The Spartan general Alcidas, who had put to
death many
prisoners, was also persuaded that this turned potential
friends
into enemies and was no way to liberate Greece.
So Alcidas
released his prisoners from Chios and others.
Meanwhile the Corcyraean hostages taken by the Corinthians
were released in order to persuade their countrymen
not to support
the Athenian alliance.
First they charged the democratic leader
Peithias with
enslaving Corcyra to the Athenians, but he was acquitted.
However, when Peithias brought five rich men to trial,
the oligarchs
broke into the council with daggers and killed
Peithias and sixty
others, taking over the government.
A civil war erupted, but 12
Athenian ships
arrived and supported the democrats.
Alcidas came
a few days later with 53 Peloponnesian ships
but fled when he
heard that 60 more
Athenian ships were on the way.
The democrats
used their advantage to kill most
of the 400 suppliants in the
temple of Hera.
Thucydides commented how the war made these
political conflicts so much more virulent and deadly
as they appealed to
each side for military aid.
He diagnosed the main cause as the
love of power,
which was exacerbated by violent fanaticism.
Conscientious
motives were ignored as the most
extreme views prevailed, causing
a deterioration
of character in the Greek world.
Law and order
broke down and
were replaced by revenge and oppression.
In the west the Athenians led by Demosthenes failed to conquer
Aetolia but defended Naupactus and Amphilochian Argos,
defeating
and killing many Ambraciots but not taking Ambracia,
because the
Acarnians and Amphilochians did not want it in the
Athenian alliance;
instead these three made
a mutual defense treaty for 100 years.
In the north the Spartans, led by Brasidas, marched through
Thessaly,
got the Chalcidians and Acanthians to join them,
and took over
Amphipolis, which had supplied Athens
with valuable timber and
revenue.
In his speech to the Acanthians, Brasidas offered them
freedom
without attempting to influence their form of government;
he said the Spartans had no imperialistic ambitions
but were attempting
to end imperialism and free Greece.
On the way to subduing the Corcyraean oligarchs holding out
at
Mount Istone, the generals Eurymedon and Sophocles dropped
Demosthenes off with five ships to fortify Pylos in Messenia.
The Lacedaemonians sent a force to the island of
Sphacteria but
could not dislodge the Athenians,
whose navy returned to surround
Sphacteria.
In Athens the aggressive Cleon criticized the generals
so boldly
that he was assigned the generalship himself and with
14,000
troops captured 290 hoplites, including 120 Spartan citizens.
The Greek world was amazed that the Spartans would
surrender their
weapons, and these hostages
made the Spartans more eager for peace.
Using Messenians, who knew the local language, the Athenian
allies
at Pylos could make guerrilla raids into Laconia.
Afraid of a
Helot revolution, the Spartans went so far as
to have the Helots
select 2,000 outstanding soldiers and put
garlands on their heads
as though they would be freed,
but then they put them to death.
The annual Spartan invasions of Attica were halted.
With this success the Athenians, led by Cleon,
were in no mood
for peace.
Athens greatly increased the tribute from their empire,
adding a hundred new cities to the list.
Cleon also got the jurors'
pay raised from two to three obols
to relieve the distress of
the poor at home.
Nicias, a more cautious Athenian general,
managed
to gain some Corinthian territory, garrisoned Methone,
took the
Peloponnesian island of Cythera,
and blockaded the Megarian port
of Nisaea.
However, the efforts of Demosthenes and Hippocrates
to
invade Boeotia led to the death of Hippocrates and Athenian
defeat at Delium, where they were
criticized for taking over a
temple.
In Thrace the Spartan general Brasidas was able to win over
the city of Amphipolis that was revolting
from the Athenian
empire,
for which the Athenian general Thucydides was
blamed and
banished to become a great historian.
The Athenians had prevented
agreement between
Sparta and Persia by intercepting their messengers.
After Darius II came to throne in 424 BC,
Athens renewed its peace
with Persia.
In Sicily at the congress of Gela the Syracusan leader
Hermocrates
made a great speech for peace that kept the
Sicilians out of the
war in 424 BC.
According to Thucydides, Hermocrates spoke of the
great
blessings of peace that has its own honors and glories,
while the miseries of war could never be counted.
Many seeking
to punish aggression have been destroyed;
attempts to redress
injury are not always successful.
Choosing freedom and independence,
they should dismiss
their enemies from their territory for as
long as possible.
Why injure enemies only to ruin oneself?
Hermocrates
was willing to make reasonable concessions,
though they would
unite to resist foreign invasion.
He warned against calling in
allies from outside.
The Sicilians took his advice and made peace
among
themselves, inspiring the Athenians to sail away,
although
the Athenians later banished Pythodorus
and Sophocles, the generals
who did so.
The Spartans and Athenians agreed on an armistice for
one year in 423 BC, and Cleon was not elected general,
though he did manage
to get the Athenians to decree the
recapture of Scione and the
killing of its male inhabitants.
The next year Cleon was elected
general and set out with
30 ships for Amphipolis; the Athenians
lost the battle there,
and both Cleon and Brasidas were killed,
removing the
greatest obstacle to peace on each side and
making
the Athenians more willing to accept peace.
In 421 BC the recalled Spartan king Pleistoanax and the
Athenian
general Nicias agreed on a peace for fifty years;
both sides agreed
to restore several cities that had been taken
in the war, and
all the captives were to be released.
However, Sparta's strongest
allies—Corinth, Boeotia, Megara,
and Elis—all opposed the
treaty but were outvoted by the
smaller states; they particularly
objected to the clause that
allowed Sparta and Athens to modify
the treaty by themselves.
When these allies would not accept the
treaty,
Sparta made an alliance with Athens, also because their
thirty-year truce with Argos had expired,
and they did not want
to fight both Athens and Argos.
The Athenians even agreed to aid
the Spartans
if they had a Helot uprising.
Corinth, Mantinea,
Elis, and the Chalcidians, who refused to
give up Amphipolis,
all joined the alliance with Argos.
Sparta said they would join
with Athens to make these states
fulfill the treaty, but Athens
suspected Sparta of bad faith
and refused to give up Pylos and
Cythera,
though now allied they did release
the captives taken
at Sphacteria.
Boeotia, which had gained more in the war than
anyone,
refused to join the alliance of Argos and Corinth but
sided
with Sparta, causing friction between Sparta and Athens
by not accepting the peace treaty.
Peace prospects dimmed when the Spartans elected two
anti-Athenian
ephors and the Athenians did not re-elect Nicias
but did elect
30-year-old Alcibiades,
who had been raised by Pericles after
his father died.
Holding a grudge against the Spartans because
they had
previously snubbed him due to his youth, Alcibiades
manipulated
a break with the Spartan envoys and an alliance
with Argos, Mantinea,
and Elis, which led to a joint attack on
Epidaurus that was defended
by Sparta, causing the Athenians
to blame the Lacedaemonians for
breaking the peace treaty.
However, in 418 BC Nicias was elected
general while
Alcibiades was not, though the alliance with Argos
remained.
Spartan king Agis invaded Argive territory, but he made
a
four-month truce with the generals of Argos,
which was very
unpopular with the troops of both sides.
However, Alcibiades convinced the Athenians to ignore the
truce as unratified, and the allies took Orchomenus in Arcadia
but were
defeated by the Spartans in Mantinea.
This stimulated a political
change in Argos from democracy
to oligarchy, and that city along
with Mantinea and Elis
abandoned their alliance with Athens to
join Sparta.
Yet while the Spartans were celebrating the Gymnopaedic
festival, the democrats overthrew the oligarchs in Argos and
built
long walls with the help of the Athenians.
The next year, however,
the Spartans came and demolished
the walls and put to death all
the free men they could find.
In Athens Hyperbolus tried to get rid of the conservative
Nicias by proposing an ostracism vote, figuring that opposing
votes would
be split between himself and Alcibiades;
but when Alcibiades deserted
the democrats and
aligned himself with Nicias, Hyperbolus himself
became the last Athenian to be ostracized.
The cautious Nicias
and the impulsive Alcibiades
failed to win back Amphipolis but
gave
Melos the same cruel treatment as Scione.
Thucydides recorded
a dramatic dialog between the Athenians
and Melians in which the
latter pleaded not to be enslaved,
asking to be neutral friends.
The Athenians wanted to increase the size and security
of their
empire, though the Melians pointed out
this was only increasing
their enemies.
The Athenians claimed the law of nature to rule
by power;
they offered liberty as long as the Melians
would pay
tribute to them.
The Dorian Melians wanted to be friends;
but
if forced to choose, they preferred their own
independence with
the help of the Spartans.
Unable to agree, the Athenians besieged
Melos,
and after sending for reinforcements, killed all the men
and enslaved the women and children.
In 416 BC a war broke out in western Sicily, and Egesta
asked Athens for aid against Selinus and deceived the
Athenians into thinking they were a wealthy city.
Alcibiades promoted the intervention
as empire building,
but Nicias was opposed and pointed out
the
dangers and immense cost.
So the Athenians voted for 100 triremes
instead of 60 and
appointed Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus generals.
Probably wanting to conquer Sicily, the Athenians did not
seem to realize that Dorian Syracuse was a large and powerful
city and as a Corinthian colony their likely enemy.
The night before
the expedition was to leave, someone
(probably enemy saboteurs)
mutilated numerous statues
of Hermes throughout Athens.
Alcibiades
was accused of profaning the Eleusinian mysteries
that night,
a very serious religious violation to Athenians.
He wanted to
answer the charges; but because Argive and
Mantinean auxiliaries
had joined the expedition
because of Alcibiades, his trial was
postponed.
The Athenians embarked for Sicily on 134 triremes with
5,100
hoplites and a total force of more than 30,000.
The cautious strategy
of Nicias and Alcibiades to use
diplomacy and small engagements
won over Naxos and
Catane, which became the Athenian base.
Alcibiades
was recalled to stand trial for impiety
and escaped enroute, going
over to the Spartans.
The Athenians condemned the absent Alcibiades
to death,
and his property was confiscated.
After 300 people had
been implicated in the sacrilege,
the orator Andocides was given
immunity and confessed
to save his father and others who were
not involved;
the 22 he named were executed.
The Athenians won a battle at Catane against the Syracusans
led by Hermocrates, but Nicias failed to press his advantage.
In a debate at Camarina, Hermocrates accused the Athenians
of
trying to win another empire, although they were arguing that
they were supporting the Leontinians, who were from Chalcis;
but
he pointed out that Chalcidians were subjugated to the
Athenian
empire in Euboea.
The Athenians admitted that they held their
empire by fear
but claimed they were concerned about security,
not enslaving anyone.
Camarina decided to remain neutral
but later
supported Syracuse.
Meanwhile Alcibiades urged the Spartans to
take and fortify
strategic Decelea in Attica and to reinforce
Syracuse.
The Spartans sent a force led by Gylippus,
and the Corinthians
contributed ships.
The Athenians besieged Syracuse;
Lamachus was
killed in action,
and Nicias suffered a kidney disease and wrote
Athens
for reinforcements, asking to be replaced.
The Athenians sent a second expedition to Syracuse led by
Eurymedon
and Demosthenes with 73 triremes
and 5,000 hoplites; but in the
narrow harbor of Syracuse
the Athenians were at a disadvantage,
and the Syracusans,
like the Greeks against the Persians at Salamis,
were fighting for their freedom against invaders.
Even an Athenian
attempt to retreat was blocked by
superstition regarding an eclipse
of the moon.
Finally the Athenians had to surrender, and 7,000
were
enslaved to quarry labor in a miserable dungeon for six months,
though their allies got out sooner.
The Spartans now decided that
the Athenians had definitely
broken the peace treaty, whereas
they realized that in the
earlier war they themselves had been
at fault for not seeking
arbitration and because the Thebans had
attacked Plataea.
King Agis led a force of Lacedaemonians into
Attica
to seize and fortify Decelea.
According to Thucydides 20,000
slaves
escaped captivity to this refuge.
To raise revenue the Athenians put a five percent tax
on imports
and exports by sea.
The economizing Athenians dismissed some mercenaries
from Thrace, who landed in Boeotia and massacred all the
inhabitants
of Mycalessus, including the women, children,
and even the animals.
Persian satraps in western Asia,
Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus,
saw the opportunity to regain some
of the lost Persian empire
by
offering to support financially revolts in Chios and Lesbos;
so
they sent envoys to Sparta and agreed on the
treaty of Miletus
that acknowledged Persian sovereignty
over its former territories.
Facing these revolts, the Athenians
voted to use the reserve
of 1,000 talents set aside at the start
of the war in 431 BC.
In spite of numerous revolts the Athenians,
using Samos as a base, won some naval victories.
Having fathered a child by the wife of King Agis, Alcibiades
left Sparta and joined Tissaphernes at Miletus, where he urged
the Persians to weaken both sides in the Greek conflict
so that
he could say he was getting Persian
help for Athens
and return home; his messages to Athenians
encouraged
them to change their form of government.
So a group of oligarchs
led by Peisander, Antiphon, and
Theramenes plotted revolution
in Athens.
The democratic Androcles was murdered;
anyone who spoke
against the oligarchy ended up being killed.
Calling an assembly
outside the walls in a temple of Poseidon
at Colonus, ten commissioners
recommended repealing the law
that prosecuted anyone who proposed
changing existing laws.
The Athenians voted for that and then
abolished existing
magistrates and appointed five men to choose
one hundred men,
who in turn each chose three, making a government
of 400.
These 400 entered the council chamber with daggers and
a
bodyguard and dismissed the democratic council of 500.
To economize,
all pay for political office was abolished.
In Samos 300 attempted an armed revolution
and killed the ostracized
Hyperbolus.
Most of the democrats were in the navy at Samos,
and
they overthrew these oligarchs and their generals,
executing thirty
of them.
Thrasybulus brought in Alcibiades as a general after
Peisander persuaded the Athenians that their only hope against
the strengthened Peloponnesian alliance was for Alcibiades
to
arrange an alliance with Persia.
When ten envoys from the 400
arrived in Samos, they pleaded
that the 5,000 would govern but
were not believed.
Alcibiades restrained the troops from sailing
to Athens
to overthrow the 400, but he sent a message insisting
that
the 400 be replaced by the traditional council of 500 and
approving of the economies to ensure supplies for the troops.
In Athens this message encouraged those who
wanted to desert
the oligarchy.
The oligarchs sent Antiphon and Phrynichus to negotiate
peace
with the Lacedaemonians, but refusing to give up
control
of the sea, the Athenians broke off negotiations;
on his return
Phrynichus was assassinated in the marketplace.
Theramenes went
to Peiraeus to quell the mutiny but decided
to join it, calling
for rule by 5,000 instead of the 400.
When the mutineers marched
to the city, a Peloponnesian
fleet arrived heading for Oropus.
The Athenians sent ships to Eretria, where they were defeated,
causing most of Euboea to rebel.
This threatened their supplies
since Attica could no longer
be farmed because of Decelea.
So
the Athenians deposed the 400 and entrusted the
government to
the 5,000, whose property
qualified them to be hoplites.
After
ruling for a summer most of the 400 escaped to Decelea,
but Antiphon
and Archeptolemus were executed for treason.
The Athenians managed
to end the eventful year of 411 BC
with a naval victory at Cynossema.
Alcibiades met Tissaphernes at Sardis and was arrested
by him, but he escaped to Clazomenae.
The Athenian generals Thrasybulus,
Theramenes,
and Alcibiades joined together to defeat the Peloponnesians
at Cyzicus, where Pharnabazus was supporting their siege
with
a Persian force on land.
60 or 80 Peloponnesian ships were destroyed,
and an intercepted Laconic message read,
"Ships lost, Mindarus
dead, men starving, in doubt what to do."
Sparta sent Endius
to Athens to propose a peace that would
withdraw garrisons, exchange
prisoners,
and maintain the current balance; but the Athenians
declined
as the democratic leader Cleophon urged them to fight
on
and instituted public works projects
and a daily two-obol payment
to help the poor.
A law was also passed stating that anyone who
overthrows
the democracy or holds office after the democracy
is overthrown can be killed with impunity.
Pharnabazus came to the
aid of the despondent Spartans
by providing money to build them
more ships;
when the Athenians led by Alcibiades besieged Calchedon,
Pharnabazus paid the Athenians twenty talents
for the Calchedonians
and promised safe passage
of Athenian envoys to the Persian
king,
as Alcibiades and Pharanabazus exchanged oaths.
Alcibiades also helped the Athenians win back cities in the
Hellespont area, and they could now acquire revenue
collecting
ten percent customs at Chrysopolis.
However, they lost control
of
Nisaea to Megara and Pylos to Sparta.
Anytus was tried in Athens
after he could not reach Pylos
because of bad weather, and it
was said that he was the first
Athenian to be acquitted because
of bribery.
Darius II sent his son Cyrus to rule Cappadocia, Phrygia,
and Lydia, and his support for Sparta ended
Athenian attempts
for Persian help.
Some Greeks resented the interference of the
Persians,
and at the Olympic games in 408 BC the famous rhetorician
Gorgias of Leontini suggested that the Greeks stop accepting
Persian
support but fight them instead.
Thrasyllus captured four Syracusan
triremes between
Ephesus and Abydus, sending the prisoners to
Athens
to work in the quarries of Pireaus.
Cyrus brought 500 talents for the Peloponnesian war effort,
and the new Spartan admiral Lysander talked Cyrus into paying
Peloponnesian rowers four obols per day instead of three
so that
men would be tempted to desert the Athenians.
Alcibiades got a
hundred talents from Caria,
while Thrasybulus attacked Thrace;
the Athenians chose them and Conon as generals.
Alcibiades returned
to Athens in 407 BC with apprehension,
but he was welcomed and
successfully defended himself
before the senate and assembly;
his condemnations
were revoked, and his property was restored.
He organized the processional march to Eleusis under armed
protection
after it had to go by sea for seven years.
Lysander craftily declined
a naval battle with Alcibiades,
and so the latter instructed the
pilot Antiochus not to engage
the navy of Lysander while he plundered
Cyme even though
it was part of the Athenian empire;
they tried
to defend their possessions
and complained to Athens.
Lysander
lured Antiochus into a battle
that lost fifteen Athenian ships.
Then the Lacedaemonians took Teos and Delphinium.
With these setbacks
and blunders Alcibiades was
not re-elected general and retired
to his private fortress in the Chersonese.
Lacking pay, Conon reduced the number
of triremes at Samos
from 100 to 70.
When Lysander's year of command expired,
he returned
what money he had to Cyrus.
So his replacement Callicratidas had
to go begging to Cyrus
and impatiently left after two days
when
he was told Cyrus was busy drinking.
However, with a fleet of
mostly Boeotian and Euboean ships
this noble Spartan was able
to win over Phocaea, Cyme,
and Methymna, where he went against
the wishes of his allies
and freed his Greek prisoners,
saying
he would never enslave a Greek.
Next Callicratidas trapped Conon's
ships
in the harbor at Mytilene.
Cyrus renewed Persian support,
and the Peloponnesian navy soon had 170 ships.
One Athenian ship
was able to escape from Mytilene
and get to Athens, and the Athenians
melted down gold
and silver from temples to build 110 ships in
one month.
A great naval battle was fought at Arginusae;
25 Athenian
ships were lost, but three times as many
Peloponnesian ships were
destroyed.
Athenian slaves that had been pressed into service
were given their freedom.
When it was discovered that no ships had gone back to rescue
the survivors and recover the corpses, charges were made
against
eight of the generals by Theramenes and Thrasybulus,
the two who
were supposed to have been ordered
to head the rescue mission.
They explained they could not do so because of a storm,
but somehow
they still blamed the generals and convinced both
the assembly
and senate to condemn the eight generals to death
by single votes
without legal trials, probably because of an
emotional religious
festival in which the families of the hundreds
of dead must have
aroused powerful emotions of grief.
Because of threats, only the
philosopher Socrates refused
to cooperate with the wrong procedure, and the six generals
were
executed by hemlock poisoning,
though the Athenians later repented.
The able Lysander in charge again visited Cyrus who,
leaving
Sardis to go to the ill King Darius, entrusted the
administration
of his satrapy and all its tribute
to the disciplined Spartan.
With plenty of money to hire sailors, Lysander took Lampsacus.
After the Athenian generals ignored Alcibiades' advice
about their
vulnerable position at Aegospotami,
Lysander captured 160 of their
galleys without losing a ship
and put to death more than 3,000
Athenians.
Only the general Adeimantus was spared, because he
alone
had opposed the new Athenian policy of cutting off
the right
hands (or thumbs) of prisoners,
though some believed it was because
he had betrayed the Athenians.
As the Athenian alliance and empire quickly fell apart,
Lysander
sent the Athenians home so that the city
would run out of supplies
even sooner.
He occupied Aegina and Salamis and blockaded the
Piraeus
with 150 ships, while Spartan king Pausanias and Argive
allies
camped in the Academy west of Athens.
Afraid they might
be treated as cruelly as they had
those in Melos and Scione, the
Athenians refused to agree
to tear down their walls for a peace
treaty.
However, the Athenians, starving to death, finally executed
the
resisting Cleophon on the charge he evaded his military duty,
and only after Theramenes spent four months negotiating
did the
dying Athenians finally agree to terms.
Although Corinth and Thebes wanted their commercial rival
destroyed,
Sparta out of respect for past Athenian heroism
against Persia
was not vindictive.
The long walls were to be torn down; the fortifications
of the
Piraeus were to be destroyed; all foreign possessions were
lost,
though Athens remained independent with twelve triremes;
all exiles were to come home; Athens became an ally of Sparta
and agreed to follow Spartan leadership.
The Athenian fortifications
and walls were enthusiastically
demolished while women played
flutes;
Xenophon called that
day the beginning of liberty for Greece.
How much misery Greek warlike ways had caused!
The Athenians,
who had defended themselves so bravely from
Persian
imperialism, proceeded to defend other Greeks;
but seduced by
their grandiose role and the tribute it garnered,
they became
oppressive and imperialistic themselves.
Other aggressive Greeks,
particularly the Spartans,
resented this, and a long war resulted,
which could have been
stopped on several occasions.
Instead the
Athenians took the war to the west
but were defeated in Sicily.
Finally their empire's wealth was spent, and amid dissension
Athens
ironically lost their navy to the Peloponnesian
land power that
had become a sea power too by force of war.
The violence of a
27-year war had almost
become a way of life to the Greeks.
According to Thucydides during the Peloponnesian War
in 424
BC the Spartan general Brasidas had told the Thracians
that the
Peloponnesians did not seek empire but were
struggling to end
Athenian imperialism; Brasidas offered
autonomy to Thrace, and
his policy was confirmed
in oaths by the Spartan ephors.
However,
twenty years later Lysander reversed this policy
by setting up
oligarchies, which tended to be less just
than the democracies
that Athens had promoted.
By the end of the Peloponnesian War
both Sparta and Athens
were making agreements with Persia
to recognize their Greek
holdings in Asia, a reversal of the original
purpose of the
Delian league, whose growing Athenian power had
brought on the Peloponnesian War in the first place.
Encouraged by Lysander, a conspiracy of oligarchs
had overthrown
the government at Miletus,
killing 340 and exiling a thousand.
The forces at Samos resisted and then capitulated,
and an oligarchy
was established there.
Many oligarchies of ten rulers were set
up by
Lysander around the Aegean Sea supported by
Lacedaemonian garrisons led by a harmost.
Lysander called an assembly and told
the Athenians
to appoint thirty men to head the government.
When
Theramenes objected, pointing out that the peace
treaty stated
that the Athenians should enjoy the government
of their fathers,
Lysander said the Athenians had broken the
treaty by not destroying
their walls in time; he threatened
to put Theramenes to death
if he did not
stop opposing the Lacedaemonians.
Thus terrorized
by Lysander, the Athenians elected an
oligarchy of thirty men,
who selected a council of 500,
ten officers to administer Piraeus
and eleven for prison and executions.
Led by Critias, the Thirty began by executing those
who had been informers during the democracy.
Then they asked for an armed
guard of Spartans,
and Lysander sent a garrison of 700.
Next the
Thirty condemned to death many who merely
opposed them, but Theramenes,
who was one of the Thirty, started objecting.
So they appointed
3,000 citizens; but when everyone else
was deprived of their arms,
Theramenes complained again.
When each of the Thirty was supposed
to condemn a
resident alien in order to seize their property,
Theramenes said it was not noble
to go beyond the informers in
injustice.
So Critias prosecuted Theramenes in the council for taking
different sides too much and reminded Athenians that
Theramenes
had accused the generals when he had been
ordered to pick up the
ship-wrecked sailors at Arginusae.
In his defense Theramenes pointed
to the execution of
Leon of Salamis (whom Socrates had refused
to arrest)
as an example of how they had executed the innocent
and
to Niceratus, son of Nicias, who was killed for his wealth.
Theramenes was not willing to issue a death warrant arbitrarily.
He criticized the importing of foreign mercenary guards.
Finally
Critias declared Theramenes no longer a member
of the 3,000 so
that the Thirty could condemn him to death,
and the Eleven forcibly
removed him from the council
chamber and gave him the poisonous
hemlock.
As many as 1500 Athenians may have been executed
without real
trials; as people were evicted from their estates,
they fled to
Megara and Thebes, which disobeyed
Spartan edicts against harboring
Athenians.
The tyrannical Thirty even tried to prohibit
teaching
the art of words.
Thrasybulus organized seventy fugitives in Thebes
and took the fortress at Phyle.
The Thirty sent a garrison against
them; but they fought them off,
and a sudden snowstorm prevented
a siege.
Soon Thrasybulus had a thousand followers and went to
Piraeus;
he roused their spirits with the idea that right
and
the gods were on their side.
In the ensuing battle Critias was
killed, and a herald tried to win
over the 3,000 hoplites by persuasion.
Finally the 3,000 deposed the Thirty and appointed a new Ten,
one from each tribe.
The most violent of the Thirty retreated
to Eleusis, which they
had previously taken over, and asked for
Spartan help.
Lysander brought an army, but the Spartan king Pausanias
persuaded the ephors to appoint himself instead.
After a defeat
by the Spartans, Thrabsybulus was encouraged
to ask for a truce,
which led to a general amnesty
except for the Thirty, the Ten,
and the Eleven who had
committed the judicial murders; Eleusis
was made
independent and open to anyone who wanted to go there.
Phormisius proposed that Athenian citizenship be restricted
to those with landed property; but the rhetorician Lysias
argued
for a larger and more democratic citizenry,
and the proposal was
defeated.
Lysias had been expelled a decade before with
300 prominent pro-Athenians from Thurii in Italy
and became an arms manufacturer
in Athens.
He prosecuted Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, for
the
unjustified execution of Polemarchus, the brother of Lysias.
The wealthy Lysias had escaped from the Thirty and had given
the
revolutionaries led by Thrasybulus money and arms.
Eratosthenes
defended himself by saying that he had to
carry out the government's
commands out of fear.
Yet Lysias argued that Eratosthenes, as
one of the Thirty,
was part of the government and one of those
who went to
Eleusis and imprisoned and sentenced to death 300
Athenians.
A resident alien from Italy, Lysias soon lost his Athenian
citizenship but wrote numerous speeches for others
to use in the
lawcourts and assembly,
although he was not allowed to speak there
himself.
Athens went back to the old laws of Solon and Dracon,
while
a new constitution was being devised.
Two years later Athenians
attacked Eleusis
and put to death its generals.
The new laws included
a long calendar of religious sacrifices.
The council of 500 was
chosen by lot, and pay
for attending the public assembly was re-instituted.
The magistrates were not allowed to permit
or act upon any law
contrary to this constitution,
and no hardship could be inflicted
upon an individual
without a secret ballot by the 6,000 citizens;
all the laws and arbitrary acts under the Thirty were annulled.
Athenian citizenship was restricted
to the sons of citizens on
both sides.
The new democracy was to last eighty years
until the Macedonians took control.
The Spartans essentially took over the
Athenian empire,
collecting perhaps a thousand talents of tribute
annually.
Alcibiades was murdered,
probably by order of both Lysander
and Cyrus.
Eleians had excluded Sparta from the Olympic games
of 420 BC
because of their fighting Argos and Mantineia.
Later they refused
to allow Spartan king Agis to sacrifice
at Olympia, and so the
Lacedaemonians demanded they pay
tribute for the long war against
Athens and that they allow
their townships to be independent.
When the Eleians refused, Agis marched an army against them;
but
he turned back when an earthquake
was interpreted as a bad sign.
However, the next year Agis, joined by cities who threw off
their
subjection to Elis, sacrificed, plundered Eleian territory,
and
left a Spartan harmost and garrison that
supported the oligarchs
led by Xenias.
Elis surrendered and joined the Spartan confederacy,
though they were allowed to continue
superintending the Olympic
games.
The Spartan enemies, the Messenians, were forced
to leave that area and migrate to Sicily and Cyrene.
Thebes and Corinth
had refused to
support either side in this little war.
Struggling with internal conflicts and war with the Thracians,
the Byzantines asked the Spartans for a general.
Clearchus was
sent and given supreme authority,
which he used to put to death
the chief magistrates and
most prominent citizens, killing and
exiling the wealthy in order
to appropriate their property.
He
used the money to hire mercenaries and was unwilling
to give up
his power; so the Spartans sent an army against him.
Clearchus
took his forces to Selymbria, where they were
defeated by the
Spartans; but Clearchus fled to Cyrus in Ionia.
Cyrus had been
given authority by his brother Artaxerxes
over all the Persian
satrapies on the Aegean Sea;
Cyrus gave funds to Clearchus to
raise a mercenary army.
Cyrus also financed mercenary forces of
Aristippus and Menon
in Thessaly and mercenaries led by the Boeotian
Proxenus,
the Arcadians Agias and Sophaenetus, and an Achaean
named Socrates, ostensibly for the siege against Miletus
or to
fight against the warlike Pisidians.
The detailed story of this army was written in the Anabasis
by Xenophon, who joined as a
friend of Proxenus.
The philosopher Socrates
had advised Xenophon to consult
the Delphic oracle before undertaking this expedition and
criticized
him when he asked how best to undertake the
journey instead of
whether or not he should.
With 13,000 Greeks and his own Persian
army of 100,000
Cyrus, who proclaimed he envied the Greeks' liberty,
led the troops east toward Pisidia;
from there he said their objective
was Syria.
Finally Cyrus had to tell his generals and the army
that his
real purpose was to march on King Artaxerxes in Babylon.
At the battle of Cunaxa in 401 BC the Greeks held their own
against
superior numbers, but after wounding his brother
Artaxerxes, Cyrus
was killed.
With Cyrus dead all the Asiatics abandoned his cause,
and about 10,000 Greeks stood alone in Mesopotamia.
The satrap
Tissaphernes invited the five generals and twenty
captains to
his tent along with a few soldiers.
The captains and soldiers
were all killed, and the generals
were sent to the Persian court,
where they were put to death.
The Greek soldiers met and elected
five new generals including Xenophon.
Xenophon portrayed himself
making speeches, inspiring
the soldiers to carry on and solve
the problems they faced.
The commanding general Cheirisophus explained
that they
would try to make their way through the hostile country
homeward while inflicting the least possible damage,
provided
that they were given free passage;
otherwise they would have to
fight their way through by force.
Of course without money or food
they would
have to steal the supplies they needed, if they were
not given
voluntarily under implied threat of force.
Thus more
often than not, they had to
fight local forces as they journeyed.
The only alternative was to found a city in Asia,
but the Greeks
wanted to get home.
Harassed by the Persian
army until they passed over the
Carduchian mountains, they suffered
the winter cold in Armenia,
where they promised Tiribazus they
would not pillage.
In March they reached the Black Sea at Trapezus
and celebrated with athletic contests.
Fearing these mercenary soldiers at the Bosphorus,
Pharnabazus
bribed the Spartan commander Anaxibius
to offer them pay to come
over to Byzantium.
When the pay was not forthcoming, only another speech by
Xenophon prevented a futile war against Lacedaemonian
power.
The remaining army of 6,000 crossed back over to Asia,
won booty and ransom in a military attack on a wealthy
Persian
family, and then Xenophon
could at last go home to Athens.
Tissaphernes
was trying to hang on to the Greek cities
on the Asiatic coast
and had attacked Cyme.
The Ionian Greeks had asked for help from
Sparta,
and an army led by Thibron joined the Greek mercenaries
that had marched more than 4,000 miles
since they had first joined
Cyrus.
The incompetent Thibron was soon replaced by Dercylidas
who,
having a grudge against Pharnabazus, made a truce
with Tissaphernes
so that he could attack his enemy.
After her husband died, Pharnabazus
had allowed Mania
to rule the Aeolians until her son-in-law Meidias
strangled her and killed her son.
Arriving at this opportune moment,
the Spartan Dercylidas
used Meidias and gained control of the
Troad,
garnering treasures that had belonged
to Pharnabazus to
pay his men well.
Dercylidas made truces with Pharnabazus and
Tissaphernes
again, sending ambassadors to the Great King at Susa,
while the Spartan army went over to Bithynia for the winter.
Next
the Spartan ephors sent Dercylidas and his army
over to Caria
to establish garrisons there
before returning to Ionia.
Apparently the abuses of power that had occurred under the
Thirty at Athens also were allowed in other oligarchies of ten
that had been set up by Lysander.
At Oreus in Euboea the harmost
Aristodemus killed a
handsome youth who resisted his attentions,
and in Boeotia
two Spartans were not prosecuted for raping and
killing
two daughters of Scedasus.
Lysander argued against Leotychides succeeding his father
King
Agis in Sparta, because it was believed that the prince
was the
son of Alcibiades not Agis.
This enabled Agesilaus to become king,
although Lysander
had hoped to broaden Spartan leadership
beyond
the two royal families.
Spartan military victories had led to
greater inequalities of wealth in Laconia.
After finding bad omens
in the sacrifices, Agesilaus discovered,
probably with the help
of the secret police, a conspiracy
led by Cinadon, who was persuading
those called "inferiors"
that the number of Spartan
citizens was so small that
the rest could join with Helots and
take power;
but he was captured, tortured to reveal the conspirators,
and executed for not wanting to be
inferior to anyone in Lacedaemon.
In 396 BC Lysander persuaded Spartan king Agesilaus to lead
2,000 enfranchised Helots and 6,000 allies to Asia to support
Greek autonomy from Persian domination.
Imitating Agamemnon's great Trojan expedition,
Agesilaus wanted
to sacrifice at Aulis,
but the Thebans would not allow this.
The Persian satrap Tissaphernes took
an oath to observe peace
but quickly went back on his word, making
Agesilaus believe
the gods were on his side; so Agesilaus invaded
Sardis.
Influenced by the queen mother, who hated Tissaphernes
for opposing her son Cyrus, the Persian
king Artaxerxes II
sent Tithraustes, who beheaded Tissaphernes.
Tithraustes proposed to allow the Ionians autonomy
if they would
pay their original tribute to Persia,
and if the Spartan army of Agesilaus would leave.
Though king,
Agesilaus had to consult with Sparta;
but he agreed to a truce
for six months, and supported
with thirty talents from Tithraustes,
moved on to the Phrygian
territory of Pharnabazus, where his army
ravaged the land
up to the walls of Dascylion.
However, after
Pharnabazus reminded Agesilaus how the
Persians had helped the
Spartans win their war against Athens,
Agesilaus agreed to leave
his territory
and respect it in the future,
as long as he had
other enemies to make war upon.
Tithraustes sent Timocrates of Rhodes to Greece with
fifty
talents to raise allies against the Lacedaemonians
in Thebes,
Corinth, Argos, and Athens.
The Athenians took no gold, according
to Xenophon,
but were persuaded by the Thebans to join them.
Meanwhile
the Athenian admiral Conon, who had fled from
the final battle
at Aegospotami to Cyprus where he was
received by Euagoras, by
the advice of Pharnabazus was
given command of a fleet of 300
Phoenician ships
and took Rhodes away from the Spartans.
In 394
BC the fleet of Conon and Pharnabazus met
and defeated the Spartan
fleet of mercenaries at Cnidus,
capturing or destroying more than
half their ships and killing Peisander.
They followed up this
victory by expelling Spartan harmosts
from the coastal cities
of Asia Minor, Pharnabazus agreeing
with the persuasive Conon
in promising not to fortify their
citadels but granting them autonomy.
A border dispute between Phocis and Locris led the Phocians
to appeal to Sparta and the Locrians to Thebes.
The Thebans invaded
Phocis and
refused to negotiate an arbitration.
Spartan king Pausanias
marched an army into Boeotia
but arrived after Lysander and many
others had been killed.
Pausanias, who agreed to a truce with
Thebes,
went into exile and was removed
from his kingship by the
Spartans.
The Boeotians helped Medius, the tyrant of Larissa,
to capture Pharsalus, and Larissa, Crannon, and Scotusa
joined
the Theban alliance.
Led by Ismenias, Thebes took Heracleia and
defeated the
Spartan-dominated Phocians.
The alliance of Thebes
and Athens was joined by Corinth,
Argos, Euboeans, Acarnians,
Thracians, and others;
in a major battle at the Corinthian isthmus
they were defeated,
losing 2800 men; but the Spartan side, supported
by Elis,
Sicyon, Epidaurus, Tegea, and Pellene, lost 1100.
Agesilaus
marched his Lacedaemonian forces down from the
north, and deceiving
his troops about the Cnidian naval defeat,
won a victory for the
Spartans against the allies at Coronea,
but nonetheless had to
evacuate Boeotia.
Pharnabazus and Conon now brought their fleet to the
Peloponnesian
coast taking Cythera, and Conon with financial
support from Pharnabazus
helped the Athenians rebuild their
long walls and fortify their
harbor at Piraeus.
During a festival 120 prominent Sparta supporters,
plotting a revolt in Corinth, were massacred in the marketplace,
and the Corinthian government united itself with Argos.
Younger
philo-Laconians led by Pasimelus escaped to join
with Praxitas
of Sicyon and defeated the Corinthians,
taking their town of Lechaeon
but not its harbor.
Corinthian walls were torn down,
but the Athenians
helped rebuild them.
Guerrilla wars continued in the Corinthian
area,
as the Athenian Iphicrates used the quickness of light-armed
peltasts he had equipped with better footwear to inflict
casualties
on the slower hoplites.
However, Teleutias, the brother of Agesilaus,
led a naval
attack that captured the harbor
at Lechaeon and the
Corinthian walls.
An attack by Iphicrates destroyed most of a
Lacedaemonian
division, causing Agesilaus to leave a garrison
at Lechaeon and return home.
Iphicrates took back Sidus, Crommyon,
Peiraeum,
and Oenoe; but arrogantly executing some pro-Argos leaders,
he was recalled by Athens and replaced by Chabrias.
The Lacedaemonians sent Antalcidas to negotiate a peace
with Tiribazus that would recognize Persian sovereignty
over the Hellenic
cities of Asia but declare
all other Greek cities independent.
Athens sent Andocides to Sparta, which accepted Athenian
walls
and control over Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros;
but Andocides was
not able to persuade the Athenian
assembly to accept these terms
even though
Thebes was willing to give up Orchomenus.
Andocides
argued that it was in the Athenians' best interest
to stop fighting,
because their allies were not willing to help
them retake their
colonies and former empire;
the desire of Argos to annex Corinth
was holding them back.
Andocides reviewed how Athens had made
the mistake
of choosing war instead of peace several times in
the past.
Whereas generals used secrecy and deception,
Andocides
was offering the Athenian people the opportunity
to make a public
and open peace.
However, the Athenian Assembly rejected the peace
treaty
and banished Andocides and the other two envoys in 391
BC.
Agesilaus gained control of the isthmus for Sparta
by taking Piraeon, and Spartans led by Teleutias used Aegina
as a base to
attack Piraeus.
While secretly supporting Euagoras in Cyprus against
their
Persian allies, the Athenians also sent Thrasybulus with
40 ships
to the Hellespont, where he won over Thasos, Samothrace,
the Chersonese, Byzantium, Chalcedon, Clazomenae,
and most of
Lesbos.
Needing revenue, the Athenians began taxing
their allies'
commerce at five percent.
Thrasybulus raised money in Pamphylia;
but when his soldiers
also pillaged there, he was attacked and
murdered
by the people of Aspendus.
Conon, who had been imprisoned
by
pro-Spartan Tiribazus, died on Cyprus.
The Spartans sent out
Anaxibius to contend for the
Hellespont commercial traffic, but
he was ambushed
and defeated by the forces of Iphicrates.
Imperialist corruption may have been creeping back,
as Ergocles,
who had been on the expedition of Thrasybulus,
was prosecuted
for embezzlement in a speech written by Lysias.
Though he was
poor before the expedition, the property of
Ergocles now valued
at thirty talents was confiscated
by the state, and he was executed.
Lysias had given a patriotic funeral oration in 392 BC in which
he praised Athenians fighting for justice, liberty, and democracy.
He justified Athenian involvement in the Corinthian war as an
effort to gain freedom and equal rights
for cities controlled
by Sparta.
However, at the Olympic games in 388 BC, probably
perturbed by the lavish display of wealth by Dionysius
of Syracuse, Lysias
made a speech in which he criticized
theGreeks for their shameful
plight in which
many were subject to Persia, cities were ruled
by tyrants,
and they were torn apart by factions, rivalries, and
wars.
The Persian king Artaxerxes II controlled many with
money and ships, as did the tyrant Dionysius of Sicily.
They ought to
cease their wars with each other and join
to expel the tyrants
and win their freedom for all in common.
Lysias praised the valor,
skill, and leadership of Sparta,
but the mutual warfare of the
Greeks had only strengthened
their oppressors and prevented them
from righting the wrongs.
Because of Athenian support for the revolt of Euagoras
at Cyprus,
Tiribazus was able to persuade Artaxerxes II
to make peace with
the Spartan diplomatic mission
of Antalcidas, who was also able
to extricate the Spartan fleet
blockaded by Iphicrates at Abydus.
With the help of Persian ships and twenty Syracusan ships
contributed
by their tyrant Dionysius, the Spartans turned the
blockade at
the Hellespont against the Athenians,
and in 386 BC Athens agreed
to accept the following peace:
The king, Artaxerxes, thinks it just that the cities
in Asia, with the islands of Clazomenae and Cyprus,
should belong to him; the rest of the Hellenic cities
he thinks it just to have independent, both small and
great, with the exception of Lemnos, Imbros, and
Scyros, which are to belong to Athens as of old.
Should any parties concerned not accept this peace,
I will make war upon them, along with those who
share my views, by land and by sea,
with ships and money.3
Eventually even the Thebans agreed
to give up their confederacy.
Spartan king Agesilaus threatened to make war against
both Argos
and Corinth if the Argive garrison was not
removed from Corinth;
it was removed,
and the union of Argos and Corinth was dissolved.
Xenophon reported that this
led to a general disarmament
and the first real peace since the
walls of Athens
had been demolished.
However, it was not long
before the Spartans,
believing the Mantineans were disloyal, demanded
that
Mantinea tear down their walls; but they refused.
So King
Agesipolis marched against them and undermined
the walls by damming
the river; he forced them to live
as five separate villages instead
of as a city.
Pausanias, living in exile at Tegea, persuaded his
son Agesipoli
to spare the lives of sixty Mantinean leaders
and
allow them to go into exile.
Xenophon
considered the village life an improvement from
demagoguery to
an aristocracy, but the citizenship valued
by most Greeks was
restored later
when Mantinea became independent.
With the Boeotian
federation dissolved,
Sparta also placed harmosts in Plataea and
Thespiae.
Persia turned its forces on Euagoras of Cyprus,
who
was allied to their enemies in Egypt.
Euagoras was besieged at
Salamis and agreed to pay tribute,
not as a slave but as a king,
and was allowed
this concession when Tiribazus was removed.
In the north a confederacy of Chalcidian cities that protected
them from Illyrian attacks caused
Macedonian king Amyntas to flee
his own country.
This growing alliance threatened to take over
Acanthus
and Apollonia, which appealed to Sparta for defense.
The Spartan assembly voted for a small force led by
Eudamidas
which could not take on the Olynthians
but prevented further encroachments
and encouraged Potidaea to revolt.
Phoebidas, the brother of Eudamidas,
was sent with a
larger force but was persuaded by the Theban polemarch
Leontiadas to support a coup at Thebes that overthrew
the other
anti-Spartan polemarch Ismenias.
This violated the peace but furthered
Spartan interests;
so Phoebidas was fined, but the Cadmean citadel
was retained.
Hypocritically the Spartans condemned and executed
Ismenias
for Medism even though they had agreed to Persian
domination of Asian Greek cities in the Peace of Antalcidas.
Sparta also consolidated its power in the Peloponnese
by taking
Phlius by blockade.
After both Teleutias and Agesipolis died in
the struggle
against Olynthus, the Spartans led by Polybiadas
forced them
to dissolve their league and with the other cities
in the area
join the Lacedaemonian alliance, while the Macedonian
cities
were restored to Amyntas, already Sparta's ally.
Allied
with the Syracusan Dionysius I in the west and Persian
king Artaxerxes II in Asia,
Sparta dominated the Greek world in
between.
In 380 BC Isocrates wrote
his Panegyric oration calling
for the Greeks to stop fighting
among themselves
and unite against Persia.
He suggested that the two great powers of Sparta and Athens
share
the leadership of Greece between them;
they should use their power
to take advantage
of the Persians, not other Greeks.
Although
he acknowledged that Sparta had held the hegemony
since the Peloponnesian
War, he argued that now
the Athenians could justly claim the leadership
again.
He reviewed the glorious history and culture of Athens,
suggesting that Hellenic had come to mean more than a race
but
an intelligence available to all who share that culture.
Athens
had become a refuge and a champion of the oppressed,
standing
by the weaker even against her own interests
rather than uniting
with the stronger for her advantage.
Isocrates
rationalized Athenian imperialistic violations
of Melos and Scione
as severe discipline in time of war.
He criticized the Lacedaemonians
for invading Athens and
for courting the favor of the Persians
to enslave other Greeks,
which was ratified in the Peace of Antalcidas.
He resented the king of Persia
dictating that the Greeks
must fight against men asserting their
right to freedom.
The Lacedaemonians had seized Thebes, laid siege to Olynthus
and Phlius, and assisted Macedonian king Amyntas
and Sicilian
tyrant Dionysius.
Instead of fighting other Greeks, Isocrates
believed they should
subjugate the Persians to the whole of Hellas
and enjoy the wealth of their possessions.
Greek mercenaries were
selling themselves
to fight other Greeks as in Cyprus.
Isocrates
argued that an enduring peace would come to them
if they joined
together to make war against Persia, annulling
the treaty that was a disgrace and humiliation to Greece.
I agree it would have been wise for the Greeks
to stop fighting
among themselves, but Isocrates
failed
to apply the same logic in regard to the Persians.
If peace
among the Greeks is better for all, why is not peace
between the
Greeks and Persians not also better?
Isocrates
was able to see beyond Greeks' rivalry of city states
to Panhellenism,
but he did not grasp
the larger unity of humanity.
Even the generally pro-Spartan Xenophon
noted the irony
of how Sparta's violation of the peace in taking
the acropolis
at Thebes led to her downfall by that growing power.
The despotic and cruel Theban government headed
by Leontiadas
was now supported by
1500 Lacedaemonians in the citadel.
Theban
fugitives went to Athens, just as the Athenians
had fled to Thebes
a quarter of a century before.
Pelopidas and six others in disguise
murdered the
polemarchs, Leontiadas, and the other leaders,
freed
150 political prisoners,
and set up a democracy with Pelopidas
as chief captain of Boeotia.
As the people prepared to storm the
Cadmea,
the Spartan harmosts capitulated; two of them
were executed when they returned to Sparta.
With their army led by King Cleombrotus
nearby,
Lacedaemonian envoys demanded the Athenians punish
two
of their generals who had supported this revolution;
one was executed
and the other who had fled was banished.
However, when Sphodrias, the Spartan harmost of Thespiae,
threatened
the Piraeus and attacked Thria, the Spartans
refused to condemn
him because his son was the lover
of the son of Agesilaus; Agesilaus
said he believed in justice,
but he made exceptions for his friends.
So Athens allied itself with Thebes against Sparta,
and in 378
BC the Athenians formed another league for
defensive purposes
but still acknowledged
Persian rule over the Asian Greeks.
The
allies, which met separately in Athens, had a collective
power
equal to that of Athens itself
and could propose measures and
veto any Athenian measure.
Their defense payments were called
contributions instead of
tribute, and Athenians were not to settle
in their lands.
The purpose of this league was inscribed on stone
and read,
"To force the Lacedaemonians to allow the Greeks
to enjoy peace in freedom and independence,
with their lands unviolated."4
The league was joined by 70 cities including Chios, Byzantium,
Mytilene, Methymna, Rhodes, most of Euboea, Thebes,
Thracian cities,
the Chalcidic league, Corcyra,
the powerful despot Jason of Pherae
in Thessaly,
and Alcetas a prince of Epirus.
To raise money Athens
had to reinstitute
a property tax of about one percent.
For the next few years the Spartans invaded
Boeotia and Thebes,
while the Athenian navy attacked the
Lacedaemonian confederacy.
After four years the Thebans drove the
Spartan garrisons out of
Boeotia.
Threatened with famine by a Spartan navy off Euboea,
the Athenian Chabrias won a victory over the Lacedaemonians
at
Naxos, gained 17 more Aegean cities,
and collected considerable
money.
The Athenian commander Timotheus, son of Conon,
won over
Corcyra without enslaving its people
or changing its laws, but
he ran out of money to pay his men.
Theban successes and Athenian
financial difficulties led to a
peace between Athens and Sparta
in 374 BC,
but this was spoiled when Timotheus took over Zacynthus.
Sparta reacted by sending a fleet under Mnasippus to Corcyra,
which managed to kill Mnasippus and hold out
until the Athenian
fleet arrived to find the Lacedaemonians gone.
Dionysius I sent
ten ships from Sicily to Corcyra to support his
Spartan allies;
but an Athenian force led by Iphicrates defeated
them, and Iphicrates
set his men working on Corcyraean farms.
The testimony of Jason
and Alcetas prevented Timotheus from
being condemned by the Athenians,
but Timotheus went on to serve the Persian king in Egypt.
Battles over Phocis and Plataea alienated Thebes from Athens,
though the plea of Isocrates to fight Thebes
on behalf of Plataea
was declined in Athens.
In 371 BC Athenian envoys Callistratus
and Callias made a
peace with Sparta annulling their confederacies,
withdrawing their governors from the cities,
disbanding their
armies and navies,
and guaranteeing the cities independence.
States
were allowed to aid cities that were transgressed
against, but
no city was to be compelled to offer aid.
However, when Epaminondas
claimed the same status for the
Boeotian towns as Laconian towns
had with Sparta,
Thebes was excluded from the treaty.
The Boeotians
had recently made a treaty with the powerful
Jason, who had become tagus of a united Thessaly
and commanded a large force
of mercenaries.
Since previously Sparta had failed to withdraw
its garrisons,
this time non-Spartan commissioners were appointed.
Although Athens recalled Iphicrates' forces from Corcyra,
the
Spartans maintained their forces in Phocis and ordered
King Cleombrotus
to march against Thebes.
In the Spartan assembly Prothous had
argued that
they should disband their army in accordance with
their oaths,
but his advice was ignored.
The army of Thebes met the larger Spartan forces at Leuctra,
but the tactics of Epaminondas and Theban valor won
a major
victory,
killing 400 Spartans including King Cleombrotus in an
unprecedented
Spartan military defeat
that astounded the Greek world.
The Spartans
sent older soldiers under the command
of Archidamus, son of Agesilaus;
but before they arrived,
Jason with his mercenaries from the north
came and persuaded
the Thebans to grant a truce to the Lacedaemoneans,
who disbanded their forces and left Boeotia.
Orchomenus submitted
and was pardoned by Thebes;
but the Thespians, who had chosen
not to stand with the
Boeotians, were expelled,
and their territory
was annexed by Thebes.
Jason went on to dismantle the Spartan fortifications
of Heraclea
that guarded the pass at Thermopylae and
further indicated his
ambitions by planning to control
the upcoming Pythian games at
Delphi.
However, while he was reviewing his cavalry one day,
seven
young men assassinated him, setting off a struggle for
power in
which his brother Polyphron murdered his brother
Polydorus and
was murdered in turn by Alexander,
the son of Polydorus.
Some
Thessalian cities turned to Alexander of Macedonia;
but other
Thessalians requested the aid of Thebes against
both Alexanders,
and Pelopidas helped Thessaly
to form a federal union protected
by Thebes.
Pelopidas also tried to resolve Macedonian domestic conflicts,
but Ptolemy murdered Alexander and
married his victim's mother
Eurydice.
Faced with another pretender to the throne,
she turned
to Iphicrates, who was commanding the
nearby Athenian fleet and,
as the adopted son of Amyntas,
was the brother of Perdiccas and
Philip.
So Iphicrates helped Eurydice to expel the pretender
and secure Perdiccas in the succession
under the regency of Ptolemy.
However, Pelopidas compelled Ptolemy into an alliance
with Thebes
and took young Philip to be trained
in the military academy supervised
by Epaminondas.
After the major Spartan defeat at Leuctra in 371 BC,
the harmosts,
which were to be voluntarily withdrawn from
cities according to
the treaty, were expelled, as cities reacted
against their oligarchies
with democratic revolutions.
In Argos, which was independent,
political violence
put 1200 people to death—
first the wealthy
oligarchs and finally even popular leaders.
Thebans in the Amphictyonic
assembly at Delphi accused
Sparta of having unlawfully captured
their citadel
by Phoebidas during the peace.
The Amphictyons found
the Spartans guilty and fined them
500 talents; when it was not
paid, the fine was doubled,
though enforcement was lacking.
Sparta soon lost control of its long-time supporters on the
Peloponnesian peninsula, as the Mantinean Lycomedes
persuaded
Arcadian cities to form a federal union;
Mantinea with support
from Elis and
Arcadians rebuilt its walls and city.
A large new
capital for this Arcadian union was built called
Megalopolis,
and forty Arcadian townships joined.
The assembly of the 10,000
was made up of all the citizens;
a council was elected; and a
force of 5,000 was maintained.
At Tegea political opponents fought
in the assembly,
killing the Pan-Arcadian Proxenus and others.
When a Mantinean force arrived, the leaders opposing the
union
were caught, condemned, and put to death;
800 Tegeans from the
defeated party went into exile at Sparta.
This stimulated the
Spartans to send an army led by
Agesilaus into Arcadia to ravage
the fields of Mantinea.
The Boeotians, supported by ten talents from Elis and led by
Epaminondas, invaded and raided Lacedaemonian territory;
but Sparta
itself was saved by rivers swollen from winter rains.
Sparta,
whose number of citizens had decreased to about
1500, promised
freedom to 6,000 Helots who would serve
in the army and called
upon their allies—
Corinth, Sicyon, Phlius, and Pellene.
During
the winter Epaminondas took advantage of the
weakened Sparta to
liberate Messenia so that its ancient
peoples could return from
their long exile;
their city was restored, and the Messenians
were able
to preserve their independence from Sparta.
The Athenians, responding to appeals from Sparta, Corinth,
and Phlius, sent a force under Iphicrates to aid Sparta;
but they
did not bar the Theban army's passage
back across the Corinthian
isthmus.
The next year Epaminondas, re-elected Boeotarch, returned
with an army and fought his way through the Spartan-Athenian
line
to take Sicyon and Pellene but not Phlius.
Dionysius I of Syracuse
sent twenty ships with 2,000 Celtic
and Iberian mercenaries to
help Sparta, and Epaminondas
decided to go home, where he was
accused of treason
and was not re-elected.
Now it was some of the
Peloponnesian cities such as Sicyon
that had to suffer Boeotian
garrisons, while the Arcadians
expanded their league to include
Heraea,
Orchomenus, and others.
Spartans led by Archidamus caught
the Arcadians pursuing a
departing Syracusan force and killed
many Arcadians without
a single Spartan dying in what was called
the "tearless battle."
Attempts to make peace at Delphi were blocked by Sparta's
demand
for Messenia and Athens' for Amphipolis,
neither of which Thebes
was willing to grant.
All sides sent envoys to the Persian court,
and in 367 BC
Pelopidas was able to get Artaxerxes II to support
Theban
positions, recognizing the independence of Messenia
and
calling for Athens to lay up their warships.
The Athenians accused
their envoy Timagoras of accepting
forty talents from the Persians,
and he was executed.
Thebes, however, was unable to get
other
Greek cities to accept the treaty.
Meeting Alexander of Pherae
at Pharsalus,
Pelopidas was taken hostage.
The cruel Alexander
was said to have massacred the people
of Meliboea and Scotussa,
and it took two Theban invasions
and the leadership of his friend
Epaminondas to free Pelopidas.
Two years later Perdiccas had his
regent Ptolemy assassinated
to revenge his brother Alexander,
and by the diplomatic skill
of Timotheus Macedonia shifted from
Thebes
to ally themselves with Athens.
Thebes sent Epaminondas, whose forces won over Achaean
cities;
but when he left them alone, the Arcadians complained
that with
constitutions unchanged
they would likely return to Spartan loyalty.
However, Theban attempts to dismantle oligarchies by
banishing their leaders eventually resulted in these exiles
overthrowing
the democracies set up
and expelling the Theban harmosts.
In Sicyon
Euphron established a democracy;
but elected general, he soon
became despotic.
Arcadians, who had supported Euphron,
drove him
out when he became a tyrant.
Euphron surrendered the harbor to
the Lacedaemonians,
but he was restored by Athenian mercenaries.
Euphron then went to Thebes to persuade them to expel
the aristocrats,
but he was assassinated in the Cadmea
by a Sicyonian, who convinced
the Theban senate
not to punish him for the tyrannicide.
Nonetheless
Euphron had been popular in Sicyon,
and his son succeeded him
there.
Thebes was also finding hegemony problematic in Arcadia.
In 366 BC the Eritrean tyrant Themison helped pro-Theban
exiles
to seize Oropus, and Athens, which had retaken Oropus
from Thebes
a few years before, recalled Chares from Thyamia
and marched forces
there but got no support from their allies.
When a Theban army
arrived, the Athenians agreed to entrust
Oropus to them pending
arbitration; but the Thebans just kept it.
Megalopolis had rejected
the treaty presented by Pelopidas,
and Lycomedes also persuaded
the assembly of the 10,000
to negotiate an alliance with Athens,
whom he then convinced
to ally themselves with the Arcadians even
though Athens' ally
Sparta was at war with the Arcadians.
However,
on his way home from Athens Lycomedes
happened to land among Mantinean
exiles and was killed.
Disappointed by Corinth's failure to help them at Oropus,
the
Athenians voted to seize and occupy Corinth.
Hearing of this,
the Corinthians asked the Athenians
to remove their garrisons,
which they did,
and the forces of Chares were politely refused
admittance
to the Corinthian port of Cenchreae.
The Corinthians
sent envoys to Thebes, saying they wanted
peace and asking permission
to send the same message to
their Lacedaemonian allies, who insisted
they were going to
continue fighting as long as they were
deprived
of the Messenian territory.
The Corinthians then went back to
Thebes to make a peace,
but the Thebans wanted an alliance, which
the Corinthians
believed would bring them into the war.
Corinth
was ready to make a just and equitable peace
while recognizing
Messenian independence,
and the Thebans respecting that, oaths
were taken by them,
the Phliasians, Epidaurians, and others.
In
Athens the orator Isocrates defended Sparta's right
to Messenia,
but Alcidamus disagreed, proclaiming,
"God has left all men
free; nature has made no man a slave."5
Athens' desire to win back Amphipolis, though acknowledged
by Persia, was impeded as cities
in the Chalcidic league
renounced their alliance with Athens
and
made a treaty with Amphipolis.
When Ariobarzanes, the satrap of
Phrygia, revolted from the
Persian
king, Athens supported him by sending thirty galleys
under Timotheus,
who besieged Samos
for ten months before it capitulated.
Athenian
aid to Ariobarzanes was rewarded with the cession
of Sestos and
Crithote in the Chersonese.
Athens sent settlers to Samos as its
territory
in a sign of renewed imperialism.
Timotheus with Macedonia
friendly compelled towns on the
Chalcidic peninsula to join the
Athenian alliance,
and Athenian settlers were also sent to Potidaea.
Yet in three years Iphicrates had failed to conquer Amphipolis;
when he was recalled, Iphicrates, supported by the mercenary
Charidemus
who gave Amphipolis back their hostages,
joined his Thracian father-in-law
Cotys in his war against Athens.
Timotheus, taking on this war against Cotys, discovered a
Theban
navy in the Aegean.
With the threat of losing Euboea to Athenian
sea power,
Epaminondas had persuaded the Thebans to build a hundred
triremes, though Menecleidas had argued
against this dangerous
escalation of warfare.
Resentment over Athenian imperialistic
settlements led
Byzantium and Ceos to rebel and Rhodes and Chios
to negotiate with Epaminondas.
Pelopidas led a Theban attack on
Alexander at Pherae
and was killed, but the next year the Thebans
came back and
forced Alexander to give over to Theban hegemony
all his possessions except Pherae.
When Thebes discovered a conspiracy
in Orchomenus
to overthrow their constitution, the Boeotian assembly
voted
to kill all the men and enslave the
Orchomenian women and
children.
When Elis tried to reclaim Triphylia, the Arcadians invaded
twice; but Sparta supported Elis by fortifying Cromnon.
The Olympic
games of 364 BC supervised by the local
Pisatans were disrupted
by this fighting,
and the retreating Eleians declared the festival
nullified.
When the Arcadians used the sacred treasures of Olympia
to pay their federal troops, Mantinea seceded and joined
its traditional
foe Sparta against Tegea, Sparta's traditional ally.
The federal
administrators sent envoys to Thebes requesting
their intervention;
but the Pan-Arcadian assembly told Thebes
not to come, and they
made a peace treaty with Elis,
restoring their authority over
Olympia.
When representatives were swearing to the peace at Tegea,
the Boeotian commander arrested the anti-Theban leaders,
though
he released them when Mantinea protested.
Epaminondas, resenting
the release and the peace with Elis,
promised to march into Arcadia.
Sparta and Athens both supported Mantinea,
Elis, Achaea, and
Phlius.
These forces met the Theban army at Mantinea in 362 BC,
and the strategy of Epaminondas triumphed once more;
but he was
killed pursuing the retreating enemy.
As Epaminondas lay dying,
he suggested two successors;
but as both were dead, he told them
to make peace.
Peace was made, although Sparta did not accept
it
because the independence of Messenia was recognized.
The treaty
required people to return to their towns,
but some people wanted
to secede from Megalopolis.
These Arcadians asked the Mantineans,
Eleians and others
to help them, while the Megalopolitans called
on Thebes,
which sent 3,000 hoplites and 300 cavalry under Pammenes
to sack towns and compel these people to live in Megalopolis.
After Timotheus fought Cotys in the Chersonese,
he was replaced
by a series of six Athenian commanders
one
after another to protect
the grain supplies from the Black Sea.
Alexander of Pherae seized
the island of Peparethus,
defeated the Athenian forces under Leosthenes,
and even plundered Piraeus, causing Athenians to condemn
their
commander and the able politician Callistratus,
both of whom fled
into exile.
Years later when Callistratus returned from Macedonia
to Athens and took sanctuary at the altar of the twelve gods,
he was executed by the state.
Corcyra got oligarchs back in power
and
left the Athenian league in 361 BC.
Athens allied itself with
the federation of Thessalians,
and both sides agreed not to make
a separate peace with Alexander of Pherae.
Thracian king Cotys
attacked and took Sestos by surprise
in 360 BC, but he was assassinated
the next year
by two former students of Plato
who were gratefully
welcomed back to Athens.
Agesilaus, who for gold had supported Ariobarzanes' revolt
in Asia Minor, now led a force of a thousand men to Egypt
to support the Egyptian rebel Tachos,
whom he served in Phoenicia.
However, he considered it in Sparta's interest for his
mercenaries
to change sides to fight for Nektanebos in Egypt
against Persia, for which he
collected 230 talents for Sparta.
King Agesilaus, who had once
tried to conquer Persia and
was
much admired and praised by Xenophon
in one of the
first biographies ever, finally died in Africa
at
the age of 84 about 360 BC.
In the west with Spartan military help Syracuse had been able
to defeat the Athenian invasion in 413 BC.
Their leader Hermocrates
was appointed to command their
fleet that was sent to aid the
Spartans in the Aegean,
but the democratic movement led by Diocles
in Syracuse banished Hermocrates.
Magistrates were selected by
lot and presided
over the assembly, restricting the power of the
generals,
who had been able to dismiss the assembly.
In 410 BC
Segesta requested aid from Carthage in a quarrel
with Selinus,
and the latter was besieged by the western
Phoenicians led by
the elderly Hannibal who, avenging previous
Carthaginian defeats
in Sicily, destroyed the city and massacred
16,000, enslaving
5,000 while 2,600 escaped to Acragas.
Hannibal then besieged Himera.
Diocles led a force of 5,000 to relieve it;
but afraid that Syracuse was going to be attacked,
he took half Himera's people and departed.
Hannibal's army broke into Himera, slaughtered 3,000 men,
violated
the women, and destroyed the city.
With money from Pharnabazus, Hermocrates came home
with five
triremes and a thousand mercenaries.
Joined by a thousand Himeran
refugees, he rebuilt Selinus.
Soon his forces grew to 6,000 and
raided the lands of Motya,
Panormus, Solus, and Carthaginian Segesta.
Diocles had neglected to have the dead buried at Himera;
so when
Hermocrates sent the bones to Syracuse in wagons,
Diocles was
banished.
However, when Hermocrates tried to return to Syracuse,
his band was attacked, and he was killed.
A young follower of
his named Dionysius was wounded.
Carthaginians returned to Sicily in 406 BC to besiege Acragas.
Hannibal died in a pestilence, and the Phoenicians
sacrificed
a boy to their god Moloch.
A large army from Syracuse, Gela, and
Camarina attacked the
eastern camp of the Carthaginians and routed
them;
but after the Acragantine generals refused to attack the
fleeing
enemy, the people stoned four of them to death.
The Carthaginians
rounded up 40 triremes and intercepted the
supplies for Acragas,
causing the Campanian mercenaries
to mutiny and the Sicilian allies
to desert Acragas.
Many believed that the Spartan commander Dexippus
had been bribed with 15 talents by Himilco.
Finally the people
of Acragas departed at night,
and Acragas became a Carthaginian
city.
In the Syracusan assembly Dionysius accused the generals of
treachery and urged the people to destroy them without a trial.
Such conduct drew a fine, but the wealthy historian Philistus
paid it and told him to go on; the generals were deposed,
and
Dionysius was appointed to the new board.
The exiled followers
of Hermocrates were recalled,
while Dionysius criticized the other
members
of the board and the rich.
Dionysius marched to Gela,
where he took the side of the
democrats against the rich oligarchs,
got the assembly to execute them, confiscated their wealth,
and
used it to pay the Spartan garrison's back wages and
to double
the pay of his Syracusan soldiers.
Returning to Syracuse, Dionysius
accused the other generals
of plotting treachery with Himilco,
claiming he had refused a bribe himself.
The assembly elected
Dionysius sole general with unlimited
power to meet the crisis
he had aroused.
Dionysius marched his army to Leontini, which now belonged
to Syracuse, and claiming that his life was in danger, he got
the
Syracusan assembly meeting in Leontini to vote him
a bodyguard
of 600 that he soon increased.
With his army of mercenaries organized,
Dionysius returned
to Syracuse and established himself in the
island fortress.
His supporters in the assembly condemned
and
executed the wealthy opposition leaders,
Daphnaeus and Demarchus.
Dionysius then married the daughter of Hermocrates,
while his
sister wed Polyxenus, brother of the late Hermocrates.
The Spartan
Dexippus and his mercenaries having been
called away, Gela, defending
itself against the
siege of Himilco, asked for aid.
Dionysius
brought a large army; but the attack on the
Carthaginian forces
was bungled,
and the people of Gela were evacuated instead.
On
the way back to Syracuse, Dionysius also ordered
the people of
Camarina to leave their home.
The Italian allies deserted, and
some Syracusan
horseman rode ahead to his island fortress,
plundered
the tyrant's valuables, and killed his bride.
However, Dionysius
leading 700 mercenaries into
Syracuse by another gate was able
to quell the revolt.
Also in 405 BC Dionysius made a treaty with Himilco
that recognized
Carthaginian possessions on the southern shore
of Sicily including
Selinus, Himera, and Acragas,
while Gela and Camarina had to destroy
their fortifications
and pay tribute to Carthage.
The independence
of the Sicels, Messana, and Leontini
was recognized, but the Carthaginians
guaranteed that
"the Syracusans shall be subject to Dionysius."6
Dionysius had established himself as the tyrant
of the most powerful
city in Europe, which lasted 38 years
protected by mercenary bodyguards
and an island fortress at Syracuse.
He used the confiscated estates
of his enemies to supply
the new citizens he created from enfranchised
slaves.
Dionysius was attempting to conquer Sicel tribes in the
interior
with his army at Herbessus in 403 BC when Syracusan troops
killed their commander Doricus, and the mutiny spread
among the
army and the exiles at Aetna.
Dionysius returned to his island
fortress with his mercenaries
and was besieged by 80 triremes
from Messana and Rhegion.
Dionysius deceptively agreed to leave
Syracuse
if they would give him five triremes, but he used Carthage's
Campanian mercenaries to defeat the rebels instead.
Rebels who
returned were forgiven.
The Campanians found a new home in Entella,
where
in one night they killed all the men and married their women.
The army of Dionysius overthrew the tyrant
of Henna and took
Aetna.
Dionysius gained Catane and Naxos with gold and betrayal
by bribing their generals; their people, who had opposed
Syracuse
in the Peloponnesian War, were sold as slaves;
Naxos was destroyed,
and its territory
was given to the native Sicels.
This treatment
persuaded the
Leontinians to migrate to Syracuse.
However, the
Rhegians sent 6,000 soldiers and 600 cavalry
across the strait
in 50 triremes and got Messana to join the war
with 4,000 soldiers
and 400 cavalry; but at the border the
Messenian Laomedon persuaded
the Messenians to give up
the war because the people had not approved
it,
which caused the Rhegians to turn back also.
Dionysius took
his army back to Syracuse,
and a peace treaty was made.
However,
when Dionysius asked to marry a Rhegian,
and
they offered only
the executioner's daughter, animosity grew.
When Aristeides of
Locri said that he would rather see his
daughter dead than married
to a tyrant,
Dionysius had his sons put to death, though the Locrians
eventually sent him Doris, whom he married on the same day
as
he wed Aristomacha, the sister of Dion.
Syracuse was fortified, and its walls
were built by 60,000
freemen.
Using coordinated attacks of army and navy, heavy and
light
infantry along with cavalry, Dionysius demonstrated the
warfare later emulated by the Macedonians;
Syracuse was the first
to use the catapult to enhance a siege
and larger warships with
four and even five banks of oars.
140,000 shields were manufactured
along with 14,000
breast-plates and great numbers of
helmets,
spears, and daggers.
110 warships were refitted, and 200 more
were built.
In 398 BC the Syracusans marched west as the Greeks
of Camarina, Gela, Acragas, Selinus, and Himera revolted
against
the Carthaginians and put them to death.
Supplied with weapons
by Dionysius, 80,000 men
besieged Motya and built a mole to that
island
while besieging Segesta and Entella.
Catapults caused Carthage's
navy to retreat from Syracuse.
Motya was the first Phoenician
city
to be sacked by the Greeks.
All the prisoners were enslaved
except the
traitorous Greek mercenaries, who were crucified.
However, the next year Himilco gained Eryx by betrayal and
re-captured Motya, causing Dionysius to give up the siege
of Segesta
and return to Syracuse.
In place of Motya the city of Lilybaeum
was built
as a Carthaginian stronghold.
Himilco took and razed
Messana
and had the town of Tauromenion built.
After defeating
the outnumbered Syracusan navy near Catane,
destroying and taking
100 ships and 20,000 men,
the Carthaginians besieged Syracuse
itself, causing Dionysius
to ask for help from Italy, Corinth,
and Sparta.
Having desecrated Greek temples,
the Carthaginians were visited once more with a plague.
The Lacedaemonians sent 30 ships led by Pharacidas,
who helped
Syracuse take a food shipment from Carthage.
Dionysius called
an assembly to praise and encourage his men,
but the Syracusan
cavalry officer Theodorus in a long and
powerful speech, as recorded
in the history of Diodorus,
criticized Dionysius for having been
a worse master than the
Carthaginians by plundering temples and
the property of
citizens, paying former slaves to enslave their
masters,
losing battles and allies, enslaving the people of Naxos
and Catane, killing critics, banishing the wealthy,
and giving
their wives to slaves; the tyrant, who lords it over
them but
cowers before the enemy, should be overthrown
with the help of
their Spartan allies.
However, Pharacidas declared that the Peloponnesians
were sent to aid Dionysius against the Carthaginians,
not the
Syracusans against Dionysius.
Weakened by pestilence that was said to have killed 150,000
Carthaginian soldiers, they were defeated by Syracuse;
but Dionysius
seeming to want an enemy to justify his tyranny
allowed Himilco
to escape at night
and received 300 talents from him.
The Carthaginians
went home, as did their Sicel allies,
and the remaining mercenaries
were killed or enslaved
except for some Iberians, who were incorporated
into the Syracusan army.
Himilco returned to Carthage and tried
to atone for his
impiety by public penitence and then starved
himself to death.
The subjugated Libyans collected an army
of
200,000 freemen and slaves.
The Carthaginians, believing their
troubles were caused by
offending the temple of the Greek goddesses
Demeter
and her daughter, instituted their worship and,
organizing
themselves for war,
dispersed the disorganized Libyans.
Dionysius extended the territory of Syracuse to Morgantina,
Cephaloedion, and Henna while making treaties with the
tyrants
of Agyrion, Centuripa, and others.
With the help of the tyrant
Agyris, Dionysius defeated the
Carthaginian forces led by Mago
in 392 BC and made a treaty
acknowledging Syracusan influence
over all the Greeks in Sicily.
Dionysius besieged Rhegion but
was
defeated at sea by the Italians.
Dionysius formed an alliance
with the Lucanians,
who then invaded Thurii; but when Leptines,
the brother of Dionysius, rescued more than a thousand Italians
at sea and ransomed them for a mina each and made an
acclaimed armistice between the Lucanians and the Italians;
Dionysius, whose
interest gained by that war, removed him
from his naval command
and appointed his other brother.
The army of Dionysius defeated
an Italian coalition mostly
from Croton but let men captured go
without a ransom
so that he could make treaties with the grateful
Italian cities.
Only Rhegion, Caulonia, and Hipponion resisted,
but Rhegion surrendered its fleet,
and the others were easily
destroyed.
Eight years later Croton was captured,
and the forefoot
of Italy was controlled by Syracuse.
Dionysius also extended Syracusan power across the
Adriatic
Sea to Apulia, Issa, Pharos, Ancona, Hadria,
and in an alliance
with Alcetas of Molossia.
Burdensome taxes were imposed on the
people of Syracuse
and its dominions for war and shipbuilding.
1500 talents were even pirated
from an Etrurian temple at Agylla.
A Carthaginian force was defeated by Syracuse in 379 BC
at Cabala,
and Mago was killed; but the next year Syracuse
was defeated at
Cronion when Leptines and 14,000 Sicilian
Greeks were killed;
Syracuse lost control of western Sicily
to the Halycus River and
had to pay
Carthage one thousand talents.
Ten years later Dionysius
tried to regain Punic Sicily,
but his siege of Lilybaeum failed
when much of his fleet
was captured by the Carthaginian navy.
So paranoid that someone would kill him
that he did not even use
a razor, Dionysius had his officer
Marsyas put to death because
he had a dream
in which he assassinated Dionysius.
The tyrant
also had the mother of his wife Doris killed,
because he suspected
her of using magic
to prevent his other wife from having a child.
When the poet Philoxenus criticized Dionysius' pretensions
to poetry, he was sent to the quarries; but persuaded to let him
return the next night, the tyrant once again asked the poet's
opinion of his verses;
Philoxenus told the servant to take him
to the quarries.
Dionysius laughed and got him to give his response,
but Philoxenus replied with double meaning, "Pitiful,"
which Dionysius could interpret
as his poetry being full of feeling.
The philosopher Plato was persuaded to come to his court,
but
his freedom of speech was rewarded by being sold
as a slave for
twenty minae,
though some philosophers purchased his freedom.
Although his verses had been laughed at and scorned
at the Olympic
games, Dionysius after many attempts
finally won first prize with
his Ransom of Hector
at the Lenaean festival in Athens;
but his drunken celebration
led to fever and death in 367 BC.
An oracle had predicted that Dionysius would die
after he had
conquered his betters.
Thus the tyrant had always avoided completely
defeating
the Carthaginians, and it was after he had won
against
better poets that he died.
Dionysius was succeeded by his son Dionysius
II,
who was advised by the sagacious Dion
and instructed by Plato.
However,
the recall of the historian Philistus from exile
resulted in rivalry
that caused Dion to be banished,
and Plato,
failing to produce
a philosopher king, returned to Athens.
1. Herodotus, The Histories 8:77 tr. Aubrey de Sélincourt.
2. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 1:75 tr. Rex Warner.
3. Xenophon, Hellenica, tr. Henry G. Dakyns, 5:1:31.
4. Bury, J. B. and Russell Meiggs, A History of Greece,
p. 351.
5. Ibid., p. 375.
6. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History,
tr. C. H. Oldfather,
13:114.
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