The Persian Wars · •Thucydides, wrote in his History of the Peloponnesian War, "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.“

The Persian Wars

King Croessus’s LydiaGreek Ionia, Aeolis, and Doris

THE IONIAN REVOLT

From 499 BC to 493 BC, the Greeks rebelled against the tyrants set up by the Persian Empire

The Persian Invasion

The Persian Invasion

• In 492 BC, Darius of Persia attacked mainland Greece, hoping to secure his empire from further interference from Athens.

• This attack was successful at first, but eventually collapsed.

• In 490 BC, he tried again by sailing across the sea.

• This attack successfully subjugated Etruria, another Greek polis, but Darius’s forces were completely destroyed at the Battle of Marathon

Legend of the Marathon

• According to Herodotus, a runner named Pheidippides ran from Athens to Sparta, a distance of 140 miles, to ask for assistance at the battle. Herodotus says that Pheidippides arrived the same day he left.

• After the battle, Athenian forces marched 20 miles back to Athens in order to head off Persians forces who were going to attack from the sea.

• These two legends became mixed later on, and so became the legend of the marathon, in which a runner made a 26.2 mile trip back to Athens to announce the victory over the Persians.

Xerxes

• Darius died before he could begin another attack on Athens.

• His son, Xerxes, then inherited the throne and the war against the Athenians.

• In 480 BC, Xerxes personally led the second Persian invasion of Greece with one of the largest ancient armies ever assembled.

• He was slowed down, but not stopped, at the Battle of Thermopylae by the 300 Spartans and some others.

Battle of Thermopylae

•• In August or September of 480, the Greek alliance of city-states,

including Athens and Sparta, decided that they would block the Persian army at a bottleneck called Thermopylae (The Hot Gates).

• About 7,000 men held of the huge Persian army for 7 days, but a local resident betrayed the Greeks and informed the Persians of a small path that led behind the mountains.

• Leonidas, the Spartan king, became away of this, and dismissed the majority of the army, leaving behind 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans, and his 300 Spartans.

• This rear-guard action protected the retreat of the main army, and held of the Persians for two full days of battle.

Modern Thermopylae

● Only a week or two after the Battle of Thermopylae, the Persians moved into the region of Attica.

● The rearguard action had allowed the Athenians to prepare for the upcoming war.

● While many wanted to defend the city walls, Themistocles convinced Athens to evacuate and prepare for a naval battle.

● They took their ships to the straights of Salamis.

● There, they tricked the Persians into attacking in the straight, effectively using a second bottleneck against the Persians.

● Using better knowledge of the weather and currents, the Greeks used their triremes to destroy most of the Persian fleet.

● This was the last time the Persians would mount an effective attack on the Greeks

● Athens and Sparta were seen as the two powerhouses of the Greek poleis after this, but because of the economic power of the Athenian navy, they became the most influential.

● While Athens made most of their money through trade, the Spartan economy was built on the backs of slaves, called Helots.

● The vast majority of the people in Sparta were helots, and the citizens were all soldiers who guarded against a slave revolt.

● The Spartans said that “Sparta’s walls are her men.”

THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS

Athens and Sparta

•• Thucydides, wrote in his History of the Peloponnesian

War, "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.“

• After Athens defeated the Persian attack in 480 BC, they began a series of attacks on Persians settlements.

• The Greek city-states had come together to form the Delian League, named for the treasury on the island of Delos.

• As Athens grew in power, it eventually stopped being the leader of the Delian League, and became the head of an empire, dominating or defeating all of Greece except for Sparta and her allies.

•• Over the next few decades, Athens’s allies became tribute

paying subjects, rather than partners.

• Tribute is money paid to a ruling state.

• This money was used to fund a large, powerful fleet, and large public works programs.

• These programs cause a great deal of resentment among the other city-states.

•• At the time that Athens was increasing in power and

influence, a man named Pericles rose to power and began to lead the Athenians.

• Pericles lived roughly from 490 to 429 B.C.

• He was born into an aristocratic family and given an excellent education.

• He was one of Athens’s foremost orators.

• He bestowed numerous benefits on the people, who then supported him, though this weakened the aristocratic class from which Pericles himself had come.

Pericles used public money for building projects, such as the Parthenon, which enraged some of the upper classes, but guaranteed support from the

commoners.

•• Athenian leadership at the time believed that Athens should

continue to be hostile toward Persia, and should develop a friendship with Sparta.

• Pericles believed the opposite.

Peloponnesian War

•• The Peloponnesian War lasted from 431 to 404 B.C.

• When the cold war between Athens and Sparta became a hot war, the Delian League began to fragment.

• The two eventually signed a peace agreement, but the agreement did not last.

• Athens made an alliance with Corcyra. This alliance created the largest navy in Greece, which made both Corinth and Sparta uneasy.

• Hostilities broke out again in 431 B.C. as this was perceived as a dangerous threat by Sparta and Corinth.

•• The Spartan strategy was to attack a region in Athens called

Attica each spring to wear down the Athenian morale. Pericles would not allow the Athenian infantry to take the field against the Spartans, and instead took refuge behind the city walls.

• Instead of meeting the Spartans head on, Pericles ordered naval attacks on the Peloponnese with their powerful navy.

• Being stuck in the city caused a plague to scourge the Athenians in 430 which caused more damage than the Spartans ever could do with weapons.

• Finally, Pericles died, which meant a dramatic change in the Athenian way of life.

•• The new leadership in Athens thought that the Athenians

should meet the Spartans in battle, despite the effectiveness of Pericles’s plan.

• The favor of the democracy swung away from supporting Pericles to supporting the new plan

• However, the Athenians were beaten by the Spartans when they met them in pitched combat.