The Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian War

MEDITERRANEAN PEOPLES HIST 1301 | History The Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian War The Athenians assumed the initiative in pursuing the war against Persia and releasing all of the Greek city-states following the Persian Wars. They established the Delian League, an association of Greek city-states with its headquarters located on the Aegean island of Delos, in 477 BCE. Members had two options: either supply the league with ships and soldiers, or, as most did, pay Athens to outfit the navy. Over the course of the following few decades, Delian League allies supported uprisings against Persia in Cyprus and Egypt and freed the Greek city-states of Ionia from Persian domination. Athens and Persia came to a peace agreement in 449 BCE whereby the Persians acknowledged Ionia's independence and the Athenians promised to cease supporting insurgents within the Persian Empire. Many Athenians from lower social classes benefited greatly from the Delian League's financial contributions during the war, as they were employed as oars in the fleet. Athens even started compensating participants in Assembly sessions as well as jurors in jury trials. The other Greeks gradually realised that the Delian League was an empire to which the subject city-states provided an ongoing stream of tribute, rather than an alliance. The city-state of Thasos left the league in 465 BCE, but the troops of Athens forced it back. The Athenians started using tribute in 437 BCE to reconstruct the temples on the Acropolis that the Persians had demolished. These were some of the most exquisite temples ever constructed, the pride of Athens, including the Parthenon, which is dedicated to Athena Parthenos. However, to the subordinate city-states, they came to represent the tyranny and conceit of the Athenians. The Spartans, who considered themselves the finest and noblest of the Greeks, were very concerned about the wealth and power of Athens. Eventually, the two city-states' rivalry brought them into open warfare. The Athenians supported Corcyra, a city-state, in its conflict with Corinth in 433 BCE. As a Peloponnesian League member, Corinth asked Sparta, the league's head, to intervene against Athenian invasion. Thus, Sparta and her allies' invasion of Attica in 431 BCE marked the start of the Peloponnesian War.Pericles, the political leader of Athens, convinced his fellow citizens to leave the Attican countryside and relocate inside the city walls. He said that the navy would provide them with food and supplies, and the wall would protect them until Sparta became weary of fighting and sought peace. Pericles was right in his evaluation. Following a decade of conflict, the Athenians and Spartans signed the Peace of Nicias in 421 BCE, preserving the Athenian empire. Nonetheless, Athens paid a heavy price for the conflict. A disease that killed many, including Pericles, broke out in the city in 426 BCE as a result of the swarming of people within its walls. A few years later, an ambitious young Athenian politician called Alcibiades—a kinsman of Pericles—inspired a huge invasion of Sicily with the aim of capturing Syracuse, the biggest city-state on the island, on the grounds that the empire could only flourish by growing. Alcibiades's political adversaries at Athens accused him of impiety and treason just as the campaign got underway in 415 BCE, and he fled to Sparta to avoid being put on trial. The expedition against Syracuse failed under his direction, and the Athenian army as a whole was decimated in 413 BCE. Now that Athens had been debilitated by the catastrophe at Syracuse, Alcibiades persuaded the Spartans to invade Attica once more while they were in exile. In the years that followed, the Spartans realised they would need a sizable navy to attack Athens, so they obtained financing for it from Persia —as long as Sparta returned Persian sovereignty to the Greek cities in Ionia. At the Battle of Aegospotami on the Hellespont in 405 BCE, the newly formed Spartan fleet routed the Athenian navy. Without ships, the besieged Athenians were unable to get food or supplies, and in 404 BCE, the city submitted to Sparta. The city's fall and the Athenian empire's demise marked the end of the Peloponnesian War. After the Peloponnesian War, Sparta was first in charge of Greece. Sparta created oligarchies of regional nobles in the city-states that had been Delian League democracies just after the conflict. Additionally, it ushered in the brief oligarchic reign of Athens during the Era of the Thirty Tyrants. Sparta broke its pledge to return Persian rule over the Greek city-states in Ionia with reference to Persia. In response, Persia provided funds for Greek opposition to Sparta, which ultimately forced Sparta to acquiesce to Persia's demands in return for Persian backing. This entailed fulfilling its earlier pledge to hand up the Ionian city-states. The Spartans persisted in meddling in the internal affairs of other Greek city-states, now supported by the Persians. City-states like Thebes and Athens were incensed by this. Thebans beat Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra in Boeotia in 371 BCE. The majority of the Spartans' helot labour was taken away from them when they overran the Peloponnese the next year and freed Messene from Spartan domination. The Peloponnesian League fell apart as a result of the Spartans' inability to maintain their military structure in the absence of the helots. Concerned by Thebes's unexpected rise to prominence, Athens and Sparta banded together once more and engaged the Thebans in combat at the Battle of Mantinea in 362 BCE. Though the fight was a draw, Thebes's hegemony quickly dissipated. After years of nonstop fighting, the Greek city-states were politically and economically depleted by 350 BCE.