LECTURE 3: RISE OF THE CITY STATES
The city of Athens during Classical Antiquity was a notable polis (city-state) of Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian war against Sparta. Athenian democracy was established in 510 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Hippias. This system remained remarkably stable, and with a few brief interruptions remained in place for 170 years, until Alexander the Great conquered Athens in 338 BCE. The peak of Athenian hegemony was achieved in the 440s to 430s BC, known as the Age of Pericles.
In the classical period, Athens was a center for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Akademia and Aristotle's Lyceum,[1][2] Athens was also the birthplace of Socrates, Pericles, Sophocles, and its many other prominent philosophers, writers and politicians of the ancient world. It is widely referred to as the cradle of Western Civilization, and the birthplace of democracy,[3] largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC on the rest of the then known European continent.[4]
Hippias established a dictatorship in 514, which proved very unpopular and was overthrown, with the help of an army from Sparta, in 510. A radical politician of aristocratic background, Cleisthenes, then took charge. He was the one who established democracy in Athens. The reforms of Cleisthenes replaced the traditional four "tribes" (phyle) with ten new ones, named after legendary heroes and having no class basis: they were in fact electorates. Each tribe was in turn divided into three trittyes while each trittys had one or more demes (see deme) - depending on the population of the demes -, which became the basis of local government. The tribes each elected fifty members to the Boule, a council which governed Athens on a day-to-day basis. The public opinion of voters was remarkably influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters.[5] The Assembly was open to all citizens and was both a legislature and a supreme court, except in murder cases and religious matters, which became the only remaining functions of the Areopagus. Most offices were filled by lot, though the ten strategoi (generals) were, for obvious reasons, elected.
Prior to the rise of Athens, the city of Sparta considered itself the leader of the Greeks, or hegemon. In 499 BC Athens sent troops to aid the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who were rebelling against the Persian Empire (see Ionian Revolt). This provoked two Persian invasions of Greece, both of which were defeated under the leadership of the Athenian soldier-statesmen Miltiades and Themistocles (see Persian Wars). In 490 the Athenians, led by Miltiades, defeated the first invasion of the Persians, guided by the king Darius at the Battle of Marathon. In 480 the Persians returned under a new ruler, Xerxes. The Hellenic League led by Sparta King Leonidas led 7,000 men to hold the narrow passageway of Battle of Thermopylae against the 100,000 men of Xerxes. Simultaneously the Spartans led an indecisive naval battle off Artemisium. This delaying action was not enough to discourage the Persian advance which soon marched through Boeotia, setting up Thebes as their base of operations, and entered southern Greece. This forced the Athenians to evacuate Athens, which was taken by the Persians, and seek the protection of their fleet. Subsequently the Athenians and their allies, led by Themistocles, defeated the Persian navy at sea in the Battle of Salamis. It is interesting to note that Xerxes had built himself a throne on the coast in order to see the Greeks defeated. Instead, the Persians were routed. Sparta's hegemony was passing to Athens, and it was Athens that took the war to Asia Minor. These victories enabled it to bring most of the Aegean and many other parts of Greece together in the Delian League, an Athenian-dominated alliance.
The city of Sparta (Doric Σπάρτα; Attic Σπάρτη Spartē) lay at the southern end of the central Laconian plain, on the right bank of the Eurotas River. It was a strategic site, guarded on three sides by mountains and controlling the routes by which invading armies could penetrate Laconia and the southern Peloponnesus via the Langhda Pass over Mt Taygetus. At the same time, its distance from the sea – Sparta was 27 miles from its seaport, Gythium – made it difficult to blockade.
The recorded history of Sparta began with the Dorian invasions, when the Peloponnesus was settled by Doric Greek tribes coming from Epirus and Macedonia through the northeast region of Greece, submitting or displacing the older Achaean Greek inhabitants.[1] The Mycenaean Sparta of Menelaus described in Homer's Iliad was an older Greek civilization, whose link to post-Mycenaean Sparta was only by name and location.[1] What is widely known today as ancient Sparta refers to state and culture that were formed in Sparta by the Dorian Greeks, some eighty years after the Trojan War.[2] It did not take long for Sparta to subdue all cities in the region of Laconia and turn it into its kingdom. In the 7th century BC it also incorporated Messenia. In the 5th century BC, Sparta and Athens were reluctant allies against the Persians, but after the foreign threat was over, they soon became rivals. The greatest series of conflicts between the two states, which resulted in the dismantling of the Athenian Empire, is called the Peloponnesian War. The city-state Athens' attempts to control Greece and take over the Spartan role of 'guardian of Hellenism' ended in failure. Following the defeat of Athens, Sparta briefly became a great naval power. The first ever defeat of a Spartan hoplite army at full strength occurred at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, after which Sparta's position as the dominant Greek city-state swiftly disappeared with the loss of large numbers of Spartiates and the resources of Messenia. By the time of the rise of Alexander the Great in 336 BC, Sparta was a shadow of its former self, clinging to an isolated independence. During the Punic Wars Sparta was an ally of the Roman Republic. Spartan political independence was put to an end when it was eventually forced into the Achaean League.
During the Roman conquest of Greece, Spartans continued their way of life and the city became a tourist attraction for the Roman elite who came to observe the "unusual" Spartan customs. Supposedly, following the disaster that befell the Roman Imperial Army at the Battle of Adrianople (AD 378), a Spartan phalanx met and defeated a force of raiding Visigoths in battle.[citation needed] There is, however, no genuine evidence of this occurring.
Modern Sparti owes its existence to an 1834 decree of King Otto of Greece.
n the context of the art, architecture, and culture of Ancient Greece, the classical period corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE (the most common dates being the fall of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BCE to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE).
From the perspective of Athenian culture in classical Greece, the period generally referred to as the 5th century BCE runs over into the 4th a bit. This century is essentially studied from the Athenian outlook because Athens has left us more narratives, plays, and other written works than the other Greek states. In this context, one might consider that the first significant event of this century occurs in 510, with the fall of the Athenian tyrant and Cleisthenes’ reforms. However, a broader view of the whole Greek world might place its beginning at the Ionian revolt of 500, the event that provoked the Persian invasion of 492. The Persians (called "Medes") were finally defeated in 490. A second Persian attempt failed in 481-479. The Delian League then formed, under Athenian hegemony and as Athens' instrument. Athens' excesses caused several revolts among the allied cities, all of which were put down by force, but Athenian dynamism finally awoke Sparta and brought about the Peloponnesian War in 431. After both forces were spent, a brief peace came about; then the war resumed to Sparta's advantage. Athens was definitively defeated in 404, and internal Athenian agitations mark the end of the 5th century in Greece.
In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow their king, the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratos. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by Isagoras. But his rival Cleisthenes, with the support of the middle class and aided by democrats, managed to take over. Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506, but could not stop Cleisthenes, now supported by the Athenians. Through his reforms, the people endowed their city with isonomic institutions (ie ones in which all have the same rights) and established ostracism.
The isonomic and isegoric[1] democracy was first organized into about 130 ’’demes’’, which became the foundational civic element. The 10,000 citizens exercised their power via the assembly (the ecclesia, in Greek) of which they all were part, headed by a council of 500 citizens chosen at random.
The city's administrative geography was reworked, the goal being to have mixed political groups--not federated by local interests linked to the sea, to the city, or to farming--whose decisions (declaration of war, etc.) would depend on their geographical situation. Also, the territory of the city was divided into thirty ’’trittyes’’ as follows:
- ten trittyes in the coastal "Paralie"
- ten trittyes in "Asty", the urban centre
- ten trittyes in rural "Mesogia".
A tribe consisted of 3 trittyes, taken at random, one from each of the three groups. Each tribe therefore always acted in the interest of all 3 sectors.
This is this corpus of reforms that would in the end allow the emergence of a
wider democracy in the 460s and 450s BC.
In Ionia (the modern Aegean coast
of Turkey), the Greek cities, which
included great centres such as Miletus
and Halicarnassus, were
unable to maintain their independence and came under the rule of the Persian Empire in the mid
6th century BC. In 499 BC
that region’s Greeks rose in the Ionian Revolt, and Athens and some other Greek
cities went to their aid, though they were at first quickly forced to back down
after defeat in 494 BC at the battle
of Lade. Asia Minor returned to Persian control.
In 492 BC, the Persian general, Mardonius led a campaign through Thrace and Macedonia and while victorious, he was wounded and forced to retreat back into Asia Minor. In addition, the naval fleet of around 1,200 ships which accompanied Mardonius on the expedition was wrecked by a storm off the coast of Mount Athos. Later, the generals Artaphernes and Datis launched a naval assault on the Aegean islands, causing them to submit, then attempted a landing at Marathon in 490 to take Athens. In 490 BC, Darius the Great, having suppressed the Ionian cities, sent a fleet to punish the Greeks. 100,000 Persians (historians are uncertain about the number; it varies from 18,000 to 100,000) landed in Attica intending to take Athens, but were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by a Greek army of 9,000 Athenian hoplites and 1,000 Plateans led by the Athenian general Miltiades. The burial mound of the Athenian dead can still be seen at Marathon. The Persian fleet continued to Athens but, seeing it garrisoned, decided not to attempt an assault.
Ten years later, in 480 BC, Darius' successor Xerxes I sent a much more powerful force of 300,000 by land, with 1,207 ships in support, across a double pontoon bridge over the Hellespont. This army took Thrace, before descending on Thessaly and Boetia, whilst the Persian navy skirted the coast and resupplied the ground troops. The Greek fleet, meanwhile, dashed to block Cape Artemision. After being delayed by the Spartan King Leonidas I at Thermopylae, Xerxes advanced into Attica, where he captured and burned Athens. But the Athenians had evacuated the city by sea, and under Themistocles they defeated the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis. During peacetime in 483, a vein of silver ore had been discovered in the Laurion (a small mountain range near athens), and the hundreds of talents mined there had paid for the construction of 200 warships to combat Aeginetan piracy. A year later, the Greeks, under the Spartan Pausanius, defeated the Persian army at Plataea.
The Athenian fleet then turned to chasing the Persians from the Aegean Sea, defeating their fleet decisively in the battle of Cape Mycale; then in 478 BC the fleet captured Byzantium. In the course of doing so Athens enrolled all the island states and some mainland ones into an alliance called the Delian League, so named because its treasury was kept on the sacred island of Delos. The Spartans, although they had taken part in the war, withdrew into isolation afterward, allowing Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power.
The Persian Wars ushered in a century of Athenian dominance in Greek affairs. Athens was the unchallenged master of the sea, and also the leading commercial power, although Corinth remained a serious rival. The leading statesman of this time was Pericles, who used the tribute paid by the members of the Delian League to build the Parthenon and other great monuments of classical Athens. By the mid 5th century the League had become an Athenian Empire, as demonstrated by the transfer of the League's treasury from Delos to the Parthenon in 454 BC.
The wealth of Athens attracted talented people from all over Greece, and also created a wealthy leisure class who became patrons of the arts. The Athenian state sponsored learning and the arts, particularly architecture. Athens became the centre of Greek literature, philosophy (see Greek philosophy), and the arts (see Greek theatre). Some of the greatest figures of Western cultural and intellectual history lived in Athens during this period: the dramatists Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles; the philosophers Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates; the historians Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; the poet Simonides; and the sculptor Pheidias. The city became, in Pericles' words, "the school of Hellas".
The other Greek states at first accepted Athenian leadership in the continuing war against the Persians, but after the fall of the conservative politician Cimon in 461 BC, Athens became increasingly open in its imperialist ambitions. After the Greek victory at the Battle of the Eurymedon in 466 BC, the Persians were no longer a threat, and some states, such as Naxos, tried to secede from the League, but were forced to remain members. The new Athenian leaders, Pericles and Ephialtes, let relations between Athens and Sparta deteriorate, and in 458 BC war broke out. After some years of inconclusive war, a 30-year peace was signed between the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League (Sparta and her allies). This coincided with the last battle between the Greeks and the Persians, a sea battle off Salamis in Cyprus, followed by the Peace of Callias (450 BC) between the Greeks and Persians.
The Golden Age is the term used to denote the historical period in Ancient Greece lasting roughly from the end of the Persian Wars in 448 BCE to either the death of Pericles 429 BCE or the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE. Pericles - an Athenian general, politician and orator - distinguished himself above the other shining personalities of the era, men who excelled in politics, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, history and literature. He fostered arts and literature and gave to Athens a splendor which would never return throughout its history. He executed a large number of public works projects and improved the life of the citizens. Hence, this important figure gave his name to the Athenian Golden Age.
During this century, Athens was governed by 10 strategoi (or generals) who were elected each year by the 10 clans of citizens. These strategoi had duties which included planning military expeditions, receiving envoys of other states and directing political affairs. During the time of the ascendancy of Ephialtes as leader of the democratic faction, Pericles was his deputy. When Ephialtes was assassinated by personal enemies, Pericles stepped in and was elected strategos in 445 BCE, a post he held continuously until his death in 429 BCE, always by election of the Athenian Assembly.
Pericles was a great orator; this quality brought him great success in the Assembly, presenting his vision of politics. One of his most popular reforms was to allow thetes (Athenians without wealth) to occupy public office. Another success of his administration was the creation of the misthophoria (μισθοφορία, which literally means paid function), a special salary for the citizens that attended the Assembly. This way, these citizens were able to completely dedicate themselves to public service without facing financial hardship. With this system, Pericles succeeded in keeping the Assembly full of members, and in giving the people experience in public life. As Athens' ruler, he made the city the first and most important polis of the Greek world, acquiring a resplendent culture and democratic institutions.
The sovereign people governed themselves, without intermediaries, deciding the matters of state in the Assembly. The Athenian citizens were free and only owed obedience to their laws and respect to their gods. They achieved equality of speech in the Assembly: the word of a poor person was the same worth as that of a rich person. The censorial classes did not disappear, but their power was more limited; they shared the fiscal and military offices but they did not have the power of distributing privileges.
The principle of equality granted to all citizens had the danger of constituting a fraud, since many of them were incapable of exercising political rights due to their extreme poverty or ignorance. To avoid this, the Athenian democracy applied itself to the task of helping the poorest in this manner:
- Concession of salaries for public functionaries.
- To seek for and supply work to the poor.
- To grant lands to dispossessed villagers.
- Public assistance for invalids, orphans and indigents.
- Other social helps.
These norms should have been carried out in great measure since the testimony has come to us (among others) from the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460 - 400 BCE), who comments: Everyone who is capable of serving the city meets no impediment, neither poverty, nor civic condition...
The magistrates were people who occupied a public post and formed the administration of the Athenian state. They were submitted to a rigorous public control. The magistrates were chosen by lot, using fava beans. Some black and white beans were put in a box and depending on which color the person drew out they obtained the post or not. This was a way of eliminating all personal influence of rich people and possible intrigues and use of favors. There were only two categories of posts which were chosen not by lot, but by election in the Popular Assembly, that of strategos, or general, and that of magistrate of finance. It was generally supposed that significant qualities were needed to exercise each of those two offices. A magistrate's post did not last more than a year, including that of the strategoi and in this sense the continued selection of Pericles year after year was an exception. At the end of every year, a magistrate would have to give an account of his administration and use of public finances.
The most honored posts were the ancient archontes, or archons in English. In previous ages they had been the heads of the Athenian state, but in the Age of Pericles they lost their large influence and power, although they still presided over tribunals.
The strategoi (generals) were the most important office holders in their capacity as army and navy officers and as diplomats. The Assembly elected 10 every year.
There were also more than 40 public administration officers and more than 60 to police the streets, the markets, to check weights and measures and to carry out arrests and executions.
The Assembly (in Greek, ἐκκλησία, that is to say, an assembly by summons), was the first organ of the democracy. In theory it intended to bring together in assembly all the citizens of Athens, but the maximum number which came to congregate is estimated at 6,000 participants. The gathering place was a space situated on the hill called Pnyx, in front of the Acropolis. The sessions sometimes lasted at from dawn to dusk. They gathered forty times a year.
The Assembly decided on the laws and the decrees which were proposed but relying always on the ancient laws which had long been in force. Bills were voted in two stages: first the Assembly itself decided and afterwards the Council or βουλη gave definitive approval.
The Council or Boule (βουλή) consisted of 500 members, 50 from each tribe, functioning as extension of the Assembly. These were chosen by chance, by the system described earlier, from which they were familiarly known as "councillors of the bean"; officially they were known as prytaneis (πρύτανις, meaning "chief" or "teacher").
The council members examined and studied legal projects and, moreover, looked over the magistrates and saw that the daily administrative details were on the right path; similarly, they oversaw the city state's external affairs. They also met at Pnyx hill, in a place expressly prepared for the event. The 50 prytaneis in power were located on grandstands carved into the rock. They had stone platforms which they reached by means of a small staircase of three steps. On the first platform were the secretaries and scribes; the orator would climb up to the second.
The economic resource of the Athenian State was not excessive. All the glory of Athens in the Age of Pericles, its constructions, public works, religious buildings, sculptures, etc. would not have been possible without the treasury of the Delian League.
Other small incomes came from customs fees and fines. In times of war a special tax was levied on rich citizens. These citizens were also charged permanently with other taxes for the good of the city. This was called the system of liturgy. The taxes were used to maintain the triremes which gave Athens great naval power and also to pay and maintain a chorus for big religious festivals.
The Athenians lived modestly and without great luxuries. There were very few great fortunes. The economy was based on maritime commerce. Agriculture was also important, but it did not produce enough to feed the populace, so some food had to be imported. There was also an artisanal industry, whose products were sought after by natives and foreigners alike.
The state oversaw all the major religious festivals. The most important one was the Panathenaia in honor of the goddess Athena, a ritual procession carried out once a year in May and once every four years in July, in which the town presented a new veil (peplos) to the old wooden statue of Athena Poliada. Phidias immortalized this procession in the frieze of the Parthenon, which is currently at the British Museum. In the July Panathenaia (Great Panathenaia), large competitions were organized which included gymnastics and horseback riding, the winners of which received amphoras full of sacred olive oil as a prize. The other important festival was that of the god Dionysus.
The education of boys began in their own home, up until the age of seven when they had to attend school. There, they had several teachers who taught them to read and write, as well as subjects such as mathematics and music. Boys also had to take part in physical education classes where they were prepared for future military service with activities such as wrestling, racing, jumping and gymnastics. At eighteen they served in the army and were instructed on how to bear arms. Physical education was very intense and many of the boys ended up becoming true athletes. In addition to these compulsory lessons, the students had the chance to discuss and learn from the great philosophers, grammarians and orators of the time.
The Athenian woman dedicated herself solely to the care of the home. Family homes contained a space, called the gineco, especially for women, where they would spend the day with their servants and young children. Athenian society was a patriarchy in which men held all the rights and advantages, and had access to education and power.
However, some women, known as hetaeras, received a careful education so that they could have more complex conversations with men. Among these was Aspasia of Miletus, who was the mistress of Pericles and is said to have debated with Socrates himself.
Historians consider the Athenian V and VI century BC as the Golden Age of sculpture and architecture. In this period the ornamental elements and the technique employed did not vary from the previous period. What characterizes this period is the quantity of works and the refinement and perfection of the works. Most were religious in nature, mainly sanctuaries and temples. Some examples from this period are:
- The reconstruction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.
- The reconstruction of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, which was destroyed by an earthquake.
- The reconstruction of the Acropolis of Athens, the marble city for the glory of the gods. The site had suffered from a fire started by the Persians and lay in ruins for more than 30 years. Pericles initiated its reconstruction with white marble brought from the nearby quarry of Pentelicon. The best architects, sculptors and workers were gathered to complete the Acropolis. The construction lasted 20 years. Financing came from the Delian League. When finished it was the grandest and most perfect monument in the history of Greek art.
Phidias is considered the greatest sculptor of this era. He created colossal gold plated marble statues ("chryselephantine statues"), generally face and hands, which were highly celebrated and admired in his own time: Athena, situated in the interior of the Parthenon, whose splendor reached the faithful through the open doors, and Zeus in the Sanctuary of Olympia, considered in its age and in later ages to be one of the marvels of the world. The Athenians were assured that after they had contemplated this statue it was impossible to feel unlucky ever again.
According to Pliny the Elder's Natural History, in order to conserve the marble of these sculptures, oil receptacles were placed in the temples so that the ivory would not crack.
The other great sculptors of this century were Myron and Polycletus.
During this age, the production of ceramic pieces was abundant. Many have survived until the present day, all of which are of high quality, which is a testimony to the skill of the artist who worked meticulously and dedicated the necessary time to each object. They are, furthermore, a testimony that a market existed inside and outside of Greece which was very demanding in terms of the perfection and completion of the work.
It is also known that there were many great painters, but their works are lost, both frescos and free-standing paintings.
The theatre reached its greatest height in the 5th century BCE. Pericles promoted and favored the theatre with a series of practical and economic measures. The wealthiest families were obligated to care for and to sustain the choruses and actors. By this means, Pericles maintained the tradition according to which theater pieces served the moral and intellectual education of the people.
Athens became the great city of Greek theater. Until the Age of Pericles, all theaters had been made of stone, but that period saw the beginning of performances in provisional theaters, made of wood, which existed only for the ten days of those productions. Theater session lasted eight consecutive hours and were a type of competition in which a jury proclaimed a winner. The best dramatists of the era entered their works into these competitions. The decor of these theatres was very simple. Each play would be performed by, at most, three actors, who wore masks to identify them with the personage they portrayed; they were accompanied by a chorus who sang, and by recitadores.
The dramatic writers from this era were:
- Aeschylus (525–456 BC), who wrote on mythological and religious themes, staying true to Olympianism.
- Sophocles, whose work constituted an analysis and often bitter criticism on religious and political problems.
- Euripides, who, moving further past Sophocles, determined to throw out religion and took on humanist ideals.
- Aristophanes, who dominated the comic theatre with social criticism and caricature.
The Golden Age featured some of the most renowned Western philosophers of all time. Chief amongst these was Socrates (whose student Plato was considered synonymous with philosophy by Emerson, who said "Plato is philosophy, and philosophy Plato"). The teachings of Socrates were immortalized by Plato in a series of dialogues.
Other notable philosophers of the Golden Age included Anaxagoras; Democritus (who first proposed the existence of the atom); Empedocles; Hippias; Isocrates; Parmenides; and Protagoras.
In the second half of the fifth century the name of sophist (from the Greek sophi, expert, teacher, man of wisdom) was given to the teachers that gave instruction on diverse branches of science and knowledge in exchange for a fee.
In this age, Athens was the "school of Greece". Pericles and his mistress Aspasia associated with and had not only great Athenians but also foreigners from within Greece and even outside Greece. Among them were the philosopher Anaxagoras, the historian Herodotus and the architect Hippodamus of Miletus, who reconstructed Peiraeus.
Among the most notable were the historians Herodotus (484-425), who described the Greco-Persian Wars; Thucydides (460-395), who wrote the great History of the Peloponnesian War; and Xenophon (427-335), who, although sometimes considered a partial and poorly documented writer, in the opinion of historians left a useful source of information about the first years of the fourth century BC.
Athens was also the capital of eloquence. Since the late fifth century eloquence had been elevated to an art form. There were the logographers (λογογράφος) who wrote courses and created a new literary form characterized by the clarity and purity of the language. It became a lucrative profession. It is known that the logographer Lysias (460-380 B.C.), made a great fortune thanks to his profession. Later, in the IV century, the orators Isocrates and Demosthenes also became famous.
Pericles governed Athens throughout the 5th century BC bringing to the city a splendour and a standard of living never previously experienced. All was well within the internal regiment of government, however discontent within the Delian League was ever increasing. The foreign affairs policies adopted by Athens did not reap the best results; members of the Delian League were increasingly dissatisfied. Athens was the city-state that dominated and subjugated the rest of Greece and these oppressed citizens wanted their independence.
Previously, in 550 BC, a similar league between the cities of the Peloponnessus—directed and dominated by Sparta—had been founded. Taking advantage of the general dissent of the Greek city-states, this Peloponnesian League began to confront Athens. The year 431 BC let loose a series of bloody wars the like of which Greece had never seen before. The trigger of the conflict was over the island of Corfu which was in dispute with Sparta's ally Corinth, and Athens who intervened on behalf of the island by offering its support. This is how the Peloponnesian War began—a war that would last another 27 years.
The Greek city-states entered the conflict even though the weight of the conflict fell on the two rival cities—Athens and Sparta. Athens displayed her military superiority at sea whereas Sparta proved to be invincible on land. The Spartans eventually invaded Attica, the territory surrounding Athens. Pericles had to bring the people inside the city walls for their protection. The long siege led to terribly unsanitary conditions that created an epidemic, believed by many to have been Typhoid fever, that caused the death of thousands of people including Pericles himself (429 BC).
Pericles, being the great statesman that he was, proved to be irreplaceable. Nicias and Cleon provided forgettable administrations and in their vacuum of leadership, the influence of the politician and general Alcibiades (nephew of Pericles) grew. After a series of lamentable decisions capped by the disastrous Sicilian expedition, Alcibiades eventually turned sides to Sparta and betrayed his own city. After losing confidence with the Spartans, he returned to Athens and was unexpectedly reappointed as general. However he was subsequently dismissed after more failures and finally sought exile in Phrygia where eventually he was assassinated.
The classical period of Athens came to its end. The devastating war with Sparta caused such irreparable damage that the city of Athens finally lost its independence in 338 BC, when Philip II of Macedonia conquered the rest of Greece.
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