Download entry 11 the golden age of greece

470-395 BCE THIS REALLY A GOLDEN AGE?
War is a strange thing. It brings sorrow to some and makes others rich and powerful. So it was with
Athens. The Persian wars were over. Athens had beaten a giant, the first world superpower, and citizens
felt confident that they could do anything. They had survived the Persian’s attacks and rebuilt their
homes in Athens.
As Athens grew in power, Athens began to demand the protection tax of the Delian League to be paid
in coin or in the ―oil‖ of the ancient world, wheat. When the land and soil-rich island of Euboea (directly
east of Athens in the Aegean) refused, Athens sent hoplites to enforce the tax. Euboea grew some of the
best wheat—lots of it. The captured island was divided between all the Athenians. Any Euboeans who
survived were forced to be slaves or tenants, some on the very land that had once they owned. Athenians
either personally supervised their lands on this island or hired ―Barbarians‖ to oversee the lands. Soon,
Athenians wanted more and more.
The leader of Athens soon after the end of the Persian Wars was a nobleman named Cimon. Cimon
promised the Athenians safety if they trusted him to be their leader. Cimon was pro-Spartan. He had
seen the sacrifice that the Spartans made and believed that Athens should be more like the Spartans,
disciplined and ruthless. After all, what if the Persians came back? Themistocles, the leader during the
Persian War and who had saved the Athenians with his trireme and battle plans, could see citizen rights
slipping away. No longer were free speech and new ideas welcome in Athens. Themistocles’s objections to
the Draconian thinking- ruthlessness, one mind, no new ideas and how these things would kill democracyfell on deaf ears. Cimon reasoned that safety should be first; and he was only enforcing non-democratic
ideas to make Athens safe, and that Themistocles was unpatriotic expressing his views. Ironically,
Themistocles (hero of the Persian War) with encouragement from Cimon and the vote of the citizen was
ostracized. Themistocles, Cimon pointed out, unpatriotic view would weaken Athens. So Themistocles and
his family were sent far from the gates of Athens, never to return, never to recover from the hurt.
Athenian citizens soon tired of Cimon but Cimon did not seem to care or notice. He did everything to
help his Spartan allies take over Athens. Athenians, however, had finally realized the truth and were
determined to keep their freedom and democracy. The Spartans came to help
Cimon. 1st Peloponnesian War had begun. Athenian and Spartan hoplites
crossed swords and spears on the battlefield many times. In other words, this
was a battle over who would have power in Athens, democracy or Sparta? In
447 BCE, a treaty was signed between Sparta and Athens that each would
mind their own business and return to their city-state.
Cimon underestimated the power of the common people (he thought that
they did not pay attention to anything rulers did) and he was ostracized soon
after, sent away forever.
Over the next ten years, an aristocrat saw how great Athens could become
and how he, as Athenian leader, could make her greater still. This aristocrat
felt he could help the Athenians ―have it all‖, The aristocrat was Pericles (461429 BCE--a general at the Battle of Marathon and Salamis), led several
important military expeditions during the wars to maintain Athens might and right, helped reinforce
Athens' control over the naval alliance called the Delian League, approved a final peace with Persia, and
introduced payment of jurors for jury service. This last act marked a major step forward for the poor,
since they too could now afford to take time off their normal work to become involved in politics. He had
learned that all classes of people having power made Athens and him stronger.
Pericles made sure Athens became the clear leader of the Delian League. The purpose of the league
was to take revenge on the Persians for the sufferings they had caused and liberate all Asian centers of
Greece in the fifth century BCE and other Greek cities still under Persian control. It was also to protect
existing states from further attack. Since Athens had the ultimate war weapon, the triremes, it only
made sense, he reasoned. Pericles and Athens was making many of the city-states an offer that no one
could refuse. The polis could pay up to be protected or be annihilated. Athens, the democracy, must have
the respect and obedience of others to remain strong. They became in an indirect way an empire (a
country that forces other countries or kingdoms to be ruled by them).
Pericles, now the total leader of Athens, pushed through a law that made sure that aristocrats had
limited power. This helped him with support from middle and lower classes.
Pericles, as a leader, was known for his incorruptibility and refusal to accept gifts from other
aristocrats. This was usually part of the job...getting gifts from aristocrats when the rich wanted
something done. Pericles, however, felt his duty was to serve and protect all the people rich or poor. In
other words, Pericles thought of Athens first. He even had a wall built between the sea and Athens to
insure that supplies would be available in time of war. He
also moved the Delian League from the island of Delos to
Athens.
Pericles took some of the protection tax monies from
the Delian League to rebuild Athens. He justified it to
citizens and outsiders by saying that architecture and art
forms not only praised the gods, but showed the world
the power of a democracy. The Parthenon, the most
beautiful temple of ancient Greek, was built on the
Acropolis during his rule. No other building in the world
at this time was like this. During the time of Pericles, art,
architecture, philosophy, science, theatre and other arts flourished. This was known as The Golden Age
of Athens. The Spartans especially hated Athens even more for this.
Now Pericles did something beyond acceptable practice of the day. He forced other city-states to
accept Athenian coinage. He also sent Athenian hoplites to other city-states to support those rebelling
against aristocrats. In other words, the Delian League, once an alliance now became an empire ruled by
Athens. Sparta wanted no part of this and withdrew their alliance. They started their own defense league
called the Peloponnesian League, Joined by other city-states tired of the bully Athens , each group began
to fight again over who would have power and control trade in the area. So the battles began again, not
against an outside invader but Greek against Greek. The resulting war was called the Second
Peloponnesian War, which last from 431-404 BCE.
Sparta had never before had a navy until this time period. Spartans feared Athens and their ideas
might seep into Spartan society and weaken it. So Sparta made a
deal with the Persians that the Spartans would return the Ionian
colonies if Persia supplied them with ships. The Persians saw their
chance for revenge. Another twist to this story was that even
though Persians were not directly involved with the fight, they by
supplying training and ships could achieve the revenge they wanted.
The Athenians saw the threat. The Second Peloponnesian War was
on. The whole of Greece was involved in war. Athens and her allies
(the Delian League) fought on one side of the war and Sparta and
her allies (the Peloponnesian League) on the other. During the first part of the war (431-421 B.C.), Sparta
continually ravaged the countryside of Attica (farmland around Athens), but it had little effect on city of
Athens. No decisive victory on either side was achieved during those ten years. Pericles, to protect the
Athenians, began to pack them from the countryside into the city of Athens. Food, water and sanitation
were scarce. Then Athena herself seemed to turn away from her beloved city. Plague hit Athens (430
BCE) during the wars with Sparta and killed a third of Athens' population. No other place was the plague
so virulent. Athenians had packed into the walls of Athens for protection. The crowded filthy city was like
fuel for a fire and when the plague started, it tore through the city like an explosion. More than one third
of the population died and funeral fires burned day and night. Even Pericles, the beloved leader of the
Athens, fell to the plague. After his death, some Athenians wanted to negotiate peace, but others
wanted to win.
A truce was concluded between the two powers in 421 B.C., but war broke out again in 415 B.C. and
lasted until 404 B.C. It began when both Athens and Sparta and their allies became involved in a war
between some of the Greek city-states in Sicily. So year after year, the battles and piles of dead and
dying continued. Several times, Sparta wanted to negotiate for peace. But the Athenians liked to win, and
there could be no compromise as far as they were concerned. Unless Athenians could win, there was no
solution. Soon Athenian allies began to change sides and became allies of the Spartans. They were tired of
Athens bullying them to fight and sacrifice. Athens had to win, no matter the cost. They after all were
loved by the gods.
The story is told that one day, the men of Athens were in the Agora when a man ragged and tattered
stumbled into their midst. He began to tell a wild story about how the Spartans and their allies had sunk
almost every ship in the fleet. The ship holding the tattered storytelling sailor had sunk. Bouncing up and
down in the crimson waves, he saw that one of the ships that remained held several Athenian generals.
The ship saw Athenian sailors struggling in the water, but turned and
sailed away with several of the Spartan ships in pursuit. The ship
made it to safety, and when these generals returned, they were tried
and hanged for abandoning their men. The Athenians also needed
someone to blame for this failure. The waters of the Aegean were
now crimson with Athenian blood. The sailor was the only survivor
(other than the generals) of the great Athenian navy. The unbeatable
Athenian navy NO LONGER EXISTED.
The Athenian still refused to believe that they were beaten. There
was to be no compromise or surrender. And with what they had left,
they wanted to continue fighting. Before they could gather in a
fighting unit, the Spartans surrounded the city and laid siege to it. Finally, with starvation and disease
raging through the city in 404 BCE, Athens surrendered.
These, however, were strange times. Sparta too had suffered from wars that had raged for more than
half of the fifth century. Warfare and plague had also robbed Sparta of many of their male population.
Women could not have enough male children
to replace the fallen fighting force. The
Spartan oligarchy fell early in 403 and
Athens returned to a democracy. but
something strange had happened to the
Athenians. The freedom loving people had
forgotten what it was like to be free. They
were afraid of everything including free
speech. In that atmosphere, the city-state
took their top citizen, Socrates, and
convicted him of poisoning the minds of the
young, and dishonoring (not respecting) the
gods. He was executed in 399 by drinking
poison.
In the ―Golden Age‖, the great citystates of ancient Greece, Athens, had worn
themselves out. The victors and the
vanquished suffered. Not only had population gone down, but warfare had ruined much of the usable land.
There were few jobs and young Greek men with little or no hope became hired soldiers for the Persians
(mercenaries).
The war had done something unexpected. Tired of sacrifice and war, people wanted to live the ―good
life‖. They no longer cared about duty, or the common good. They only wanted riches. Soon power was
back solely in the hands of the rich and powerful.
Many Athenians stopped believing in democracy, and began believing that ―might makes right‖. Freedom
of speech was no longer welcome, and Athenians explained their losses as the gods displeasure. For a time,
Sparta tried to rule all the city-states. The Spartans had never liked new ideas and were out of touch
with their world. In 371, the Spartans lost everything to the polis of Thebes. The Thebans were
terrible rulers and the city –states and warlords began to fight constantly. Like a petulant child, the citystates rebelled and Thebes threw up its hands and gave up. In the end, the ruler of the Greek city-states
was ANARCHY (no real rules or government- just who happened to be strongest). Hang around to find out
what happens next....