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The Golden Age
•The end of the Persian Wars marked the dawn of the greatest
age in ancient history
•The single century from approximately 480 BCE to 380 BCE
saw a phenomenon of achievements in the ancient Greek states
•Many of these developments stemmed from Athens
•This golden age – often refferred to as Classical Greece –
developed partly because of contacts with the Egyptians and
Persians that inspired a blossoming in the arts and sciences
•This was the time of great thinkers, poets, artists
•Pericles lead Athens after Persian Wars
•He was the strongest leader from 460BCE until his death 31
years later
•This time was called the Age of Pericles
•He was elected one of the ten generals for 15 consecutive years
and so he had more influence than the other strategos
•Powerful public speaker and usually persuaded the Assembly to
vote the way he wanted
•Three goals: strengthen democracy, expand empire, beautify
Athens
•Pericles supported democratic reforms
•He wanted to change balance of power between rich and poor
•In 430 BCE, Pericles gave speech honoring soldiers killed in
war
• -stated his view of democracy
• -spoke out for equality in the law
• Praised public service and individual ability over class
•Introduced pay for serving on the Council of 500, on juries and
in the various civic offices, allowing even the poorest citizen to
take time away from his work
•Paid civil service was a radical departure from earlier system of
government
•Pericles was a major architect of the Athenian empire
•In 454 BCE, he moved treasury of the Delian League from
Delos to Athens to increase Athenian naval development and
foreign trade
•He invited skilled foreigners to settle in Athens, adding to the
wealth of the city
•In 480 BCE, Athens was in ruins from the Persian Wars
•Pericles rebuilt, beautified city with funds from Delian League
• Other city-states were angry he did not ask permission to use funds
•Pericles spent money on sculptures, buildings, expensive
materials
• Materials included gold, ivory, and marble
•Athens rebuilt Acropolis – “high city” that included Parthenon
• Parthenon housed statue of goddess Athena, city’s protector
• Parthenon architecture had graceful proportions, harmony, order
•Other Acropolis temple dedicated to Athena Nike, goddess of
victory
•Acropolis’ Erechtheum is sacred site with beautiful
architecture
• Legendary site where Athena beat Poseidon to be city’s patron
•To protect themselves, Greek city-states formed Delian League
• Mutual protection group had center, treasury on island of Delos
• Pericles used League money to build navvy of at least 300 warships
•Athens had a superior navy, control of Delian League
• Moved League treasury to Athens in 454 BCE
• This move strengthened Athens
•Other city-states eventually became part of Athenian empire
•Formed in 478 BCE to provide protection against any further attacks from the Persians
•The treasury and meetings were held at the great sanctuary of Apollo on the island of
Delos, hence the name Delian League
•Included 150 city-states at its peak
•Each state signed a defence treaty with Athens
•Members had to contribute men plus either ships or money to a common defence fund
•Most city-states chose to contribute money, and Athens used the capital to build ships
•Athens provided all the officials and commanders of the League and swore not to
interfere in the internal affairs of its allies
•Originally it was a voluntary association but soon became a forced union
•Some states that did not want to join were compelled to enter the alliance while others
that wanted to drop out when the Persian threat receded were forced to remain and pay
their share
•According to the rules of the league, a member could not withdraw without the consent
of all
•When Naxos and Thasos tried to break away, they were crushed by Athens and forced
to pay a heavy tribute
•In 454 BCE, Pericles moved the League’s treasury from the island of Delos back to
Athens
•This was taken as final proof that the League had now become an empire controlled by
Athens
•The other great city-state – and the rival of Athens – was Sparta
•Sparta was the principal polis in the Peloponnese (the southern
part of mainland Greece)
•In the 6th century BCE, Sparta made alliances with the peoples
of the Peloponnese
•This was known as the Peloponnesian League
•Sparta’s allies remained independent, but they had to give
Sparta military assistance when required
•During a Helot revolt in 462 BCE, Sparta asked Athens for help
•Athenians sent soldiers to help Sparta, but when they arrived,
Sparta refused their help and sent the Athenians home
•This insulted the Athenians
•Tensions between the two rival city-states increased when
Athens tried to expand its empire in central Greece, threatening
Sparta’s power base
•Athens also blocked some cities from trading at Atheniancontrolled ports
•States within the Delian League that opposed this oppression,
and that resented Athenian interference in their affairs, sought
an alternative
•To ease tensions, Sparta and Athens signed a 30-year peace
treaty in 445 BCE
•Sparta was a land power with a conservative oligarchic
government, backward in terms of trade, wealth and recent
advances in Greek culture such as philosophy and literature. It
sought leadership among Greek city states simply in order to
protect itself and its narrow interests, rather than out of a desire
for wealth, power or expansion.
•Athens was a sea power governed by a democracy, Athens was
at the forefront of advances in culture. It was a progressive,
wealthy, trading nation. Athens maintained and tried to
expand its empire for the sake of power and income it provided.
•Corinth was a rich trading city like Athens, but belonged to
Peloponnesian League
•Athens kept Corinth’s merchants away from the profitable
trade of the Aegean area and provoked other states by excluding
them from ports of Athenian empire
•When Athens began to interfere with Corinth’s colonies, it was
accused of breaking its peace treaty with Sparta and provoked
the so-called Peloponnesian War
•This was the longest, most bitter and costly war the Greeks ever
fought
•Almost every city-state aligned itself with one side or the other
•At the outset, Athens seemed the strongest of the combatants
and best prepared for war
•Pericles knew that Athens could be invaded yearly by the more
powerful land army of the Spartans
•He devised a strategy to avoid fighting the Spartans on land
•all his people would remain inside the long walls that
surrounded the city
•He planned that the Athenian navy would maintain the food
supply through a protected port
•The Athenian fleet was strong and could raid the coast of the
Peloponnese at will
•During the first half of the following century, various Greek
city-states struggled for power
•First Sparta prevailed as the chief polis in Greece
•Then, for a time, Thebes was the strongest centre
•But he most serious threat to the city-states was on the
northern frontier of Macedonia
•Pericles could not have foreseen that a terrible plague would
strike the city
•Too many people lived in confined quarters, often in badly
ventilated huts and hygiene deteriorated
•A terrible plague struck the city in 430 BCE (the second year of
the Peloponnesian War), killing 1/3 of the population, including
Pericles himself
•Athens had been dealt a severe blow
•The war lasted 27 years
•First one side gained a strategic victory, then the other
•In 421 BCE, the two city-states agreed to a truce, but it was
short lived
•Athens at one point foolishly decided to try to conquer
Syracuse, the most powerful city on the distant island of Sicily
•This 2-year campaign required huge quantities of ships,
manpower and money to undertake
•It was a disaster
•The war lasted another 10 years, but Athens could not recover
•By 408, the Persians had begun supporting the Spartans,
providing ships to fight the Athenians
•When a Spartan and Persian fleet defeated the Athenian fleet
at Aegospotami in 405 BCE, the power of Athens crumbled
•Sparta’s allies wanted to destroy Athens and sell its citizens into
slavery, because Athens had attacked and captured the island of
Melos at one point during the war and put do death all men of
military age and sold women and children into slavery
•Sparta blocked the move, likely because of Athens service to
the Greek states during the Persian Wars
•Athens was forced to surrender its empire and all of its fleet,
except 12 ships
•Athens was also required to tear down the city’s long walls
•Athens also had to acknowledge Spartan leadership in matters
of peace and war
•Athens was never again a great power