Classical Athens

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, lead 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 Persians had to pass through a narrow strait to get to Athens. A call had been sent via a runner to Sparta for help. The Spartans were in the middle of a religious festival, and so could only send three hundred men. The 300 Spartans and their allies blocked the narrow passageway from the 200,000 men of Xerxes (the Battle of Thermopylae). They held them off for a number of days, but eventually all but one Spartan was killed. 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, lead by Themistocles had defeated the still vastly larger 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 period from the end of the Persian Wars to the Macedonian conquest marked the zenith of Athens as a center of literature, philosophy and the arts . In this society, the political satire of the Comic poets at the theaters, had a remarkable influence on public opinion. Some of the most important 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 poetSimonides and the sculptor Phidias. The leading statesman of this period 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. The city became, in Pericles's words, "the school of Hellas".

Resentment by other cities at the hegemony of Athens led to the Peloponnesian War in 431, which pitted Athens and her increasingly rebellious sea empire against a coalition of land-based states led by Sparta. The conflict marked the end of Athenian command of the sea. The war between the two city-state Sparta had defeated Athens.

The democracy was briefly overthrown by a coup in 411 due to its poor handling of the war, but quickly restored. The war ended with the complete defeat of Athens in 404. Since the defeat was largely blamed on democratic politicians such as Cleon and Cleophon, there was a brief reaction against democracy, aided by the Spartan army (the rule of the Thirty Tyrants). In 403, democracy was restored by Thrasybulus and an amnesty declared.

Sparta's former allies soon turned against her due to her imperialist policy and soon Athens's former enemies Thebes and Corinth had become her allies. Argos, Thebes, Corinth, allied with Athens, fought against Sparta in the indecisive Corinthian War (395 BC - 387 BC). Opposition to Sparta enabled Athens to establish a Second Athenian League. Finally Thebes defeated Sparta in 371 in the Battle of Leuctra. Then the Greek cities (including Athens and Sparta) turned against Thebes whose dominance was stopped at the Battle of Mantinea (362 BC) with the death of its military genius leader Epaminondas.

By mid century, however, the northern Greek kingdom of Macedon was becoming dominant in Athenian affairs, despite the warnings of the last great statesman of independent Athens, Demosthenes. In 338 BC the armies of Philip II defeated the other Greek cities at the Battle of Chaeronea, effectively ending Athenian independence. Further, the conquests of his son, Alexander the Great, widened Greek horizons and made the traditional Greek city state obsolete. Athens remained a wealthy city with a brilliant cultural life, but ceased to be an independent power. In the 2nd century, after 200 years of Macedonian supremacy, Greece was absorbed into the Roman Republic.

See also:

Athens early history

Athens origins and settings

Athens history