Western Civilization

The Spartans and their allies attacked Athens, hoping

that the Athenians would send out their army to fight

beyond the walls. But Pericles was convinced that Ath-

ens was secure behind its walls and retaliated by send-

ing out naval excursions to ravage the seacoast of the

Peloponnesus.

In the second year of the war, however, plague dev-

astated the crowded city of Athens and wiped out pos-

sibly one-third of the population. Pericles himself died

the following year (429B.C.E.), a severe loss to Athens.

Despite the ravages of the plague, the Athenians fought

on in a struggle that dragged on for twenty-seven

years. A crushing blow came in 405B.C.E. when the

Athenian fleet was destroyed at Aegospotami (ee-guh-

SPAH-tuh-my) on the Hellespont. Athens was besieged

and surrendered in 404B.C.E. Its walls were torn down,

the navy was disbanded, and the Athenian empire was

destroyed. The great war was finally over.

The Decline of the Greek States

(404–338B.C.E.)

The Peloponnesian War weakened the major Greek

states and led to new alliances among thepoleis. After

the defeat of Athens in 404B.C.E., the Spartans estab-

lished control over Greece. Oligarchies of local leaders

in cooperation with Spartan garrisons were imposed on

states “liberated” from Athenian imperialism. But the

harsh policies of the oligarchs soon led to a reaction. In

Athens, a rebellion enabled the Athenians to reestab-

lish their democracy in 403B.C.E. and even to rebuild

their navy and again become an important force in the

Greek world.

To maintain its newly organized leadership in Greek

affairs, Sparta encouraged a Greek crusade against the

Persians as a common enemy. But the Persians had

learned the lessons of Greek politics and offered finan-

cial support to Athens and other Greek states to

oppose Spartan power within Greece itself, thus begin-

ning a new war that finally ended in 386B.C.E.

The city-state of Thebes, in Boeotia, north of

Athens, now began to exert its influence. Under their

leader Epaminondas (eh-PAM-uh-NAHN-duss), the The-

bans dramatically defeated the Spartan army at the

Battle of Leuctra in 371B.C.E. Spartan power declined,

but Theban ascendancy was short-lived. After the death

of Epaminondas in the Battle of Mantinea in 362B.C.E.,

the Thebans could no longer dominate Greek politics.

Yet the Greek states continued their petty wars, seem-

ingly oblivious to the growing danger to the north,

where King Philip II of Macedonia was developing a

unified state that would finally end the destructive

fratricide of the Greek states by imposing Macedonian

authority.

The Culture and Society of

Classical Greece

Q FOCUSQUESTION: Upon what ideals was classical

Greek art based, and how were these ideals

expressed? What questions did the Greek

philosophers pose, and what answers did they

suggest?

Classical Greece saw a period of remarkable intellectual

and cultural growth throughout the Greek world. His-

torians agree, however, that Periclean Athens was the

most important center of classical Greek culture.

The Writing of History

History as we know it, the systematic analysis of past

events, was a Greek creation. Herodotus (huh-ROD-uh-

tuss) (ca. 484–ca. 425B.C.E.) was the author ofThe

Persian Wars, a work commonly regarded as the first

real history in Western civilization. The Greek word

historia(from which we derive our wordhistory) means

“research” or “investigation,” and it is in the opening

line of Herodotus’s work that we find the first recorded

use of the word:

These are the researches [historia] of Herodotus of Hali-

carnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby pre-

serving from decay the remembrance of what men have

done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions

of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due

meed [reward] of glory; and withal to put on record what

were their grounds of feud.^8

The central theme of Herodotus’s work is the con-

flict between the Greeks and the Persians, which he

viewed as a struggle between freedom and despotism.

Herodotus traveled extensively and questioned many

people to obtain his information. Although he was a

master storyteller and sometimes included considerable

fanciful material, Herodotus was also capable of exhib-

iting a critical attitude toward the materials he used.

Thucydides (ca. 460–ca. 400B.C.E.) was a far better

historian, indeed, the greatest of the ancient world.

Thucydides was an Athenian and a participant in the

Peloponnesian War. He had been elected a general,

but a defeat in battle led the Athenian assembly to

62 Chapter 3 The Civilization of the Greeks

Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

`ˆÌi`Ê܈̅Ê̅iÊ`i“œÊÛiÀȜ˜ÊœvÊ

˜vˆÝÊ*ÀœÊ*Ê

`ˆÌœÀÊ

/œÊÀi“œÛiÊ̅ˆÃʘœÌˆVi]ÊۈÈÌ\Ê