- Greece: The History Of The Classical Period
(By Simon Hornblower)Outline of Events
The Athenians founded a naval empire in 478, thus replacing the Spartans as leaders of Greece. Their power expanded in the 470s and 460s,
as they took the offensive against the Persians, the recent invaders of Greece. The climax of this offensive was reached in the early 460s when
the Athenian commander Cimon won a battle in Pamphylia in southern Asia Minor, the battle of the Eurymedon. The suppression of a revolt
from Athens by the northern Aegean island of Thasos in the mid 460s was another landmark: it led to a deterioration in relations with Sparta
and her league, the Peloponnesian League. From c.460 to 446 a war, the so-called First Peloponnesian War, was fought between Athens and
the Peloponnesian League; in the early phases of this war Corinth, not Sparta, was more obviously to the front in the fighting, though the
Spartans did invade Attica in the last year of the war. Corinth's uncharacteristic hostility towards Athens was the result of the adhesion to
Athens of Megara, the small state which separated Athens from Corinth geographically, but hatred of which had united Athens and Corinth
politically up to now. In the 450s Athens, despite the warfare on her hands in Greece, fought in support of anti-Persian rebels in Egypt (a
revolt which failed disastrously and cost many Athenian lives) and opened diplomacy with communities in Sicily.
Formal hostilities with Persia ended in about 449 with the Peace of Callias. The settlement in 446 of the First Peloponnesian War recognized
the existence of the Athenian Naval Empire and was thus a victory for Athens, although she had to abandon the mainland Greek territories
which she had acquired in fighting, notably Boeotia. Athens was now free to expand to the north, where in 437 she fulfilled an old dream by
establishing a settlement at the timber-rich site of Amphipolis; to the east, where she imposed her authority more firmly on Samos, which had
revolted unsuccessfully in 440/39; and to the west, where she made a series of alliances, perhaps hoping for uninterrupted supplies of the
timber which she needed for her navy. This western and northern expansion, combined with renewed aggression against Megara, reawakened
the suspicions of Corinth in the 430s, for Corinth had traditional ties with her colonies in Northern Greece and in Sicily. The result was the
Second or Great Peloponnesian War of 431-404, which Athens lost.
The Erechtheum On The Acropolis At Athens. An unusual, asymmetrical building of the Ionic order, which housed the cults which were once
served in the Archaic Temple of Athena. This had been burned by the Persians in 480 B.C.: its foundations lie in the foreground and were
perhaps left exposed as a memorial to the Persian attack. The Caryatid porch, with statues of girls supporting the roof, overlaps these
foundations; the porch itself is accessible only from within the building. The Erechtheum was built just after the Parthenon, and completed in
the last years of the Peloponnesian War. It is the most sophisticated application of the Ionic order to any Classical building and elements of it