Persian Wars many Greeks encountered at close quarters the “barbarians” (as the Greeks called all
people whose native language was not Greek) and found that there were significant religious and cultural
differences between themselves and their attackers, who included not only Persians but also Phoenicians,
Egyptians, Ethiopians, and other non-Greek subjects of the Persian king. Since the Greeks had defeated
these “barbarians” in battle on both land and sea, it was almost inevitable that those differences would
prompt in them a certain feeling of superiority. In addition, through poetry and myth, the Greeks began to
think of the legendary Trojan War in the light of their recent experience, imagining the defeated Trojans as
effete barbarians who were earlier overcome by the superior civilization of the Greeks. This feeling of
superiority to non-Greeks was, naturally, strongest on the part of the Greeks in those cities that had
actually contributed to the resistance to the Persians, principally the cities of Athens and Sparta. It was
these two cities that were to dominate the life of Greece for the next hundred years or more, and their
development will serve as the focus for the present chapter.
Timeline 5 The early fifth century BC.
A word needs to be said first about another polis, the city of Miletus, which occupied a prominent place
in the previous chapter. Miletus had been utterly destroyed in 494 BC as punishment for its role in the
Ionian Revolt. After the wars ended, with freedom from Persian domination restored to the Greek cities of
Asia Minor, it was possible for the Milesians to rebuild their home and to do so following a rational and
uniform plan. The new city of Miletus was laid out according to a grid in which all the streets were either
parallel or at right angles to one another (figure 39). This plan is generally associated with the figure of