greece-10-understand-survival.pdf

HISTORY

WAR & CONQUEST

431–21 BC

The military might of

Sparta runs afoul of the

commercial and artistic

clout of Athens over an

alliance with Corcyra.

The spat becomes a full-

blown war of attrition,

with Athens barricaded

and the Peloponnese

embargoed.

431–386 BC

Crete also sees internal

strife: Knossos against

Lyttos, Phaestos

against Gortyna,

Kydonia against

Apollonia and Itanos

against Ierapitna. An

earthquake wreaks

havoc in 386.

413–404 BC

A second war between

Sparta and Athens

breaks out over

the distant colony

of Sicily, ending an

eight-year truce. The

Spartans break the

Athenian siege and

Sparta assumes total

dominance.

When Darius died in 485 BC, his son Xerxes resumed the quest to con-

quer Greece. In 480 BC Xerxes gathered men from every nation of his em-

pire and launched a massive, coordinated invasion by land and sea. Some

30 city-states met in Corinth to devise a defence (others, including Delphi,

sided with the Persians). This joint alliance, the Hellenic League, agreed

on a combined army and navy under Spartan command, with the strategy

provided by the brilliant Athenian leader, Themistocles. The Spartan king

Leonidas led the army to the pass at Thermopylae, near present-day Lamia,

the main passage into central Greece from the north. This bottleneck was

easy to defend and, although the Greeks were greatly outnumbered, they

held the pass – until a traitor showed the Persians another way over the

mountains, from where they turned to attack the Greeks. The Greeks re-

treated, but Leonidas, along with 300 of his elite Spartan troops, fought to

the death in a heroic last stand (see also The Spartans, p 715 ).

The Spartans and their Peloponnesian allies fell back on their second

line of defence, an earthen wall across the Isthmus of Corinth, while the

Persians advanced upon Athens. Themistocles ordered his people to fl ee

the city, the women and children to seek refuge at Salamis (today’s Sala-

mina) and the men to sea with the Athenian naval fl eet, while the Persians

razed Athens to the ground. The Persian naval campaign, however, was

not successful. By skilful manoeuvring, the Greek warships trapped the

larger Persian ships in the narrow waters off Salamis, where the smaller,

more agile Greek vessels carried the advantage. Xerxes returned to Persia

in disgust, leaving his general Mardonius to subdue Greece. The result was

quite the reverse: a year later the Greeks, under the command of the Spar-

tan general Pausanias, obliterated the Persian army at the Battle of Plataea.

The Peloponnesian Wars

The Peloponnesian League was essentially a military coalition governed

by the iron hand of Sparta, who maintained political dominance over the

Peloponnesian region. Athens’ growing imperialism threatened Spartan

hegemony; the ensuing power struggle was to last almost 30 years.

First Peloponnesian War

One of the major triggers of the fi rst Peloponnesian War (431–421 BC)

was the Corcyra incident, in which Athens supported Corcyra (present-

day Corfu) in a row with Corinth, its mother city. Corinth called on Spar-

ta to help and the Spartans, whose power depended to a large extent on

Corinth’s wealth and allegiance, duly rallied to the cause.

Athens knew it couldn’t defeat the Spartans on land, so it abandoned

Attica and withdrew behind its mighty walls, opting to rely on its navy to

put pressure on Sparta by blockading the Peloponnese. Athens suff ered

badly during the siege; plague broke out in the overcrowded city, killing a

The Trial of

Socrates by IF

Stone frames in

a contemporary

investigative light

Plato’s version of

events surround-

ing the philoso-

pher Socrates’ life

and death.

In The

Peloponnesian

War, Thucydides

sets out a histori-

cal narrative of

the quarrels and

warfare between

Athens and

Sparta.

ANDERS BLOMQVIST / LONELY PLANET IMAGES ©

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