From the Persian War to the Peloponnesian War

In 510 BC a man named Cleisthenes (KLICE-then-eez), who was an aristocrat (a rich, powerful man) in Athens , invented a new type of government, the democracy. Cleisthenes, like other aristocrats, wanted to get more power. But tyrants had gotten unpopular in Athens . Cleisthenes decided to give even more power to poor people.  He organized a new way of making political decisions. Every Athenian man would have one vote, and they would all meet and vote on what to do. The big meeting was called the Assembly.

But all the men couldn't meet every day; they had to work. So there was also a smaller council of 500 men, who were chosen by a lottery, and changed every year. It may seem as though Cleisthenes and the other aristocrats would be out of power, right? Actually, he arranged the voting so that his family, the Alcmaeonids (alk-MEE-oh-nids), would have more votes than anyone else.

In 490 BC the Persians attacked Athens . Everybody was very frightened, because the Persians were great fighters. Some people thought Athens should go back to the old system of government, the oligarchy (rule by a few powerful people or families); in case democracy didn't work well enough. They thought it would take too long to make decisions in a democracy. But they didn't go back.

All the men in Athens marched out to meet the Persians at Marathon. They thought they would lose. But the Athenians fought in the new way, with the wall of shields, and the Persians were still running and yelling. So the Athenians won!

In 480 BC the Persians, with their king Xerxes (ZERK-sees) attacked again. This time most of the cities in Greece banded together and formed a league to fight the Persians, known as the Delian League. The Greeks lost their first battle, at Thermopylae (therm-AH-pill-aye), but they won after that, at Salamis and again at Plataea (plah-TAY-ah). Again the Persians went home defeated.

The Athenians, led by Themistocles, convinced the other Greek cities that they needed to keep the strong Greek navy together in case the Persians came back again. At first everyone thought this was a good idea, except the Spartans, who refused. Then the Athenians said to the other cities, "Don't bother sending ships and men for the navy anymore; that is too hard. Just send money to Athens , and we will build ships and defend you against the Persians.” So a lot of cities did that. But the Persians did not come back. After a while, some of the cities said, "We don't want to send any more money to Athens . We don't think the Persians are going to come back anymore.” But the Athenians used their big navy to MAKE the other cities keep sending money. When Miletus (my-LEE-tuss), a prominent Ionian city in Asia Minor , refused to pay more money to Athens , the Athenians took their city and wrecked it.

The Athenians, now led by Pericles, also spent some of the money on their own city. No Athenians had to pay taxes anymore. They used the money from the other cities to build great temples like the Parthenon.

The other cities in Greece were angry. They asked the Spartans to help stop the Athenians. Some cities took sides with Athens , others with Sparta . There was a big war, from 431 BC to 404 BC (almost thirty years!). This is called the Peloponnesian War, named after the Peloponnesus , a peninsula that makes up the southern part of Greece and that includes the cities of Athens and Sparta.

Peloponnesian War

The Athenian historian Thucydides, who lived through the Peloponnesian War and wrote the history of it, began by asking, why did the war start? He answered that basically the war started because Athens was too greedy, and tried to take over all of Greece . So the Spartans decided to stop the Athenians, and help all the cities of Greece become free and independent. The Spartans formed an alliance with Corinth and some other, smaller Greek cities, and brought an army to march to the walls of Athens in 431 BC.

In the first years of the war, it must have seemed pretty hopeless. The Athenians had a lot of money, and a lot of power, and they were the only Greek city that had a good navy. Even though the Spartans could attack the countryside around Athens , the Athenians were safe inside their walls, and the Spartans could not break through. And the Athenians could get food, and come and go as they pleased, by sailing out of their port in their ships. The Spartans didn't have any navy, so they couldn't stop the Athenians from sailing around.

But in the summer, many of the Athenians began to die from a terrible plague. Because all the Athenian farmers had to leave the countryside and move inside the walls of Athens , it was very crowded inside the walls. A lot of poor people were living in wooden shacks, a lot of people in one room, with no real protection from the weather, and not enough good food to eat. So it was easy for the plague to spread.

We don't know exactly what this plague was. Even though Thucydides described it, it doesn't sound exactly like any modern disease. Some people think it might be a stronger form of measles. But hundreds of people died. One of them was the Athenian general Pericles, who had been leading the war.

Gradually the Spartans began to win some battles.

The Sicilian Expedition and Alcibiades

The Athenians decided that, since the war was not going so well, they would try a really dramatic, aggressive move. A young Athenian general named Alcibiades (al-se-BUY-a-dees) convinced the Athenian Assembly to send nearly the whole Athenian army and navy to the island of Sicily . Sicily was where the Spartans were getting their food from. So if the Athenians could capture Sicily , they could cut off the supplies of the Spartans and make them stop fighting. The Athenians agreed to send the young Alcibiades and a very old general named Nicias (NICK-ee-ass) to lead the army in Sicily .

But a few days before they were supposed to leave, somebody broke a whole lot of good-luck statues all over Athens . People were very upset. Some people thought it was Alcibiades and his friends who did it. There was a lot of discussion, but finally they decided to let Alcibiades lead the army anyway. So they all sailed off to Sicily .

But once Alcibiades and Nicias had sailed off to Sicily , the Athenians began to think about it again, and this time they decided to make Alcibiades stand trial for breaking the statues. They sent a ship to bring him back to Athens . Alcibiades pretended to go along, but half-way home, when the ships put in for the night in southern Italy , Alcibiades ran away in the middle of the night and joined the Spartans!

Without Alcibiades, the Athenians couldn't fight very well. And Alcibiades gave the Spartans good advice about how to fight the Athenians. When Alcibiades got to Sparta , he made a deal with the Spartans. If they would let him stay in Sparta , he would help them win the Peloponnesian War by giving them good advice. They agreed, and the first thing Alcibiades told the Spartans was that they should build a navy and use it to destroy the Sicilian Expedition.

In the end, the Spartans defeated the Athenian army in Sicily , and almost all of the Athenian men were killed. The Athenians who were taken prisoner were forced to work as slaves in stone quarries, where many of them died. When this plan worked, the Spartans thought Alcibiades was really smart. He also advised them to lay a permanent siege to Athens , instead of only in the summertime. That worked too.

Alcibiades was born in Athens around 450 BC. His mother was an Alcmaeonid. He was from one of the wealthiest families in Athens , and he grew up with the best of everything. After his father was killed in battle, Pericles, another Alcmaeonid, was Alcibiades' guardian. When he was a teenager, during the early years of the Peloponnesian War, he was a student of Socrates.

By the time Alcibiades grew up, Athens was beginning to lose the Peloponnesian War. Alcibiades became a very good general. The Sicilian Expedition was his idea.

After they defeated the Sicilian Expedition in 415 BC, and with the help of the formerly-Athenian general Alcibiades, the Spartans began to win more battles against Athens . Alcibiades taught them how to fight naval battles. But by 412 BC Alcibiades had gotten very unpopular in Sparta as well as Athens . An author and biographer named Plutarch wrote that Alcibiades was suspected of sleeping with the Spartan queen, but we don't know whether that is true. Either way, Alcibiades had to leave Sparta quickly.

In any case, Alcibiades left the Spartans and fled to Anatolia (modern Turkey ) under the protection of a Persian satrap (ruler), named Tissaphernes. Alcibiades gave the Persians good advice about how to manage the Peloponnesian War. He convinced Tissaphernes to give money to the Athenians, if the Athenians would let him be a general again and end the democracy, putting in an oligarchy instead run by the generals.

Near the end of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians were so desperate to beat the Spartans that they let Alcibiades come back as their general. The generals did take power, but in the end Tissaphernes didn't give the money he had promised, so Alcibiades didn't get to be a general. Some of the Athenian allies went over to the other side, and the Athenian oligarchy began negotiating with the Spartans for surrender.

But just at this point, the Athenian navy, which was anchored off the island of Samos , heard about the oligarchs getting power in Athens , and wanting to surrender to Sparta . The soldiers were very angry about losing their democracy, and about surrendering, and they elected Alcibiades their general. They demanded that the Athenians put the democracy back in power immediately.

The Athenians were going to say no, but just at this point the negotiations to surrender to Sparta failed, and the Spartans attacked and the Athenian fleet in Athens was destroyed. So the Athenians agreed to do what the fleet at Samos wanted: they restored the democracy, let Alcibiades be their general, and stopped trying to surrender to Sparta . The Persians began to give money to Sparta instead of Athens .

Now the Spartans had a smart idea: they used their navy to block the Hellespont , where ships came through bringing food to Athens . Alcibiades, who now led the Athenians, tried to get the Spartans out, and he did win some victories, but in the end, thanks to Persian money, the Spartans got control. The Athenians started to fight among themselves, and by 407 BC they had fired Alcibiades. He was angry, washed his hands of the whole war, and retired.

Slowly the Athenians began to starve, as the Spartans stopped their food ships from getting through. By 404 BC, with many Athenians already dead of starvation, the Athenians surrendered unconditionally, and the Spartans made them pull down their city walls.

COMPARING SPARTA AND ATHENS

The Greeks of Sparta and Athens spoke different dialects and developed different political systems, and very different societies. Sparta sought conformity, Athens allowed individual expression. The two city-states would serve as the role models for most other Greek city states. Their differences would lead to the downfall of Greece.