Transcript Athens and the Greek States: From Alliance to Empire

Athens and the Greek States
From Alliance to Empire
Delian League
Bust of Pericles
Thucydides on Early Greek History
 Thucydides-born of Athenian aristocratic family
from Haliartus ca. 460 BCE; failed as stratēgos
(general) to relieve Spartan siege of Amphipolis in
424 BCE; writes History in exile (cf. Histories 4.103106; 5.26)
 Thucydides on insignificance of earlier Greek
powers (Histories 1.21): Trojan War (1.9-11);
Tyrants (1.17); Persian Wars (1.23)
Imaginative Bust of Thucydides
Thucydides and the “Realists”
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Competitive Struggle for Security and Supremacy
“Zero-Sum” Competition
Power Ultimately the Final Arbiter
International “System” of Anarchy the Rule
“The problem is this: how to conceive of an order
without an orderer and of organizational effects where
formal organization is lacking.” (Kenneth Waltz, Theory
of International Politics (89))
Pentekontaitia
Defensive Alliance to Athenian Empire
(Thuc. 1.89-117)
 Athens rebuilt and fortified; Piraeus (Thuc. 1.90-93)
 The Pausanias affair and Athenian allied leadership
(Thuc. 1.126-138)
 Delian Confederacy and the First Assessment
 Aristides’ First Assessment (460 talents); treasury
at Delos (Thuc. 1.96)
 Allied contributions: money or ships
 Hellenotamiae (“Hellenic treasurers”)
Pentekontaitia
Defensive Alliance to Athenian Empire
(Thuc. 1.89-117)
 Allied Military Actions
 Persia--470s: Eion (Persian stronghold); Scyros
(pirate lair); Carystus (medizer)
 Cimon’s Eurymedon campaign in Pamphylia
(469/8? 466?): Destruction of 200 Phoenician warships
 Expedition to Egypt (ends in disaster): 459-454
 Internal Policing: Naxos, 470; Thasos, 465
470s: Eion, Scyros, Carystus
Cimon and the Persian Empire (Eurymedon)
Revolts: Naxos (470) and Thasos (465)
First Peloponnesian War
ca. 460-455 BCE
 Revolt of Thasos (465); Helot Revolt and Mt. Ithome (465);
Athenian Settlement of Refugees at Naupactus
 Alignment of Greek States-Sparta or Athens
 Athenian Alliance with Argos, traditional Spartan enemy
(461/460)
 Athenian Assistance to Megara (Megarian revolt cripples
Corinth, an important member of the Peloponnesian League
headed by Sparta)
 Tightening of Athenian control over Allies. Fortification of
Athens and the “Long Walls” (459-442)
 Allied treasury moved from Delos to Athens (454); Building
Program (Propylaea, Parthenon)
Athens Fortified: Long Walls
Parthenon: Symbol of Periclean Democracy
Cimon, Pericles, and the Reorientation of Athenian
Foreign Policy
 Cimon’s Outmoded Policy (Sparta and Athens as the
“yoke-fellows” of Greece against Persia)
 Ephialtic Reforms of 462/1 BCE (archons by lot, pay
for jury duty, stripping of Areopagus)
 Ostracism of Cimon (ca. 462); obsolescence of
Cimonian policy; “Peace of Callias” in 449?
 Pericles and Sparta
Thucydides’ View on the War’s Causes (1.23)
“What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian
power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.”