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Chapter FourAncient Greece
1750 B.C. - 133 B.C.
Section Three
Conflict in the Greek World
By the Fifth century B.C., the Persians conquered a huge empire stretching from Asia Minor to the border of India.
This is a map of the Persian Empire around
the time of Darius the Great and
Xerxes.
The Persians had conquered the Greek city-states of Ionia in Asia Minor.
The Ionians resented their situation. In
499 B.C., Ionian Greeks rebelled
against Persian rule. Athens sent ships to
help them.
The Persians soon crushed the rebel Ionian city-states.
This maps shows the key sites of the Persian Wars. The blue line
indicated at left shows the first invasion - and
how little time and effort it took for the
Persians to defeat the Ionians.
This little blue line - that’s all there is.
Darius I was furious at Athens for its role in the uprising.
This is a view of the ancient Persian city of Persepolis, a
palace complex in
Iran founded by Darius I around 515
B.C.
Iran is the modern name
for Persia.
At left is a sketch of an image of Darius I on a vase found in 1851 in
Canossa, Italy. The sketch is an illustration from Monuments of
Classical Alterums, Volume I, 1885.
Darias I ruled Persia when the empire
was at its peak. He is often called
Darius the Great.
This is Darius I from a relief in Persepolis, the ancient Persian
capital.
These are the remains of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, from about 515 B.C.
Darius’ tomb can be seen
in the background
at center.
The conflict that began in Ionia in 499 B.C. is known as the first of the Greek’s three Persian Wars.
The Ionian Revolt(499 to 493 B.C.)
The Second Persian War(492 to 490 B.C.)
The Third Persian War(480 to 479 B.C.)
The Second Persian War began in 492 B.C.
The Athenians asked for help from neighboring Greek city-states, but
received little support.
In 490 B.C. the Persians attacked at Marathon. The location is marked
in red on the map at right.
The Persians greatly outnumbered Athenians.
The second Persian War was meant to be Athens’ punishment.
Athenian foot soldiers ran toward the Persians.
Darius’ archers responded with a rain of arrows, but
the Greeks rushed onward. The armies engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat, then
the Persians retreated to their ships.
These are Persian archers shown in a glazed brick frieze in Darius’ palace in
Susa, Iran from about 510 BC.
This is the mound
where the Athenians
buried their dead after the battle of
Marathon.
Pheidippides is supposed to have run, without stopping, from Marathon to Athens.
Upon arriving, he announced his news
with one word, “victory,” then, his
mission complete, he collapsed and died.
This is Pheidippides Giving Word of Victory after the Battle of Marathon by Luc-Olivier Merson, 1869.
A modern marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards. Marathon is about twenty-five miles southeast of Athens.
The legend of Pheidippides was honored at the first modern Olympic Games that were held in Greece in
1896. That first modern marathon was 40,000 meters (or 24.85 miles) long. At the 1908 Olympic Games in London the marathon distance was changed to 26.2
miles. The extra two miles were added so that the race could finish in front of royal family’s viewing box.
Pietri was initially declared the winner, but later, after other competitors protested that he was assisted during the race, he was disqualified.
This is a photograph
of the arrival of Dorando Pietri of
Italy at the finish of the 1908 Olympics
marathon.
The Athenian leader Themistocles knew that success at Marathon would not end the Persian Wars.
Themistocles convinced Athenians
to build a fleet of warships and
prepare themselves for another attack.
This is Crossing the Hellespont by Xerxes, an illustration for an 1896 text entitled The Story of the Greeks.
Darius died while preparing an army for the Third Persian War.
He left the task of punishing Athens to his son.
In 480 B.C., Darius’ son, Xerxes, sent another, much larger force to conquer Greece.
This is a rock relief of Xerxes from Persepolis.
This time Athens persuaded Sparta and other city-states to join the fight against the Persians.
The Third Persian war began in 480 B.C. when the Persians landed in northern Greece. They
were met by a small Spartan force guarding the narrow mountain pass at Thermopylae.
The Spartans held out heroically against the enormous Persian force,
but were defeated in the end.This is a view of the Thermopylae pass.
This is Jacques-Louis
David’s Leonidas at
Thermopylae from 1814.
The Battle of Thermopylae gave the
Athenians time to empty their city and withdraw to safety.
The Persians marched south and burned Athens.
This image from a Fifth century B.C. Greek drinking cup shows a Greek hoplite (citizen-soldier) and a
Persian warrior fighting.
The Greeks now put their faith in the fleet of ships that Themistocles had urged them to build.
This is a copy of a stone relief from a graffito found at the House of Dionysos on Delos Island in the early 1930s. It
shows an ancient Greek warship and its crew. The original stone
relief has since badly deteriorated.
Ancient Greek warships, called triremes, were
powered by rowers and equipped with
underwater battering rams.
This is the Olympias, a reconstruction of an ancient Greek trireme. Notice that its wooden ram is reinforced with bronze. When tested with an inexperienced crew it made a 180° turn in
less than one minute. The Persian ships could not match the trireme’s maneuverability.
These are Athenian soldiers preparing to fight the Persians as portrayed in
2014’s 300: Rise of an Empire.
His fleet in place, Themistocles tempted the enormous Persian navy to fight at Salamis.
The Persians
sailed into the Straits
of Salamis.
In the cramped conditions of the Straits of Salamis the great Persian ships struggled to maneuver and became disorganized. The Greeks destroyed the Persian fleet Xerxes retreated with his army.
The Battle of Salamis, by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1868), shows the aftermath of the Persian’s defeat.
On the shore, Xerxes watched as his mighty fleet sank.
The Greek city-states saved themselves from
the Persian threat.
The next year, the Greeks defeated the Persians on land in
Asia Minor. This victory marked the end of the Persian
Wars.
This is Burial of Themistocles’ Ashes, by Giuseppe Bossi from about 1809.
Themistocles’ foresight had saved Athens.
Too proud, years later his boasting got
him exiled. He went to Persia and became an advisor to
the king.
Themistocles’ foresight saved Athens
He died in Ionia in 459 B.C.
Athens emerged from the war as the most powerful
city-state in Greece. Athens created an alliance with other
Greek city-states. Modern scholars call this alliance the
Delian League after Delos, the location where the
league held meetings. From the start, Athens dominated
the Delian League.Athens (in red above) and the other city-states of the Delian League (in yellow above) joined
forces to defend against future Persian invasions. Notice that Sparta is not a member.
Delos
Sparta
The most important long-term contributions of ancient Greek civilization are primarily found
in the area of government and law.
The architectural style in
Washington, D.C. is neoclassical,
meaning that it is inspired by
ancient Greek and Roman
architecture.
These styles use tall columns, symmetrical shapes, and triangular
pediments, like those seen in the Supreme Court Building at left.
The Hall of Columns is a dramatic, high-ceilinged corridor over 100 feet long. It runs along the North-South axis of the first floor of the House wing in the U.S. Capitol, directly beneath the Hall of the
House of Representatives. These columns, like to columns at the front of the Supreme Court Building, are of the Corinthian style.
The architecture of the nation’s capital
expresses the influence of
classical Greek and Roman political
ideals on our government.
There are three main columns in Greek architecture, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.
Ionia and Corinth were Greek city-states. The term
Doric derives from the Dorian invaders who built the city-
state of Sparta.
These are the Doric columns of the crypt in the U.S. Capitol Building.
These sandstone columns support
the arches that hold up the floor of the Rotunda above.
These ionic columns
belong to the Rayburn
House Office Building.
Our Congressman, Andre Carson, has his office in room 2453 of this building.
These are Corinthian columns in the Library of Congress’ main reading room in Washington, D.C.
The White House and the
Lincoln Memorial are also examples
of classical architecture in Washington,
D.C.
In Indianapolis, the Central
Library’s columns are
Doric.
The Indiana War
Memorial’s columns are
ionic.
The memorial is based upon the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, a tomb built by Greek architects in
the Fourth century B.C.
These columns
inside the Indiana
Statehouse are in the Corinthian
style.
The years after the Persian Wars, from 460 B.C. to 429 B.C., were a golden age for Athens.
Under the leadership of Pericles, Athens was a direct
democracy. In a direct democracy, all citizens vote
on all laws.
This is Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to Pericles, Aspasia, Alcibiades and Friends, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, from 1868.
We have a representative (or indirect) democracy. We vote to elect others who vote on legislation because they represent us.
Citizens took part directly
in the day-to-day affairs of government.
Today, the citizens in most democratic
countries participate in government
indirectly through elected
representatives.
This is Raphael’s School of Athens. It was painted
between 1509 and 1511 to decorate a room in the Apostolic Palace in the
Vatican. Nearly every great ancient Greek philosopher
can be found in the painting.
By the time of Pericles, the Athenian assembly met several times a month. A Council of Five Hundred,
selected by lot, conducted daily government business.
Pericles believed that
all citizens, regardless of
wealth or social class, should take
part in government.
The setting suggests the open exchange of ideas that occurs in a democracy. Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle are numbers 12, 14, and 15, respectively.
Athens paid a salary to men who participated in
the government, enabling poor men to serve.
Many Greeks outside of Athens resented Athenian domination. Before long, the Greek
world was split into rival camps.
This is Spartan Woman Giving a Shield to Her Son by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier (1805). In the folklore of Sparta, when a son left
home for the armed forces, his mother said: “Fight well and fairly. Return with your shield - or on it.”
The Peloponnesian
League (Sparta) is in
yellow and the Delian League (Athens) is in orange on the
map at left.
To counter the Delian League, Sparta and other enemies of Athens formed the Peloponnesian League.
In 431 B.C., warfare broke out between
Athens and Sparta. This conflict, which became
known as the Peloponnesian War, soon
engulfed all of Greece. The fighting lasted for twenty-seven years.
This is Plague in an Ancient City by Michael Sweerts from about 1652.
When Sparta’s powerful army came
near to Athens, Pericles allowed people from the
countryside to move inside the city walls.
The overcrowded conditions led to a terrible plague that
killed many Athenians, including
Pericles himself.
Finally, in 404 B.C., with the help of the Persian navy, the Spartans
captured Athens.
As the war dragged on, each side committed savage acts
against the other. Sparta even allied itself with Persia, the
longtime enemy of the Greeks.
This vase was created by the Spartan artist known as the Rider Painter in the Sixth century B.C.
The victors stripped Athens of its empire.
The Peloponnesian War ended Athenian domination
of the Greek world.
Athens remained the cultural center of Greece. However, its
spirit and vitality declined.
This is Aristotle Tutoring Alexander, by Jean Leon
Gerome Ferris from 1895.
While the Greeks battled among themselves, a new power rose in Macedonia, a kingdom
to the north of Greece.
By 359 B.C., its ambitious ruler stood poised to
conquer the quarrelsome Greek city-
states.
and now…
some more final exam questions…
Which civilizations were organized into city-states?
a) Ancient Greece and Mayans
b) Rome and Egypt
c) Phoenicia and India
d) Ancient China and Ghana
Which civilizations were organized into city-states?
a) Ancient Greece and Mayans
b) Rome and Egypt
c) Phoenicia and India
d) Ancient China and Ghana
Important long-term contributions of Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations are primarily found
in the area of
a) government and law.
b) military technology.
c) religious doctrine.
d) economic policy.
Important long-term contributions of Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations are primarily found
in the area of
a) government and law.
b) military technology.
c) religious doctrine.
d) economic policy.