Page 100 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

The Spartans and their allies attacked Athens, hoping that the Athenians would send out their army to fight beyond the walls. But Pericles was convinced that Ath- ens was secure behind its walls and retaliated by send- ing out naval excursions to ravage the seacoast of the Peloponnesus.
In the second year of the war, however, plague dev- astated the crowded city of Athens and wiped out pos- sibly one-third of the population. Pericles himself died the following year (429 B.C.E.), a severe loss to Athens. Despite the ravages of the plague, the Athenians fought on in a struggle that dragged on for twenty-seven years. A crushing blow came in 405 B.C.E. when the Athenian fleet was destroyed at Aegospotami (ee-guh- SPAH-tuh-my) on the Hellespont. Athens was besieged and surrendered in 404 B.C.E. Its walls were torn down, the navy was disbanded, and the Athenian empire was destroyed. The great war was finally over.
The Decline of the Greek States
(404–338 B.C.E.)
The Peloponnesian War weakened the major Greek states and led to new alliances among the poleis. After the defeat of Athens in 404 B.C.E., the Spartans estab- lished control over Greece. Oligarchies of local leaders in cooperation with Spartan garrisons were imposed on states “liberated” from Athenian imperialism. But the harsh policies of the oligarchs soon led to a reaction. In Athens, a rebellion enabled the Athenians to reestab- lish their democracy in 403 B.C.E. and even to rebuild their navy and again become an important force in the Greek world.
To maintain its newly organized leadership in Greek affairs, Sparta encouraged a Greek crusade against the Persians as a common enemy. But the Persians had learned the lessons of Greek politics and offered finan- cial support to Athens and other Greek states to oppose Spartan power within Greece itself, thus begin- ning a new war that finally ended in 386 B.C.E.
The city-state of Thebes, in Boeotia, north of Athens, now began to exert its influence. Under their leader Epaminondas (eh-PAM-uh-NAHN-duss), the The- bans dramatically defeated the Spartan army at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C.E. Spartan power declined, but Theban ascendancy was short-lived. After the death of Epaminondas in the Battle of Mantinea in 362 B.C.E., the Thebans could no longer dominate Greek politics. Yet the Greek states continued their petty wars, seem- ingly oblivious to the growing danger to the north, where King Philip II of Macedonia was developing a
62 Chapter 3 The Civilization of the Greeks
unified state that would finally end the destructive fratricide of the Greek states by imposing Macedonian authority.
The Culture and Society of Classical Greece
Q FOCUS QUESTION: Upon what ideals was classical Greek art based, and how were these ideals expressed? What questions did the Greek philosophers pose, and what answers did they suggest?
Classical Greece saw a period of remarkable intellectual and cultural growth throughout the Greek world. His- torians agree, however, that Periclean Athens was the most important center of classical Greek culture.
The Writing of History
History as we know it, the systematic analysis of past events, was a Greek creation. Herodotus (huh-ROD-uh- tuss) (ca. 484–ca. 425 B.C.E.) was the author of The Persian Wars, a work commonly regarded as the first real history in Western civilization. The Greek word historia (from which we derive our word history) means “research” or “investigation,” and it is in the opening line of Herodotus’s work that we find the first recorded use of the word:
These are the researches [historia] of Herodotus of Hali- carnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby pre- serving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed [reward] of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feud.8
The central theme of Herodotus’s work is the con- flict between the Greeks and the Persians, which he viewed as a struggle between freedom and despotism. Herodotus traveled extensively and questioned many people to obtain his information. Although he was a master storyteller and sometimes included considerable fanciful material, Herodotus was also capable of exhib- iting a critical attitude toward the materials he used.
Thucydides (ca. 460–ca. 400 B.C.E.) was a far better historian, indeed, the greatest of the ancient world. Thucydides was an Athenian and a participant in the Peloponnesian War. He had been elected a general, but a defeat in battle led the Athenian assembly to
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