Page 97 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

CHRONOLOGY Archaic Greece: Sparta and Athens
Sparta
Conquest of Messenia ca. 730–710 B.C.E.
Beginning of ca. 560–550 B.C.E. Peloponnesian League
Athens
Solon’s reforms Tyranny of Pisistratus End of tyranny Cleisthenes’s reforms
594–593 B.C.E.
ca. 560–556 and 546–527 B.C.E. 510 B.C.E.
ca. 508–501 B.C.E.
inhabitants located in the rural districts of Attica, the coastal areas, and Athens. Each tribe thus contained a cross section of the population and reflected all of Attica, a move that gave local areas a basic role in the political structure. Each of the ten tribes chose fifty members by lot each year for a new Council of Five Hundred, which was responsible for the administration of both foreign and financial affairs and prepared the business that would be handled by the assembly. This assembly of all male citizens had final authority in the passing of laws after free and open debate; thus, Cleisthenes’s reforms strengthened the central role of the assembly of citizens in the Athenian political system.
The reforms of Cleisthenes laid the foundations for Athenian democracy. More changes would come in the fifth century B.C.E. when the Athenians themselves would begin to use the word democracy to describe their system (from the Greek words demos, “people,” and kratia, “power”—thus, “power to the people”). By 500 B.C.E., Athens was more united than it had ever been and was about to assume a more important role in Greek affairs.
The High Point of Greek Civilization: Classical Greece
Q FOCUS QUESTION: What did the Greeks mean by democracy, and in what ways was the Athenian political system a democracy? What effect did the two great conflicts of the fifth century B.C.E.—the Persian wars and the Peloponnesian War—have on Greek civilization?
Classical Greece is the name given to the period from around 500 B.C.E. to the conquest of Greece by the Macedonian king Philip II in 338 B.C.E. It was a time of
brilliant achievement, much of it associated with the flowering of democracy in Athens under the leadership of Pericles. Many of the lasting contributions of the Greeks occurred during this period. The age began with a mighty confrontation between the Greek states and the mammoth Persian Empire.
The Challenge of Persia
As Greek civilization expanded throughout the Medi- terranean, it was inevitable that it would come into contact with the Persian Empire to the east. The Ionian Greek cities in southwestern Asia Minor had already fallen subject to the Persian Empire by the mid-sixth century B.C.E. An unsuccessful revolt by the Ionian cities in 499, assisted by the Athenian navy, led the Persian ruler Darius to seek revenge by attacking the mainland Greeks in 490. The Persians landed an army on the plain of Marathon, only twenty-six miles from Athens. There a mostly Athenian army, though clearly outnumbered, went on the attack. Led by Miltiades (mil-TY-uh-deez), one of the Greek leaders who insisted on attacking, the Greek hoplites charged across the plain of Marathon and crushed the Persian forces.
Xerxes (ZURK-seez), the new Persian monarch after the death of Darius in 486 B.C.E., vowed revenge and renewed the invasion of Greece. In preparation for the attack, some of the Greek states formed a defensive league under Spartan leadership, while the Athenians pursued a new military policy by developing a navy. By the time of the Persian invasion in 480 B.C.E., the Athe- nians had produced a fleet of about two hundred vessels.
Xerxes led a massive invasion force into Greece: close to 150,000 troops, almost seven hundred naval ships, and hundreds of supply ships to keep the large army fed. The Greeks hoped to stop the Persians at the pass of Thermopylae (thur-MAHP-ul-lee) along the main road into central Greece. A Greek force number- ing close to nine thousand, under the leadership of the Spartan king Leonidas (lee-ON-uh-duss) and his contingent of three hundred Spartans, held off the Persian army for several days. The Spartan troops were especially brave. When told that Persian arrows would darken the sky in battle, one Spartan warrior supposedly responded, “That is good news. We will fight in the shade!” Unfortunately for the Greeks, a traitor told the Persians how to use a mountain path to outflank the Greek force. King Leonidas and the three hundred Spartans fought to the last man.
The Athenians, now threatened by the onslaught of the Persian forces, abandoned their city. While the
The High Point of Greek Civilization: Classical Greece 59
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