CLAS 2112 - Early Aegean and Greek Civilization Part II

Darius conquers Miletus shortly after the foundation of democracy.
Histiaeus and Aristagoras, who are leading Miletians, rebel against Persian rule.
Histiaeus is taken to Susa by the Persians, so he sends a message to Aristagoras by tattooing a messenger's head and letting his hair grow out.
He told the messenger to tell Aristagoras to shave the messenger's head.
The revolt begins in 499 bc and Athens (Ionian) agrees to help and sends 20 ships.
Sparta (Dorian) refuses to help.
The revolt ends in disaster; by 494 bc the Persians end the revolt.
This gives the Persians an excuse to invade Greece because of Athens' involvement.

The Laurion Silver Mines have been producing silver and lead since the early Bronze Age.
The Athenians find a huge vein of silver, making Athens extremely wealthy.
The Athenians use the money to create a navy to prepare for another Persian invasion.
They create about 20 triremes every year.
Triremes have three levels of rowers, making them the fastest boat at that time.
This huge navy leads directly to the Athenian Empire.

The Persian army is the largest army the world has seen up to this point with 25,000 troops in 600 ships,
The Greek forces are only 10,000 troops (9,000 Athenians + 1,000 others). They fight without the Spartans.
Miltiades is the leader of the Athenian army.
The Persians are annihilated, but the remaining fleet begins to sail towards Athens.

Darius I decides to invade Greece because the Athenians had sent 20 ships to help out the Ionian rebellion.
In 492 bc the Persians come across in Thrace and Macedonia to test the waters.
The actual invasion occurs in 490 bc.
The Persians are the most feared in the ancient world.
They have an elite bodyguard called the Immortals, who are about two-hundred in number.
The Persians sail across and lose, but the Garrisons remain on the islands.

The Greeks begin ostracism as a means to prevent another invasion.
The Greeks ostracize someone every year from 488 bc to the invasion.

The Athenians know they can not defend Athens.
The women, children, and elderly are evacuated to the island The Persians sack Athens and burn it to the ground.
By bringing the Persians down to Athens, the Greeks force the Persians to commit to their navy.
The Greeks use the same narrow path tactics from Thermopylae at Salamis, but on water with their navy.
Soldiers stand on top of triremes to break the oars of the Persian triremes.
They also attach battering rams in the front of the triremes to sink the Persian boats.
The Greeks lose at Thermopylae, but win at Salamis.

There are 500,000 troops and non-combatants of the Persian forces.
There are 6,000-7,000 troops of the Greek Forces, including Leonidas and his 300 Spartans.
The Greeks did not expect to win this battle, they are trying to stall the Persians so that Greek cities have more time to prepare and evacuate.
This site is chosen because the mountains closed in on both sides.
The pass would only let through ten men at a time, so the fighting would be ten against ten despite the size of their armies.
The Greeks are betrayed byPhocian, who shows the Persians a secret path around the Spartans.
All the Spartans, including Leonidas, are killed.

The Persian navy follows the route of their land troops around the Aegean sea, supporting the army as they go.
The Persians need to cross the Hellespont, the divide between Asia and Europe.
They lash together the boats and create a bridge for the army.
A storm sinks about half of the Persian boats.

The Persians think that their numbers will overwhelm the Greeks, but the Greeks use strategy to make the Persian's numbers insignificant and the Persians lose.
The Persians leave Greece, but the Greeks know that the Persians intend to come back.

Sophocles is a dramatist.
Some of his famous works is the Theban play, which consist of three parts: "Antigone", "Oedipus the King", and "Oedipus at Colonus".

Phiedias is a sculptor hired to carve the statue of Athena on top of the Acropolis.
He is most famous for the statue of Zeus in Olympia.
He is called the sculptors to the gods.

Socrates is a philosopher, who is convicted of not believing in the gods and forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.

Thucydides is the foremost historian of the time.
He lives through the Peloponnesian War and the Plague.

Hecatopenon Parthenos is the actual name of the Parthenon.
Parthenon or "Parthenos" is the nickname, which means the bedroom for young virgin girls SO the Parthenon was the literal house of Athena.
This is the first building part of a Periclean Building Program.
Athens was the center of the world to Pericles, so it needed to look like it.
The Parthenon uses a blend of the Doric and Ionic styles: 8 columns on front and back, 17 columns on each side.
It utilizes optical Illusions; there is a subtle swelling (entasis) of the mid-portions of the columns, so that they don't appear thin in the middle, there is a tilting columns toward interior so that they don't seem to be falling outward, and there is a curving the middle of the floor and steps upward, so that they don't seem to droop in the center.
The Parthenon is very finely decorated: the Panathenaic Procession is depicted along the outside, the front room is dedicated to the statue of Athena with Chryselephantine statue that is completely gone now, and there is a reflecting pool in the front of Athena to keep the ivory of the statue moist.
The backroom, Athena's bedroom, is stuffed full of gold, silver vases; shields; and furniture.
A list is kept of the dedications in this room.
Some items have tags with an inscription of who dedicated the items.
Because of this list, we can create a prosopography - a list of the citizens living in the city at the time.
The Athenians borrow from Athena's statue and her bedroom when they need money, but they return what they borrowed with interest.

The Temple of Athena Nike has 4 columns in the front and back.
This served as an actual temple.
It is decorated with various scenes of Athena carved into the top.
There is an altar inside with Mycenaean pottery around it from the Bronze Age, so this was obviously a sacred place for many years.

Plato is Socrates' most famous student.
He is born when the plague is ravishing Athens and the Peloponnesian War is beginning.

About seven different cults worshiped at the Erechtheion.
There is a porch of the Caryatid maidens and a porch where Poseidon gave the Athenians water (which included the holes from Poseidon's thunderbolt).
It is built from the Penteli quarries.

Aristotle is not Athenian, but comes to Athens to study with Plato.
Plato starts a school (The Academy) and Aristotle teaches a rival school (The Lyceum).
When he finally leaves Athens, he becomes the tutor of Alexander in the north.
He receives an exalted position, but once Alexander dies, he falls out of favor.

In order to make sure the Greeks are prepared for the probable, future Persian invasion, they form the Delian League based on the island of Delos.
Ostracisms stop, most of the Greek city-states are in the league, and give ships, men, or money each year.
This creates a standing GREEK navy, not just Athenian.
In the meantime, they go around to the islands of Greece to wipe out the Persian garrisons remaining.
They also fight the Persians to get them out of the western coast of Turkey.

The "Pentecontaetia" translates to “the 50 year period”.
In this period, the Athenian empire grows and becomes established.
This happens because of the Persian Wars which lead directly to the Delian League.
There is a rise of Athens power (Navy, Alliances, Wealth), development of Democracy, growing animosity between Sparta and Athens, and cultural achievements in Greece.
Pericles also gains political success in Athens.

The Athenians attacks them and forces them to stay in the Delian League.
They lose their independence.
Naxos is the first, but not the last, to attempt to leave.
If a city-state doesn’t give the money or ships or men they were supposed to each year, the Athenians come and take it from them.

The Athenian navy fights and wins against the Thasos navy and occupies the island.
The people of Thasos appeal to Sparta to help them against the Athenians.
Sparta promises to come, but gives an excuse (an earthquake and some rebellion in Sparta).
The people of Thasos are forced to accept the Athenian terms.

The people of Aegina also try to rebel against the Delian League.
They are also put down and forced to stay in the league.

The move of the Delian League Treasury from Delos to Athens sparks an increase in power, decoration, humanities, and arts in Athens.
Their navy becomes incredibly powerful, and Athens becomes a center for learning.

In 454 bc Pericles convinces everyone to move the treasury of the Delian League at Delos to Athens.
Pericles takes the treasury, builds up the Acropolis and Athens, and begins the Athenian Empire.

Sparta agrees not to attack Athens.

This treaty was signed by Persia and Athens.
Callias is the diplomat who negotiates the treaty.
This treaty lasts for quite a long time.

After the first treaty with Sparta is up, Athens and Sparta almost g to war.
They sign the “Thirty Years Treaty” with Sparta in 445 bc and it is supposed to last to 415 bc, but the Peloponnesian War breaks out in 431 bc.

Megara is an important member of the Delian League.
Pericles decrees that no one from Megara can land on any port or trade with any port that belongs to Athens or the Delian League.
This is a death note for Megara.
Sparta comes to the defense of Megara.

This is part of the first half of the Peloponnesian War.
It is named after the general Archidamias.
Athens wins and signs a peace treaty.

Sparta and Athens fight in both cold and hot wars with one another.
Ultimately, Sparta is victorious.
The Athenian empire falls in just 75 years.
The Athenians are forced to make peace.
The long walls are torn down and Athens will no longer be the military power it once was.
Athens becomes a University town.

By about 429/8 bc, the plague rips through Athens.
It decimates the population and kills half/three-quarters of the population.
One of the people killed is Pericles in 429 bc.
What disease was the plague?
Thucydides recounts the Plague for future students to identify.

The Peace of Nicias is named after the man who writes it.
This is believed to be the end of the war.

The Melian Dialogue is written by Thucydides--Book V of the History of the Peloponnesian War.
Because the island of Melos, a colony of Sparta, will not submit, the Athenians kill most of the Melians.
The Athenians dp not want Melos to be neutral or side with the Spartans.
However Thucydides isn't actually a witness to the conversation, and makes up what he thinks must have happened based on what happened before and after the meeting.

This is a cold war between Sparta and Athens.

This is the second half of the Peloponnesian War.

This is the final battle of the Peloponnesian war.
Near Troy and Istanbul, the Athenian navy gets hungry and goes off the ships to get food.
The Spartans are spying on the Athenians, and upon seeing the Athenian ships empty, the Spartans burn and destroy the ships.
The Athenians no longer have any power since their Empire is based on naval power.

This peace treaty is designed to sure-up the fronts that Spartan may need to fight on.
Sparta signs the treaty with Persia.
This gives the Persians control over the western coast of Turkey because the Ionians rebelled before the Persian War in 499 bc.
The Spartans believe they need to do it because they knew they would be fighting others.

This is a battle between the Thebans and the Spartans in the neighborhood of Leuctra, a village in Boeotia (the "dancing floor of war").
The Thebans win, in part because of revolutionary tactics by their leading general Epaminondas, as well as the role that the Sacred Band plays.
The Sacred band is a group of 300 or so men, who are trained to fight to the death for one another - a page from the Spartan handbook of battles.
Epaminondas adds three inches to the spears.
When Epaminondas wins, he takes the children of the rulers as hostages.

The Thebans win again, but Epaminondas is killed.
The Theban generals, who are going to succeed him, are also killed as well.
This leaves the door wide open for Philip II.

Philip II grows up as royal "hostage" in Thebes; he learns from Epaminondas.
Pella and Vergina are the ancestral homes of Philip and Alexander.
Philip loses an eye in battle.
He marries Olympias, who claims that Apollo came to her in the guise of a snake and impregnated her with Alexander.

Philip II and Alexander meet the united Greek forces in Chaeronea.
Macedonians almost lose, but Alexander saves the day by riding in from his wing and destroying the Thebans and the Greeks.
This is the first battle that Alexander won (at age 18).
He never loses.

Alexander wants revenge on the Persians for coming down through Macedonia using a scorched earth policy.
During 492 bc, Mardonius goes to Thessaly to test the waters after the Ionian rebellion before the Persian Wars.
He dies in Babylon in 323 bc at the age of 33.
During 480 bc, the battle of Thermopylae left Macedonia barren.
For the first two years of his reign, he picks a force of about 300 people in order to stop rebellions.
Alexander burns Thebes to the ground in order to show that he was in charge of the mighty city.
After destroying Thebes, the rest of the Greek cities fall in line.
Alexander begins his conquests by crossing into Turkey.
He continues to march over the known world.
He conquers everything that the Persians had conquered plus Greece.
His empire is larger than anything that had existed before him and larger than anything that has existed since him, apart from the Roman empire.

The Battle at Granikos River is his first major battle outside of Greece.
Alexander fights the local population along with a smattering of mercenaries.
Using his usual fighting style, he wins.
After he wins, he comes down the Ionian coast.
This victory opens up all of Turkey to Alexander.

Here Alexander fights the major Persian forces and Darius III, the Persian King.
He fights, he wins, he leaves.
This opens up the whole coastline (Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and into Egypt).

Alexander shows up, he fights, and he wins.
He fights Darius III again, Darius III is killed.
He continues on into Hindu Kush and Afghanistan.
He torches most of the Persian cities that he visits.
This opens up all of Mesopotamia for Alexander.

Alexander turns around when he wins because his men would not stop revolting against him.