1. People, Peloponnesian War and Philosophy
Greece Chat Part 2
People, Peloponnesian War and Philosophy

2. Age of Pericles
Skilled, wise, admired politician for 32 years = Golden Age of Athens
Increased Athenian Democracy
Athenian Empire
Greek Art and Architecture
Parthenon
Phidias
Classical Art
Phidias…cult statue of Athena, made by the sculptor Phidias, who had been placed in charge of the decoration of the Parthenon by the Athenian politician Pericles. "The statue is made of ivory and gold," the Greek author Pausanias writes, "She has a sphinx on the middle of her helmet, and griffins on either side of it. [...] She stands upright in an ankle-length tunic with the head of Medusa in ivory on her breast. She has a Victory of about eight feet high, and a spear in her hand and a shield at her feet, and a snake beside the shield; this snake might be Erichthonius. The plinth of the statue is carved with the birth of Pandora. Hesiod and others say Pandora was the first woman ever born, and the female sex did not exist before her birth."

3. Heracles,” marble statue produced in the workshop of Phidias, from the eastern pediment of the Parthenon, the Acropolis, Athens, c. 5th century bc; in the British Museum

4. Greek People and Culture
Upper left = Aeschylus
Next upper left (under) = Sophocles
Lower left = Euripides
Lower left one to middle = Aristophanes
Upper Right = Herodotus
Lower Right = Thucydides

5. Peloponnesian War

6. Peloponnesian War
Delian League (Athens) v Peloponnesian League (Sparta) – formed in Greece after the Persian Wars
Conflict over Delian control
431 BC Sparta attacks Attica
Sparta attacks the overcrowded Athens – Sparta surrounds Athens - the “rock fortress”
Plague and Pericles dies
Peace of Nicias (50 year truce)
Delian (Athens) versus Peloponnesian League (Sparta) – actually the 2nd conflict!
Athens in POWER – Persian threat gone and $ still coming in – Athenian Empire! But, the turning point in the Delian League came with the revolt of a small island city, Thasos. Unhappy with the League and payments to Athens, Thasos rebelled against the League; first time in the League history where a decision was made only in regard to the interests of Athens rather than the interests of the League as a whole = radical democratic movement, under the leadership of Pericles, challenged his authority
Pericles Athenian Leader (30 years in power) – thought Athens well-prepared with strong walls, sea access, and $
Discuss Funeral Oration Questions!
Sparta marches into Attica and burns all of the city and crops (431 BCE)
Sparta outnumbers Athens 2 to 1 – both sides want to wear down to surrender
Athens takes people into walls – becomes overcrowded – plague sweeps through Athens – Pericles dies too
Both tied so Sparta and Athens signed a fifty year peace called the Peace of Nicias, after the Athenian politician and general who was leading Athens at the time.
Everyone was allowed to go home, and the territorial status as it stood at the time of the peace, was allowed to remain in place. Athens kept its continental territories and allies, and Sparta got to keep all the territories it had acquired.

7. Athens v Sparta

8. Plague – probably typhoid fever based on new dental evidence from gravesite of 150 plague victims in Athens

9. Peloponnesian War Athenian army/navy destroyed in Sicily
Athenian power based on navy
Athens attacked by Sparta who was joined by Persia!
Sparta will not bargain for peace so… Athens surrenders in 404 BC
Eventually democracy returns…but Athens is too weak to be a great power again
In 413 BC, the entire army was defeated and captured and a large part of the great, powerful fleet of the Athenians was destroyed in the harbor of Syracuse when Athens attacked Sicily – persuaded by young men to try and capture. Athenian power since the Persian Wars had rested solely on the power of the navy; the disastrous Sicilian expedition left Athens almost completely powerless.
Spartans soon attacked Athens and—worse news piled on top of bad news—they were soon joined by the Persians.
For awhile the Athenians hung on, even enjoying tremendous victories when the war was shifted to the Aegean Sea. But in 405, the rest of their navy was destroyed in a surprise attack, and by the next year the situation was hopeless.
Sparta does not want to bargain for peace, weak Athenian leadership
404 BCE = Athens sues for peace…
Terms = tear down walls, only 12 naval ships; NO democracy – oligarchy (known as the 30 Tyrants; killed 1000 and displaced 5000; Athenians rebel; Sparta allows democracy to return; Athens weakened)

10. Results of the Peloponnesian War
Athens loses power / influence
Democracy suffers in Greece
Greece declines as Macedonia rises to power
This period in Greek history is called the Spartan hegemony, for although Sparta didn't rule the city -states of Greece as if it were an empire, Sparta did exercise considerable influence over the domestic and foreign decisions of these independent states: it exercised, then, hegemonic control over these states.