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First stage of the war,

431-421 B.C.

The war began in 431 B.C. Its first stage was indecisive. The Athenians avoided a conflict in the open field with the stronger Peloponnesian army, which ravaged Attica. They were crippled almost at the outset of the struggle by a terrible plague among the refugees from Attica, crowded behind the Long Walls. The pestilence slew at least one-fourth of the inhabitants of Athens, including Pericles himself. After ten years of fighting both sides grew weary of the war and made a treaty of peace to last for fifty years.

[graphic]

The Sicilian
Expedition,
415-413 B.C.

Not long after the conclusion of peace the Athenians were persuaded by a brilliant and ambitious politician, named Alcibiades, to undertake an expedition against Syracuse in Sicily. This city was a colony of Corinth, and hence was a natural ally of the Peloponnesian states. The Athenians, by conquering it, expected to establish their power in Sicily. But the siege of Syracuse ended in a complete failure. The Athenians failed to capture the city, and in a great naval battle they lost their fleet. Then they tried to retreat by land, but soon had to surrender. Many of the prisoners were sold as slaves; many were thrown by their inhuman captors into the stone quarries near Syracuse, where they perished from exposure and starvation. The Athenians, says Thucydides, "were absolutely annihilated - both army and fleet and of the many thousands who went away only a handful ever saw their homes again." 1

[graphic]

A SILVER COIN OF
SYRACUSE

The profile of the nymph Arethusa has been styled the most exquisite Greek head known to us.

Athens never recovered from this terrible blow. The Spartans quickly renewed the contest, now with the highest hopes of success. The Athenians had to guard their city against the 1 Thucydides, vii, 87.

Last stage of the war,

413-404 B.C.

invader night and day; their slaves deserted to the enemy; and they themselves could do no farming except under the walls of the city. For supplies they had to depend entirely on their ships. For nearly ten years, however, the Athenians kept up the struggle. At length the Spartans captured an Athenian fleet near Ægospotami on the Hellespont. Soon afterwards they blockaded Piræus and their army encamped before the walls of Athens. Bitter famine compelled the Athenians to sue for peace. The Spartans imposed harsh terms. The Athenians were obliged to destroy their Long Walls and the fortifications of Piræus, to surrender all but twelve of their warships, and to acknowledge the supremacy of Sparta.

37. The Spartan and Theban Supremacies,

404-362 B.C.

Sparta was now the undisputed leader of Continental Greece and of the Ægean. As the representative of the liberty-loving Greeks she had humbled the pride and power of Spartan des"tyrant" Athens. A great opportunity lay before potism her to reorganize the Hellenic world and to end the struggles for supremacy between rival cities. But Sparta entered upon no such glorious career. She had always stood as the champion of aristocracy against democracy, and now in her hour of triumph. she began to overturn every democratic government that still existed in Greece. The Greek cities soon found they had exchanged the mild sway of Athens for the brutal despotism of Sparta.

But Spartan despotism provoked resistance. It was the Boeotian city of Thebes which raised the standard of revolt. Some of the liberty-loving Thebans, headed by The freeing Pelopidas, a patriotic noble, formed a conspiracy of Thebes, to drive the Spartans out of the city. Disguised as huntsmen, Pelopidas and his followers entered Thebes at nightfall, killed the tyrants whom Sparta had set over the people, and forced the Spartan garrison to surrender.

379 B.C.

The Thebans had now recovered their independence. Eight

Battle of
Leuctra, 371
B.C.

years later they totally defeated a superior Peloponnesian force at the battle of Leuctra and brought the supremacy of Sparta to an end. This engagement from a military standpoint is one of the most interesting in ancient history. Epaminondas, the skilful Theban commander, massed his best troops in a solid column, fifty men deep, and hurled it with terrific force against the Spartan ranks. The enemy, drawn up twelve men deep in the customary formation, could not withstand the impact of the Theban column; their lines gave way, and the fight was soon won. The battle destroyed

once for all the legend of Spartan invincibility.

Pelopidas and Epaminondas

The sudden rise of Thebes to the position of the first city in Greece was the work of two men whose names are always linked together in the annals of the time. In Pelopidas and Epaminondas, bosom friends and colleagues, Thebes found the heroes of her struggle for independence. Pelopidas was a fiery warrior whose bravery and daring won the hearts of his soldiers. Epaminondas was both an able general and an eminent statesman. No other Greek, save perhaps Pericles, can be compared with him. Even Pericles worked for Athens alone and showed no regard for the rest of Greece. Epaminondas had nobler ideals and sought the general good of the Hellenic race. He fought less to destroy Sparta than to curb that city's power of doing harm. He aimed not so much to make Thebes mistress of an empire as to give her a proper place among Greek cities. The Thebans, indeed, sometimes complained that Epaminondas loved Hellas more than his native city.

Battle of Mantinea, 362 B.C.

By crippling Sparta, Epaminondas raised Thebes to a position of supremacy. Had he been spared for a longer service, Epaminondas might have realized his dream of bringing unity and order into the troubled politics of his time. But circumstances were too strong for him. The Greek states, which had accepted the leadership of Athens and Sparta, were unwilling to admit the claims of Thebes to a position of equal power and importance. The period of Theban rule was filled, therefore, with perpetual

conflict. Nine years after Leuctra Epaminondas himself fell in battle at Mantinea in the Peloponnesus, and with his death ended the brief glory of Thebes.

38. Decline of the City-State

Weakness of

The battle of Mantinea proved that no single city - Athens, Sparta, or Thebes - was strong enough to rule Greece. By the middle of the fourth century B.C. it had become evident that a great Hellenic power could the citynot be created out of the little, independent citystates of Greece.

states

A record of

less conflict

The history of Continental Hellas for more than a century after the close of the Persian War had been a record of almost ceaseless conflict. We have seen how Greece came to be split up into two great alliances, the one a almost ceasenaval league ruled by Athens, the other a confederacy of Peloponnesian cities under the leadership of Sparta. How the Delian League became the Athenian Empire; how Sparta began a long war with Athens to secure the independence of the subject states and ended it by reducing them to her own supremacy; how the rough-handed sway of Sparta led to the revolt of her allies and dependencies and the sudden rise of Thebes to supremacy; how Thebes herself established an empire on the ruins of Spartan rule - this is a story of fruitless and exhausting struggles which sounded the knell of Greek liberty and the end of the city-state.

Far away in the north, remote from the noisy conflicts of Greek political life, a new power was slowly rising to imperial greatness no insignificant city-state, but an The future

extensive territorial state like those of modern

times. Three years after the battle of Mantinea Philip II ascended the throne of Macedonia. He established Hellenic unity by bringing the Hellenic people within a widespread empire. Alexander the Great, the son of this king, carried Macedonian dominion and Greek culture to the ends of the known world. To this new period of ancient history we now turn.

Studies

1. On an outline map indicate the principal places mentioned in this chapter. 2. On an outline map indicate the Athenian allies and dependencies and those of Sparta at the opening of the Peloponnesian War. 3. What do you understand by a "decisive" battle? Why has Marathon been considered such a battle? 4. Why did Xerxes take the longer route through Thrace, instead of the shorter route followed by Datis and Artaphernes? 5. What was the importance of the Phoenician fleet in the Persian invasions? 6. What reasons can be given for the Greek victory in the struggle against Persia? 7. Distinguish between a confederacy and an empire. 8. Compare the relations of the Delian subject cities to Athens with those of British colonies, such as Canada and Australia, to England. 9. What do you understand by representative government? 10. If the Athenian Empire could have rested on a representative basis, why would it have been more likely to endure? II. How far can the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people" be applied to the Athenian democracy? 12. Did the popular assembly of Athens have any resemblance to a New England town meeting? 13. Compare the Athenian jury system with that of England and the United States. 14. The Athenian democracy of the time of Pericles has been described as a pure democracy and not, like the American, as a representative democracy. In what lies the difference? 15. Can you suggest any objections to the system of state pay introduced by Pericles? To what extent do we employ the same system under our government? 16. What conditions of the time help to explain the contempt of the Greeks for money-making? 17. Trace on the map, page 107, the Long Walls of Athens. 18. Why has the Peloponnesian War been called an "irrepressible conflict"? Why has it been called the "suicide of Greece"? 19. What states of the Greek mainland were neutral in the Peloponnesian War (map facing page 108)? 20. Contrast the resources of the contending parties. Where was each side weak and where strong? 21. Why was the tyranny of Sparta more oppressive than that of Athens? 22. What were the reasons for the failure of the Athenian, Spartan, and Theban attempts at empire?

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