Читать книгу Western Civilization - Paul R. Waibel - Страница 26

There were two major results of the Greek victory in the wars with Persia. First, it infused the Greeks with a victorious spirit. The Greeks saw their victory as one of a free people over an empire of slaves. Nothing seemed impossible for them. The result was the golden age of classical civilization, a cultural flowering seldom matched in history (see below). The second outcome was the emergence of Athens as a great power among the Greek city‐states. Athenian imperialism would lead to a Greek civil war between Athens and Sparta that would end the golden age and put Greece on a downward slide from which it would never recover.

Athens was rebuilt along with its port, Piraeus, following the Persian defeat. The triumphant Athenian fleet was enlarged. Athens became leader of the Delian League of Greek city‐states intended to guard against any revived Persian threat. Once the Persian threat no longer existed, the other members of the Delian League wanted to disband the league. Athens refused. Those city‐states who attempted to leave the league were destroyed by Athens. The transformation of the Delian League into an Athenian Empire was complete in 454 BC, when the league's treasury was moved to Athens. Athenian imperialism threatened the traditional Greek lifestyle centered on the independent city‐state.

Imperialism brought with it war rather than peace. Athens' attempt to gain hegemony over the Greek city‐states led the Athenians into the sin of hubris, that exaggerated pride the Greeks believed led to retribution. Athens' dominance was brief. The end came through the Peloponnesian War (433–404 BC).

Thucydides (460–395 BC), who recorded the Peloponnesian War in his History of the Peloponnesian War, said that what caused the war was fear of Athenian imperialism and its threat to the independence of the Greek city‐states. Sparta assumed leadership of the Peloponnesian League formed to oppose Athens and defend the liberty of the city‐states threatened by Athens' imperialistic goals. The war broke out in 431 BC, when Thebes, an ally of Sparta, attacked Plataea, an ally of Athens.

The war eventually became a contest between Sparta and Athens, while city‐states allied with either side would be captured and, at times, their populations massacred. Sparta and Athens, the two most powerful city‐states at the time, were not equally matched. Sparta was a land power and Athens was a sea power. Each invaded and lay waste to the opponent's territory on an annual basis, but neither was strong enough to actually capture the enemy city. The Athenians, for example, could retreat behind the city walls to wait out the Spartans. Access to Piraeus, Athens' harbor, was protected by two Long Walls. Their fleet was able to supply Athens. Without a navy, Sparta was not able to blockade Piraeus.

Athens suffered a fatal blow in 429 BC, when the city was struck with a devastating plague. Thucydides recorded the plague in his History. From one third to as many as two thirds of the city's population died. The Spartans broke off their siege fearing the plague more than combat. It was the death of Pericles (495–429 BC), architect of the Athenian Empire, that sealed the city's fate. With the loss of Pericles' able leadership, Athenian policy fell victim to the whim of the mob as expressed through the Popular Assembly.

In 415 BC, the Athenians heeded the advice of the youthful and reckless Alcibiades (451/450–404 BC) to launch a campaign against Syracuse on the island of Sicily. The largest force ever assembled by a Greek city‐state set sail for Syracuse. The result was a disastrous defeat for Athens in the harbor of Syracuse in 413 BC. With most of its navy gone, Athenian political life deteriorated. No one leader could control the Popular Assembly long enough to implement a strategy. Sparta sought and received financial assistance from Persia to build a fleet.

The Spartans caught the Athenian fleet off guard at Aegospotami in the Hellespont. They captured 160 of the Athenian ships. The Spartans then laid siege to Athens by both land and sea. Without its navy, the proud Athenians were forced to surrender in 404 BC. The Peloponnesian War, sometimes seen as a contest between an elephant and a whale, was won by the elephant.

Sparta's allies demanded that Athens, in defeat, be dealt with as Athens dealt with those whom it defeated, that is, the city destroyed, the men massacred, and the women and children sold into slavery. Sparta refused. Instead, the Delian League was dissolved and Athens was required to surrender what was left of its fleet and dismantle its defensive walls. Aristocratic rule under a government of Thirty Tyrants was imposed on Athens, with Spartan support.

The Greek spirit was broken. The pursuit of selfish interests replaced the old devotion to the city‐state. Civil war among the city‐states became the order of the day during the fourth century BC, while to the north in Macedonia, the stage was being set for the next phase of Greek history.

After the Peloponnesian War, no individual city‐state was able to dominate the rest or impose unity on Greece. Sparta, Thebes, and Athens each, in turn, held brief sway. Finally, in 387 BC, Persia imposed the “King's Peace” on Greece, with Sparta as its agent in supervising the peace. The Ionian city‐states remained under Persian control, and all power blocks within Greece were forbidden. Greece remained splintered into numerous independent city‐states. Remaining divided, the Greeks were unprepared for the threat presented by Philip II (359–336 BC) and the Kingdom of Macedon in the north.

Philip II studied the battle tactics of the Greeks, especially the heavily armored hoplites, while living in Thebes during his youth. To meet the challenge presented by the hoplites, Philip developed a new formation, the phalanx of 10 ranks of infantry armed with long pikes and small swords. By 357 BC, Philip united Macedonia and gained access to the sea. In 340 BC, he defeated the hastily formed Hellenic League of Greek city‐states at the battle of Chaeronea. The independence of the Greek city‐states was finally ended, as they were united under Philip's leadership in the League of Corinth. Philip II was the master of Greece.

In 337 BC, the League of Corinth declared war on Persia to avenge the destruction of Greek temples by Xerxes. Philip sent an advance army across the Hellespont in the spring of 336 BC. Philip was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards before he could join his army. Whether the assassin acted alone, or was part of a conspiracy, remains unknown. His son, Alexander, was among those who were rumored to be the instigators of the plot.

Alexander (356–323 BC) succeeded his father at the age of 20. He inherited the war with Persia along with the throne. Thebes rebelled, believing a rumor that Alexander was dead. After destroying Thebes for its treason, Alexander crossed the Hellespont in May, 334 at the exact spot where Xerxes began his invasion of Greece in 480 BC.

Alexander the Great's career has become romanticized and clouded with mystery over the centuries since his death in Babylon in 323 BC at the age of 33. He was, no doubt, a military genius. Even if we grant that the Persian Empire of the time was only a weakened shadow of what it had once been, still Alexander's conquest of it in less than 10 years was a feat seldom, if ever, matched. What his real intentions were for the future can only be guessed. Did he really intend to promote a fusion of cultures and, thus, some sort of new world order as some suggests, or was he merely trying to build a power base from which to launch a conquest of the western Mediterranean? Perhaps in the final analysis, Alexander the Great was only a madman who set out to conquer the world. Whatever his real motives, he changed the world.