The Fall of Classical Greece Essay Example for Free

The Fall of real Greece EssayThe contend between capital of Greece and Sparta in the twenty percent century BCE was a major turning point in western history. It attach both the stop of capital of Greece as a Mediterranean superpower, and the end of the Greek Golden Age. The state of war resisted nearly 30 years, left hundreds of molar concentrations dead, disrupted trade, bankrupted both societies, altered the course of warf atomic number 18, and rattled the platform of state. Though Sparta emerged victorious and capital of Greece brut attendant subjugated, neither urban center state was able to recoup their former prosperity and power and both yielded to a nonher Greek superpower after little than a century of tenuous peace. Nothing would be the same after the Peloponnesian warfare.In Classical Greece most states allied with either Sparta or Athens, the deuce most opposite states in the Greek world1. The dangerouss focused on creating the perfect warrior they were a militaristic oligarchic state dependent on slaves2. They viewed the democratic Athenians with misgiving and increasing resendment, especi assort after the Persian wars when Athens was becoming the authoritative economic and cultural centre of Greece. With its commanding navy Athens was able to hive away many tribute-bearing allies and to devote itself to bypassing democracy. According to Thucydides, the leading source of the events during the Peloponnesian War, the prime reason for the war was the growth of Athenian power and the vexation which this caused in Sparta3. By 431 BCE both sides were prepared to go to war, and both believed victory would be quick.The war lasted 27 years. It began with Spartan raids on Atticas countryside in the summer of 431 BCE. Soldiers attempt to burn olive trees and grape vines, the mainstay of Athens economy4. They hoped the ruined crops would force Athens to sue for peace or face the deadly Spartan hoplites in battle. Spartan soldiers were f abled the rest of Greece knew that they would lose any land battles against Sparta5. But Athens refused to bow to Sparta. Pericles, a powerful Athenian statesman, believed he had a taking plan. He moved everyone from the hinterland into Athens city walls so that Spartan raids on the countryside would have little effect6. He also kept up armed services pressure along the coast by sending superior fleets to harass the Peloponnesus.This move into the city was disastrous. With pressure on food, housing, and sanitation a plague skint out within Athens, one so deadly that Spartan soldiers refused to advance to the Long Walls. Thucydides, a survivor of the plague, states that the disease, first settling in the head, went on to pretend every part of the body in turn, and even when people escaped its worst effects, it still left its traces on them by fastening upon the extremities of the body7. This was a succession of complete and utter chaos. There was nowhere to bury the dead, and no w ay to treat the infected or even reduce their suffering. When people became affected they ofttimes resorted to unprecedented lawlessness8. Many lost their entire family and died alone in the streets. The exact numbers are debatable but Attica likely lost one-quarter to one-third of its population9.The plague, in only the second year of a twenty-seven-year long war, is what ultimately drove the Athenian shoot. It caused more deaths than all the battles the city fought against the Peloponnesian League. Thucydides states that nothing did more monetary value to Athenian power than the plague10 because it changed the entire course of the war. The state lost about one third of its hoplite troops and cavalry forces, and between forty and fifty thousand women, children and slaves, as well as the level-headed Pericles11. So few eligible sailors and rowers remained that slaves were given these positions in exchange for freedom12. It left Athens profoundly demoralizedThe plague was followed by a series of poor decisions by both sides. For the most part the two states never directly faced polish off, this was largely because of their opposing strengths Spartas hoplite army could defeat any land-based enemy and Athens had the most powerful navy in the Aegean13. Athens did not want to clamber Sparta on land, and Sparta did not want to fight Athens at sea.In 424 BCE Athens attacked Boetia, a Spartan ally just north of Attica that allowed Spartan raiders easy access into the Athenian countryside. This was supposed to be an equal-sided pitched battle14. Hoplite battles were normally fought on even ground at a set time and with roughly an equal number of troops.There were generally no surprises and winning was determined on the individual strength and resolve of the men. Battles were usually over in a matter of minutes15. But at the Battle of Delium the Boetians charged downhill towards the Athenian army and eliminated it. The Athenians lost nearly 15 per cent of their hop lite army16. The Athenians received another severe blow when they tried to regain Amphipolis, an important ally that had recently surrendered to Sparta. Thucydides was sent to save the city but arrived too late. He spent the next 20 years in exile. The Peloponnesian War marked the end of formalized warfare in Greece. Whole cities were unmake and their inhabitants murdered or enslaved.After a decade of fighting the Peace of Nicias sought to ally Sparta and Athens. The terms stated that peace between the Peloponnesian League and the Delian League was to last for 50 years, and both sides were to return what land they had gained from the enemy17. This uneasy peace18 did not last long. By 418 BCE the truce was officially over Athenian coastal attacks of the Peloponnesus had not ceased, and King Agis of Sparta attacked Mantinea and Argos19.In 415 BCE the Athenians embarked on their most controversial and disastrous military communique to date. They resolved to sail again against Sicilya nd, if possible, to conquer it.they did not realize that they were taking on a war of almost the same magnitude as their war against the Peloponnesians20. The Athenians believed that if they could conquer the large, fertile island they could cease grain imports into the Peloponnesus as well as increase imported grain for themselves21. They underestimated the size and strength of Sicily.The expedition was also mischievously led22. The Athenian Assembly sent three commanders Nicias, Lamachus, and the traitorous Alcibiades who jumped ship in southern Italy and fled to Sparta. After arriving at siege of Syracuse the Athenian fleet waited several months in front attacking thus enabling the Syracusans to prepare. When they finally attacked they won a hoplite battle but were unable to breach the reinforced city walls. They began constructing a siege wall, Syracusans build counter-walls but could not keep pace and victory looked certain for Athens. Then the Spartan fleet, having been info rmed by Alcibiades of the Athenians plan, landed on the island and attacked the Athenians from the rear. Athenian naval reinforcements were sent but modified Spartan and Corinthian ships smashed through the Athenian triremes and 25000 sailors and nearly all the Athenian ships were undo23.A night attack on Syracuse also ended disastrously. When the Syracusans began fighting back Athenian soldiers panicked, and in the dark began killing their own men. Some 40,000 Athenian soldiers attempted to retreat to Catana, a city in northern Sicily that was Athenian friendly. More Athenians died while fleeing than in all other Sicilian battles 9000 hoplites and countless foot-soldiers perished. This wasthe greatest action that we know of in classical historyto the vanquished the most calamitous of defeatstheir losses were, as they say, total army, navy, everything was destroyed24. This failed conquest of Sicily was the second major factor in Athens fall from preeminence.While the Athenians fl ailed in Sicily, Spartan troops urged by Alcibiades, set up base in Decelea, which gave them control of rural Attica and prevented food supplies from reaching Athens. The Athenians were forced to break into the Iron Reserve, a unavowed stash of 1000 talents to construct a new fleet. In order to construct a fleet of their own, Sparta made a deal with King Darius of Persia the Persians would put forward gold for a fleet if Sparta surrendered Ionia25. The Spartans agreed and the Peloponnesian War moved to the sea. The Battle of Arginusae in 406 BCE was the biggest naval battle in Greek history and Athens greatest naval victory. The Athenians destroyed two thirds of Spartas fleet26. Sparta, exhausted and defeated, offered peace but the Athenians refused, arrogantly assuming their rivals could never recover from such devastating losses. This was the third broad blunder of the Athenians. Backed by Persian gold Sparta quickly rebuilt her fleet.The final battle of the Peloponnesian War w as at Aegospotami, a harbour in the Hellespont. For long time the Athenians tried to lure the Spartan admiral Lysander into battle. He waited until many Athenian sailors were off searching for food and water then, in a surprise attack, destroyed 171 Athenian triremes and killed 3000 soldiers27. With this defeat Athens was forced to join the Spartan alliance, destroy the Long Walls, surrender all but twelve ships, and abandon democracy28. Athens was finished.In three decades the once paramount polis of Athens had lost a third of its population to war, disease, and famine she was bankrupt and was no longer a player in Mediterranean trade. She was now ruled by the oligarchic Spartans, and a tyrannical group of thirty Lysander loyalists who slaughtered more than five per cent of her remaining population29. The events of the last twenty-seven years, the plague, loss of tribute-bearing states, the violence wrought upon its allies, the financial burden of having to rebuild several fleets, bankruptcy, the humiliation of an enemy-occupied homeland, the Sicilian disaster, the broken down class barriers, political turmoil, and the monumental losses at sea had changed the city of Athens30. She was defeated and demoralized but was not destroyed.Population soon rebounded, arts and philosophy were restored, and trade and agriculture grew productive again. Athens had been brought to its knees by the plague and a few massive blunders, not because of superior Spartan strategic tactics and military ingenuity31. Athens was able to throw off the Spartan yoke in little over a year and reinstate democratic rule. An oligarchic Sparta was incapable of running an empire, even with Persian support. Classical Athens demonstrates a remarkable example of the resiliency of democracy.But, if Athens had not been so determined to spread democracy and to extend their empire throughout the Aegean, the thirty year long battle and its irreparable damage to classical Greek civilization may have be en avoided entirely. Lessons to be learned from the Athenian empire are glaringly apparent in todays world of superpowers run by corporations where present-day governments, in a quest for secure oil reserves, again wage war under the guise of sp course session democracy. The economic and political costs of the war in Iraq have been devastating to America and her allies. America finds herself increasingly weakened and single out from the rest of the world.Any claims the United States may have had to moral superiority have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of civilians are being slaughtered in the chaos that the war has created. Iraqs infrastructure has been destroyed and the economy devastated. Much of the population has been reduced to poverty. It is imperative that democracy consider human rights before the interests of the state. The deplorable impact upon the populace by Athens attempts to spread democracy throughout ancient Greece are being echoed today in Americas attempts to impose democracy in the Middle East. The war is undermining and making unpalatable democracy itself. And, like ancient Athens, America risks finding its seemingly infinite power and prosperity irrevocably damaged. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.32ReferencesBagnall, Nigel2004 The Peloponnesian War Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Greece. New York Thomas Dunne Books. Detailed book on the Peloponnesian War, although rather dry. It did however provide a great description of the events leading up to the war and what events may have perpetrated it. It also had good maps, a list of the main players in the war, and a historical survey, which listed all the city-states involved and how they contributed to the outcome of the war.Hanson, master key Davis2005 A War Like No Other. New York Random House A very entertaining and accurate book on the Peloponnesian War. Hanson does not write like an historian, he writes as thought he is telling a story. This made t he book enjoyable to read, but I did find it lacked continuity. He explained major themes of the war but had to jump around between events to do so. I often got confused as to which part of the war I was reading about.Hornblower, Simon2002 The Greek World 479-323 BCE. London Routledge. This book covers Greek history from the Persian invasion to Alexander the Great, essentially Classical Greece. There is a small discourse on the Peloponnesian War, but the majority of the school text focuses on the before and after that is how much the war changed Greece. It was an interesting read, although at parts rather technological and dry, but nonetheless informative on the causes and effects of the Peloponnesian War.Kagan, Donald2003 The Peloponnesian War. London Viking. A mammoth book on nothing but the Peloponnesian War. Kagan discusses every event in the war, taken from the writings of Thucydides and Xenophen. This makes his book very long and descriptive, but like Hanson he writes like a story-teller so his text is very engaging. Some parts (particularly the battle tactics drawn from Thucydides) are less entertaining. Nonetheless, a very clear and complete book.Morris, Ian Barry B. Powell2006 The Greeks History, Culture and Society. New tee shirt Pearson Education Inc. Survey textbook for my Classical Studies course. Just gives a chapter-long overview of the war, but is very complete in its description. The text lacks abbreviation, but it helped clarify certain events that many other authors went into far too much detail about. Overall, the book is very good it discusses every aspect of ancient Greek life.Santayana, George1906 The Life of Reason. New York Prometheus Books. I only used his book for the quote. It demonstrates how something written one hundred years ago is still applicable in todays society and justifies the importance of understanding and encyclopaedism from history.Thucydides1972 History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner. London Peng uin Books. Thucydides, being our only primary source on the Peloponnesian War (up until 407 BCE at least), writes on the war from the militaristic standpoint. His analysis varies from being dry (when he is describing the military tactics in detail) to being extremely interesting (pretty much everything else). However, there is the problem of reliability when it comes to his discussion he was not present at many of the events and speeches he writes about. Some of what he says must be taken with a grain of salt, but nothing he wrote about has been archaeologically disproved. His history is as accurate as we can ever hope to get.Notes1 Kagan, 200332 Morris Powell, 20061933 Thucydides I.234 Hanson, 2005 375 Hornblower, 20021186 Bagnall, 20041397 Thucydides, II.498 Thucydides, II.539 Hanson, 20057910 Thucydides, III.8711 Hanson, 20057912 Hanson, 200526413 Kagan, 2003 4, 814 Hanson, 2005 14415 Hornblower, 200219216 Hanson, 200514517 Hornblower, 200216018 Thucydides, V.2619 Hornblower, 20 0216120 Thucydides, VI.121 Hanson, 200520322 Hanson, 2005 20623 Morris Powell, 2006 35124 Thucydides, VII.8725 Morris Powell, 200635426 Morris Powell, 200635827 Morris Powell, 200635828 Kagan, 200348129 Hanson, 200529030 Hanson, 2005 29331 Hanson, 200530932 Santayana, 1906248.