Chapter FourAncient Greece

1750 B.C. - 133 B.C.

Section Three

Conflict in the Greek World

By the Fifth century B.C., the Persians conquered a huge empire stretching from Asia Minor to the border of India.

This is a map of the Persian Empire around

the time of Darius the Great and

Xerxes.

The Persians had conquered the Greek city-states of Ionia in Asia Minor.

The Ionians resented their situation. In

499 B.C., Ionian Greeks rebelled

against Persian rule. Athens sent ships to

help them.

The Persians soon crushed the rebel Ionian city-states.

This maps shows the key sites of the Persian Wars. The blue line

indicated at left shows the first invasion - and

how little time and effort it took for the

Persians to defeat the Ionians.

This little blue line - that’s all there is.

Darius I was furious at Athens for its role in the uprising.

This is a view of the ancient Persian city of Persepolis, a

palace complex in

Iran founded by Darius I around 515

B.C.

Iran is the modern name

for Persia.

At left is a sketch of an image of Darius I on a vase found in 1851 in

Canossa, Italy. The sketch is an illustration from Monuments of

Classical Alterums, Volume I, 1885.

Darias I ruled Persia when the empire

was at its peak. He is often called

Darius the Great.

This is Darius I from a relief in Persepolis, the ancient Persian

capital.

These are the remains of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, from about 515 B.C.

Darius’ tomb can be seen

in the background

at center.

The conflict that began in Ionia in 499 B.C. is known as the first of the Greek’s three Persian Wars.

The Ionian Revolt(499 to 493 B.C.)

The Second Persian War(492 to 490 B.C.)

The Third Persian War(480 to 479 B.C.)

The Second Persian War began in 492 B.C.

The Athenians asked for help from neighboring Greek city-states, but

received little support.

In 490 B.C. the Persians attacked at Marathon. The location is marked

in red on the map at right.

The Persians greatly outnumbered Athenians.

The second Persian War was meant to be Athens’ punishment.

Athenian foot soldiers ran toward the Persians.

Darius’ archers responded with a rain of arrows, but

the Greeks rushed onward. The armies engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat, then

the Persians retreated to their ships.

These are Persian archers shown in a glazed brick frieze in Darius’ palace in

Susa, Iran from about 510 BC.

This is the mound

where the Athenians

buried their dead after the battle of

Marathon.

Pheidippides is supposed to have run, without stopping, from Marathon to Athens.

Upon arriving, he announced his news

with one word, “victory,” then, his

mission complete, he collapsed and died.

This is Pheidippides Giving Word of Victory after the Battle of Marathon by Luc-Olivier Merson, 1869.

A modern marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards. Marathon is about twenty-five miles southeast of Athens.

The legend of Pheidippides was honored at the first modern Olympic Games that were held in Greece in

1896. That first modern marathon was 40,000 meters (or 24.85 miles) long. At the 1908 Olympic Games in London the marathon distance was changed to 26.2

miles. The extra two miles were added so that the race could finish in front of royal family’s viewing box.

Pietri was initially declared the winner, but later, after other competitors protested that he was assisted during the race, he was disqualified.

This is a photograph

of the arrival of Dorando Pietri of

Italy at the finish of the 1908 Olympics

marathon.

The Athenian leader Themistocles knew that success at Marathon would not end the Persian Wars.

Themistocles convinced Athenians

to build a fleet of warships and

prepare themselves for another attack.

This is Crossing the Hellespont by Xerxes, an illustration for an 1896 text entitled The Story of the Greeks.

Darius died while preparing an army for the Third Persian War.

He left the task of punishing Athens to his son.

In 480 B.C., Darius’ son, Xerxes, sent another, much larger force to conquer Greece.

This is a rock relief of Xerxes from Persepolis.

This time Athens persuaded Sparta and other city-states to join the fight against the Persians.

The Third Persian war began in 480 B.C. when the Persians landed in northern Greece. They

were met by a small Spartan force guarding the narrow mountain pass at Thermopylae.

The Spartans held out heroically against the enormous Persian force,

but were defeated in the end.This is a view of the Thermopylae pass.

This is Jacques-Louis

David’s Leonidas at

Thermopylae from 1814.

The Battle of Thermopylae gave the

Athenians time to empty their city and withdraw to safety.

The Persians marched south and burned Athens.

This image from a Fifth century B.C. Greek drinking cup shows a Greek hoplite (citizen-soldier) and a

Persian warrior fighting.

The Greeks now put their faith in the fleet of ships that Themistocles had urged them to build.

This is a copy of a stone relief from a graffito found at the House of Dionysos on Delos Island in the early 1930s. It

shows an ancient Greek warship and its crew. The original stone

relief has since badly deteriorated.

Ancient Greek warships, called triremes, were

powered by rowers and equipped with

underwater battering rams.

This is the Olympias, a reconstruction of an ancient Greek trireme. Notice that its wooden ram is reinforced with bronze. When tested with an inexperienced crew it made a 180° turn in

less than one minute. The Persian ships could not match the trireme’s maneuverability.

These are Athenian soldiers preparing to fight the Persians as portrayed in

2014’s 300: Rise of an Empire.

His fleet in place, Themistocles tempted the enormous Persian navy to fight at Salamis.

The Persians

sailed into the Straits

of Salamis.

In the cramped conditions of the Straits of Salamis the great Persian ships struggled to maneuver and became disorganized. The Greeks destroyed the Persian fleet Xerxes retreated with his army.

The Battle of Salamis, by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1868), shows the aftermath of the Persian’s defeat.

On the shore, Xerxes watched as his mighty fleet sank.

The Greek city-states saved themselves from

the Persian threat.

The next year, the Greeks defeated the Persians on land in

Asia Minor. This victory marked the end of the Persian

Wars.

This is Burial of Themistocles’ Ashes, by Giuseppe Bossi from about 1809.

Themistocles’ foresight had saved Athens.

Too proud, years later his boasting got

him exiled. He went to Persia and became an advisor to

the king.

Themistocles’ foresight saved Athens

He died in Ionia in 459 B.C.

Athens emerged from the war as the most powerful

city-state in Greece. Athens created an alliance with other

Greek city-states. Modern scholars call this alliance the

Delian League after Delos, the location where the

league held meetings. From the start, Athens dominated

the Delian League.Athens (in red above) and the other city-states of the Delian League (in yellow above) joined

forces to defend against future Persian invasions. Notice that Sparta is not a member.

Delos

Sparta

The most important long-term contributions of ancient Greek civilization are primarily found

in the area of government and law.

The architectural style in

Washington, D.C. is neoclassical,

meaning that it is inspired by

ancient Greek and Roman

architecture.

These styles use tall columns, symmetrical shapes, and triangular

pediments, like those seen in the Supreme Court Building at left.

The Hall of Columns is a dramatic, high-ceilinged corridor over 100 feet long. It runs along the North-South axis of the first floor of the House wing in the U.S. Capitol, directly beneath the Hall of the

House of Representatives. These columns, like to columns at the front of the Supreme Court Building, are of the Corinthian style.

The architecture of the nation’s capital

expresses the influence of

classical Greek and Roman political

ideals on our government.

There are three main columns in Greek architecture, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.

Ionia and Corinth were Greek city-states. The term

Doric derives from the Dorian invaders who built the city-

state of Sparta.

These are the Doric columns of the crypt in the U.S. Capitol Building.

These sandstone columns support

the arches that hold up the floor of the Rotunda above.

These ionic columns

belong to the Rayburn

House Office Building.

Our Congressman, Andre Carson, has his office in room 2453 of this building.

These are Corinthian columns in the Library of Congress’ main reading room in Washington, D.C.

The White House and the

Lincoln Memorial are also examples

of classical architecture in Washington,

D.C.

In Indianapolis, the Central

Library’s columns are

Doric.

The Indiana War

Memorial’s columns are

ionic.

The memorial is based upon the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, a tomb built by Greek architects in

the Fourth century B.C.

These columns

inside the Indiana

Statehouse are in the Corinthian

style.

The years after the Persian Wars, from 460 B.C. to 429 B.C., were a golden age for Athens.

Under the leadership of Pericles, Athens was a direct

democracy. In a direct democracy, all citizens vote

on all laws.

This is Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to Pericles, Aspasia, Alcibiades and Friends, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, from 1868.

We have a representative (or indirect) democracy. We vote to elect others who vote on legislation because they represent us.

Citizens took part directly

in the day-to-day affairs of government.

Today, the citizens in most democratic

countries participate in government

indirectly through elected

representatives.

This is Raphael’s School of Athens. It was painted

between 1509 and 1511 to decorate a room in the Apostolic Palace in the

Vatican. Nearly every great ancient Greek philosopher

can be found in the painting.

By the time of Pericles, the Athenian assembly met several times a month. A Council of Five Hundred,

selected by lot, conducted daily government business.

Pericles believed that

all citizens, regardless of

wealth or social class, should take

part in government.

The setting suggests the open exchange of ideas that occurs in a democracy. Socrates, Plato, and

Aristotle are numbers 12, 14, and 15, respectively.

Athens paid a salary to men who participated in

the government, enabling poor men to serve.

Many Greeks outside of Athens resented Athenian domination. Before long, the Greek

world was split into rival camps.

This is Spartan Woman Giving a Shield to Her Son by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier (1805). In the folklore of Sparta, when a son left

home for the armed forces, his mother said: “Fight well and fairly. Return with your shield - or on it.”

The Peloponnesian

League (Sparta) is in

yellow and the Delian League (Athens) is in orange on the

map at left.

To counter the Delian League, Sparta and other enemies of Athens formed the Peloponnesian League.

In 431 B.C., warfare broke out between

Athens and Sparta. This conflict, which became

known as the Peloponnesian War, soon

engulfed all of Greece. The fighting lasted for twenty-seven years.

This is Plague in an Ancient City by Michael Sweerts from about 1652.

When Sparta’s powerful army came

near to Athens, Pericles allowed people from the

countryside to move inside the city walls.

The overcrowded conditions led to a terrible plague that

killed many Athenians, including

Pericles himself.

Finally, in 404 B.C., with the help of the Persian navy, the Spartans

captured Athens.

As the war dragged on, each side committed savage acts

against the other. Sparta even allied itself with Persia, the

longtime enemy of the Greeks.

This vase was created by the Spartan artist known as the Rider Painter in the Sixth century B.C.

The victors stripped Athens of its empire.

The Peloponnesian War ended Athenian domination

of the Greek world.

Athens remained the cultural center of Greece. However, its

spirit and vitality declined.

This is Aristotle Tutoring Alexander, by Jean Leon

Gerome Ferris from 1895.

While the Greeks battled among themselves, a new power rose in Macedonia, a kingdom

to the north of Greece.

By 359 B.C., its ambitious ruler stood poised to

conquer the quarrelsome Greek city-

states.

and now…

some more final exam questions…

Which civilizations were organized into city-states?

a) Ancient Greece and Mayans

b) Rome and Egypt

c) Phoenicia and India

d) Ancient China and Ghana

Which civilizations were organized into city-states?

a) Ancient Greece and Mayans

b) Rome and Egypt

c) Phoenicia and India

d) Ancient China and Ghana

Important long-term contributions of Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations are primarily found

in the area of

a) government and law.

b) military technology.

c) religious doctrine.

d) economic policy.

Important long-term contributions of Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations are primarily found

in the area of

a) government and law.

b) military technology.

c) religious doctrine.

d) economic policy.