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.
The Hellenistic Age (323–31 BC)
Shortly after his death Alexander's empire was divided among his leading generals. Alexander's mother Olympia was murdered in 316 BC. His wife Roxana, daughter of a Bactrian chief, and their son were both killed in 310 BC. Roxana had previously killed two of Alexander's other wives fearing they were a threat to her and her son. After dividing the administration of the empire among them, the generals fought one another until 281 BC, when three successor kingdoms were recognized. The Antigonids ruled Macedonia; the Seleucids ruled Asia Minor and Mesopotamia; the Ptolemies ruled Egypt.
During the Hellenistic Age, following the death of Alexander the Great, the independent city‐state that characterized the Hellenic Age was replaced by a cosmopolitan world of kingdoms and empires, all of which were permeated by Greek culture. Koine, a form of Greek, became the lingua franca throughout most of the Mediterranean world. Alexandria in Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great, became the economic and cultural center of the Mediterranean world. There, Hebrew scholars translated the Old Testament into Greek and began studying Greek philosophy. Historians began to write universal or world histories. The spread of Greek culture from the eastern Mediterranean to the Indus River was one of the great legacies of Hellenization. But this Hellenization remained only a thin veneer limited largely to the urban centers. Outside the cities, in the countryside, there was not even a veneer. There, the old ways remained dominate and the “world” did not extend beyond the immediate experience.
Greek Society
For the sake of brevity, and because we know more about Athens than the other city‐states, we will consider Greek society during the classical period as it existed in Athens. The population of Athens and other city‐states, except Sparta, consisted of three classes: citizens, resident foreigners (metics), and slaves. Only free adult men were citizens allowed to participate in governing the city‐state. Beginning in 451 BC, only male children of parents who were both Athenians were granted citizenship. Resident foreigners, who were often traders and craftsmen, were not citizens. Freed slaves were included in the metics.
Women in Greek Society
Women were Athenians, but little else. Athens was a men's only club. Girls in their mid‐teens normally married men in their early thirties. The marriage was arranged by the girl's male guardian. Often the bride did not meet her chosen husband until the wedding day. Once married, her life was largely restricted to the women's quarters. She did not go out in public unless accompanied by a male. Men did the shopping, not women. Wives did not dine with their husbands. They could not act in plays, and if they attended a play, they were required to sit
