29 Greco-Persian War.

Greco-Persian War..

To 500 BCE the empire of the Persian Achaemenid Dynasty extended to all of Asia Minor, into Thrace and Chalidice. Imperial Persia was generally tolerant of local customs and provided its conquered peoples protection from attacks from wandering warrior tribes. It offered its subjects peace and a stable coinage. But in 499, a desire for self-rule among the Greeks of Asia Minor helped fuel a rebellion against the Persians.

Athens and the city of Eretria (about thirty miles north of Athens), supported the uprising. By 494 the Persians crushed the rebellion, destroying the great city of Miletus, sacking and burning other towns and taking select Greek boys and girls back to Persia. Then, believing that his god-given right to rule should not have been challenged, Persia's King of Kings, Darius the Great, set out to punish Athens and others who had supported the uprising. Darius hoped to extend his rule down the Greek peninsula, and many Greeks opposed to democracy including some Athenians favored submission to the Persians. They saw Persia as a champion of authoritarian rule and expected that Persian rule would include freedom of worship and allow local self-government as it had in Asia Minor.

Those who supported democracy favored resisting the Persians. So too did many Greeks who made their living in industry and trade, fearing that the Persians would give trading favors to rivals such as the Phoenicians – who were subjects of Darius. And the Spartans feared the Persians, believing that if the Persians came to the Greek mainland they would try to eliminate them as a military power.

In the year 490, the Persian fleet sailed across the Aegean Sea and landed a force of many thousand soldiers at Marathon Bay, twenty-six miles by road north of Athens. With the Persians was Hippias, former ruler of Athens, son of Pisistratus, who expected the Persians to return him to power in Athens. The Athenians responded to the threat from Persia by sending troops to Marathon, and it sent a fast runner to Sparta with the news of the Persian landing. Sparta announced that it would join Athens against the Persians. But remaining faithful to their gods, the Spartans waited for the passing of a full moon, and the Athenians had to confront the Persians without them.

Historians write of the heroism among the Greeks during the Persian war. Greeks far and wide, including the Athenians, were inspired by their victory over the great Persian Empire, and they held a religious festival at Delphi as thanksgiving to the gods for the victory at Marathon. And there the oracle of Apollo praised Athens as an eagle "for all time."

Soon it was said that the god Pan had given the Athenians their victory by his causing panic among the Persians. It was said that Pan had done so after having seen a slack in devotion to him among the Athenians and that by giving them victory he was trying to regain their devotion.

But declaring victory was premature. The Greeks had driven off the Persians, but the Persians remained a formidable power. After Darius died in 486, his son and successor, Xerxes, intended to carry out his father's plan to invade the Greek mainland again. Xerxes failed to appreciate adequately the costs that would be incurred by such an expansion or the burdens of maintaining an empire that would be farther reaching. He had trouble enough with the empire as it was. But Xerxes believed in the power of his god, Mazda.

Athens, Sparta and some other Greek city-states expected the return of the Persians. And they did as many others had done before them: they set aside their differences and formed a military alliance. Their alliance was called the Hellenic League and was led by Sparta, still seen as the greatest land-based military power among them. Member cities sent representatives to league congresses, the first of which was held in 481. This congress ended the small wars that were taking place among member cities. And at these congresses, oaths were taken that were supposed to bind the city-states to each other permanently.

Xerxes assembled the greatest military force ever, and in the year 480 he launched his invasion, marching his armies along the coast of Macedonia and down into Greece, while keeping these armies supplied by his navy. Sparta and Thebes sent armies to meet the invaders at Thermopylae, about 20 miles north of Delphi and eighty-five miles northwest of Athens. There they held the Persians at a narrow pass while the league's navy, mostly Athenian, engaged Persian naval forces offshore. The Greek writer Herodotus described the storm that wrecked much of the Persian fleet as an intervention by Zeus, but, inexplicably, Zeus appeared uninterested in helping the Greek cause on land. A traitor among the Greeks showed the Persian foot soldiers a way around the pass at Thermopylae, and the Persians attacked the Greeks from behind. The Thebans surrendered while the Spartans fought and died to the last man. The main force of Persians swarmed through the pass toward Athens. Persia's army overran Attica and Athens, while Athenians fled to the islands ofSalamis, near their port, and Aegina, tens miles to the southwest.

The Athenian navy placed itself between Xerxes' force and the Athenian refugees on the island of Salamis, and it rallied support from numerous coastal Greek cities. Near Salamis, the Athenian navy and its allies won a great naval battle, destroying the Persian fleet – the waters said to be covered with Persian wreckage and blood. With much of the Persian army dependent on ships for supplies, the Persians were forced to march out of Greece and back to Asia Minor. Xerxes had failed. But peace was not declared, and Persia and the Greeks remained at war.

THE GRECO-PERSIAN WARS

Ionia and the Ionian rebellion: 545-494 BC

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When the Persians annexe Ionia in about 545, acquiring a foothold on the Aegean, the strongest city state in mainland Greece isSparta. None of the Greek states risk an armed excursion in defence of the Ionians, but the Spartans do send a message to the Persian emperor,Cyrus, warning him to keep away from Greece. His reply, as reported, suggests genuine bewilderment. 'Who are the Spartans?', he asks.

Far from keeping away, an expedition of 514 approaches alarmingly close to Greece from the north, conquering Thrace and Macedonia to bring the northern coast of the Aegean under Persian control. But it is on the coast ofAnatolia that the crisis intensifies.

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In 499 BC the cities of Ioniarebel against their Persian satrap. They are supported to a limited extent by Athens. The rebellion continues fitfully until finally put down in 493. But this region is now established as an area of friction between Persia and Greece. Geographically Ionia seems a natural extension of Persia's great land empire. But culturally the Ionians are linked to all the other Greek-speaking peoples round the Aegean Sea.

Athens becomes the main target of the Persian emperor's hostility - partly because of her support for the Ionian rebels, but also because the tyrant Hippias, expelled from Athens, is at the Persian court offering treacherous encouragement. In 490 Darius launches his attack.
 
A Persian fleet sails along the southern coast of Anatolia. According to Herodotus, it numbers 600 ships. The horses of the famous Persian cavalry are in transport vessels; the troops are carried intriremes.

From Ionia this armada sets a course straight across the Aegean, pausing only at Naxos and other islands to take hostages and press recruits into the army. The destination is Marathon, a plain to the north of Athens on which the cavalry will have room to manoeuvre. The army lands on the island of Euboea, conquers the small city of Eretria, makes the short crossing to the mainland at Marathon, and waits.







Marathon: 490 BC

In Athens the decision is taken to send an army to confront the Persians, rather than concentrate on defence of the city. A runner, whom Herodotus names as Pheidippides, is sent to seek help from Sparta. He completes the journey of about 150 miles (240 km) in two days. The Spartans agree to cooperate. But a religious ceremony prevents them from setting off until the next full moon, in six days' time.

At Marathon 10,000 Greekhoplites confront perhaps 25,000 Persians. The Persians wait for the Greeks to attack across the plain, exposing themselves to the cavalry. The Greeks creep forward, night after night, with a ruse to frustrate the Persian horsemen.


They fell trees to create a barricade against the cavalry, and they move them gradually forward under cover of darkness. The plain has been considerably reduced in this way, when word comes one night that the Persian cavalry has moved temporarily elsewhere (the reason is unknown).

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During their war against Persia, a spirit of unity and brotherhood had arisen among those Greek cities opposed to the Persians, a unity served by their common language, common customs and common religious beliefs. But the spirit of unity didn't last.

A difference arose between Sparta and Athens over the question of continuing their war against Persia. The Athenians were interested in trade with the Greek cities still ruled by Persia, and they wanted to liberate their fellow Greeks from Persian rule. The Spartans were concerned about the many men they had already lost in battle, and they feared that their Helot slaves might take advantage of military losses and rise against them. Sparta and its allies on the Peloponnese peninsula withdrew from the war, leaving Athens as the most influential among those cities continuing the war. Athens created a new league of states – a voluntary association called the Delian League. (Its representatives met on the Island of Delos.) Member states agreed to donate money, ships and crewmen to the war effort and to police the Aegean Sea, and they sent representatives to assemblies where league policies and goals were to be decided.

Athens arrogated to itself the role of policeman within its alliance. According to the Athenian journalist Thucydides, the Athenians were heavy handed in pressuring allies who were "neither accustomed nor willing to undertake protracted toil." Athens forced back into its alliance a city that had broken its oath to remain in the league. It suppressed petty wars within the league and intervened in disputes within member cities, favoring those who supported democracy.

The Athenians were creating an empire. Some Athenians argued that empire was the natural order of things, that if they didn't have the strength to dominate others they would soon be dominated. Some saw empire as a remedy to over-population. Some landless Athenians favored the confiscation of lands abroad as an opportunity to become landowners. Some wealthy Athenians saw in imperialism an opportunity to gain more land. Those Athenians making money from trade supported empire believing that it would benefit them commercially. Some believed that imperialism would provide them jobs, jobs on ships that policed the seas and jobs on the docks that serviced those ships. Some supported empire also because it appeared to guarantee supplies of grain. Many Athenians saw benefit in their city receiving tribute from those city-states that Athens dominated, taxes they would otherwise have to pay.
Athens forced its rule on the island of Scyros (southeast of Attica), the Athenians claiming authority there on the grounds of a discovery in Scyros of the purported bones of a mythical king of Athens, who was said to have migrated there during the Dorian invasions. And claiming that during the Dorian invasions Athenians populated the western coast of Asia Minor, Athenian propaganda portrayed Athens as the mother of cities the Greek cities of Asia Minor. These cities, according to the Athenian imperialists, owed Athens religious homage as was customary between a mother city and its offspring. The Athenians claimed that their goddess Demeter, a goddess of harvest and fertility, had given grain to humanity and that Athens therefore was a benefactor of humanity and was justified in ruling others.
Rather than any kind of a unity or sense of equality among the Greek city-states, a great wars was in the making that would destroy many and damage them all. This was the Great Peloponnesian War, from 431 to 404 BCE.

On-again, off-again little wars among the Greeks continued, with Athens fighting to maintain its power and status. Athens intervened in disputes to its north, in Boeotia, where bad governing by democrats had brought rebellion and the return of oligarchs to power. A Boeotian force defeated an Athenian force of a thousand Athenian volunteers, led by men who had mistakenly believed that their small force could subdue the rebellion.

More trouble arose for Athens. In 446, cities on the peninsula-like island of Euboea, to the east of Athens, joined the revolt against Athenian domination. The Athenian leader Pericles was worried about the example that rebellion would set for others in the Athenian empire, and he sent an army and navy to Euboea to crush the rebellion. This inspired still more trouble as the city of Megara, a little northeast of Athens, disliked what it saw as Athenian bullying and joined the anti-Athens rebellion. Pericles withdrew from Euboea to fight Megara. An army from the Peloponnesian League, under a Spartan king, Pleistoanax, responded by invading Attica, but after laying waste to some countryside it withdrew.

Pericles and an army of five thousand infantrymen supported by fifty ships returned to Euboea and subdued the entire island. Athens expelled the inhabitants of Histiaea, in the north of the island, and it sent settlers in their place. But trouble for Athens continued, which Athen met with some success. In 441, Samos, off the coast of Asia Minor, tried to secede from the so-called Athenian alliance. Samos appealed for help from Sparta and the Persians. Sparta remained passive and Persia remained fearful of the Athenian navy. By 339 the Athenian navy was able to blockade Samos and starve it into submission. Samos surrendered its navy. Its defensive walls were torn down. It was forced to pay Athens reparations with money and land. And its oligarchs were exiled and replaced by democrats

Next came a conflict between Corinth and its colony at Corcyra, an island and city off the northwestern coast of Greece. Corcyra was challenging Corinth's trade monopoly in northwestern Greece and was hampering Corinth's trade with Sicily and southern Italy. In 435 the navies of Corinth and Corcyra battled each other near Corcyra. Corinth lost fifteen ships and some prisoners to Corcyra. Corcyra sold some of the Corinthians into slavery, and Corinth began organizing a bigger attack against Corcyra. To protect itself, Corcyra appealed to Athens and Athens became involved: it accepted Corcyra as an ally. The Corinthians again sailed for Corcyra, with a larger force than before, but victory was snatched from them as the great Athenian fleet appeared. Hatred for Athens among the Corinthians rose to a new high, and the Great Peloponnesian War was a bit closer.
Cities in Chalcidice disliked the extension of Athenian power into their area, and they were ready to support Corinth against Athens. Athens saw revolt coming in one of its subject-ally cities in Chalcidice – Potidaea – and, to prevent the spread of revolt, Athens demanded that Potidaea dismantle its defensive walls and give to Athens some Potidaeans as hostages. Instead, Potidaea sought support from Corinth and the Peloponnesian League. Corinth joined Potidaea and some cities in Chalcidice and Boeotia joined the revolt against Athens. All of Sparta's allies that had grievances against Athens were aroused. Corinth appealed to Sparta, suggesting that if Sparta would not fight for its allies then its allies would seek leadership elsewhere. A meeting of the Peloponnesian League was called, and Sparta sent someone to consult with Apollo at Delphi. The Great War was closer still.
The city of Thebes desired a solid front against Athens, and it sent a delegation and a small force to its neighboring city:Plataea. Violence ensued. Many Plataeans fled to Athens for safety, and Athens sent troops to Plataea. To the enemies of Athens, events at Plataea were a signal for war. Sparta, meanwhile, was encouraged by the Oracle at Delphi, who stated that Apollo was on its side, that if Sparta made war with all its might it would win.
The year was 431 BCE, described by some as the end of Greece's Golden Age. Sparta and its allies invaded Attica, announcing that they were fighting against Athenian imperialism for their independence and for the liberty of Greeks.