Classical Civilizations: Mediterranean Basin 2 WH011 Activity Introduction Hey there, it s (Jack). Today we re talkin about two Greek city-states: Athens and Sparta. To help out with this, I ve got some different activities up my sleeve. Let s get started! Reading Passage Introduction First, you ve got to understand some stuff about Athens and Sparta. After the Persian War, they became the top dogs of the Greek world. However, they were pretty different, especially in terms of ideology. What I mean is that Athens and Sparta had different value systems and ideas. In general, they had different beliefs about how people should live and be governed. Not sure what I mean? Well, check out this reading passage. It s going to give you a helpful comparison between Athens and Sparta, which will allow you to understand very important developments which occurred after the Persian Wars in Classical Greece. Video 1 Hey there, (actor name) here. Today we re looking at one of the most interesting struggles in Greek history, the Peloponnesian War. It s full of dynamic leaders, bold military tactics, and two opposing ideologies struggling for dominance. The Peloponnesian War was also very different from the Persian Wars. You might
remember, the Persian Wars involved many of the Greek city-states unifying to fight off the Persian invasion. Well, the Peloponnesian War was more like a civil war, when one faction of a country fights another faction from that same country. But it s also good to remember that at this time Greece wasn t what we think of today as a country or a nation. It was a collection of loosely tied-together city-states. Now during the Persian Wars, Athens and Sparta emerged as the leading Greek citystates or superpowers, if you will. But they were very different from one another. Athens was wealthy and worldly, and quite proud of its democratic society. Sparta, on the other hand, was plain and isolated, and equally proud of its strong militaristic society. Even though they joined forces to fight the Persians, they always remained very suspicious of each other. And this suspicion would lead to that s right, the Peloponnesian War. When Athens proposed that the Greeks go on the offensive and force the Persians out of the Aegean Sea, Sparta wanted nothing to do with this ambitious plan. So Athens gathered support from other Greek city-states and formed the Delian League in four-seventy-seven B.C.E. To be a member of the league, you gave soldiers and money to Athens to push the Persians out of the Aegean. By four-seventy B.C.E., they had removed much of the Persian threat. After the threat was removed, some of the city-states wanted to leave the Delian League. However, Athens refused to let them
and continued to demand money from them for protection money that the Athenians would also use to beautify their own city-state. Seriously, that Parthenon didn t pay for itself. Around this time Athens also began to expand on the Greek mainland, conquering other city-states. These developments made Sparta and its allied city-states, who were also known as the Peloponnesian League, very wary. They no longer saw Persia as the major threat to Greece. Instead, their biggest concern was Athens ambitions. In order to stop Athens, the Peloponnesian League went to war against the Delian League. The war ended with a treaty outlining an agreement to a thirty-year peace between Sparta and Athens in which Athens would give up the territory it conquered on the Greek mainland in exchange for Sparta s recognition of Athens naval superiority. Despite the treaty, the city-state of Corinth, a member of the Peloponnesian League, and Athens began to have issues with one another when two of their colonies went to war in four-thirty-three B.C.E. So Corinth and Athens engaged in a naval battle. As a result, Sparta came to the aid of its ally Corinth, sparking the Peloponnesian War. Video 2 Ok, when the Spartans attacked Athens, Pericles, the Athenian leader, was ready. You see, prior to the invasion, Pericles commissioned a large wall that was built around the city to keep out invaders for just such an occasion. The walls deflected the siege, and the Athenian fleet blocked Spartan supply lines from reaching Athens. Despite this success, there were some serious problems with Pericles plan. First, it kept Athens on the defensive and didn t do enough to completely fight off Sparta. Also,
it forced all the people of Athens to live inside the city walls. Pericles didn t anticipate the unsanitary conditions this would create. Within two years, Athens suffered from an outbreak of the plague. And as it turned out, Pericles plan would be his own undoing when he, too, contracted the plague and died. After the death of Pericles, Athens began to fall apart as serious tensions arose between the aristocrats and the democrats. Around this time, a democrat named Cleon led Athens. He believed Athens had to go on the offensive, and he initiated an attack on Sparta. He thought this would incite a slave revolt in Sparta. So, in four-twenty-five B.C.E., Cleon led the attack. But Athenian success was fleeting, and the death of Cleon in four-twenty-two dealt Athens a serious blow. After Cleon s failed expedition, an Athenian leader named Nicias negotiated a truce with Sparta. However, the truce only lasted seven years. What destroyed the truce? Well, when a charismatic and manipulative young man named Alcibiades became the leader of Athens, he sided with the pro-war faction of democrats against Nicias and began heading up a renewed war effort. Soon Alcibiades designed a brilliant plan for a rather daring expedition. But the night before the expedition, sacred statues in Athens were vandalized, and Alcibiades and his friends were believed to be responsible. Alcibiades was arrested for sacrilege, but he escaped and fled to Sparta, where he gave the Spartans all the details of the expedition. In the end, the expedition was a complete and utter failure. It resulted in the deaths of many Athenians and drained the city of its monetary resources. The war continued for
several more years and, in their desperation, Athenians even welcomed Alcibiades back to lead the city. Eventually, though, Athens surrendered to Sparta. The Spartans restored the Athenian aristocrats to power and outlawed democracy. From this point on, Athens was a shadow of its once-glorious self.