A History of Greece from the Persian to the Peloponnesian War
Contents:
One sophist, the most famous, Protagoras , went so far as to say, "Man is the measure of all things.
The challenge presented by these sophists was met by perhaps the greatest team of thinkers in human history, Socrates and Plato. This teacher-and-student duo led the charge to set morality back on a firm foundation of strict philosophical argumentation and to counter the relativism of the sophistic movement.
All cynics and sceptics since have had to face up to the dialogues of Socrates in which, as recorded by his student Plato, the master attacks various free-thinkers and debunks their wide-ranging claims that moral absolutes do not exist. It is still not clear which side won, but with this pair, staunch moralists gained a valuable and much-needed ally in the long on-going war between idealism and practicality, conviction and compromise, what ought to be versus what has to be.
The glory of Athens grew top-heavy by the later decades of the fifth century BCE. Made greedy by the wealth they had come to expect over time, the Athenians started expanding their realm by force. In response, Sparta initiated a war with Athens in BCE in an effort to curb the Athenians' imperialistic designs, a quest for world domination as the Spartans saw it.
A battle of words
This on-and-off conflict is now known as the Peloponnesian War —Sparta is in the Peloponnese southern Greece and we today see the war from the Athenians' perspective since their records preserve the history of this conflict—it was essentially a civil war among Greek city-states, ending with Sparta's defeat of Athens in BCE. The ultimate result was even worse. Weakened by incessant in-fighting, all southern Greece fell to a foreign power in the next century. The lesson to be learned about the consequences of a nation's failure to achieve compromise and resolve peaceably its internal disagreements is as yet not fully understood by many world leaders today: In this so-called Post-Classical Age the fourth century, i.
In Greek, barbaros means " foreign," purportedly from the nonsense syllables "bar bar" which is the way non-Greek languages sounded to the Greeks. During the first half of the fourth century, the Macedonians gradually consolidated their power in northern Greece and under the leadership of Philip II , a crafty and ruthless ruler and a general of great skill, began to extend their influence south. In BCE, Philip succeeded in defeating the combined forces of the southern Greeks—Athens, Thebes, and Sparta all fighting together for the first time since the Persian Wars well over a century before!
He would surely have become one of the best known figures in history, had he not created a son whose name and glory resound through all time, Alexander the Great. Still barely out of his teens, Alexander not only succeeded Philip as ruler of Greece but over the course of the next decade BCE went on to conquer many lands, including Asia Minor modern Turkey , Egypt, and Persia, and even made incursions into India. When he died suddenly of a mysterious ailment in BCE, he left behind a very different world.
Peloponnesian War
The period after Alexander is called the Hellenistic Age. Alexander had died without siring a legitimate heir, giving his generals carte blanche to seize and divide up his vast realm. These so-called diadochoi "successors" inaugurated three centuries of internecine conflict in the eastern Mediterranean area. Governed by one of Alexander's generals Ptolemy and a long line of his descendants, Egypt was the only of these "successor states" to thrive and enjoy any stability, and indeed a Hellenized "Greek-ified" Egypt did prosper, becoming a home-away-from-home for many post-Classical Greek authors.
The discovery there of thousands of papyri scraps of "paper" with Greek writing on them, dating to the third century BCE onward, is evidence of the large number of Greek speakers who moved into Egypt in the Hellenistic Age.
- A Winters Tale;
- Illustrated Infectious Diseases in Japan Illustrated Microbiology (Japanese Edition).
- ?
- Oh Mann!: Humoriges Trostbüchlein (German Edition).
- Queen of the Stars (The Royals of Adriel Book 1);
- Citation Information.
Thus, the Greeks' business interests continued to expand even after the Macedonian conquest, many becoming very wealthy in the course of their cosmopolitan commercial adventures. But, if well-fed and secure, they were also lost and unhappy amidst their materialistic bliss. One of the consequences of Alexander's dominion was to show what a small and insignificant place Greece actually was in the larger—the much larger!
Ironically, then, as the Greeks' monetary worth rose, their sense of self-importance declined. It grew ever harder, for instance, to believe that the Greek gods who presumably controlled the whole planet—and such an expansive domain it had proven to be! The Olympian religion, which had already suffered severe setbacks during the intellectual turmoil of the Classical Age, started to falter seriously.
While not wholly discarding their ancestors' religion, many Hellenistic Greeks joined foreign cults in a search for greater meaning and direction in life. Some put religious structures aside altogether and indulged in "philosophies," essentially cults based on logical argumentation but in reality belief systems of a sort.
Spawned in the wake of Socrates and Plato, these philosophies dictated ways of living that could be "deduced" through proper reasoning.
- A Brief History of Classical Greece, Classical Drama and Theatre.
- Xtul: an experience of The Process!
- Pure Land Haiku: The Art of Priest Issa?
The most important of these in the long run was Stoicism , a philosophy centering around the premise that the universe is essentially "good" and, therefore, suffering exists for the very purpose of building a better tomorrow. The "logical" response to this situation, the Stoics preached, is to distance oneself from any feelings of pain or remorse, to push aside emotion and understand that things will turn out for the better even if they do not seem that way at the moment.
Thus, people should focus on their duty and ignore as much as possible the pain encountered in the passage through life. Stoicism has influenced a wide range of people then and now, from Saint Paul's conception of Christianity to Gene Roddenbery's depiction of Vulcans in Star Trek.
Peloponnesian War
Eventually, the internal conflicts of these Hellenistic kingdoms spelled their doom. Yet another conqueror came along and took them down one by one. Unlike the Greeks, this new regime had avoided for a long time the fatal pitfall of internal bickering and thereby created the most powerful and long-lasting empire yet in Western Civilization. These conquerors were, of course, the Romans who began incorporating the Hellenistic Greek world into their realm around BCE.
He set the bar and set it high:. And the results, by avoiding patriotic storytelling, will perhaps seem the less enjoyable for listening. Yet if they are judged useful by any who wish to look at the plain truth about both past events and those that at some future time, in accordance to human nature, will recur in similar or comparable ways, that will suffice. His analysis of the immediate and underlying causes of the war and his insight into the considerations and motivations of those fighting it remain one of the most brilliant pieces of political history to date.
His sharp analysis of the kind of forces that stir popular sentiments and drive collective decision making still resonates in the modern world.
Nonetheless, his programmatic prediction proved right. When Thucydides set out to compose his work, the writing of warfare was already a notable tradition launched with a bang by the legendary Homer about three centuries earlier. In his epic poem Iliad , Homer related the story of the Trojan War as an epic battle involving gods and humans alike.
He was followed years later by Herodotus who gave an account of the Persian Wars, similarly rich in iconic battles and larger-than-life personalities on both sides of the conflict. With Thucydides, the writing of war took a new direction. In contrast to the wars of Homer and Herodotus, the armed conflict that concerned Thucydides was fought primarily among Greeks. Thucydides focused on offering a strong and authoritative account of the war, its causes, and behind the scenes negotiations. To this end, he largely left out the gods and religious explanations more generally — although there is still more religion in Thucydides than one may think.
Instead, he offered a deep analysis of human factors and motivations. Although Thucydides was aware that all authors exaggerate the importance of their topic, he still felt inclined to make a case for his:.
- Choose this not that for Cervical Cancer?
- Thucydides?
- Kill Them All (The Heretics Secret Book 2)?
- My war is bigger than yours.
And this war — even though men always consider the war on hand the most important while they are fighting but once they have ended it are more impressed by ancient ones — will nevertheless stand out clearly as greater than the others for anyone who examines it from the facts themselves. The reasons he gave were three-fold: What stands out throughout is the sharpness with which Thucydides reports.
Greco-Persian Wars
In contrast to Herodotus, he no longer includes alternative viewpoints and traditions but offers a strong, singular explanation of events. Yet the authorial voice Thucydides created in the History should not belie the fact that he engaged in his very own forms of make—believe. Through the speeches, in particular, Thucydides offers evaluations of events and situations in a voice other than his own.
Interspersed throughout the History, they provide a commentary on the events from the perspective of the historical actors. Yet Thucydides himself apparently saw no problem; there was no conflict between his aim to tell what really happened and his use of speeches, although he did find the subject important enough to warrant an explanation:. Insofar as these facts involve what the various participants said both before and during the actual conflict, recalling the exact words was difficult for me regarding speeches I heard myself and for my informants about speeches made elsewhere; in the way I thought each would have said what was especially required in the given situation, I have stated accordingly, with the closest possible fidelity on my part to the overall sense of what was actually said.
However, a different picture of life in Athens follows this oration: Lawlessness, disregard for custom, egotism and a general lack of order in the face of death took hold of Athens. Time and again he shows that in extreme situations, it is human nature to diverge from ideals that are otherwise firmly held. In these moments, the anthropologist and humanist in Thucydides comes to the fore.
Recent scholarship has highlighted this dimension of his work.
"The subject-matter of the ensuing history is comprised in the fifty years that intervene between the repulse of the invasion of Greece by Xerxes and the outbreak. A History of Greece from the Persian to the Peloponnesian War - Kindle edition by William Watkiss Lloyd. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device.
Even though the main focus in his History remains on warfare and the geo-political deliberations that inform it, there is more on human nature and culture in this work than one may think. And, more frequently than not, Thucydides extends his sharp analysis from politics and warfare to the human and cultural factors driving human history.
The same sharp analysis runs throughout the work. The Mytilenean Debate revolves around whether the Athenians should revoke their decision to annihilate the entire western Ionian city of Mytilene in retaliation for a revolt. Thucydides has two main speakers set out the case. Both speakers make a series of complex arguments revolving around questions of justice, fairness, good governance, and the nature of hegemonic rule. Cleon a General during the Peloponnesian War argues for harsh treatment: Diodotus his opponent , on the other hand, takes up this point and insists that a more lenient response is the superior strategy: As such, the Athenians choose to overturn the decision.
A trireme is dispatched just in time to prevent major bloodshed. However, a very different side of Athens emerges in the Melian Dialogue. Importantly, this conceit allowed both the Athenians and the Melians to present their views directly and as a collective voice.
Italy for the Italians, Italy freed from the stranger: Stylistically, the placement of this passage also serves to heighten the contrast with the description of the plague in Athens immediately following it, which graphically emphasizes the horror of human mortality, thereby conveying a powerful sense of verisimilitude:. The Annales School , which exemplifies this direction, has been viewed as extending the tradition of Herodotus. University of Chicago Press , It was a period in which diplomatic maneuvers gradually gave way to small-scale military operations as each city tried to win smaller states over to its side. This was the beginning of the Ionian Revolt , which would last until BC, progressively drawing more regions of Asia Minor into the conflict.
Should the Melians a Spartan colony be allowed to remain neutral? Or should the Athenians insist they submit and pay tribute? The Melians make a passionate plea for justice and the right to remain neutral. The Athenians counter by pointing out:.