The Olympic Games are just one of the many traditions that have its origins in Greece-Western democracy is another one of those ideals. Greece was organized into a series of city-states that governed themselves. The two most powerful and well-know of these city-states were Athens and Sparta.
Sparta was formed by the invading Dorian people. The invaders forced the people that they conquered to work for them-these people were known as helots. The helots greatly outnumbered the Spartans. This meant that the Spartans lived in constant fear of a helot uprising, so the Spartans constantly terrorized the helots to keep them in check.
The main focus of Spartan society was to create a powerful military machine. From birth the babies were inspected and those who seemed weak or deformed were abandoned and left to die. Military training was also part of the formal education. Boys were given inadequate clothing and scarce food. To keep from starving the boys had to steal, and anyone who was caught stealing was punished not for stealing, but for being inept enough to get caught.
Athens, on the other hand, developed much differently than Sparta. Athens developed into a more democratic society. Cleisthenes is called the father of Athenian democracy because it was his political reforms that lead to the birth of democracy in Athens. Ironically, though the Athenians had a more open and democratic lifestyle than the Spartans, Spartan women were given more freedom than Athenian women were given.
The Greek city-states developed for a period of time without interference from Western Asia, but that was about to change when Cyrus the Great of Persia came to power. Cyrus began conquering other nations to consolidate his empire. This large Persian Empire would eventually come into conflict with the Greeks. This would be known as the Persian Wars.
The Persian wars began with the Ionian Revolt. The Ionian Revolt was a response to Persian rule. The people were dissatisfied with the tyrants that the Persians had assigned to rule them. Darius the Great was able to crush this revolt. He then turned his attention towards Athens and Eretria because they supported the Ionian Revolt. In 490 B.C. Darius launched an invasion of Greece. Despite outnumbering the Athenians, the Persians still lost to the heavily armed Athenians at the Battle of Marathon. After this war there would be a ten year period of peace. During this period Darius would die while preparing an army to once again invade Greece. Xerxes, Darius’ son, would become the new Persian king and continued where his father left off. In 480 B.C., news began to spread that Xerxes was coming to Greece with a large army.
To advance from northern Greece into Central Greece, the Persian army had to march through Thermopylae. There King Leonidas led an army of 300 Spartans along with other Greeks into battle with a significantly lager Persian army. The Greeks managed to hold the narrow mountain pass for three days. The Greeks fought valiantly, but a Greek traitor known as Ephialtes showed the Persians another way through the mountains. Realizing that the Persian forces could not be repelled, many of the Greeks were sent home, but the Spartans and some others remained. Despite being surrounded, the Spartans and other Greeks fought until every last one of them had been killed.
This battle was a victory for the Persians in the sense that their victory would allow them to march further into Greece, but the courage that Leonidas and the Spartans displayed inspired the Greeks to continue fighting the Persians. The Persians moved into Athens. The Athenian leader Themistocles told his people to abandon the city. With Athens abandoned, the Persian army entered the city and destroyed it.
The next crucial battle between the Greeks and Persians was fought at sea. Themistocles tricked Xerxes into attacking an Athenian fleet in the Salamis strait. The narrow waters of the strait nullified the numbers advantage that the Persians had. The Battle of Salamis was a decisive victory for the Greeks and a turning point in the war against the Persians. The next year, in 479 B.C., the Greeks finally defeated the Persians at Plataea.
Although the Greeks managed to defeat the Persians, the Persian Empire still remained powerful, and they still continued to meddle in Greek affairs. The fear of a future invasion from the Persians still persisted. This led to the formation of the Delian League which was led by Athens. When Xerxes died in 465 B.C. the threat of Persian invasion ended. The Delian League continued however, and Athens became an empire.
After defeating the Persians the Athenians rebuilt their city and entered into a period of prosperity. During this time Pericles came to power. Pericles was a great general, orator, and statesman. Under Pericles Athenian democracy reached its peak. Pericles also used Athens’ leadership of the Delian League to make changes that would benefit Athens. He moved the Delian League’s treasury from Delos to Athens and he enlarged the League by making other city-states join.
Other city-states began to resent Athens’ domination. Athens’ main rival was Sparta. The Greeks had united in opposition against the Persian Empire, but now they began turning against each other. The growing tensions between Athens and Sparta led to the Peloponnesian War. Neither side really tried to avoid a war. In fact, both sides were eager to take up arms to fight each other.
The Spartans, with its stronger army, invaded Attica, the region that surrounded Athens, while Athens took advantage of its superior navy. During the war a plague broke out. Among the victims of this plague was Pericles. The Peloponnesian War went on for generations and caused a large loss of life. In 415 B.C. Athens attacked Syracuse. The attack would be a disastrous failure for Athens. As the war dragged on Athens was greatly weakened. The Spartans finally managed to block food supplies from reaching Athens and in 404 B.C. a staving and weakened Athens finally surrendered. After their defeat, Athens would be subjected to the rule of the Thirty Tyrants for a brief period of time.
With Athens defeated, Sparta attempted to dominate Greece, but they were defeated by Thebes. Thebes then tried to control Greece, but they were also unsuccessful and Greek disunity continued. The Peloponnesian War resulted in political disunity in Greece and it would lay the foundation for the rise of a Macedonian conqueror known as Alexander the Great.
In 359 B.C., Philip II of Macedonia became king. As a youth Phillip was held hostage in Thebes. During that time Philip came to admire the Greek lifestyle and the organization of Thebes’ army. Philip II wanted to be a strong king and he organized one of the strongest armies of his time to achieve his goal.
After organizing his army, Philip conquered and unified Greece. After years of fighting and disunity, Philip would finally unify Greece, only Greece would be unified under his rule. Some of the Greeks opposed Philip. Demosthenes, known as one of Athens’ greatest public speakers, led the opposition to Philip. This opposition would prove to be unsuccessful however, as Philip managed to conquer the Greek city-states one by one. During the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C., Philip defeated Athens and Thebes, thus becoming the master of Greece. Phillip then began organizing the city-states for an invasion of the Persian Empire, but those plans would never take off. In 336 B.C., Philip was assassinated at his daughter’s wedding.
After Philip’s assassination, his son would come to power. That son was the famous conqueror known as Alexander the Great. Alexander and Philip rarely agreed and they argued often, but that didn’t stop Philip from ensuring his son got the best training and education available. Alexander received his military training in the Macedonian army and he received his education from the Greek philosopher Aristotle.
Alexander proved to be a more capable military commander than his father. He began his campaign to dominate the world by crushing rebellions in Greek city-states and then declaring himself master of Greece. By 331 B.C. he had conquered Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Alexander then set his eyes on conquering India, but he was forced to turn back because his exhausted troops were growing tired of the constant fighting. Over the course of Alexander’s military campaigns he never lost a single battle.
In 323 B.C. Alexander became ill in Babylon and died. After Alexander’s death his family was murdered and his empire was broken up and divided. Alexander’s goal was to conquer the entire world, and although he never achieved this, he did leave behind a legacy that influenced Western civilization. Alexander spread Hellenistic culture to the areas that he conquered. The Nile Valley and Western Asia were introduced to Greek culture for the first time. Greek culture also laid the basis for the rise of Rome, Europe’s next great empire.
