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Chapter 3: Classical and Hellenistic Greece, 500-100 B.C.E. |
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The classical age of Greece began and ended with victories over the Persian Empire. The first was the unexpected triumph of the independent poleis over the might of Darius I. The Greek success fueled the development of Greek culture independent of the East. The second victory was even more stunning. Under the leadership of Alexander of Macedonia, Greek culture conquered the Eastern empires and beyond.
Greeks identified with their polei rather than with Greece as a whole. Lacking a sense of national identity the Greeks remained deeply divided as they faced the Persian invasion in 490 B.C.E.
Darius I planned the first Persian attack on the Greek mainland as a means of punishing the Athenians for their aid to the subject city-states of Asia Minor. Without any sense of national unity, the Greek poleis were not united in their opposition to the Persian invader.
Athens stood virtually alone against the assault in 490 B.C.E. Despite the odds, the Athenians under the command of Miltiades won a great victory on the plains of Marathon. In the aftermath of the victory, Athenians became convinced of the invincibility of their arms, the superiority of their culture, and the efficiency of democratic government. Further democratic reforms were instituted. Ostracism permitted the exile by popular vote of any citizen deemed likely to become too powerful. At the same time, the manner of election to almost all public office was changed to selection by lot.
The second Persian invasion of the Greek mainland came nearly ten years after the first. The Emperor Xerxes mounted a land and sea assault on the Greek poleis. Although the Greek city-states were still not united, Sparta, Athens, and some others were able to construct an alliance to fend off the invasion. The Spartans sought to delay the Persian army’s advance at the mountain pass at Thermopylae. King Leonidas and his three hundred equals succeeded in gaining valuable time, but paid for their success with their lives. The Persian army and navy then descended on Athens. Under the leadership of the Athenian general Themistocles the Athenian navy won a great victory over the Persian fleet in the straits between the island of Salamis and the mainland. The allied army, fighting under the command of the Spartan general Pausanias won a land engagement at Plataea. The combined successes of Athens’ fleet and the Spartan army forced the Persians to withdraw in defeat.
Sparta was too preoccupied with its internal political affairs to follow up on the victory over the Persians. In contrast, the Athenians began to extend their authority over other city-states on the mainland and in the Aegean. The stated purpose for the extension of Athenian power was the continued war against the Persians. In 478 B.C.E. the Athenians assumed leadership of the Delian League, an alliance of poleis to carry on a naval war to free the Aegean and Asia Minor from Persian influence. Members of the league contributed ships or money to the treasury originally kept on the island of Delos. Over time the league, which had begun as an alliance of equals, was converted to an Athenian empire. Monies originally intended to serve all members were transferred into the public treasury of Athens. Athens controlled the subject city-states militarily. Those who sought to withdraw from the empire were resolutely crushed, and their whole populations were transported or sold into slavery.
Athens was enriched by the contributions of its subject city-states. At its height its population reached about 350,000 people, only 60,000 of which were citizens. At the bottom of Athenian society were slaves, perhaps one-fourth of the total population. As in all societies, slaves were regarded as the property of their owners, but treatment of slaves varied. Generally speaking, rural slaves and those who labored in the mines were less well off. On rare occasions, slaves could and did amass private wealth. About half of the free population of Athens were people born outside the city-state of Attica. They were called metoikoi or metics. Many of these people came from the subject city-states of the Athenian empire, although some were non-Greek. Metics could not own land or hold public office in Athens. They were most commonly engaged in commerce, banking, and the skilled crafts in the great Athenian port of Piraeus. Women held low status in Athenian society. They were valued only for purposes of marriage, transfer of property, and procreation. They were forbidden to hold public office and generally were not part of the Athenian labor force. Although all male citizens of Athens were eligible for public office and theoretically equal, status remained a visible part of Athenian society. The majority of citizens were poor farmers. Some citizens earned their wealth through commerce, although trade and industry were largely the province of the metics. Finally, although public office had been democratized, aristocratic families continued to exert strong influence and to hold much of the real property in Attica. Equality in political life in Athens was symbolized by the ekklesia or assembly to which all citizens belonged. Although full meetings of the assembly did occur on rare occasions, most business was transacted in the smaller boule or Council of Five Hundred whose members were selected by lot from the electoral districts established in Cleisthenes reforms. Because of the extreme democratization of office-holding in Athens, political leadership was exercised by popular leaders or demagogues. These were unelected men who practiced their control of government through their control of informal political networks, service on voluntary committees, and their personal appeal. Demagogues were often members of aristocratic families. The position of demagogue was not secure because of the Athenian practice of ostracism. Themistocles, the hero of Salamis, was ostracized as was Cimon, the son of Miltiades.
With the ostracism of the heroes of the Persian Wars, political leadership in Athens fell to Pericles. His career was typical of a demagogue: participation in popular public works projects, eloquence in public speaking, extension of democracy to all citizens regardless of property qualifications, and restriction of citizenship to native-born Athenians. Under Pericles’ leadership, Athens changed the direction of its foreign policy. Athens broke its long alliance with the Spartans and began to direct the forces of its empire against the Peloponnesian rival city-state. After a lengthy period of animosity, warfare between Sparta, Athens, and their respective allies broke out in 431 B.C.E.
The Peloponnesian War can be broken down into two phases: from 431 to 421 B.C.E. and from 414 to 404 B. C. The first phase of the conflict was a war of attrition. The Spartan army ravaged Attica outside the walls of Athens, while the Athenian fleet raided the shores of the Peloponnesus and fomented revolt amongst the Spartan helots. The first phase of the war was inconclusive, and the exhausted combatants agreed to a peace in 421 B.C.E. The Athenian leader Pericles died during an outbreak of the plague during the first stage of the war. Pericles’ relative, Alcibiades, sought to succeed his kinsman as demagogue in Athens. He convinced the Athenians to extend the war to the colonies of the western Mediterranean, particularly the city-state of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. Accused of a religious offense just after his departure in the Sicilian campaign, Alcibiades abandoned his fleet. He sought refuge first with the Spartans, then with the Persians. In his absence, the Athenian campaign was a disaster and marked the beginning of the demise of the Athenian war fleet. Alcibiades sought to establish his political power base in Athens for a second time in 41l B.C.E. He offered to secure a Persian alliance against the Spartans in return for a change in the Athenian constitution. Briefly, an oligarchy was established, but quickly suppressed. The final Athenian defeat followed shortly thereafter. In 404 B.C.E. the Spartan king captured Athens and destroyed its defensive fortifications.
Much of what we consider the culture of classical Greece was actually Athenian culture. The citizens of Athens made major contributions to drama, art, and philosophy.
The Ionian philosophers began the exploration of the rational universe, but the Athenians raised the examination of the human to new heights. The Sophists were the first “school” of philosophy. Gorgias and Protagoras taught the skills of rhetoric and logic, mostly to young aristocrats seeking a role in public affairs. Socrates (470-399 B.C.) condemned the Sophists for their failure to examine the moral choices of public life. Socrates sought to question, literally, the moral rectitude of all public decisions and attacked the ignorance of his contemporaries. He was eventually condemned to death by the Athenian courts for corrupting the morals of youths under his instruction.
Historical writing finds its origins in classical Athens. Herodotus (484-420 B.C.), the chronicler of the Persian Wars, and Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War, are founders of the art of historical interpretation.
Drama had long been associated in Greek culture with religious festivals. Drama was traditionally divided into the categories of tragedy, comedy, and the satyr plays. The great Athenian tragedians were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The authors vary in their treatment of drama. Aeschylus echoed the traditional Greek values; Sophocles emphasized the role of fate in men’s lives; and Euripides dealt more directly with human emotion. The Athenian comedians dealt satirically with contemporary political events. The most famous of the Athenian comedians was Aristophanes.
Athenian art continued to develop a more natural and less stylized form. Vase painting passed from black figure to a more lifelike and colorful rendering of human figures. Sculpture similarly sought to explore naturalism. The rebuilding of the acropolis during the time of Pericles remains the greatest expression of classical Greek sculpture.
The Peloponnesian War left a vacuum of political power on the Greek mainland. Both Sparta and Athens were exhausted. Political unification of the Greek city-states remained beyond the capability of any single polis.
The Peloponnesian War altered the nature of warfare in Greece. The hoplites lost their dominance on the battlefield to lightly-armed professional soldiers. The switch from hoplite to mercenary armies led to increasing numbers of war atrocities. Sparta failed to construct a lasting empire after its victory in the Peloponnesian War. Spartans established oligarchies in conquered city-states, including Athens. The clumsy attempt to alter the political configuration of Greece was rapidly overthrown, and revolts broke out everywhere against Spartan overlordship. A series of unstable alliances sought to bring down the victors of the Peloponnesian War. By 371 B.C., Thebes defeated Sparta and established its own hegemony. An alliance of poleis defeated Thebes, and Athens failed in its attempts to restore its former dominance. Mainland Greece remained fragmented without any political unity beyond the individual city-state in the 330s B.C.E.
The failure of Greek attempts to unify politically affected Athenian philosophers. A student of Socrates, Plato, disavowed the concept of democracy and argued for the creation of an ideal government ruled by an elite of philosophers. Plato posited the theory of Forms or Ideas, eternal and perfect concepts that exist outside the material world. Truth could only be perceived through knowledge of the forms, not their imperfect reflections in the natural world. Plato’s rejection of observation in the material world was disavowed by his student, Aristotle. Aristotle constructed a system of knowledge based on close observation followed by conclusions or general theories drawn from experiential information. According to Aristotle’s examination of political structures, the best government avoided the pitfalls of both narrow oligarchy and radical democracy. Aristotle served as teacher in the Macedonian court for the son of king Philip II of Macedonia, Alexander.
The ethnos, not the polis, was the model of government in Macedonia. The rulers of Macedonia were kings chosen from among the clan leaders. Ostensibly a Greek culture, the Macedonians existed on the frontiers of the Greek world and served as a barrier to even more primitive barbarians. Under the leadership of King Philip II, Macedonia prepared to move into the political vacuum created in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War. Philip secured his selection to the throne by the assassination of his rivals. He then defeated the traditional Macedonian enemies on his borders before preparing a campaign against the Greek poleis. The Greek campaigns began in 346 B.C.E. and ended with his victory over the Greek city-states at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C.E. To bind together his conquests, Philip created the League of Corinth. The new political unification of Greece was unlike the previous confederations of independent city-states. All league members were forced to follow the leadership of Philip as hegemon. Once Greece was finally unified under Macedonian rule, Philip prepared an invasion of the Persian Empire. Before he could initiate a campaign, he was assassinated.
Philip was succeeded by his son Alexander, who carried out his father’s plans for imperial conquest. The assault on the Persian Empire began in 334 B.C.E. Under the brilliant generalship of the young Macedonian king, Greek armies swept through Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and Persia. In three years, the Persian Empire recognized Alexander as its new leader. Alexander pressed his armies eastward from the Persian capital farther into Asia—as far as the modern states of Afghanistan and Pakistan. When his armies at last refused to continue, Alexander reluctantly returned to Persia in 324 B.C.E. It had been Alexander’s goal to merge Greek culture with the more centralized political tradition of the East. Alexander fostered the construction of cities on the Greek model, but he carefully protected indigenous customs and social organization. Despite the success of Alexander’s program of cultural amalgamation, his empire was in many ways a personal one. When the emperor died in 323, the empire fragmented into several political units led by Alexander’s most important generals. General Ptolemy became ruler of Egypt. General Seleucid acquired control of a kingdom encompassing the territory from Anatolia to Afghanistan and General Antigonas gained control of Greece and Macedonia.
The Hellenistic Kingdoms and the Greek cities within them spread Greek culture throughout the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
As Alexander had proceeded on his path of conquest, he had constructed cities. Hellenistic cities were Greek in culture, architectural form, and constitution. There were, however, differences. Hellenistic cities were larger, were not independent poleis but subject to absolute monarchs, and were open to all residents regardless of their geographical origins.
Women achieved higher status in Hellenistic society than in classical Greece. They were able to control their own property and in some areas of the Hellenistic world, particularly Egypt, were able to hold public office. The Ptolemy dynasty had a tradition of female co-monarchs. Hellenistic art and literature benefited from extensive patronage.
Alexandria in Egypt emerged as the greatest center of scholarship in the ancient world under the Ptolemies. The focal point of Alexandrian culture was the great library that served as a repository for the greatest works of literature and philosophy in the Hellenistic world.
The romance and pastoral poem as forms of literature were creations of Hellenistic authors. Callimachus emerged as a popular author of epigrams, while Menander of Athens was the author of a new style of dramatic comedy.
With the development of larger Hellenistic cities, architectural forms became more flamboyant and monumental. Art tended toward the romantic and individual rather than the ideal.
Philosophy in the Hellenistic world was dominated by three schools: the Cynics, the Epicureans, and the Stoics. The Cynics saw the material world as evil and urged followers to renounce all material possessions. The founders of the school were Antisthenes (c. 450-350 B.C.E.) and Diogenes of Sinope (d. c. 320 B.C.E.). The Epicureans sought to maximize the pleasurable and to minimize pain. They taught retreat from public life and concentration on simplicity and tranquillity. The founder of the school was Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.). The founder of Stoicism, Zeno, believed that the entire universe was ordered according to natural laws. Each person is consigned a role in the natural system and must seek to discover and fulfill that vocation.
Hellenistic Egypt emerged as a new center of mathematics and science. Mathematics and the application of mathematics to the cosmos through astronomy were areas of special significance. The geometer Euclid created a system of geometry that continues to exist. Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287-212 B.C.E.) was renowned for his application of mathematical theory to ancient engineering. Hipparchus of Nicea ((146-127 B.C.E.) created a theory of the basic order of the universe with an earth-centered cosmology that remained unchanged until the sixteenth century. Advances were also made in medicine. Herophilus of Chalcedon (c. 335—c. 280 B.C.E.) conducted studies in human anatomy by dissecting alive condemned prisoners and concluded that the brain was the center of the nervous system.
Although the Hellenistic rulers made many attempts to bridge the cultural gaps between the indigenous populations of their territories and the Greeks, there was often open resistance to cultural homogenization. Resistance to the imposition of Greek culture among the Jews led to rebellion after 167 B.C.E. Violent opposition was repeated elsewhere in the kingdoms that had once been part of Alexander’s empire.
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