7 – Athens was the Bully of Ancient Greece
For those with a cursory interest in ancient Greece, Athens seems to be a fantastic city. Certainly, it was filled with advanced thinkers, had its own form of democracy and achieved great things in art, architecture and sculpture. However, there is a dark side to Athens and I’m not just talking about slavery! The city had an uneasy relationship with most Greek states and a downright tumultuous one with Sparta which ultimately led to war.
The Greek states managed to unite in the face of Persian invasions. During the first invasion of 492-490 BC, Athens was joined by Eretria, Naxos and Plataea. The majority of the states came together to successfully fight off the Persians during the second invasion of 480-479 BC. This alliance included the Spartans, Corinthians, Phocians and Thespians. However, by the end of the war, Sparta and Athens emerged as the two most powerful Greek states.
In 478 BC, a coalition known as the Delian League was formed between Athens and a host of other states but Sparta refused to join. One of the aims of this alliance was to take Persian territories on the east coast of the Aegean. After a number of successes, the Delian League gained strength but soon, it became less of an alliance and more of an Athenian empire with so-called ‘equal’ allies treated as inferior states. Athens conquered cities that made an effort to try and leave.
The island of Melos refused to join so the Athenians created a blockade which starved the inhabitants and then they enslaved those who survived. The Delian League was supposed to have a shared treasury but Athens circumnavigated that problem by simply pocketing the money!
The other Greek city states were fed up with Athenian tyranny so a handful of them sided with Sparta. Tensions rose and ultimately led to the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) which resulted in victory for Sparta and its allies and ended Greece’s golden age. It also marked the end of Athens as a major force in Greece although it did continue to play a significant role in the country’s politics for some time afterwards.