19. Athens Reached Its Zenith Under Pericles, Then Collapsed After His Death
After Persian invaders were kicked out of Greece in 479 BC, Greek city-states led by Athens formed a defensive alliance headquartered in the island of Delos, that came to be known as the Delian League. Pericles transformed that alliance into a de facto Athenian empire whose members were not permitted to leave, and who were compelled to pay annual taxes and other contributions into a treasury controlled by Athens. By the 440s BC, any remaining pretense was abandoned, and the Delian treasury was transferred from Delos to Athens, where it was used to pay for a magnificent public works program. Athens’ logic might have been: “The alliance’s goal is to keep the Persians away. Do you see any Persians? No? Then pay up“. Athens’ grandest monuments, such as the Acropolis and the Parthenon, were paid for by that act of brazen embezzlement.
In 431 BC, the drawn-out Peloponnesian War (431 – 404 BC) between Athens and Sparta began. Pericles ably led his city in the first two years, successfully neutralizing Sparta’s advantages as the Greek world’s most formidable land power, while leveraging Athens’ sea power to take the war to Sparta and her allies. However, a plague struck Athens in 429 BC, and Pericles was one of its victims. Athens failed to produce another leader of Pericles’ caliber. The city, led by a series of lesser men during the prolonged conflict, lurched from mistake to mistake, until the war ended in catastrophic Athenian defeat and collapse in 404 BC.