XIV) The Rise and Fall of the Greek Empire
A) It starts with a war – In one corner the Persians
1) they were considered the strongest military
power in the world at the time
2) they had already conquered much of Asia Minor
(Turkey) and the Middle East and was slowly
moving into Greece
3) they were ruled by a fierce king – Darius I
4) they had already conquered the former enemies
of the Greeks – the Ionians
B) In the other corner – the Greeks
1) they were considered the up and coming military
power in the world
2) They were starting to conquer areas outside of
Greece
3) They were ruled (for the most part anyway) by a
Greek assembly
4) They had agreed to help the Ionians re-conquer
their land
C) The 2 sides meet – the Persian Wars
1) When Darius heard the Greeks were trying to
support the Ionians he ordered his forces to
attack Greece
2) At first (in 490 BCE) they tried to attack by way
of the Aegean Sea but are destroyed by a storm
3) Then they attacked the city of Marathon (about
25 miles north of Athens) but the better armored
Athenians defeated the larger Persian army
4) How did Athens find out that the Greek army had
defeated the Persians?
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5) The Persians, frustrated, started loading up their
ships to quickly attack Athens directly by sea but
it was too late
6) The army at Marathon (thanks to Pheidippides)
got back to Athens and defended the city
D) The Persians strike back
1) In 486 BCE Darius’ son Xerses invades Greece
from the north with over 150,000 troops and 700
ships
2) this time Sparta joined Athens in fighting the
Persians in the Persian War (other city-states of
Greece chose to remain neutral or decided to join
the Persian side)
3) the Greeks were told by the fortune
tellers/Oracles at Delphi that they would be safe
behind “a wooden wall”
4) the Athenian general Themistocles thought that
this meant that a fleet of wooden ships was to go up
against the Persians
5) One problem – ships take time to build
6) So they needed a distraction – so began the battle
of Thermopylae
a) the 300 Spartans led by one of their kings
Leonidas, would hold off the 9,000 attacking
Persians at the mountain pass of Thermopolyae
while the navy was being built up
b) it worked at first until a Greek traitor went to
the other side and told the Persians how to
outflank or outmaneuver the Greeks
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c) the Spartans even though they realized that
they would be massacred fought the Persians to
the last man
d) thanks to the heroic Spartans, the Athenians
had enough time to organize their 200 ship navy
e) Xerses and his Persians soon conquered
Athens but when the Persians tried to sail out of
Athens they found the Greek navy waiting for
them at the port of Salamis (Xerses lost 1/3 of his
ships during this battle)
f) The Persian navy was defeated (thus fulfilling
the oracle’s fortune telling) while the Spartans
defeated the rest of the Persian army in 479 BCE
at Platea
E) After the Persian Wars, enter the Golden Age of
Athens! (480 to 430 BCE)
1) After the Persians were defeated the Athenian
ruler/general Pericles wanted to rebuild by:
a) Goal 1: strengthening the democracy
1) who rules in a democracy again?
2) He made sure everyone be they rich or
poor had a shot at a government job with
a good salary
3) He let the entire male population vote on
laws (and who to kick out of the polis for
ten years) instead of just the elected
representatives (this is called a direct
democracy)
b) Goal 2:strengthening the Greek Empire
1) he built up the Athenian navy to make it
the biggest navy in the area
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2) as a result he expanded the number of
areas Athens traded with
c) Goal 3: making Athens the best Greek citystate of them all
1) he bought gold, ivory, and marble for his
construction projects
2) his most famous project : the Parthenon
a) it was 23,000 square feet in area and
took 15 years to complete
b) it was built in honor of the goddess
Athena – why her?
1) contained a statue of her built by
the famous sculptor Phidias
2) the statue was made of gold and
ivory and was over 38 ft tall!
2)He built new homes – see pg. 122-123 in the
Ancient World Book
a) Consisted of two main rooms with smaller
rooms around it
b) One main room was the dining room (called
the andron) where men sat on reclining
couches (women were permitted to join the
men only if there were no other men around)
c) Meanwhile the women (most of the time)
remained in the other main room, the wool
room (also known as the gynaeceum), where
they spun and wove cloth
d) Outside all the rooms was the courtyard where
the family’s goats and chickens were kept
3)The difference between men and women in the
“Golden Age”
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a) The men
1)In the morning they worked as
a) Farmers
b) Artisans
c) Merchants
d) Pottery Makers
2)In the afternoons they attended assembly
meetings and exercised in the gymnasiums
3) At night they went to the symposium
a) It was a type of bar where men drank and
talked
b) They were entertained by dancers,
singers, acrobats, and magicians
c) No WOMEN were allowed!
4)Those men who were slaves (1/3 of the
population)
a) Did the mining
b) Were servants
c) Were teachers
b) The women –see pg. 146 in the Ancient World
book
1)In the home
a) Cooked (or made sure the servants were
cooking)
b) Wove cloth
c) Was in charge of the house’s finances or
budget
2)Outside of the home
a) Learned how to read and write (secretly)
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b) Were restricted (by law) in the amount of
money they could spend and could not
own property
c) could participate in a few religious
ceremonies
d) had to be chaperoned everywhere by the
males of the family
e) Ladies, think this is bad? – check out the
laws about marriage and divorce on pg.
146 and 147
F) The Good Times come to an end – the
Peloponnesian Wars
1) The Athenians were still worried about the
Persians returning
2) They wanted to form an alliance with all the other
Greek cities called the Delian League
3) 140 of the other Greek city-states sign up but
the Spartans refused to join
4) Eventually the Delian League were
successful at getting the remaining Persians
out of the area
5)With the Persians out, the Athenians (more
specifically their leader Pericles became too greedy)
a) All of the other city-states treasuries were used
to decorate the Parthenon in Athens
b) They stated that all criminal cases must be
tried in Athens
c) All city-states must use Athenian currency
d) Athens started to slowly take over all the other
cities with their armies
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5) Eventually all the other Greek cities (led by Sparta and
their allies the Peloponnesian League) rebelled against
Athens and so began the Peloponnesian War
a) Lasted from 431to 401 BCE
b) Athens at the had the best navy in all of Greece
c) The superior Athenian navy didn’t help though
because Sparta wasn’t located near the coast and its
excellent army was able to attack the land around
Athens
d) Still needing some sort of navy, Sparta made a deal
with the Persians to use what remained of the
Persian navy
e) Scared, Athens decided to evacuate its people and
hide within the city walls
f) Unfortunately inside the walls, Athens was hit by a
deadly plague that wiped out a 1/3 of their
population (including their leader Pericles) – see
pg. 123 in your textbook - Academic
g) Things got worse when Athens failed to defeat one
of Sparta’s allies, Syracuse, in 413 BCE
h) At this point most of Athens’ allies switched sides
and helped the Spartan side defeat Athens once and
for all in 404 BCE
6) Effects of the civil war in Greece
a) Lots of dead people (due to disease or war)
b) Towns/fields in ruin
c) Lots of unemployment (even the soldiers had to
look for work)
d) No more government for the people – now they had
a government where people were only concerned
by how much money they could get for themselves
7) Greece was now weak and waiting for someone to
conquer them
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