Classic Greece 1
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Name:____________________________________________________________________Period:__________
1.
Mark Lydia and Sardis on your map.
In 499 BCE the Greeks of West Asia, with the feeble help of Athens, rebelled against the Persian Empire. In
490 BCE the Persians struck back at Athens but were beaten off at the Battle of Marathon, a small plain in
Attica.
2.
Mark the place on your map where this battle took place.
In 480 BCE the Persian king Xerxes retaliated with a mighty invasion force. Facing this emergency, many
Greeks united to resist the invaders. The Spartans provided the overall leadership and commanded the Greek
armies. The Athenians, led by the wily Themistocles, provided the heart of the naval forces.
3.
Who was Themistocles? Read his biography as written by Plutarch.
a.
List 3 things about Themistocles from his early life.
b. List 3 things about Themistocles that made him a good leader.
In a series of hard-fought battles at the pass of Thermopylae and in the waters off Artemisium in 480 BCE, the
Greeks retreated after heavy losses.
4. Mark on your map where the fighting took place.
But later than autumn the Greeks decisively defeated the enemy at the naval battle of Salamis.
5. Mark on your map where the Greeks were defeated.
In 479 BCE the Greeks routed the last Persian forces at Plataea. These victories meant that the Greeks remained
free to develop their particular culture. Their political forms and intellectual concepts would be the heritage of
the West.
6. What does routed mean?
Classic Greece 2
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7. Mark on your maps were the Persian forces were routed.
In 478 the Athenians and their allies form the Delian League, a grand naval alliance aimed at liberating Ionia
from Perisian rule.
8. Where is Ionia?
But Athenian success had a sinister side. While the Athenians drove the Persians out of the Aegean, they also
became increasingly imperialistic, even to the point of turning the Delian League into an Athenian empire.
9. What does imperialistic mean?
10. Do you believe that a country should go to war to stop another country from taking over smaller, less
powerful nations? Explain your answer.
Under their great leader Pericles, the Athenians grew so powerful and aggressive that they alarmed Sparta and
its allies. A short war ending in 445 BCE settled nothing, and in 431 BCE Athenian imperialism finally drove
Sparta to another conflict.
11. Why would Sparta fear Athenian power?
12. Would you be in favor of Sparta declaring war on Athens? Why?
At the outbreak of this conflict, the Peloponnesian War, a Spartan ambassador warned the Athenians:
“This day will be the beginning of great evils for the Greeks.”
13. Who do you think would emerge victorious from the battle: Athens or Sparta? Why?
Classic Greece 3
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The Peloponnesian War lasted a generation (431-404 BCE) and brought in its wake fearful plagues, famines,
civil wars, widespread destruction, and huge loss of life. Finally, in 404 BCE the Athenians surrendered, but by
then the war had dealt Greek civilization a serious blow.
One positive development stemming from these events was the beginning of historical writing in the west.
Herodotus and Thucydides left vivid, generally accurate accounts of Greek events. Their writings were not the
chronicles or king lists of the Near East but analyses of what happened and why, with great emphasis on cause
and effect and the role of individuals in important events. For the first time in the West, some men felt that the
deeds of human beings were important enough to be recorded, understood, and instructive to others.
14. What were the differences between this “new history” and the histories as written by Egyptian kings
on their steles?
Immediately after the Peloponnesian War, with Athens humbled, Sparta began striving for empire over the
Greeks. The arrogance and imperialism of the Spartans turned their former allies against them.
15. What do you think of Sparta’s attempt to control all of Greece?
Even with Persian help Sparta could not maintain its hold on Greece. In 371 BCE on the plain of Leuctra in
Boeotia, a Theban army under the command of Epaminondas destroyed the flower of the Spartan army on a
single summer day.
16. Who were the Thebans?
17. Locate Thebes on your map.
18. Locate on your map where the battle took place.
But the Thebans were unable to bring peace to Greece. In 362 BCE Epaminondas was killed in battle, and a
period of a stalemate set in. The Greek states were virtually exhausted.
The man who turned the situation to his advantage was Philip II, King of Macedonia. Throughout most of
Greek history Macedonia, which bordered Greece in the north, had been a backward, disunited kingdom, but
Philip’s genius and courage turned it into a major power.
19. Locate Macedonia on your map.
Classic Greece 4
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One of the ablest statesmen of antiquity, Philip united his powerful kingdom, built a redoubtable army, and
pursued his ambition with drive and determination. His horizon was not limited to Macedonia, for he realized
that he could turn the rivalry and exhaustion of the Greek states to his own purposes. By clever use of his wealth
and superb army, Philip won control of the northern Aegean and awakened fear in Athens, which had vital
interests there.
A comic playwright depicted one of Philip’s ambassadors warning the Athnians:
Do you know that your battle will be with men
Who dine on sharpened swords,
And gulp burning firebrands for wine?
Then immediately after dinner the slave
Brings us dessert – Cretan arrows
Or pieces of broken spears.
We have shields and breastplates for
Cushions and at our feet slings and arrows,
And we are crowned with catapults.
In 338 BCE a combined Theban-Athenian army met Philip’s veterans at the Boeotian city of Chaeronea.
20. Find Chaeronea on your map.
21. Where was Sparta during this time?
Philip’s army won a hard-fought victory: he had conquered Greece and put an end to Greek freedom.
22. What do you believe was the main reason the Greeks failed to keep control of their lands? Explain
your answer.