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2亿+学生的选择
there ---- lots of food on the table.横线上是is还是are.为什么有填is有填are的到底哪个对?为什么?剑桥上原句是1 there is a lot of food on a small table.2 there are all kinds of fruit on a small table.有的说are是修饰 all kinds of因为它是复数形式。那把a lot of 改成lots of是不是is 也应遍成are?
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2亿+学生的选择
lots of 意为“许多” 就等于a lot of .后面可加可数名词复数,和不可数名词.eg:1.There is a lot of (或者lots of)water in the river.2.There are a lot of (或者lots of)students in my school.在这里food 是食物的意思,不可数名词,所以用is2 there are all kinds of fruit on a small table.这句强调食物的种类,而1 there is a lot of food on a small table.强调食物的多,
为您推荐：
其他类似问题
当然是：is啦！food为不可数名词；lots of能修饰可数与不可数名词；单复数的决定要看其后的名词。谢谢！剑桥上原句是1 there is a lot of food on a small table.2 there
are all kinds of fruit on a small table.有的说are是修饰 all kinds of因为它是复数形式。那把a lot...
is lots of 既可修饰可数名词也可修饰不可数名词。food为不可数名词。例there are lots of
tablethere is lots of food on the table剑桥上原句是1 there is a lot of food on a small table.2 there
are all kinds...
不是的了，你得经常看一些英语的短文，不能拘泥与字典。因为food是不可数名词。 there
are all kinds of fruit on a small table。句中all kinds of fruit 表示的是 fruit 的种类。a lot of与 lots of都是许多的意思，他们可以互换
isfood不可数
剑桥上原句是1 there is a lot of food on a small table.2 there
are all kinds of fruit on a small table.有的说are是修饰 all kinds of因为它是复数形式。那把a lot of 改成lots of是不是
is 也应遍成are?
扫描下载二维码Covered in multimedia lecture #.
Introduction
While the peoples of the ancient Near East gave us civilization, the Greeks gave it forms and meanings that make us look to them as the founders of our own culture, Western Civilization.
Greek genius and energy extended in numerous directions.
Much of our math and science plus the idea of scientific research and the acquisition of knowledge apart from any religious or
political authority goes back to the Greeks.
The philosophy of such Greeks as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle laid the foundations for the way we look at the world today.
architecture, drama, literature, and poetry are all firmly based on Greek models.
And possibly most important, our ideas of democracy, the value of the individual in society, and toleration
of dissent and open criticism as a means of improving society were all products of the Greek genius.
Even those critical of our own society and Western Civilization overall have the Greeks,
creators of Western Civilization, to thank for that right.
Greece's geography strongly affected its history.
Greece was a hilly and mountainous land, breaking it up into literally hundreds of independent city-states.
These city-states spent
much of their time fighting one another rather than uniting in a common cause.
Greece was also by the sea with many natural harbors.
This and the fact that it had poor soil and few
natural resources forced the Greeks to be traders and sailors, following in the footsteps of the Phoenicians and eventually surpassing them.
The Minoans (c. B.C.E.)
The first Greek civilization was that of the Minoans on the island of Crete just south of Greece.
Quite clearly, the Minoans were heavily influenced by two older Near Eastern
civilizations, Mesopotamia and Egypt, by way of the Cycladic Islands, which formed natural stepping stones for the spread of people from Greece and of civilized ideas from the Middle East. Egyptian
influence on the Minoans is especially apparent.
Minoan architecture used columns much as Egyptian architecture did.
Minoan art also seems to copy Egyptian art by only showing people in
profile, never frontally.
Still, the Minoans added their own touches, making their figures much more natural looking than the still figures we find in Egyptian art.
Since we have not been able to translate the few examples of their hieroglyphic script, known as Linear A, there are some very large gaps in the picture we have of these people.
even know what the people on Crete called themselves.
Minoans comes from Greek myths concerning a legendary king of Crete, Minos, who supposedly ruled a vast sea empire.
As with most myths, there is a grain of truth in this myth, for
the Minoans were a seafaring people who depended on their navy and trade for power and prosperity.
Two things, both relating to Crete's maritime position, largely determined the nature of the Minoan's civilization.
First, they had a large fleet, which was useful for both trade and
Second, Crete's isolated position meant there was no major threat to its security at this time and therefore little need for fortifications.
These two factors helped create a
peaceful and prosperous civilization reflected in three aspects of Minoan culture: its cities and architecture, the status of its women, and its art, especially its pottery.
The Minoans had several main cities centered around palace complexes which collected the island's surplus wealth as taxes and redistributed it to support the various activities that distinguish
a civilization: arts, crafts, trade, and government. The largest of these centers was at Knossos, whose palace complex was so big and confusing to visitors, that it has come down to us in Greek
myth as the Labyrinth, or maze, home of the legendary beast, the Minotaur.
The sophistication of the Minoans is also shown by the fact that they had water pipes, sewers, and even toilets with
pipes leading to outside drains.
Since their island position eliminated the need for fortifications, Minoan cities were less crowded and more spread out than cities in other
civilizations.
Minoan women seem to have had much higher status than their counterparts in many other ancient civilizations.
One likely reason was that, in the absence of a powerful warrior class and a
constant need for defense, they had more opportunity for attaining some social stature.
This is reflected in their religion where the primary deity was an earth goddess.
Minoan art also
depicts women as being much freer, even participating with men in a dangerous gymnastic ritual of vaulting themselves over a charging bull.
Minoan art especially its pottery, also shows a peaceful prosperous society, depicting floral designs and such marine wildlife as dolphins and octopuses rather than scenes of war.
diffusion around the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean shows that Minoan influence was quite widespread, extending throughout the Cycladic Islands and Southern Greece.
The myth of Theseus and
the Minotaur where Athens had to send a yearly sacrifice of its children to Crete, reflects Minoan rule and indicates that it might not always have been so peaceful.
Recent archaeological
evidence indicates the Minoans did at times practice human sacrifices.
Minoan civilization continued to prosper until it came to a sudden and mysterious end.
A combination of archaeology and mythology provide clues to how this may have happened.
central event was a massive volcanic eruption that partially sank the island of Thera some eighty miles northeast of Crete and left a crater four times the size of that created by the eruption of
Krakatoa in 1883, the largest recorded volcanic eruption in recorded history, This eruption had three devastating effects: a shock wave which levelled Crete's cities, a tidal wave which destroyed
its navy, and massive fallout of volcanic ash which poisoned its crops.
Together these weakened the Minoans enough to let another people, the Mycenaean Greeks eventually take over around 1450
This seems to correspond to the myth of the lost continent of Atlantis, passed on to the Greeks from the Egyptians who had been frequent trading partners with the Minoans. When the Minoans,
whose fleet was destroyed by the tidal wave, suddenly stopped coming to visit Egypt, stories drifted southward about an island blown into the sea (i.e., Thera) which the Egyptians assumed was
Over the centuries the stories kept growing until Crete became the vast mythical continent and empire of Atlantis set in the
Atlantic Ocean.
Greeks picked up the story, which is found in its most complete form in Plato's dialogues,
Timaeus and
The Mycenaeans (c.1500-ll00 B.C.E.) were Greeks from the mainland who took advantage of the Minoans' weakened state to conquer Crete and assume Minoan dominance of the Aegean and
Eastern Mediterranean.
They were a vigorous and active people who engaged in trade and some piracy over a wide area extending from southern Italy in the west to Troy and the Black Sea in the
northeast.
We are almost as much in the dark about Mycenaean history and society as we are about the Minoans.
We do have some written records in a script called Linear B which concern
themselves mainly with official tax records and inventories.
Three types of evidence tell us at least a little about Mycenaean society.
First of all, we know that they were divided into different city-states such as Mycenae, Pylos, Tiryns, and
Most of these consisted of highly fortified central palace complexes which ruled over surrounding villages.
The Mycenaeans tried to run these as highly centralized states such
as existed in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
We do not know if these city-states were completely independent or looked to one city, probably Mycenae, for leadership.
However, sources, such as
Iliad tell us that the Mycenaeans could apparently unite in a common endeavor such as the Trojan War.
Second, the art, armor, and remains of fortifications, such as those at Mycenae, tell us the Mycenaeans were much more warlike than the Minoans.
Later Greeks had no idea of the existence
of Mycenaean civilization and thought these massive walls and gates had been built by a mythical race of giants known as the Cyclopes.
Finally, archaeological remains also tell us that the Mycenaeans, at least the upper classes, were fabulously wealthy from trade and probably occasional piracy.
Gold funeral masks,
jewelry, bronze weapons, tripods, and a storeroom with 2853 stemmed goblets all attest to the Mycenaeans' wealth.
Keep in mind this is only what we have found.
There is no telling how
much of their wealth was plundered by grave robbers.
Around 1200 B.C.E., a period of migrations and turmoil began that would weaken and eventually help destroy Mycenaean civilization.
Once again, the main troublemakers were the Sea Peoples
whom we have seen destroy the Hittite Empire, conquer the coast of Palestine, and shake the Egyptian Empire to its very foundations.
The Sea Peoples also hit the Mycenaeans, destroying some
settlements and driving other inhabitants inland or across the sea away from their raids.
The historical Trojan War and sack of Troy took place at this time at the hands of the Mycenaeans,
who may have been running from and, in some cases, joining up with the Sea Peoples.
Hittite records associate their own decline with people known as the
Ahhiwaya, translated as &Achaeans& (Greeks).
Whatever role the Mycenaeans may have played in all these raids, the result was widespread turmoil as cities were sacked, populations displaced, and trade disrupted. Even though the Mycenaeans
survived the actual onslaught of the Sea Peoples, they did not survive the aftermath of all this destruction.
Reduced revenue from trade may have caused more warfare between the city-states
over the meager resources left in Greece.
This warfare would only serve to weaken the Mycenaeans further, wreck trade even more, aggravate grain shortages at home, and so on.
recurring feedback of problems opened the way for a new wave of Greek tribes, the Dorians, to move down and take over much of Greece.
A period of anarchy and poverty now settled over the
Greek world which virtually blotted out any memories of the Minoans and Mycenaeans.
However, on top of the foundations laid by these early Greek cultures an even more creative and vibrant
civilization would be built, that of the classical Greeks.
Covered in multimedia lecture .
Introduction: the Dark Age of Greece
The centuries following the fall of the Mycenaeans are mostly obscured from our view by an extreme scarcity of records.
As a result, this is known as the Dark Age of Greek history.
Still, there are a few things that we know about this period that saw the transition from Mycenaean to classical Greek civilization.
It was a period of chaos and the movements of
New tribes of Greeks, the Dorians, moved in and displaced or conquered older inhabitants.
Those peoples in turn would migrate, oftentimes overseas, in search of new
It was also a period of illiteracy and poverty leaving us no written records or sophisticated monuments to tell us about the culture of this period.
All this led to the Greek world at this time being divided up between various Greek-speaking peoples who were distinguishable from each other by slight differences in dialect and religious
practices.
However, their similarities were important enough so that we can talk about the Greeks as a people.
Two of these Greek peoples in particular should be mentioned: the
Dorians and Ionians.
The Dorians were Greek invaders who came down from the north to conquer many of the Mycenaean strongholds around 1100 B.C.E. Sometimes they completely blended in with
their pre-Dorian subjects, and there was little class conflict in their city-states.
In other places the Dorians did not intermarry and remained a distinct ruling class over the non-Dorian
population.
The most extreme cases of this were Sparta and Thessaly, where the non-Dorians were virtually enslaved and forced to work the soil for the ruling Dorians.
Such situations
posed a constant threat of violence within city-states.
The Ionians were pre-Dorian inhabitants who avoided conquest by the Dorians, either by fighting them off or by migrating.
The region of Attica, centered around Athens, was one main
pocket of resistance to Dorian conquest, as seen in the myth of the Athenian king, Codrus, who sacrificed himself in battle to ensure Athens' safety against a Dorian invasion. Many Ionians either
chose to migrate overseas or were forced to do so by invaders.
Most of them settled in the Cycladic Islands or on the western coast of Asia Minor, which became known as Ionia from the large
number of Ionian Greeks there.
The birth of the Polis
The chaos and Greece's mountainous terrain forced people to huddle under the protection of a defensible hill known as an
acropolis.
By 800 B.C.E., these fortified centers had produced more security and settled conditions that triggered two important developments vital to the emergence of Greek
First, the more settled conditions plus the fact that Greece was by the sea and had few resources led to a revival of trade and contact with the older cultures to the East.
For example, the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels to it, so literacy returned to Greece.
Also, Egyptian influence can be seen in Greek architecture and
sculpture.
Here too we see the Greeks would add their own innovations, giving their pillars more slender and graceful lines, and creating more lifelike statues than the stiff formal
Egyptian models they had to copy.
These influences would lead to and be the partial basis of classical Greek civilization .
Also, the settled conditions along with Greece's poor soils and hilly and dry conditions led to a new type of agriculture and farmer at this time.
Instead of the overly centralized
agriculture of the Mycenaean period and the under-worked aristocratic estates of the earlier Dark Age, farmers started developing less desirable lands which the nobles probably did not even
Rather than raising just grain crops or grazing livestock, they developed a mixed agriculture of grains, orchards, and vineyards that was better adapted to the varied conditions of
their lands and climate.
The intensive labor such farms required bred very independent farmers who would be largely responsible for the emergence of democracy in the Greek polis.
The revival of trade and development of small independent farms also combined to allow the settlements to grow into towns and cities
(poleis) that spread out beyond the confines of their original acropolises.
Later, in some cities, notably Athens, the acropolis would become a place to build temples to the gods
while also serving as a reminder of earlier more turbulent times.
In order to understand the Greeks, one must understand what this most distinctive of all Greek institutions, the
polis (city-state), meant to them.
polis means city, but it was much more than that to the Greek citizen.
It was the central focus of his political, cultural, religious, and social life.
Much of this was
because the Greek climate was ideal for people to spend most of their time outdoors.
Therefore, they interacted with one another much more than we do and became more tightly knit as a
community.
Since poleis were so isolated from each other by mountains, they became largely self sufficient and self-conscious communities.
Greeks generally saw their poleis as
complete in themselves, not needing to unite with other Greek poleis for more security or fulfillment.
We can see three main qualities that were typical of major and minor poleis alike.
The polis was an independent political unit with its own foreign policy, coinage, patron deity, and even calendar.
For example, the tiny island of Ceos off the coast of Attica,
had four independent city-states, each claiming the right to carry on its own business and wage war as it saw fit-- all this on an island no more than ten miles in length!
The polis was on a small scale.
This is obvious from the example of Ceos.
But consider a major city-state such as Corinth, which controlled an area of only some 320
square miles, considerably smaller than an average county in one of our states.
Athens, by far the most influential of the city-states on our own culture, controlled an area only about
the size of Rhode Island.
Yet it is to Athens that we look for the birth of such things as our drama, philosophy, architecture, history, and democracy.
The polis was personal in nature.
This follows logically from its small size.
Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato thought that a polis should be small enough
for every citizen to know every other citizen.
If it got any bigger, it would get too impersonal and not work for the individual citizen's benefit.
Even in Athens, the most
populous Greek city-state, some citizens could pay their taxes in very personal ways, such as by equipping and maintaining a warship for a year or by producing a dramatic play for the yearly
festival dedicated to Dionysus.
This tended to breed a healthy competition where citizens would strive to make their plays or warships the best ones possible, thus benefiting the polis
as a whole.
The polis' small and personal nature bred an intense loyalty in its citizens that had both its good and bad points. On the plus side, it did inspire members of the community to work hard for
the civic welfare.
The incredible accomplishments of Athens in the fifth century B.C.E. are the most outstanding example of what this civic pride could accomplish.
On the negative side, the polis' narrow loyalties led to intense rivalries and chronic warfare between neighboring city-states.
These wars could be long, bitter, and costly.
and Argos were almost always in a state of war with each other or armed truce waiting for war.
The Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens lasted 27 years, destroying Athens' empire and
golden age.
Sometimes city-states would be entirely destroyed in these wars, such as happened to Plataea and Sybaris.
In addition, there was often civil strife within the city-state
as well: between rich and poor, Dorians and non-Dorians, and citizens and non-citizens.
This internal turmoil could be every bit as vicious and bloody as fighting between city-states.
Ultimately, the Greeks sealed their own doom by wasting energy and resources in their own petty squabbles while other larger powers were waiting in the wings for the right moment to strike.
However, there were several factors that gave the Greeks a common identity and some degree of unity.
First of all, the Greeks spoke a common language that largely gave them a common way
of looking at things.
The Greeks generally divided the world into those who spoke Greek and those who did not. Those who did not speak Greek were called
barbarians, since, to the Greeks, they senselessly babbled (&bar-bar-bar&).
Religion also gave the Greeks a common identity.
Athletic contests in honor of the gods especially emphasized the Greeks' unity as a people.
The most famous of these were the
Olympic Games held every four years in honor of Zeus.
During these games a truce was called between all Greek city-states, allowing Greeks to travel in peace to the games, even through the
territory of hostile states.
The modern Olympic Games, even though they are no more successful than the ancient games in putting an end to war, still serve as a symbol of peace in a less
than peaceful world.
Finally, several city-states might combine into leagues.
These leagues might be purely for the purpose of celebrating religious rites or kinship common to their cities.
example was the Delphic Amphictyony, a league of twelve cities formed to promote and protect the Oracle of Delphi.
Some leagues were for political and defensive purposes.
Peloponnesian League under Sparta and the Delian League under Athens were for such a purpose and together claimed the loyalties of most of the city-states in Greece and Ionia.
This was good
for preventing war between individual city-states.
But it backfired when Sparta and Athens went to war in 431 B.C.E. and dragged most of the Greek world into the most tragic and destructive
struggle in ancient Greek history.
By 750 B.C.E., the Greek world had largely taken shape as a collection of city-states, often at war with one another, but also feeling certain common ties of language, religion, and
At this point, there was nothing remarkable about the Greeks, but forces were at work that would transform Greece into the home of democracy and the birthplace of Western
Civilization.
Covered in multimedia lecture #.
The Age of Colonization (c.750-550 B.C.E)
Greece was not a rich land capable of supporting a large population. Yet the revival of stable conditions and the rise of a new class of independent farmers practicing a mixed agriculture of
grains, vines, and orchards after 800 B.C.E brought population growth.
This, in turn, brought problems, since family lands had to be split up among the surviving sons.
These sons also
had families to support, but on less land than their fathers had.
Greece's poor soil and occasional droughts would lead to famines, forcing the victims of those crop failures to seek loans
from the rich nobles.
Of course, there was interest on the loan, generally equal to one-sixth of the peasants' crops.
Failure to pay back the loan and interest in time led to the loss
of the family lands or the personal freedom of the farmer and his family.
Unfortunately, bad harvests often run in cycles of several years at a time.
As a result, the Greek poleis in
the eighth century B.C.E had a few rich nobles and a multitude of desperately poor people, creating an unstable situation for the polis and the nobles who controlled it.
Therefore, many
city-states started looking for new lands on which to settle their surplus populations.
The Age of Colonization was born.
The Greeks looked for several qualities in a site for a colony: good soil, plentiful natural resources, defensible land, and a good location for trade. They especially found such sites along
the coasts of the North Aegean and Black Seas to the northeast, and Sicily and Southern Italy to the west.
However, Greek colonies dotted the map of the Mediterranean from Egypt and Cyrene
in North Africa to Spain and Southern France in the West.
Founding a colony was no easy task.
A leader and enough settlers had to be found, which often involved two city-states combining their efforts to found the colony.
Finding a site
for the colony was also a problem.
Generally, colonists would ask the Oracle of Delphi for advice, usually getting a vague double-edged answer that could be interpreted in several ways,
thus making the Oracle always right.
For example, the colonists who founded Byzantium by the Black Sea were told to found their city across from the blind men.
They figured the blind
men were the settlers of nearby Chalcedon who had missed the much superior site of nearby Byzantium, since it controlled the trade routes between the Black and Aegean Seas and between Europe and
Although a colony was an independent city-state in its own right, it generally kept close relations with its mother city (
metropolis), symbolized by taking part of the metropolis' sacred fire, representing its life, to light the fire of the new colony. Eventually, many Greek colonies, especially ones to the
west such as Syracuse, Tarentum, and Neapolis (Naples), would surpass their mother cities in wealth and power.
As a result, Southern Italy and Sicily came to be known as Magna Graecia,
(Greater Greece).
Colonies triggered a feedback cycle that would help maintain the colonial movement and lead to dramatic economic, social, and political changes in the Greek homeland.
First of all,
colonies relieved population pressures at home and provided resources to their mother cities.
This helped support the emergence of craftsmen who made such things as pottery and armor for
It also made life easier for the free farmers who had more land now that there was less crowding.
These two rising groups, craftsmen and free farmers, constituted a new group,
the middle class, which could afford arms and armor and help defend their poleis.
That, in turn, allowed the Greeks to deploy into a
phalanx, a much larger mass formation of heavily armored soldiers who together formed a sort of human tank.
Thanks to this deadly new formation, the Greeks were better able to
found and defend colonies in territories with large hostile populations.
This would feed back into the beginning of the process whereby colonies would produce more wealth and resources that
would add further to the rising middle class that could afford arms and armor, leading to more heavily armed Greeks who could found and defend more colonies, and so on.
Another development that helped this process was a new invention: coinage.
Although for centuries, people had used gold and silver as common mediums of exchange to expedite trade, there
were always problems of determining the accurate weight and purity of such metals to avoid being cheated.
Then, around 600 B.C.E., the Lydians, neighbors of the Ionian Greeks in Asia Minor,
issued the first coins, lumps of gold marked with a government stamp guaranteeing the weight and purity of those lumps.
Greek poleis soon picked up on this practice and issued their own
coins. Coinage created a more portable form of wealth that everyone agreed was valuable.
Trade became much easier to carry on, thus increasing its volume and the fortunes of the merchants
involved in it.
Overall, this signaled a growing shift from the land-based economy dominated by the nobles to the more dynamic money economy controlled by the middle class.
The Western way of war
The cycle of colonization spread a new type of warfare across the Greek world.
Previously, Greek warfare had been the domain of the nobles, since they were the only ones who could afford
the arms and armor necessary for fighting in the front lines.
While this put the brunt of the fighting on their shoulders, it also gave them prestige and power, since they had the weapons
to enforce their will.
However, by the mid seventh century B.C.E, the wealth brought in by colonies led to a new type of warfare, the hoplite phalanx, a compact formation of heavily armored soldiers (hoplites, from
the Greek word for shield) with overlapping shields and armed with spears.
The idea was to use the weight of the phalanx to plow through the enemy.
It wasn’t elegant, but it was
effective and brought into play two new revolutionary factors.
First, since the phalanx’s success relied on numbers, anyone able to afford heavy armor and shield had to be used. This
meant including the rising middle class of independent farmers, craftsmen, and merchants, which would have a dramatic impact on the polis’ political structure in the future.
Secondly, the hoplite phalanx created a new concept of warfare.
Previously, when warfare had been primarily a matter of honor and power for a narrow group of kings and nobles who had
nothing better to do, battles had mainly been a matter of hit-and-run tactics with some face-to-face combat.
However, with middle class farmers now making up the bulk of the phalanx,
warfare became a matter of defending their very livelihood.
Therefore, the practice developed of meeting invaders in short, but brutal, head-on clashes to protect the defending
farmers’ lands and homes from ruin. Also, the fact that most of those fighting the battles had regular occupations to get back to reinforced this urge for a quick resolution of a war in one
decisive battle.
This concept of resolving wars in decisive head-on clashes long outlived the Greek poleis that started it. The Romans would subscribe to this principle with systematic efficiency and pass it
on to Western Civilization where it is still seen as
the way to fight wars.
Until the mid 1900s this strategy served Western powers well, but in recent decades it has not always proven effective, as the Vietnam War, Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and American occupation in Iraq have shown.
Pheidon, the ruler of Argos, was the first to use the new hoplite phalanx against Sparta, defeating it in the process. Soon Sparta had adapted to these new tactics, and other Greek poleis
quickly proceeded to arm their middle classes and form phalanxes of their own in order to survive.
Soon the "Hoplite Revolution" had spread throughout Greece and its colonies.
By 550 B.C.E, the cycle of Greek colonization was running out as few good sites for new colonies remained. However, colonization had spread of Greek civilization to other peoples, notably the
Macedonians to the north and the Romans to the west.
Rome in particular would adapt Greek culture to its own needs and pass it on to Western Civilization.
The rise of Greek democracy
Increased prosperity oftentimes leads to trouble, for it creates expectations of power and status to go with it.
People who have virtually nothing expect nothing more.
People who
have had a taste of something generally expect more and will even fight to get it. Such is the fuel of revolutions, and ancient Greece was no exception.
The problem was that, while the
middle class artisans and farmers had little or no social status or political power to go with the expectation to fight in the phalanx.
frustration in more commercial poleis
played itself out somewhat differently than in the more agricultural poleis, but ultimately with the same basic result.
In many, usually the more commercial poleis such as Corinth, Megara, and Athens, some disgruntled and ambitious nobles used the frustrated middle class to seize power from the ruling
aristocracy.
The government they set up was called a tyranny, from the Greek word
tyrannos, meaning one-man rule.
Such an arrangement was usually illegal, but not necessarily evil.
That association with the word tyrant would come later.
In order to maintain his popularity, the tyrant typically did three things.
First, he protected peoples' rights with a written law code, literally carved in stone, so that the laws could
not be changed or interpreted upon the whim of the rich and powerful.
Second, he confiscated the lands of the nobles he had driven from power and redistributed them among the poor. Finally,
he provided jobs through building projects: harbors, fortifications, and stone temples with graceful fluted columns, a new Greek innovation. In addition, tyrants had the means to patronize the
Thus the sixth century B.C.E. saw a flourishing of Greek culture in such areas as architecture, sculpture, and poetry.
However, the increased prosperity brought on by the tyrants only gave the people a taste for more of the same.
By the second or third generation, tyrants could not or would not meet
those growing demands, and people grew resentful.
In reaction to this resentment, tyrants would often resort to repressive measures, which just caused more resentment, more repression, and
Eventually, this feedback of resentment and repression would lead to a revolution to replace the tyrants with a limited democracy especially favoring the hoplite class of small
landholding farmers, though excluding the poor, women, and slaves.
In the more agricultural poleis, the farmer-hoplites seem to have taken control more peacefully.
Their dual status as farmers and hoplites supported each other in maintaining
As farmers, they were the ones who could afford arms and armor and serve in the phalanx.
And as hoplites in the phalanx, they were the ones with the power to run the
Much like the states that experienced tyrannies, these agrarian poleis also established limited democracies favoring the small land-holding farmers.
While these democracies may
have excluded a majority of their populations, they did exhibit several characteristics that made them a unique experiment in history and a giant step toward democracy.
A high value was placed on equality, at least among the citizens ruling the polis.
This ethos of equality discouraged the accumulation of large fortunes and encouraged the rich
to donate their services and wealth to the polis.
This created a fine balance between individual rights and working for the welfare of the society as a whole that helped create fairly
stable poleis.
The polis was largely dominated by a middle class of small landholders, merchants, and craftsmen. In addition to women and slaves, Greek democracies typically excluded freemen
without any property from the full advantages of citizenship.
However, despite its shortcomings, the moderate style of democracy born in Greece by 500 B.C.E was the basis for the later,
much more broadly based democracy in Athens and our own idea of individuals controlling their own destinies.
Hoplite warfare limited the scope and damage of warfare among the Greek poleis.
Since it was the farmers who both declared war and fought it for the polis, they made sure that
it was short and decisive so it would not disrupt their agricultural work or damage their crops.
A typical war might take only three days: one day to march into enemy territory, one day
to fight, and one day to get back home to the crops.
They also made sure it was cheap.
Since hoplite warfare was simple and everyone supplied his own equipment and rations, there
was no need for taxes to support generals and buy supplies.
This limited, almost ritualistic, style of warfare maintained a stability among the Greek poleis despite the frequency of
their wars.
Covered in multimedia lecture #.
Come home with your shield or on it.
— Spartan women,
to their men leaving for battle
No Greek city-state aroused such great interest and admiration among other Greeks as Sparta.
This was largely because the Spartans did about everything contrary to the way other Greeks
For example, Sparta had no fortifications, claiming its men were its walls.
While other Greeks emphasized their individuality with their own personal armor, the Spartans wore red
uniforms that masked their individuality and any blood lost from wounds.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that we remember Sparta for being a military state always ready for war, but
not against other city-states so much as against its own enserfed subjects.
Originally, Sparta was much like other Greek city-states, being a leader in poetry and dance.
However, by 750 B.C.E., population growth led to the need for expansion.
Instead of
colonizing overseas, like other Greeks did, the Spartans decided to attack their neighbors, the Messenians.
In two bitterly fought wars, they subdued the Messenians and turned them into serfs
Helots) who had to work the soil for their masters.
Unfortunately for the Spartans, the Helots vastly outnumbered them.
As a result, Sparta became a military state constantly on guard against the ever-present threat of a Helot revolt. This especially shaped five aspects of Spartan society:
its infants, its
boys, its girls, its government, and its foreign policy.
Infants were the virtual property of the state from birth when state inspectors would examine them for any signs of weakness or
Babies judged unlikely to be able to serve as healthy soldiers or mothers were left to die on nearby Mt. Taygetus.
Boys were taken from home at age seven to live in the barracks.
There they were formed into platoons under the command of an older man and the ablest of their number.
Life in the
barracks involved a lot of hard exercise and bullying by the older boys.
At age twelve it got much worse.
Adolescence brought the Spartan training at its worst.
The boys received
one flimsy garment, although they usually trained and exercised in the nude.
They slept out in the open year round, only being allowed to make a bed of rushes that were picked by hand, not
They were fed very little, forcing them to steal food to supplement their diet and teaching them to forage the countryside as soldiers.
Their training, games, and punishments were
all extremely harsh.
One notorious contest involved tying boys to the altar of Artemis Orthia and flogging them until they cried out.
Reportedly, some of them kept silent until they
died under the lash.
At age eighteen, the Spartan entered the
Krypteia, or secret police, for two years.
The Krypteia's task was to spy on and terrorize the Helots in order to keep them from plotting revolt.
The Spartans even declared
ritual warfare on the Helots each year to remind themselves and the Helots of their situation and Spartan resolve to deal with it.
At age twenty, the Spartan entered the army where he would
spend the next thirty years.
As an adult, he could grow his hair shoulder length in the Spartan fashion to look more terrifying to his enemies.
Not surprisingly, he had little in the
way of a family life.
However, it was illegal
not to marry in Sparta, since it was part of the Spartan's duty to produce strong healthy children for the next generation.
After getting married, the young husband might have to
sneak out of the barracks at night in order to see his wife and children.
It was said some Spartan fathers went for years without seeing their families by the light of day.
fifty, the Spartan could finally move home, although he remained on active reserve for ten more years.
Girls did not have it much easier.
Although they did live at home rather than in the barracks, they also went through arduous training and exercise.
All of this was for one purpose:
to produce strong healthy children for the next generation.
Surprisingly, Spartan women were the most liberated women in ancient Greece.
This was because the men were away with the
army, leaving the women to supervise the Helots and run the farms.
In fact, Spartan women scandalized other Greeks with how outspoken and free they were.
Spartan government, in sharp contrast with the democracies found in other city-states, kept elements of the old monarchy and aristocracy.
They had two kings whose duty was to lead the
Most power rested with five officials known as
ephors and a council of thirty elders, the
There was also an assembly of all Spartan men that voted only on issues the Gerousia presented them.
The Spartans had a very conservative foreign policy, since they
did not want to risk a Helot revolt while they were away at war.
They did extend their influence through leadership of the Peloponnesian League, which contained most of the city-states in the
Peloponnesus, making Sparta the most powerful Greek city-state, although its army was never very large.Spartan discipline did produce magnificent soldiers, inured to hardship and blind
obedience to authority, but with little talent for original thinking or self-discipline.
However, in the Persian wars, the Spartans would do more than their share in the defense of freedom,
as ironic as that may have sounded to them.
Covered in multimedia lecture #.
While Athens is the city we generally think of when the Greeks are mentioned, it did not always seem destined for glory.
Rather, its greatness was the product of a long history laying the
foundations for the great accomplishments of the fifth century B.C.E.
Two things in Athens' early history led to internal peace that made its history and development much easier.
First of all, there was no Dorian conquest of
Attica, the region surrounding Athens.
The myth of the Athenian king, Codrus, who sacrificed himself in battle against the Dorians tells us there probably was Dorian pressure on
Attica, but that it failed.
Consequently, with no conflict of Dorians against non-Dorians, internal peace could reign in Athenian society.
Second, Athens united all of Attica under its
rule at a fairly early date and made all its subjects Athenian citizens.
Therefore, they were more likely to work for Athens' interests in contrast to the Spartan Helots who were always
looking for an opportunity to revolt.
Despite these advantages, the tensions that accompanied both a rising middle class and overpopulation in other poleis affected Athens as well.
For example, there was a failed attempt to
establish tyranny at Athens by a man named Cylon who seized the Acropolis with the aid of Megarian troops.
One issue causing discontent was the lack of a written law code.
Since nobles controlled the religion, which was seen as the source of law, they could say the law was whatever they pleased
and then change it at will.
At last, in 62l B.C.E., they gave in and commissioned Draco, whose name meant "dragon", to write down the laws.
His law code was so harsh that even today we
use the term "draconian" to describe something extremely severe.
Some people claimed Draco's law code was written in blood rather than ink. But Draco did get the laws written down, which was
a step forward for the people.
And, of course, they wanted more.
By 600 B.C.E., the nobles in Athens were becoming more nervous as the complaints of the very poor and the rising middle class grew increasingly louder.
As a result, they gave a man named
Solon extraordinary powers to reform the state and ease the tensions between the different classes.
Solon passed both economic and political reforms that laid the foundations for Athens'
later greatness.
Economic reforms
Solon improved Athens' economy in several ways.
First, since Attica's soil was particularly poor for farming wheat and barley, he outlawed the export of grain from Attica.
encouraged the cultivation of olive trees that were better suited for Attica's soil.
The olive oil produced from these trees was a valuable commodity used for cleansing and as a fuel for
light and cooking.
Later, grapevines would also be cultivated, and Attica's wine became still another highly valued Athenian product.
Second, Solon developed trade and manufacture in
Athens, largely through attracting skilled craftsmen to settle there.
He especially encouraged pottery since Attica had excellent clay for ceramics.
In later years, Athenian pottery
would come to be some of the most beautiful and highly valued in the Mediterranean.
One other thing Solon did to relieve the poverty in Athens was to abolish debts and debt slavery.
While this was not popular with the nobles, it did ease some of the tensions threatening Athenian society at that time.
The profits gained from selling olive oil, pottery, and wine were then used for buying grain from the Black Sea.
Since Athens' economy now was much more suited to local conditions than
when it was barely getting by on the old subsistence agriculture, it could buy the grain it needed and still have money left over.
The Athenians could use this extra money for further
developing their economy through more trade, industry, and olive orchards.
This would lead to even more profits, and so on.
Solon's reforms set the stage for the Persian Wars and Athens' later cultural accomplishments.
Since Athens was heavily dependent on the Black Sea for grain, it was very sensitive to any
events in that part of the world, just as the United States today is sensitive to events in Middle East where it gets much of its oil.
As a result, Athens expanded to the shores of the Black
Sea, thus leading to a collision with Persia over control of that region.
Solon's political reforms made the Athenian state more democratic in three ways.
First, he changed the qualifications for holding public office from being determined by birth
into a particular class to how much wealth one had.
This meant that someone not born a noble still had a chance to rise up through society by means of his ability.
Solon also admitted
the poorest class of citizens to participate in the popular assembly and juries. Finally, he granted a few powers and privileges to the popular assembly, which opened the way for more sweeping
democratic reforms a century later.
These measures delayed, but did not prevent, the overthrow of the aristocrats by a tyrant.
Fighting in Athens continued between the Hill (peasants on small farms), Shore (artisans and
traders), and Plain (nobles) factions.
Eventually, the leader of the hill faction, Peisistratus, gained the upper hand and became tyrant. Peisistratus did two things important for Athens'
For one thing, like other Greek tyrants, he enriched the lower classes by providing them with land and jobs on building projects.
Second, he secured Athens' grain supply from
the Black Sea by getting control of the town of Sigeum, which safeguarded Athens' grain ships in that area but also set Athens up for an eventual clash with Persia.
There were also cultural developments during Peisistratus' rule.
For one thing, he gathered scholars to take all the different versions of Homer's
Iliad and decide which was the definitive one.
One other cultural accomplishment was the invention of tragic drama. This evolved from rather boisterous goat songs (
tragoidea) dedicated to Dionysus, the god of song and revelry.
However, by this time, these songs had become much more serious, and the addition of an actor to interact with the
chorus of fifty led to the birth of drama.
As we have seen, in most poleis the first generation of tyrants would rule rather peacefully.
For example, Cypselus, tyrant of Corinth, was so popular that he went about without so much as
a bodyguard.
However, the second or third generation of tyrants usually ran into problems, either because their rule was oppressive or people wanted more political rights to go along with
their rising wealth.
Athens was no exception.
Peisistratus ruled and died peacefully, but his son, Hippias, ruled more oppressively, especially after an unsuccessful assassination
attempt aroused his suspicions of all around him.
Popular anger would grow, triggering more oppression, causing more anger, and so on.
Finally, Hippias was driven out of Athens with
help from the Spartans who then put a garrison of 700 soldiers in Athens' Acropolis.
However, the Spartans were hardly the people to go along with the democratic aspirations of the Athenians,
and their garrison had to be driven out of the Acropolis before democracy could be established.
The man who did this, Cleisthenes, was also responsible for setting up a stable democracy at
Cleisthenes saw clearly that the friction between the factions of Hill, Shore, and Plain and between the four different tribes had to be stopped.
He cleverly did this by breaking up the
old tribes and replacing them with ten artificial tribes comprised of elements from different tribes and factions.
Artificially mixing people from different loyalties tended to break up those
old loyalties, leaving only loyalty to Athens.
Cleisthenes also made the popular assembly the main law making body.
The democracy that emerged, much like those in other poleis of the
time, was a somewhat limited one favoring the middle class of farmers, merchants and craftsmen.
However, it was still a democracy, which meant the Athenians had more than ever at stake
Athens' security.
Therefore, the combination of this greater sense of commitment to Athens, the struggle with Persia over the security of the Black Sea grain supply, and the fortunate discovery of large deposits
of silver at Laurium in Attica, would prompt the Athenians to use their economic power to build a navy with which to fight Persia.
It was this navy which would lead the Greeks to victory over
Persia and lay the foundations for the Athenian Empire in the fifth century B.C.E.
That empire in turn would provide the wealth to support the cultural flowering at Athens that has been the
basis for so much of Western Civilization.
Covered in multimedia lecture #.
Introduction
When people think of the ancient Greeks, they usually think of such things as Greek architecture, literature, and democracy.
However, there is one other contribution they made that is
central to Western Civilization: the birth of Western science.
There were three main factors that converged to help create Greek science.
First of all, there was the influence of Egypt, especially in medicine, which the Greeks would draw heavily
Second, Mesopotamian civilization also had a significant impact, passing on its math and astronomy, including the ability to predict eclipses (although they did not know why they
occurred).
Third, there was the growing prosperity and freedom of expression in the polis, allowing the Greeks to break free of older mythological explanations and come up with totally new
All these factors combined to make the Greeks the first people to give non-mythological explanations of the universe.
Such non-mythological explanations are what we call
However, there were also three basic limitations handicapping Greek scientists compared to scientists today.
For one thing, they had no concept of science as we understand it.
thought of themselves as philosophers (literally "lovers of wisdom") who were seeking answers to all sorts of problems about their world: moral, ethical, and metaphysical as well as physical.
The Greeks did not divide knowledge into separate disciplines the way we do.
The philosopher, Plato, lectured on geometry as well as what we call philosophy, seeing them as closely
intertwined, while Parmenides of Elea and Empedocles of Acragas wrote on physical science in poetic verse.
Second, the Greeks had no guidelines on what they were supposed to be studying,
since they were the first to ask these kinds of questions without relying on religious explanations.
However, they did define certain issues and came up with the right questions to ask, which
is a major part of solving a problem.
Finally, they had no instruments to help them gather data, which slowed progress tremendously.
The Milesian philosophers
Greek science was born with the Ionian philosophers, especially in Miletus, around 600 B.C.E.
The first of these philosophers, Thales of Miletus, successfully predicted a solar eclipse in
585 B.C.E., calculated the distance of ships at sea, and experimented with the strange magnetic properties of a rock near the city of Magnesia (from which we get the term "magnet").
the question that Thales and other Ionian philosophers wrestled with was: What is the primary element that is the root of all matter and change?
Thales postulated that there is one primary
element in nature, water, since it can exist in all three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas.
Thales' student, Anaximander, proposed the theory that the stars and planets are concentric rings of fire surrounding the earth and that humans evolved from fish, since babies are too helpless
at birth to survive on their own and therefore must arise from simpler more self-sufficient species.
He disagreed with Thales over the primary element, saying water was not the primary
element since it does not give rise to fire.
Therefore, the primary element should be some indeterminate element with built-in opposites (e.g., hot vs. wet vs. dry).
For lack of a
better name, he called this element the "Boundless."
Another Milesian, Anaximenes, said the primary element was air or vapor, since rain is pressed from the air.
The nature of change
All these speculations were based on the assumption there is one eternal and unchanging element that is the basis for all matter.
Yet, if there is just one unchanging element, how does one
account for all the apparent diversity and change one apparently sees in nature?
From this time, Greek science was largely split into two camps: those who said we can trust our senses and
those who said we cannot.
Among those who distrusted the senses was Parmenides of Elea, who, through some rather interesting logic, said there is no such thing as motion.
He based this on the premise that there is
no such thing as nothingness or empty space since it is illogical to assume that something can arise from nothing.
Therefore, matter cannot be destroyed, since that would create empty
Also, we cannot move, since that would involve moving into empty space, which of course, cannot exist.
The implication was that any movement we perceive is an illusion, thus
showing we cannot trust our senses.
On the other hand, there was Heracleitus of Ephesus, who said the world consists largely of opposites, such as day and night, hot and cold, wet and dry, etc.
These opposites act upon one
another to create change.
Therefore not only does change occur, but is constant.
As Heracleitus would say, you cannot put your foot into the same river twice, since it is always
different water flowing by.
However, since we perceive change, we must trust our senses at least to an extent.
A partial reconciliation of these views was worked out by two different philosophers postulating the general idea of numerous unchanging elements that could combine with each other in various
ways. First, there was Empedocles of Acragas who said that the mind can be deceived as well as the senses, so we should use both.
This led to his theory of four elements, earth, water, air,
and fire, where any substance is defined by a fixed proportion of one or more of these elements (e.g., bone = 4 parts fire, 2 parts water, and 2 parts earth).
Although the specifics were
wrong, Empedocles' idea of a Law of Fixed Proportions is an important part of chemistry today.
In the fifth century B.C.E., Democritus of Abdera developed the first atomic theory, saying the universe consists both of void and tiny indestructible atoms.
He said these atoms are in
perpetual motion and collision causing constant change and new compounds.
Differences in substance are supposedly due to the shapes of the atoms and their positions and arrangements relative
to one another.
In the fifth century B.C.E., Athens, with its powerful empire and money, became the new center of philosophy, drawing learned men from all over the Greek world.
Many of these men were
known as the Sophists.
They doubted our ability to discover the answers to the riddles of nature, and therefore turned philosophy's focus more to issues concerning Man and his place in
As one philosopher, Protagoras, put it, "Man is the measure of all things."
Being widely traveled, the Sophists doubted the existence of absolute right and wrong since they had
seen different cultures react differently to moral issues, such as public nudity, which did not bother the Greeks.
As a result, they claimed that morals were socially induced and changeable
from society to society.
Some Sophists supposedly boasted they could teach their students to prove the right side of an argument to be wrong.
This, plus the fact that they taught for
money, discredited them in many people's eyes.
Socrates (470-399 B.C.E.) was one of Athens' most famous philosophers at this time.
Like the Sophists, with whom he was wrongly associated, he focused on Man and society rather
than the forces of nature.
As the Roman philosopher, Cicero, put it, "Socrates called philosophy down from the sky..." Unlike the Sophists, he did not see morals as relative to different
societies and situations.
He saw right and wrong as absolute and worked to show that we each have within us the innate ability to arrive at that truth.
Therefore, his method of
teaching, known even today as the Socratic method, was to question his students' ideas rather than lecture on his own.
Through a series of leading questions he would help his students realize
the truth for themselves.
Unfortunately, such a technique practiced in public tended to embarrass a number of people trapped by Socrates' logic, thus making him several enemies.
In 399 B.C.E., he was tried and
executed for corrupting the youth and introducing new gods into the state.
Although Socrates left us no writings, his pupil Plato preserved his teachings in a number of written
dialogues.
Socrates influenced two other giants in Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, who both agreed with Socrates on our innate ability to reason.
However, they differed greatly
on the old question of whether or not we can trust our senses.
Plato (428-347) was the first of these philosophers.
He was also influenced by the early philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras of Croton in South Italy, who is most famous
for the Pythagorean theorem for finding the length of the hypotenuse in a right triangle.
Pythagoras thought that all the principles of the universe were bound up with the mystical properties
of numbers.
He felt the whole universe can be perceived as a harmony of numbers, even defining objects as numbers (e.g., justice = 4).
He saw music as mathematical and, in the process,
discovered the principles of octaves and fifths.
He also thought the universe orbited around a central fire, a theory that would ultimately influence Copernicus in his heliocentric theory
2000 years later.
Plato drew upon Pythagoras' idea of a central fire and proposed there are two worlds: the perfect World of Being and this world, which is the imperfect World of Becoming where things are
constantly changing. This makes it impossible for us to truly know anything, since this world is only a dim reflection of the perfect World of Being.
As Plato put it, our perception of
reality was no better than that of a man in a cave, trying to perceive the outside world through viewing the shadows cast against the wall of the cave by a fire.
Since our senses alone cannot
be trusted, Plato said we should rely on abstract reason, especially math, much as Pythagoras had.
The sign over the entrance to Plato's school, the Academy, reflected this quite well: "Let
no one unskilled in geometry enter."
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) was a pupil at Plato's Academy, but held a very different view of the world from his old teacher, believing in the value of the senses as well as the
Although he agreed with Plato on our innate power of reasoning, he asserted that nothing exists in our minds that does not first exist in the sensory world. Therefore, we must rely on
our senses and experiment to discover the truth.
Aristotle accepted the theory of four elements and the idea that the elements were defined on the basis of two sets of contrasting qualities: hot vs. cold, and wet vs. dry, with earth being cold
and dry, water being cold and wet, air being hot and wet, and fire being hot and dry.
Thus, according to Aristotle, we should be able to change substances by changing their qualities.
The best example was heating cold and wet water to make it into hot and wet air (vapor).
This idea would inspire generations of alchemists in the fruitless pursuit of a means of turning lead
into gold.
Aristotle said the four elements have a natural tendency to move toward the center of the universe, with the heavier substances (earth and water) displacing the lighter ones (air and fire), so
that water rests on land, air on top of water, and fire on top of air.
He also said there was a celestial element, ether, which was perfect and unchanging and moved in perfect circles around
the center of the universe, which is earth where all terrestrial elements are clustered.
Aristotle's theories of the elements and universe were highly logical and interlocking, making it hard to disprove one part without attacking the whole system.
Although Aristotle often
failed to test his own theories (so that he reported the wrong number of horse's teeth and men's ribs), his theories were easier to understand than Plato's and reinstated the value of the senses,
compiling data, and experimenting in order to find the truth.
Although Plato's theories would not be the most widely accepted over the next 2000 years, they would survive and be revived
during the Italian Renaissance.
Since then, the idea of using math to verify scientific theories has also been an essential part of Western Science.
While both Plato and Aristotle had
flaws in their theories, they each contributed powerful ideas that would have profound effects on Western civilization for 2000 years until the Scientific Revolution of the 1700's.
Covered in multimedia lecture #.
Formation of the Delian League
We can well imagine the Greeks' incredible feelings of pride and accomplishment in 478 B.C.E. after defeating the Persian Empire.
The Athenians felt that they in particular had done more
than their part with their army at Marathon and their navy at Salamis and Mycale. It was this incredible victory which gave them the self-confidence and drive to lead Greece in its political and
cultural golden age for the next half century.
However, victory had been won at a heavy price.
Fields, orchards, and vineyards lay devastated throughout much of Greece, and it would take decades for the vineyards and olive groves in
particular to be restored.
Athens itself was in ruins, being burned by the Persians in vengeance for the destruction of Sardis during the Ionian Revolt.
Therefore, the Athenians
immediately set to work to rebuild their city, and in particular its fortifications.
The Spartans, probably through fear or jealousy of Athens' growing power, tried to convince the
Athenians not to rebuild their walls.
They said that if the Persians came back and recaptured Athens, they could use it as a fortified base against other Greeks.
The Athenian leader,
Themistocles, stalled the Spartans on the issue until his fellow Athenians had enough time to erect defensible fortifications. (This was later extended by what was known as the Long Walls to
connect Athens to it port, Piraeus, so it could not be cut off from its fleet.)
By the time Sparta realized what was happening, it was too late to do anything.
One could already see
bad relations starting to emerge between Athens and Sparta.
In time, they would get much worse.
Since the Athenians and other Greeks could not assume that the Persians would not come back, they decided the best defense was a good offense, and formed an alliance known as the Delian
The League's main goals were to liberate the Ionian Greeks from Persian rule and to safeguard the islands in the Aegean from further Persian aggression.
The key to doing this
was sea power, and that made Athens the natural leader, since it had by far the largest navy and also the incentive to strike back at Persia.
At first, Sparta had been offered leadership in
the league because of its military reputation.
However, constant fear of Helot revolts made the Spartans reluctant to commit themselves overseas.
Also, their king, Pausanias, had
angered the other Greeks by showing that typical Spartan lust for gold.
As a result, he was recalled, leaving Athens to lead the way.
The Persian navy, or what was left of it, was in no shape to halt the Greek advance after taking two serious beatings from the Greeks in the recent war.
Ionia was stripped from the Great
King's grasp, and the Persians were swept from the Aegean sea island by island.
Within a few years, the Delian League controlled virtually all the Greeks in the islands and coastal regions
of the Aegean.
From Delian League to Athenian Empire
At first each polis liberated from Persia was expected to join the league and contribute ships for the common navy.
However, most of these states were so small that the construction and
maintenance of even one ship was a heavy burden.
Therefore, most of these states started paying money to Athens which used their combined contributions to build and man the League's
This triggered a feedback cycle where Athens came to have the only powerful navy in the Aegean, putting the other Greeks at its mercy.
Athens could then use its navy to keep
league members under control, forcing them to pay more money to maintain the fleet which kept them under control, and so on.
The changing nature of the league became apparent a decade after the defeat of the Persians when the island states of Naxos (469 B.C.) and Thasos (465 B.C) felt secure enough to try to pull
out of the League.
However, Athens and its navy immediately pushed them back in, claiming the Persian threat was still there.
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