Which athenian general formed the delian league

Although Leonidas lost the battle, his death at Thermopylae was seen as a heroic sacrifice because he sent most The Athenian philosopher Plato c. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates.

The Academy he The Battle of Marathon in B. The battle was fought on the Marathon plain of northeastern Attica and marked the first blows of the Greco-Persian War. With the Persians closing in on the Greek capitol, Athenian general Sparta was a warrior society in ancient Greece that reached the height of its power after defeating rival city-state Athens in the Peloponnesian War B.

Spartan culture was centered on loyalty to the state and military service. At age 7, Spartan boys entered a Viewed by many as the founding figure of Western philosophy, Socrates B. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. The War Begins In B. Athens vs. Recommended for you. Peloponnesian War. Trojan War. Gorilla War. French and Indian War. Trojan War The story of the Trojan War—the Bronze Age conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece—straddles the history and mythology of ancient Greece and inspired the greatest writers of antiquity, from Homer, Herodotus and Sophocles to Virgil.

During the 6th century B. Sparta had come to be regarded as the chief power, not only in the Peloponnese, but also in Greece as a whole, including the islands of the Aegean.

The Persian invasions of Darius and Xerxes, with the consequent importance of maritime strength and the capacity for distant enterprise, as compared with that of purely military superiority in the Greek peninsula, caused a considerable loss of prestige which Sparta was unwilling to recognize. Moreover, it chanced that at the time the Spartan leaders were not men of strong character or general ability.

Pausanias, the victor of Plataea, soon showed himself destitute of the high qualities which the situation demanded. Personal cupidity, discourtesy to the allies, and a tendency to adopt the style and manners of oriental princes, combined to alienate from him the sympathies of the Ionian allies, who realized that, had it not been for the Athenians, the battle of Salamis would never have been even fought, arld Greece would probably have become a the task of driving the Persians finally out of the Thraceward towns was under the command of the Athenians, Aristides and Cimon, men of tact and probity.

It is not, therefore, surprising that when Pausanias was recalled to Sparta on the charge of treasonable overtures to the Persians, the Ionianallies appealed to the Athenians on the grounds of kinship and urgent necessity, and that when Sparta sent out Dorcis to supersede Pausanias he found Aristides in unquestioned command of the allied fleet.

To some extent the Spartans were undoubtedly relieved, in that it no longer fell to them to organize distant expeditions to Asia Minor, and this feeling was strengthened about the same time by the treacherous conduct of their king Leotychides q.

In any case the inelastic quality of the Spartan system was unable to adapt itself to the spirit of the new age. To Aristides was mainly due the organization of the new leavue and the adiustment of the contributions of the various allies in ships or in money. His assessment, of the details of which we know nothing, was so fair that it remained popular long after the league of autonomous allies had become an Athenian empire. The general affairs of the league were managed by a synod which met periodically in the temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos, the ancient centre sanctified by the common worship of the Ionians.

In this synod the allies met on an equality under the presidency of Athens. Among its first subjects of deliberation must have been the ratification of Aristides' assessment. The league was, therefore, specifically a free confederation of autonomous [onian cities founded as a protection against the common danger which threatened the Aegean basin, and led by Athens in virtue of her predominant naval power as exhibited in the wae against Xerxes.

Its organization, adopted by the common synod, was the product of the new democratic ideal embodied in the Cleisthenic reforms, as interpreted by a jurt and moderate exponent. It is one of the few examples of free corporate action on the part of the ancient Greek cities, whose centrifugal yearning for independence so often proved fatal to the Hellenic world.

It is, therefore, a profound mistake to regard the history of the league during the first twenty years of its existence as that of an Athenian empire.

Of the first ten years of the league's history we know practically nothing, save that it was a period of steady, successful activity against the few remaining Persian strongholds in Thrace and the Aegean Herod. In these years the Athenian sailors reached a high pitch of training, and by their successes strengthened that corporate pride which had been born at Salamis.

On the other hand, it naturally came to pass that certain of the allies became weary of incessant warfare and looked for a period of commercial prosperity. Athens, as the chosen leader, and supported no doubt by the synod, enforced the contributions of ships and money according to the assessment.

Gradually the allies began to weary of personal service and persuaded the synod to accept a money commutation. The Ionians were naturally averse from prolonged warfare, and in the prosperity which must have followed the final rout of the Persians and the freeing of the Aegean from the pirates a very important feature in the league's policy a money contribution was only a trifling burden.

The result was, however, extremely bad for the allies, whose status in the league necessarily became lower in relation to that of Athens, while at the same time theil military and naval resources correspondingly diminished. Athens became more and more powerful, and could afford to disregard the authority of the synod. Another new feature appeared in the employment of coercion against cities which desired to secede.

Athens might fairly insist that the protection of the Aegean would become impossible if some of the chief islands were liable to be used as piratical strcngholds, and further that it was only right that all should contribute in some way to the security which all enjoyed.

The result was that, in the cases of Naxos and Thasos, for instance, the league's resources were employed not against the Persians but against recalcitrant Greek islands, and that the Greek ideal of separate autonomy was outraged. Shortly after the capture of Naxos c. Cimon proceeded with a fleet of ships only from the allies to the southwestern and southern coasts of Asia Minor. Having driven the Persians out of Greek towns in Lycia and Caria, he met and routed the Persians on land and sea at the mouth of the Eurymedon in Pamphylia.

In after a had quarrelled over mining rights in the Strymon valley. It is said Thuc. But this is both unproved and improbable. Sparta had so far no quarrel with Athens. Athens thus became mistress of the Aegean, while the synod at Delos had become practically, if not theoretically, powerless. It was at this timc that Cimon q. During the ensuing years, apart from a brief return to the Cimonian policy, the resources of the league, or, as it has now become, the Athenian empire, were directed not so rnuch against Persia as against Sparta, Corinth, Aegina and Boeotia.

A few points only need be dealt with here. The first years of the land war brought the Athenian empire to its zenith. Apart from Thessaly, it included all Greece outside the Peloponnese. Peace was made with Sparta, and, if we are to believe 4thcentury orators, a treaty, the Peace of Callias or of Cimon, was concluded between the Great King and Athens in after the death of Cimon before the walls of Citium in Cyprus.

The meaning of this socalled Peace of Callias is doubtful. At all events, it is significant of the success of the main object of the Delian League, the Athenians resigning Cyprus and Egypt, while Persia recognized the freedom of the maritime Greeks of Asia Minor. During this period the power of Atherls over her allies had increased, though we do not know anything of the process by which this was brought about.

Chios, Lesbos and Samos alone furnished ships; all the rest had commuted for a money payment. This meant that the synod was quite powerless. Moreover in probably the changed relations were crystallized by the transference proposed by the Samians of the treasury to Athens Corp. Thus in B. Athens was not only mistress of a maritime empire, but ruled over Megara, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, Achaea and Troezen, i..

Thus measure must have had a detrimentaleffect on the allies, who thus saw themselves excluded stiU further from recognition as equal partners in a league see PERICLES. The natural result of all these causes was that a feeling of antipathy rose against Athens in the minds of those to whom autonomy was the breath of lifej and the fundamental tendency of the Greeks to disruption was soon to prove more powerful than the forces at the disposal of Athens.

The first to secede were the land powers of Greece proper, whose subordination Athens had endeavoured to guarantee by supporting the democratic parties in the various states. Gradually the exiled oligarchs combined; with the defeat of Tolmides at Coroneia, Boeotia was finally lost to the empire, and the loss of Phocis, Locris and Megara was the immediate sequel. Against these losses the retention of Euboea, Nisaea and Pegae was no compensation; the land empire was irretrievably lost.

The next important event is the revolt of Samos, which had quarrelled with Miletus over the city of Priene. The Samians refused the arbitration of Athens. The is! It is, however, equally noticeable on the one hand that the main body of the allies was not affected, and on the other that the Peloponnesian League on the advice of Corinth omcially recognized the right of Athens to deal with her rebellious subject allies, and refused to give help to the Samians.

Two important cvents alone call for special notice. The first is the raising of the allies' tribute in B. II ; it was proved by the discovery of the assessment list of Hicks and Hill, Inscrip. The second event belongs to , after the failure of the Sicilian expedition.

The Tribute. In the first place there is the question of the tribute. Similarly he is probably wrong, or at all events includes items of which the tribute lists take no account, when he says that it amounted to talents at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War.

The moderation of the assessment is shown not only by the fact that it was paid so long without objection, but also by the individual items. The number of tributaries is given by Aristophanes as , but this is greatly inexcess of those named in the tribute lists. Pericles maintained close friendships with the leading intellects of his time. The playwright Sophocles and the sculptor Phidias were among his friends. Pericles himself was a master orator.

His speeches and elegies as recorded and possibly interpreted by Thucydides celebrate the greatness of a democratic Athens at its peak. As Athens grew in power under Pericles, Sparta felt more and more threatened and began to demand concessions from the Athenians. Pericles refused, and in B. When the Spartans arrived at Attica, they found it empty. A few months later, Pericles himself succumbed.

His death was, according to Thucydides, disastrous for Athens. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, went to war with each other from to B. The Peloponnesian War marked a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favoring Sparta, and also ushered in a period of regional decline that signaled the The Athenian philosopher Plato c.

In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates. The Academy he The classical period was an era of war and conflict—first between the Greeks and the Persians, then between the One of the greatest ancient historians, Thucydides c.