Year 12 Ancient - Delian League to Athenian Empire

Here is the introduction to an essay written by Thomas Ash, explaining the transformation of the Delian League into the Athenian Empire. Click on the link at the end to read the whole thing.

When Athens began to emerge as a Greek city state in the ninth century, it was a poor city, built on and surrounded by undesirable land, which could support only a few poor crops and olive trees. As it grew it was forced to import much of its food, and while it was near the centre of the Greek world, it was far from being a vital trading juncture like, for example, Corinth. Its army was, by the standards of cities such as Sparta, weak. Yet somehow it became the most prominent of the Greek city states, the one remembered while contemporaries such as Sparta are often forgotten. It was the world's first democracy of a substantial size (and, in some ways, though certainly not others, one of the few true democracies the world has ever seen), producing art and fine architecture in unprecedented amounts. It became a centre of thinking and literature, producing philosophers and playwrights like Socrates and Aristophanes. But most strikingly of all, it was the one Greek city that managed to control an empire spanning the Aegean Sea. During the course of this essay I will attempt to explain how tiny Athens managed to acquire this formidable empire, and why she became Greece's most prominent city state, rather than cities which seemed to have more going for them like Sparta or Corinth. [continue reading here]

For more info on the League, try this page.

Year 12 Ancient - Athens Documentary

If you get bored in the holidays...here is the History Channel docco on Ancient Athens. It is in three parts, so link through to the next instalments.

Have a great holiday!

Year 12 Ancient - Delian League/Athenian Democracy Powerpoint

Hi folks. Here is the PowerPoint we did last week, outlining the main points for the rest of the Greek World syllabus:

Delian League/Athenian Democracy

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Year 12 Ancient - Delian League Map

Here is a map showing the major Greek alliances in the 5th Century BC - the Delian league (Athena and its allies) and the Peloponnesian League (Sparta and its allies). The Delian League was mainly an anti-Persian grouping, aimed at fostering trade, at freeing the Ionian poleis, and ensuring Athenian supremacy in the Aegean. The Peloponnesian League was mainly a defensive alliance, aimed at controlling the helots, bolstering Sparta's small population, and ensuring Spartan predominance in the Peloponnese. Over the decades following the Persian Wars, the two leagues jostled for power, and eventually conflict broke out between them, culminating in the destructive Second Peoloponnesian War (431-404BC).

Year 12 Ancient - Miltiades and Marathon

Below is the PowerPoint on the life of Miltiades, and his part in securing the Greek victory at Marathon in 490BC.

Miltiades – Hero of Marathon

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Year 12 Ancient - Persian Wars Introduction

I have found a good summary of the Persian Wars, written by Richard Hooker, on this website.

Here is the first paragraph, to whet your appetite...

Like the Trojan War, the Persian Wars were a defining moment in Greek history. The Athenians, who would dominate Greece culturally and politically through the fifth century BC and through part of the fourth, regarded the wars against Persia as their greatest and most characteristic moment. For all their importance, though, the Persian Wars began inauspiciously. In the middle of the sixth century BC, the Greek city-states along the coast of Asia Minor came under the control of the Lydians and their king, Croesus (560-546 BC). However, when the Persians conquered the Lydians in 546 BC, all the states subject to the Lydians became subject to the Persians. The Persians controlled their new subject-states very closely; they appointed individuals to rule the states as tyrants. They also required citizens to serve in the Persian army and to pay fairly steep taxes. Smarting under these new burdens and anxious for independence, the tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, began a democratic rebellion in 499 BC. Aristagoras was an opportunist. He had been placed in power by the Persians, but when he persuaded the Persians to launch a failed expedition against Naxos, he began to fear for his life. So he fomented a popular rebellion against the Persians and went to the Greek mainland for support. He went first to the Spartans, since they were the most powerful state in Greece, but the Spartans seem to have seen right through him. When he approached the Athenians, they promised him twenty ships. In 498 BC, the Athenians conquered and burned Sardis, which was the capital of Lydia, and all the Greek cities in Asia Minor joined the revolt. The Athenians, however, lost interest and went home; by 495 BC, the Persians, under king Darius I (521-486 BC), had restored control over the rebellious Greek cities...
(click here to read the rest of the article)

Year 12 Ancient - Map of Ancient Greece

Below is a map showing the major city states (poleis) of Ancient Greece - Sparta and Athens - along with their main allies. Athens and Sparta were both at their height around 500BC, and competed for hegemony (dominance) of the area we now call Ancient Greece.

In reality, Greece was not one country, but many island- and city-states, scattered around the Eastern Mediterranean from Macedonia and Thrace in the north, to Crete in the south, to Ionia (Turkey) in the east.

Sparta's allies (in purple)were called the Peloponnesian League, as Sparta was the main state on the Peloponnese peninsula.

Athens' allies (in orange) were called the Delian League, after the island of Delos where the states agreed to help each other.

You can click on the map below to gain a larger image.