Give me a summary of the Peloponnesian war.
Athens thinks they're amazing
Sparta kicks their shit in
Athens and Sparta had an uneasy relationship since the 6th century.
Athens had a pretty great Tyrant who made the city the greatest in Greece. When he died his sons were left in charge. They weren't terrible rulers but were less respected by the allies their father held and by the people. Eventually one of them was killed by a gay lover in a a 3-way lovers quarrel.
The remaining brother lost his shit and began a reign of (forgive me) tyranny. He started rounding up and executing people and making life generally miserable.
Some Athenians, actually a family banned from ever returning to Athens (the family of Pericles mother) financed the opposition and got the Spartans to come and kick the Tyrant out.
The Spartans decided they set up their own Tyrant and occupy the city. This went badly for them as the Athenians refused their 'offer' or 'terms' however you want to frame it, and created lasting animosity between the two cities.
After Darius took the Persian throne from Cambyses the Athenians and allies decided to finance a rebellion of the Ionian coast.
1/?
>>382310
keep going pls
>>380584
WW1: the prequel edition
>>382310
This revolt went badly. A couple of cities had limited success but in general they were all crushed. Entire cities were enslaved and any good will demonstrated by Cyrus and Cambyses vanished with Darius.
One of the Greek Tyrants who was a Persian vassal decided around this time to defect to the Greek states, going to Athens. His name was Miltiades, this is important for later.
Darius decided he would go to Greece and fuck up Athen's shit for their interference. He didn't want to subjugate Greece or anything, the entire invasion was just to get at Athens.
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I forgot that, after kicking out Sparta's puppet Tyrant the Athenians began their democracy experiment
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2/?
>>382338
when does Alcibiades show up because I started reading Tides of War
>>382310
>>382338
Now, Darius' invasion was thwarted when most of his fleet sank en route to Greece and his invasion of the mainland was completely smashed (100% causalities probably). This land defeat happened at Marathon, and was the work of Miltiades, the guy who defected.
After Darius' sudden death his son, Xerxes decided to follow through on his father's plans for another invasion. This time, however, infuriated by the shameful defeat they last suffered, he decided he'd conquer all of Greece.
We know how the (second) Persian War went, right? Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea? Well the Spartans were the staunchest of all Athen's allies during this period. Probably due to the respect Athens earned at Marathon, and maybe because of political/xenia reasons.
So here we are at 479 now, and Athens and Sparta are back to being friends.
Sparta led an invasion of the Ionian Coast. The King in charge was found to actually be in league with the Persians, and this made the Athenians and many other Greeks distrust the Spartans and forced him into an isolationist stance.
3/?
>>382383
*force them into
The king fled to a temple iirc, was locked inside, and starved to death.
Athens started the Delian League as protection against further Persian aggression, and collected payments from members. After Sparta became isolationists Athens turned the Delian League into a maritime Empire, and any polis that refused to join the League and pay tribute was subjugated. Ones that revolted were enslaved and turned into military colonies.
So now you have the greatest land based force, isolated in the Peloponnese and the greatest maritime force, expanding everywhere around them.
Obviously this created tensions between them.
Miltiades son, Cimon, essentially singlehandedly destroyed the entire Persian fleet and defeated the Persians all along Asia Minor. He was also very, very close to Sparta - sharing xenia with one of the Spartan kings. Xenia is guest friendship, it's cross generational and it's an extremely deep friendship that comes with great obligation.
4/?
>>382410
keep 'em coming, this is interesting stuff
>>382410
Cimon's xenia plays into this because he was a member of what the romans would call the Optimates (i can't remember the Athenian term).
The democratic faction in Athens, Ephialtes and Pericles and Alcibiades, were part of the Populares equivalent.
So, during this period of Imperial expansion by Athens Sparta happened to suffer a helot revolt that threatened to bring down the state. They asked Athens for assistance, and Cimon obliged. He put his entire career on the line, presented his case to the aeropogus, and got permission to go help Sparta.
Ofc Cimon got played - Pericles buddy Ephialtes and the Populares approved his plan hoping he'd fail, so they could exile him, as he was the most powerful, richest, Athenian and their political opponent.
When Cimon got to the mountain the helots were holdup in, the Spartans were apprehensive of their motives and actually turned him away. I know, what the fuck, right? Well Cimon got back to Athens, where the exiled him for 10 years.
The incident also cemented the animosity between them (on top of Athens constantly expanding militarily pissing off Sparta).
I'd like to take this moment to stress that Cimon fucking ruined the Persians - he was the reason they agreed to peace with the Athenians.
Read Thucydides and Kagan you lazy OP
>>382431
Not too long after the Cimon/Helot thing the Spartans and Athenians signed a 30 years peace. It lasted like half that time.
Athens decided to help a colony of Corinth (colonies answered to their mother city typically) fight Corinth. Send of peace.
After that the war is pretty simple, I guess?
Athens opted to undertake very few expeditions, usually going north to secure their grain supply. The Spartans utilized scorched earth tactics and just kept burning the land around Athens, forcing them to rely further on their grain shipments.
To be honest the details escape me, there wasn't very much going on, it was like the first frozen conflict. Putin would be proud.
Athens was probably the largest city in the world at the time, and being besieged for so long with so many people within the walls eventually led to an outbreak of plague. It may not have been THE plague, it could have been cholera or something, we're not sure yet but I think they discovered genetic evidence for plague recently.
>>382462
Wow, that was an awesome summation. Really enjoyed reading through that. Makes me want to read Thucydides.
>>382572
Read Kagan aswell kid
Athens and Sparta chimp out at each other and use Persian money to wage a brutal war against one another which permanently weakens Greece ushering in two millenia of servitude to other powers.
>>382462
Pericles died during the plague outbreak, and shortly afterwards one of the other prominent politicians (Nicias) led a force of like 20,000 troops to Sicily.
Nicias died there iirc, but it was Alcibiades idea.
I think like 95% of those Athenians (and their allies) perished in one of the worst defeats I've ever read about. The Athenians were chased across the island and slaughtered as they fled.
This was huge. 20,000 men is not peanuts. Those are middle-class and wealthy men in the prime of their lives. Immediately after a devastating plague that already claimed god knows how many civilian lives and even followed the Athenians on their expeditions to Macedonia and cost thousands more lives (hoplites all of them).
It was the brain child of Alcibiades and the strategic value is... debatable? In any even I think it represents the last attempt by Athens in the war to initiate an attack.
The kicker? It might have succeeded if Alcibiades hadn't betrayed the Athenians plans as he fled from 'justice' (his political opponents in Athens were going to have him executed).
He defected to Sparta. And thus ended Pericles direct influence on the Athenian state.
7/?
>>380584
SPARTA STRONG!
>>382786
>>382572
Sorry went out for lunch.
So now that Athens has lost both of it's most prominent citizens to plague and defection, and at this point perhaps 30,000 troops to plague and calamitous defeat, they were stuck.
From 415 until 401 I don't believe Athenian forces left the walls to fight. The smaller temple next to the Parthenon, 'Temple to Athenia Nika' was constructed during the war, and finished in the 414-401 period. Nike is the goddess of victory and Athena was the defender of cities + patron goddess of Athens.
The Temple would have been visible to the Spartans as they marched on Athens and burnt the fields and stuff. It represented both the Athenian hope for victory as well as their resolve that they were the just party in all of this.
The end of the war signalled the beginning of the Spartan Hegemony which was exceptionally short lived.
>>382643
Sparta and Thebes ruled for the next half century.
Macedonians were Greek speaking, hellenic peoples who happened to occupy the 'frontier' and were thus less civilized than the southern Greeks.
So foreign rule was really only a thing from 146 BC until whenever East Roman Emperors switched from Latin to Greek origins (6th or 7th century?).
>>382898
Temple should be 'Athena Nike' sorry for the typo.
Anyways, this has been a very brief and disjointed summary of 150 years of Athenian and Spartan history but it relates the gist of it.
Like the anons say, read Thucydides he is great and he wrote about the Peloponnesian War specifically, believing it to be the greatest war of all time because of the power and splendour of Sparta and Athens.
>>382572
A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson goes into the war itself very well, although he's primarily concerned with how war itself in the Greek world changed than the political ramifications of a lot of stuff.
>>382786
And citing to VDH, the real disaster of Sicily wasn't the hoplite/land troop lost. Painful, but replaceable, it was that their navy got defeated, and that core of professional rowers which made the Athenian fleet so invincible was now at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
The Athenians rebuilt their fleet pretty quickly, but they didn't enjoy the naval dominance they had earlier in the war anymore, and the Spartans (financed by the Persians) could contest the waters on a near equal footing.
>>382922
>it was that their navy got defeated, and that core of professional rowers which made the Athenian fleet so invincible was now at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
>The Athenians rebuilt their fleet pretty quickly, but they didn't enjoy the naval dominance they had earlier in the war anymore, and the Spartans (financed by the Persians) could contest the waters on a near equal footing.
Well thanks for clarifying that, wasn't aware of that specifically. Any thing else to add? I'm sure I missed tons.
>>382963
I'm going to go more into the direct military angle of things, because I'm more knowledgeable about that, if you don't mind:
For a long time, warfare in Greece was incredibly ritualized, and relatively non-lethal. You had a bunch of walled cities, which were almost impervious to direct assault, and could only be starved out with great difficulty. Defeats in wars tended to have indemnities paid, or the installation of an already pre-existing party that favored the winning side in the loser's political structure, and even those arrangements tended to be short-lived.
A large part of that is that hoplite warfare was relatively non-lethal. The breastplates and shields that existed could only be penetrated by the contemporary weapons with great difficutly, and if you were in a line, and they were in a line, and everyone kept in formation you could pound on each other for hours and not kill anyone. Battles were decided by morale and a formation breaking, and even then, IIRC, Hanson gives something like an 8% casualty rate for the losing side, and virtually nothing for a winning side in a "classic" hoplite shield push.
Which meant that even if you won, you very rarely outright destroyed the strength of your opposing polis.
Then, things began to change, mostly spurred on by the arrival of the Persians, and the introduction to a sort of war where real, "national" survival was on the line. Troops started to professionalize, not just the Spartans. You started seeing the integration of lighter troops into your plans. You started seeing cavalry forces appear, and large fleets were getting built.
Cont
Through all of this though, you still never really developed a reliable means of assaulting a fortified position; no matter how ascendant the Spartans got, they never even seriously contemplated trying to storm over the Long Walls (There was one brief moment during the plague, but a mutiny broke out for fear of catching it), and that meant subduing an enemy meant a long, long process of starving them out, either metaphorically or literally.
So you still had the relatively indecisive fighting from a strategic standpoint, which meant you needed multiple victories, not just one, to really break an enemy. But now with the addition of lighter troops, which meant better intelligence and far better pursuit elements, warfare got a lot bloodier. And since a lot of your soldiers wanted to be paid for their services, which could run into years, war got a lot more expensive. Pretty much all the major states, sans Thebes, were bankrupt at the end of the Peloponesean wars, or heavily indebted to Persia.
And then came naval fighting. A triereme had a crew of about 200. That original sicilian expedition? 5,100 hoplites, 750 allied troops, 1,300 light troops, 30 cavalry, for 7,180 soldiers. The 134 trieremes had 26,800 men on board, almost 4 times as many. And unlike land war, where the bulk of defeated armies survived, if your ship went down, well, that's the end.
And unlike what you see in hollywood, you didn't have slaves rowing the gallies, you were rowing blind, and the guys on the left banks had to match the speed of the guys on the right banks, or your ship went around in circles, it was very difficult to get a good rate and keep even speed, and the rowers made quite a bit of money at it, they were highly sought after.
So the naval aspect of the Peloponesean war combined its most expensive investments with its highest lethalities, which meant that the war at sea was way, way more decisive than the war at land, you could actually inflict losses that would break a Polis.
Just read this
>>380584
After the Persian invasion, Athens spearheads the Nato of Greece with Deillian league named after the isle it took place upon. At this league the other states agreed to give athens military tributes in the form of men or weapons in the end it just degenerated into giving athens money and athens became arroagent and affluent blinded by hubris and pride, others didn;t like this, an arbitrary war broke out and the alliance system chain affect that we see in world war one took place and Sparta ended up being on the opposite side as the athenians.Mulitple battles took place and it the athenians lost their main force at the battle of syracuse I think they got smashed at sea then the Spartans sieged athens and won the athenians stopped saying there way was better and we see the end of Pericles' spirit of patriotism. The Athenians stopped asking why it was better that Sparta should ahve won and just adopted an aristotliean approach and began doing as sparta did and just worked towards the furthering of military and state.
aristotle in ethics defines good as what is furthering to the state.
History is top quality while grammar and syntax is that of a six year old, forgive me.
basically it was WWI but for ancient Greece
>>380584
Persians conqueror the Lydian Empire under most based Cyrus the Great, this transfers control and dominion of the Ionian Greek colonies and city-states from the Lydian crown to the Persian one. Persians are even more lenient and tolerant with their Greek vassals and Cyrus applies is his normal rules: pay him and the empire a small fee and everything is swell. Persians have their Persian governor told by their Greek subjects that tyrants that are the most popular and stable form of government. Persians say okay if that's what you want we're cool with it. But said tyrants prove to be extremely corrupt and heavy-handed and start culling rebellious Greeks who want them removed from power by their Persian overlords.
A certain Greek, a very corrupt tyrant, in fact has early earned Darius the Great's displeasure and lost favor. Fearing he'll be sold out by his own former Greek subjects and put on trial by the Persians, he appeals to aid to the Greek homeland. Athens and few other city-states in Greece start sending in soldiers, warships, supplies, and money to start a revolt. The Persians are completely caught off guard by this because objectively, they had done everything in their power to keep their subjects happy and placated.
So after that you have a 6 year long revolt and Ionian Greek uprising from 499 BC to 493 BC where the Persians repeatedly crush the Ionians all over Ionian and Cyprus after a reversal of military fortunes and most based Datis. Darius wants revenge and is justified for war by Athens openly decrying Persian hegemony.
Then you have the two Greco-Persian Wars. Afterwards Greeks are unable to make any real headway into Asia Minor and Persians stay away directly from mainland Europe. Athens becomes corrupt and manipulates the Delian League into its own personal empire, and then you have Spartan and Athenian wars while Persians play divide and distract.
>>380584
>FUCKING SPARTIATES GET OUT OF MY ATTICA RRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
>>383954
>be Athenian
>get plague
That was great summary
Ignore the retards
>>384013
All of the large posts/summaries offered in the thread are good, and each has a different focus.
Worth reading them all.
>>384007
>be historian
>live to get plague, fight it off, and document how your city suffered under it
>>384007
>be Spartan boy
>get fucked in the ass because institutionalized pederasty
>>380584
greeks got #rekt
>Athens got a bunch of the islands and Persian-conquered subjects as tax tributes after liberating them
>this made them the 'big-boys' in Greece, which was previously seated by Sparta
>Sparta decides to invade Athens to pummel them before they become too powerful for them in the future, as the city-states were governed by a bunch of paranoid schizophrenics who backstabbed each-other constantly
>Spartans make no progress because they're a bunch of land-restricted fuckbois who didn't have siege engines, so they basically invaded Attica annually just to set crops afire and leave and go back to Sparta to make sure the Helots weren't impregnating their women and running their shit
>Battle of Sphacteria happens, which the Spartans get #rekt by a bunch of peasant mercenaries and surrender for the first time in then-recent history to the Athenians, which was a huge blow to their ego and made them want to negotiate peace, which sort does happen for nearly a decade
>meanwhile in said decade, Athenians follow the advice of this giant faggot named Alcibiades, who thought it would be smart to invade and conquer Greek-Sicily (which were pretty big big-boys) with the largest expeditionary force assembled by the Greeks since the Trojan War
>that backfires, literally the whole force gets killed or sold off as slaves, Athens becomes the laughing stock of the Greek states; their tributaries leave them; they realize that Democracy isn't all what it's knocked up to be and abolish it for oligarchy in-order to win the war; Persia gets involved in aiding both sides to weaken them; Sparta eventually wins after a bunch of dragged out years
Op here. I forgot I made this thread.
>>382898
>switched from Latin to Greek
Wasn't the eastern half of the Roman Empire always the wealthier one? I know Rome was bigger than anything else by far but there were a lot of important cities in the east. The Roman Empire in the east never really shook its Greek identity.
>>382898
You're confusing the Archidamian War for the Ionian War for when you're talking about the Athenians not leaving the walls between 415 - 401.
Pericles advocated the "Periesesthai" for the Archiadamian War, which essentially meant staying behind the walls and letting Sparta wear themselves out, hoping for a stalemate (which would be a moral victory for them). Pericles died 1 year into the war though, and a guy called Cleon, who was really aggressive, took over. Athens fucked Sparta in Pylos, Sphacterio in 425BC, capturing a bunch of super important people. Sparta didn't want to invade Athens anymore, and went to shit for a while.
As a result of this victory at Pylos, the Athenians got arrogant and became increasingly aggressive, eventually losing the extremely important Amphipolis and signing a truce with Sparta (Thucydides was exile after this battle).
The Ionian War was where Athens and Sparta actually fought each other (Athens won most of the battles before the executed their own generals like fucking spastics). That was the one between 413 and 404BC. If parts of this don't make sense it's because I'm drunk. I hope this helps.
read thucydides
>>383333
Dem quads
>>383142
Or just read Thucydides.
>>386372
Doesn't mean that the first ERE rulers weren't more 'Roman' or Latin than Greek.
>>386372
Right but Latin was still the legal language that those actually ruling both the east and the west used (until it wasn't).
>>380584
>Athens tries to become a super power
>war with Sparta
>everyone in Athens gets Plague while the spartan army sits outside the walls laughing at everyone dying of plague
>Athens gets it's shit slapped
>>390789
Also Corinthian Helmets are gay
