GREECE 



2606 



GREECE 



governing. Its citizens owed allegiance to no 

 other powers, and it might declare war irre- 

 spective of the wishes of any neighboring city. 

 There were other differences also. When his- ' 

 toric Athens is spoken of, it is not simply the 

 walled town with its Acropolis and wonderful 

 buildings which is meant, but all Attica with its 

 farms and villages. All the dwellers throughout 

 such a region might have a national pride as 

 Greeks, a sentiment of loyalty toward Greece 

 as a whole, but their intense patriotism was 

 toward the city: they were, for example, 

 Athenians or Spartans first, and then Greeks. 

 This must be understood, that it may be clear 

 why Greece throughout antiquity was never 

 one nation. 



The Period of Glory. By the close of the 

 sixth century B. c. the powerful city-states had 

 developed fully, each in its own field. Sparta 

 was a great military power, Corinth was com- 

 mercially supreme, and Athens was beginning 

 to be the center of the intellectual and artistic 

 life (see articles on those cities). Great politi- 

 cal advance had also been made. Draco had 

 drawn up a code of laws at Athens, and Solon 

 and Clisthenes had broken the rule of the old 

 land-holding nobles and organized the first 

 democratic government of the world. But it 

 was war which brought Greece to the height of 

 its glory war with a great foreign power. 



The Persian Wars. The Ionian cities which 

 had been planted in Asia Minor had kept up 

 their connection with the mother country, but 

 they had come in 546 B. c. by conquest under 

 the rule of Persia. So severe was this rule 

 that the cities revolted in 499 B. c., and Athens 

 sent them aid in their unsuccessful insurrec- 

 tion. For this act Darius, the Persian king, 

 decided that Athens must be punished. So 

 determined was he not to let his wrath die 

 down that he commanded a servant to repeat 

 to him three times each day, "Master, remem- 

 ber the Athenians." 



In 492 B. c., therefore, Darius dispatched 

 an army into Greece under his son-in-law, 

 Mardonius, but a storm off Mount Athos de- 

 stroyed the Persian fleet, and the army suf- 

 fered so severely during its progress through 

 Thrace that the expedition was abandoned. 

 Unappeased, Darius sent out another force 

 two 'years later, but this army encountered the 

 Athenians on the plain of Marathon (which 

 see) and was overwhelmingly defeated. This 

 victory, one of the "fifteen decisive battles" of 

 the world, gave confidence to the Greeks, and 

 raised Athens to the position of acknowledged 



headship among the Greek states. See FIFTEEN 

 DECISIVE BATTLES. 



Themistocles (which see), realizing that Per- 

 sia had not yet given up the struggle, per- 

 suaded the Athenians to increase their navy, 

 on which he felt Greece must of necessity de- 

 pend in any future conflict. Events proved 

 his wisdom, for in 480 B.C. Xerxes, the son 

 of Darius, undertook to carry to success his 

 father's project. With a land and naval force 

 which the ancients estimated at more than 

 2,000,000, but which authorities believe to have 

 included only about 300,000 actual warriors, 

 he crossed the Hellespont and marched through 

 Thrace and Macedonia. Laying aside their jeal- 

 ousy, Sparta and Athens summoned a congress 

 of the states at Corinth, and a number of the 

 cities were represented and agreed to help in 

 the struggle. 



In a series of battles which included the 

 heroic, but for the Greeks, disastrous stand 

 at Thermopylae (which see), the great naval 

 engagement at Salamis (which see), and the 

 battle at Plataea, Xerxes attempted to crush 

 the Greeks, but their heroism and patriotism 

 were 'in the end triumphant, and the Persian 

 hosts were compelled to withdraw to Asia. 



For half a century after the close of the 

 Persian wars Greece had peace, and the city- 

 states had leisure to develop their differing 

 types of civilization (see ATHENS; SPARTA). 

 Because of its naval leadership during the war, 

 Athens was the dominating power in the pen- 

 insula, and reached a height at which the 

 world still marvels. Its democratic ideas were 

 widely adopted by the other states, but Sparta 

 held firmly to its old aristocratic government. 



Period of Decline. The old rivalry between 

 Athens and Sparta, which had been almost for- 

 gotten during the Persian wars, flamed up 

 again when there was no great need for har- 

 mony, and in 431 B. c. Sparta found in the 

 relation of Athens to its allied states an occa- 

 sion for war. In the resulting struggle, known 

 as the Peloponnesian War, Pericles, the great 

 Athenian statesman, held his people back from 

 land battles, in which they were no match for 

 the Spartans, but attempted to destroy the 

 commerce of the Peloponnesus and to gain 

 possession of the coast towns and islands. 

 Sparta, in the meantime, did its best to induce 

 the colonies of Athens to revolt, and sent ex- 

 peditions to ravage Attica. The Athenian 

 plan worked well until a terrible plague broke 

 out in the city and carried off at least a fourth 

 of the population. Pericles was one of the 



