It’s the year 478 BCE.
And an interesting embassy of various diplomats presents itself to the Athenian Assembly.
This video is sponsored by the Great Courses Plus but more on that later.
This embassy that presented itself before the Athenian Assembly, well actually they
would first come before the Prytaneis who where part of the Boule who would decide whether
to present them before the Assembly but the Athenian government is all but not simple
so for simplicity sake let's just say the embassy presented itself before the Assembly.
This embassy was a coalition of various Greek Ionian city states, but also most likely other
Greek city states were part of it as well.
And they all came to Athens, to present before the Athenians, their plea for Athens to take
the leadership of the Hellenic Alliance away from the Spartans.
Why is there a Hellenic Alliance, why are the Spartans leading it, why are the Aionians
asking Athens to help, and how is this all even related to the creation of the Athenian
Empire?
Well let's get into it.
…
Before 478 the Hellenic world was embroiled in a conflict the scale of which they have
never seen before.
The Persian Empire ruling over most of the eastern known world had set it sights on Greece,
and so the conflict known as the Greco-Persian Wars started, I do not intend to cover this
entire topic as that would require an entire video series of its own but it is important
to mention certain events from it that lead to the arrival of the aforementioned diplomatic
embassy to Athens in 478.
So the simplified version goes like this.
The Greco Persian Wars started with a rebellion of Ionian Greeks against the Persian rule
in 499.
They were supported in this rebellion by Athenians and Eretrians.
The revolt was subdued by the Persians in 493 but the Persian king Darius vowed to make
Athens and Eretria pay for their support of the revolt.
And so with this in mind he invaded Greece in 490 where he was promptly defeated at Marathon
by mainly Athenian but also some Eretrain forces led by Callimachus.
During the battle Callimachus was supported by 10 strategoi, basically Athenian Generals.
The most important of which were Aristides, Themistocles, Xanthipus and, of course Miltiades.
Militiades was the one to pressure the Athenians to face the Persians in open battle and he
was the one who devised the battle tactic that defeated the Persians even though they
outnumbered the Athenians.
After the battle the story goes that the remaining Persians wanted to use their fleet to attack
Athens since the Athenian army was in Marathon.
But the Athenians marched as fast as they could in full armour, 40 km from Marathon
to Athens, just in time to see the Persian fleet arriving, who upon seeing the Athenian
army in the city, decided to retreat.
This story was later romanticized, and confused with a different story, resulting in the story
we know today.
Which is that after the Athenian victory at Marathon a herald called Philippides was dispatched
to announce the news in Athens.
He ran the full 40 km in armour exclaimed before the Assembly “We've won!” and promptly
died of exhaustion.
This story is why today’s marathon is called a Marathon and why it is 40 km long, well
not exactly, but I digress.
After the Persian defeat at Marathon a year later Miltiades led the Athenian troops on
the offensive but this proved to be not so successful and he even managed to get grievously
injured during this campaign.
His rivals in Athens used this failed campaign, and other arguments, to get Miltiades imprisoned.
This man who helped Athens defeat the Persians at Marathon died due to his injuries while
being imprisoned by said Athenians.
He was also almost ostracized if he had lived a couple of years longer to see this new law
come into practice.
What is Ostracism?
Well for those who don’t know ostracism was an Athenian way of getting rid of people
who might be aspiring to overthrow the democracy.
If more than 6000 votes were casted, who's ever name was mentioned the most in those
6000+ votes was exiled from Athens for a period of 10 years.
The problem with this was that even though the reason why the ostracism was introduced
was quite altruistic, it just ended up being yet another way of getting rid of your political
rivals and almost anyone who became popular in Athenian politics got ostracized eventually.
Even the person who introduced ostracism and reformed Athenian democracy to be more “democractic”,
Cleisthenes, is said to have been ostracized himself, maybe the sources are unclear, but
it is known that his son was later ostracised.
So a little foreshadowing there of how it ends for most of the people in these videos.
Going back to the Greco-Persian Wars, Darius was preparing another invasion of Greece but
died in 486 and was succeeded by his son Xerxes.
Xerxes had to deal with rebellions and consolidate his power within Persia and due to this he
put his father’s planned Greek invasion on hold until 480.
During this 10 year interbellum in the war, two prominent politicians came to ascendents
in Athens.
The veterans of the Battle at Marathon Themistocles and Aristides.
Themistocles was popular with the lower classes mainly because he came from them, he was known
as a cunning man who always had a plan and to whom sometimes the ends did justify the
means.
Aristides on the other hand positioned himself against Themistocles, he was the champion
of the upper classes, called “The just Aristides” by his supporters, he was incorruptible, conservative
and as Plutarch puts it, he was in politics “to secure the best results consistent with
safety and righteousness” not to be a populist.
Nonetheless the main issue these two disagreed on was whether Athens should focus more on
its navy or its military, with Themistocles supporting the former and Aristides the latter.
This heated debate culminated in 483 when a very rich seam of silver was found in the
Athenian controlled mines Laurion.
Themistocles wanted to use the new found money to build a great new navy for Athens, while
Aristidis fearing this would mean Athen’s abandonment of its military in favor of the
navy proposed dividing up the money amongst the Athenian citizens.
At the end it looked like a compromise was going to be reached between the two sides
but an ostracism was held in this time.
During the ostracism an illiterate man came up to Aristides not recognizing him.
He asked Aristides if he could please write the name Aristides on his pottery shard (which
was the ballot), confused Aristides asked the man “has Aristides wronged you at any
point” to which the man replied “No, and I do not even know him, but it irritates me
to hear him everywhere called 'the Just”.
Aristides than true to his nickname wrote his own name on the pottery shard.
Unsurprisingly Aristides was ostracized, meaning Themistoclese won and Athens promptly started
to build one of the largest fleets in the Aegean.
In 481, Greeks learned of the planned Persian invasion and so called for a Greek Council.
There were around 700 Greek city states at the time but only 70 showed up to the council.
However even with that it has to be stated how big of a deal this is, even 10% of the
Greek city states showing up to a council when some of them are technically in an active
war with each other is impressive.
The council decided a Hellenic Alliance with the power to levy troops and send ambassadors
would be formed to fight the Persians.
This Hellenic Alliance promptly made the Spartans the main leaders of the alliance and of the
joined military, because I mean it's the war obsessed Spartans who else should lead the
allies to war.
The Athenians, on the other hand with their fancy new big navy, and due to some clever
diplomatic maneuvering by Themistocles, managed to be appointed as the leaders of the Allied
navy.
And so with Athenian Themistocles leading the Navy and
Spartan Leonidas the military what follows next are the stories of legends.
Persians win at Thermopylae killing Leonidas and march to Attica to burn down Athens along
with a bunch of other cities and temples along the way.
Most Athenians however retreated with the Hellenic Alliance to the Isthmus of Corinth
so they were safe for now.
Also Athens during this time passed a law of recalling exiles, meaning Aristides could
return and so he did, promptly serving under Themistocles in the Allied Navy.
Also since Leonidas was dead he was promptly succeeded in the leadership of the allies
by another spartan Pausanias.
The Persian navy was then defeated thanks to Themistocles cunning at the Battle of Salamis.
After that the allies went on the offencive defeating the invading forces at the Battle
of Plataea and the remaining Persian Navy at the Battle of Mycale.
During the Battle of Platea Aristidis showed his confidence, orator skills, and honor,
even helping to put down a conspiracy within the army.
These actions gave the allies great admiration for Aristides but more on that later.
With the Persian threat no longer imminent Athenians returned to their burned downed
and destroyed city.
Athenians started to rebuild their city along with the destroyed walls, naturally the Spartans
objected to the Athenians rebuilding their walls because well they didn’t want their
main rivals to have walls.
Themistocles however, ever the trickster, devised a plan of how to trick the Spartans.
He told the Athenians to focus on only building the walls as quick as they can.
He then headed an embassy to Sparta along with a man named Kimon where he delayed for
as long as he could.
Spartans however didn’t believe his words and so Themistocles suggested the Spartans
send envoys of their own, to see for themselves if Athenians are building the walls or not.
He then himself send a herald to Athens, telling them to keep hostage the Spartan envoys that
will arrive.
The Athenians did so and when Aristides arrived to Sparta to enform Themistocles that the
walls have been finished, enraged Spartans wanted to imprison the entire Athenian embassy
to which Themistocles nicely pointed out they had the Spartan envoys in custody in Athens.
So the Spartans reluctantly released the Athenian Embassy and the Athenians released the Spartan
embassy.
Before leaving, Themistocles informed the Spartans for future reference that Athenians
weren’t just any Greek city the Spartans could boss around and in fact it was a city
of distinguished people which could make their own decisions without Spartan or any other
city’s consent.
The new Athenian Walls on top of encompassing a much larger area than the actual city itself
where also build around the new Athenian port Piraeus.
Themistocles couldn’t stress enough how valuable having access to the sea was for
the Athenians now that they were the dominant naval power in the Greek world.
He even suggested that if worse comes to worse, the Athenians abandoned their city in favor
of defending Piraeus.
Whether that will ever happen, I guess we’ll just have to see.
Going back to the Greco Persian Wars the Hellenic Alliance continued being on the offensive
taking over Gallipoli, raiding Cyprus and capturing Byzantium.
All while most of the Ionian Greeks, remember them, rebelled from the Persians and joined
the Alliance as well.
However, during this entire time, the Spartans where the ones in charge of the alliances
actions.
After all as mentioned before you’re going to war with the largest Empire in the known
world, so you probably want to make the war obsessed Spartans the leaders of the Alliance.
But now that the imminent threat of Persian invasion of Greece has been largely stifled,
the problems of Spartan hegemony are starting to come to light.
The Spartan leader of the alliance Pausanias was said to be dictatorial, violent, corrupt
and even often irrational.
Now these statements may have been just Athenian propaganda at play but considering that Spartans
were known for carrying sticks and beating with them anyone who disagreed with their
opinion, it would be easy to assume that Pausanias wasn’t really liked by the allied troops.
Which brings us back to 478 and the allied embassy coming to Athens, pleading for them
to take over the leadership of the Alliance.
Athenians agreed to take the leadership away from the Spartans under certain conditions.
The exact details of this and how the new alliance was runned is a matter of debate
because no sources talk about it in detail, but to present a coherent story I am going
to go with N.G.L.
Hammonds representation.
Each ally will swear an oath to the gods to have an offencive and a defensive alliance
with Athens. (also sometimes to the alliance itself as a whole, depends)
They will also be required to participate in the alliance’s council on the island
of Delos.
Each ally has a seat and one vote on the council, however the Athenian vote is equivalent to
the whole alliances council vote.
Plus Athens will hold a permanent Hegemony over the leadership of the alliance’s navy
and army.
On top of that any booty gotten from raiding and pillaging the Persian territory will be
divided amongst the allies and of course 1/10 of it will go to the gods.
Lastly each alli has to either support the alliance in military/naval aid or financial
payments which would be held at a treasury in Delos.
Why Delos you ask?
Well partly because it’s conveniently placed in the middle of the Aegean, partly because
it’s an island, and so easily defendable by the Athenian Navy, and partly because it
is a very religiously important site in the Hellenic world.
It is the island where the twin gods of Apollo and Artemis were born and came down from the
mountain Cynthus.
Having the allies meet at such a religious important place would make them think twice
before breaking the oath they swore to Athens before the gods.
Most allies mainly the islanders and the Ionians agreed to these terms while others like Sparta
just left the alliance.
Why Sparta gave up the hegemony of the Alliance is uncertain but it is mostly agreed that
they felt like the Persians have been soundly defeated and there was no longer a reason
to continue on with the Alliance.
This combined with the Athenian restructuring of the alliance meant that not everybody was
happy being part of the alliance anymore.
Why did other allies agree to the terms set by Athens?
Well for the Aioninas and some islanders this was a perfect deal as they were in a constant
threat from Persia and so being part of such an alliance with one of the most powerful
cities in the Greek world meant protection.
Other cities even at this early point may have been strongarmed by Athens in to joining
the new alliance but we have no way of knowing that for sure.
Lastly there’s an economic aspect to it.
Being part of the alliance means protection, stability and more streamlined access to markets,
something which the trade oriented Thassos would enjoy.
So in 478 the Athenians became the leaders of a newly created alliance which henceforth
we shall call the Delian league, a political entity which gradually over the course of
the 5th century became the Athenian Empire.
So now that Athens is leading this new Delian League what are they going to do about the
Persian threat, also what is Themistocles and Aristides role in this new league, plus
who was that new guy named Kimon who helped Themistocles trick the Spartans?
All very good questions that are going to be answered in the next video of my Athenian
Empire Series.
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know when the next video in this series is going to come out, you can always go to the
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