Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind by Edith Hall

Author:Edith Hall [Hall, Edith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: History, Ancient, Greece
ISBN: 9780393244120
Google: dq5bAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0393351165
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-06-16T07:00:00+00:00

Of all the events of this war, this was the most momentous, and indeed I think it was the most momentous of any event ever reported to have happened in the Greek world. It brought the most glory to the winners, and the greatest misfortune to the losers. For the losers were absolutely wiped out in every respect and their sufferings were too awful for words. Total destruction was the fate of both army and navy. Everything was obliterated. Of the many who had gone to war few returned home again.

The annihilation of almost its entire population of men of fighting age sent Athens reeling. Two years later, the democracy was overthrown in a violent oligarchic coup, producing a government of only four hundred. It was soon deposed and a larger number, five thousand, given the reins of power, before the democracy was reintroduced, amid much bitterness, litigation, and executions, in 410.

The Athenians then commenced the dance of death that culminated in their surrender to the Spartans in 404 BC. The focus of the war shifted to the eastern Aegean, and in a series of naval battles, the Athenians suffered humiliating defeats; even their unexpected victory at the battle of Arginusae in 406 was ruined by the heavy fatalities. The crews of the many damaged Athenian triremes had not been rescued and had drowned. The Athenians summarily executed six of the eight generals, but were in desperate straits: The executions were of at best questionable legality, and demoralized even ardent democrats while providing their opponents with evidence that democracy was simply rule by the rabble. This perception was sharpened further by the changing face of the Athenian citizens: They were now so short of manpower that, ever resourceful and open to radical solutions, they conferred citizenship on all the slaves who had rowed in the battle. In 405 BC the Athenians were defeated in a further sea battle, and the Peloponnesian War came to an end. The regime of the Thirty Tyrants amenable to Sparta, who included the ferocious and willful Critias, lasted for just over a year before exiled Athenians succeeded in returning and restoring the democracy in 403. Athens remained independent until 338 BC but never recovered the wealth and imperial power she had enjoyed under Pericles.

Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War peters out in 411. The three most significant Athenians who lived through the last decade of the fifth century and the first few decades of the fourth, and who supply our knowledge of events in those years, are all connected with the philosopher Socrates. One is the comic dramatist Aristophanes, who was intrigued by Socrates’ ideas and a member of the same social circle; the other two, Plato and the soldier and historian Xenophon, were both Socrates’ students. Socrates’ experiences between 411 and his death in 399 reveal the serial emergencies into which the Athenians plunged themselves during those years. His responses to the crisis show how his presence, his conduct, and his probing of public

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.