Greece and Persia at the Beginning of the 5Th Century BC

Greece and Persia at the beginning of the 5th century BC

1. Athens:  At the beginning of the 5th century, most of Greece was made up of city states. A city state was a large city controlling the countryside and towns around it.  Athens was the largest city state in Greece. It controlled the region called Attica.  Because of its proximity to the sea, Athens became the major naval power in Greece.  By 500 BC, Athens was also transforming itself into the world’s first democracy.

2. Sparta:  Sparta was the major land power in Greece.  Sparta did not have a large capital city like the other states of Greece. It was an agrarian society, with all work being done by slaves and non-citizens. The citizens, or Spartiates, were a military class, with every adult male serving full-time in the army.  The Spartan political system was part-monarchy (2 hereditary kings), part oligarchy (a Council of Elders made up of nobles) and part democracy (five administrators elected by the citizens). Only the military caste had any political rights.

3. Persia:  The Persian Empire (known at the time as the Achaemanid Empire) was founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC, and was the largest empire of the ancient world. It stretched from Macedonia and Libya in the west to the Indus River (in modern-day Pakistan).  The king of Persia (known as the Great King) was an absolute monarch, who ruled the empire via local administrators known as satraps.  The Persians built roads and a postal system across the empire, and used a single language for communication.  They also had one of the first religions based around one all powerful god (Ahuramazda), but were tolerant of other religions and cultures.

4. Historical sources on the period:  All the key sources are Greek, giving them an unavoidable bias.  The main source is Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), who is credited as being the world’s first historian. His Histories is a record of the Greco-Persian Wars. Unfortunately, there are problems with Herodotus’ account: it is biased towards the Greeks; it is also biased towards Athens; his account of what happened is more reliable than his reasons for why things happened; and some of his facts are dubious.  Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BC) was a Greek historian who wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens (431 – 404BC). This history also provides a brief account of the Persian Wars. His work is far more reliable than that of Herodotus, but the part on the Persian Wars is very brief.  Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who lived in the 1st century BC. He wrote a history of the world to 60 BC, which includes a section on the Persian Wars.  Plutarch (c. AD 46 – 120) was a Greek Historian who wrote a series of political biographies, including on Themistocles and Aristides.  Aeschylus (c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek playwright, who fought at Marathon and Salamis (480 BC). His play The Persians is set at the court of King Xerxes in Persepolis, but is largely based on his own experiences in the Second Persian War. Xerxes appears as a major character.  There are also Persian sources, but these mostly date from the Muslim period, 1,000 years after the wars with Greece, and are not regarded as reliable.