ATHENS and ROME: ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ Athens – 51-338 B.C
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1 2 ATHENS AND ROME: ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ Athens – 51-338 B.C. The Mediterranean Sea stands at the meeting point of three continents: In 510 B.C. Athens was not the capital of a united ‘Greece’ as it is today. Africa, Asia, and Europe. Since our species arrived at its shores over Greeks were scattered around the Mediterranean in settlements amongst 50,000 years ago, and floated primitive rafts onto its waters, this mighty foreign peoples in modern Turkey, Sicily, Italy, Africa, the Balkans, the sea has carried ideas, people, and goods from continent to continent; and Black Sea, France, Spain, Crete, Cyprus, and other Aegean islands – as well it has fostered the development – and collapse – of great civilisations. as modern Greece itself. And although they saw themselves (more or less) as one people, speaking one language, the hundreds of Greek communities Its name, reflecting this crucial position, means ‘Sea at the Middle of the around these shores were totally independent states (‘countries’). Athens Earth’ in Latin – the language of the city of Rome. The Romans, in fact, was just one of these ‘city states’ – so called because each was centred on a didn’t call it the ‘Mediterranean’, but ‘mare nostrum’: ‘our Sea’. Both our single city, with land and smaller settlements around it. name for the Mediterranean, and the Romans’, say something about our attitudes. Yet while people around the world might quibble that the Each Greek city state had its own traditions, its own heroes, its own local Mediterranean is the ‘centre of the earth’, there is no doubting its crucial versions of the multiple Greek gods – and its own means of government. role in world history; and two cities, Athens and Rome, in particular. Many states were ruled by individual kings or by collections of wealthy nobles. Sparta, the most powerful Greek city state, was dominated by rich In 2017 A.D. in Rome, the Pope still faces questions about his Church’s aristocratic families; a strange system in which two kings ruled at once; involvement in abuse scandals worldwide. Athens, now the capital of a and a completely militarised warrior class of citizens. Athens, until 510, united Greece, still struggles as one of the economically weakest members was ruled by dictators or ‘tyrants’, most lately Hippias. In 510, however, of the Eurozone. But two and a half millennia ago, in 511-507BC, events the Athenians, with help from Sparta, overthrew Hippias. The Spartans were transpiring in each of the two cities that would see them achieve a and their allies within Athens now wanted control, while others wanted to position of unrivalled importance in world history. This is why both cities form a ‘democracy’ - demokratia, a Greek word meaning ‘rule of the are still so intensively studied today. people’. In 508/7, the latter group won out, brushing the Spartans aside. The sea ‘at the centre of the The Spartans hoped that their intervention in 510 would win gratitude earth’: a reconstruction of a and compliance from a newly ‘free’ Athens – a hope many a ‘liberating’ Roman world map, with east at power has held in vain throughout history (as in some of the USA’s 20th the top. The three known st continents, Europe (left), Asia and 21 century experiences). In fact, they helped to create their greatest (top) and Africa (right), wrap rival, and a thorn in their side for the next hundred years and more. It was themselves around a central the new democracy of Athens, established in 508/7 B.C., that would rise to point: the Mediterranean. The spiky peninsulas of Italy and a position of dominance in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean; make Greece project into the sea from strides in art, thought and culture that still have a profound influence the left. today; and engage in direct and indirect jostling with Sparta, until they tore each other apart in the later fifth century BC. 3 4 THE PERSIAN WARS BEGIN – 492-480 BC – your Unit Two (Year 12!) But democratic Athens’ first great enemy was not Sparta, but Persia. The Persians were a tribal people from Iran who in the sixth century BC had expanded their power into the largest empire the world had ever seen. By TROY 510 BC, the Persian King of Kings ruled the whole of the Middle East, from G R E E C E Afghanistan to Egypt. He had also brought Asia Minor (modern Turkey) under his control, including many Greek city states on the western coast. 3. Xerxes’ invasion 480BC It must be remembered that at the time, this was most of the world as THERMOPYLAE 1. Ionian Revolt, 499-4BC known to either Greeks or Persians. Persia was a true superpower. P e r s I a n Attacking superpowers, or helping others to do so, can be a dangerous ATHENS E m p I r e move. The Taliban discovered this in 2001, and Athens did two and a half millennia ago. In the 490s BC, some Greek cities in Turkey rebelled against SPARTA the control of the Persians and appealed for help from Greeks abroad (the 2. Darius’ invasion, 490BC Ionian Revolt, 499-4BC: see map, 1). Sparta refused; Athens agreed. Athens and the rebel cities marched to the local Persian capital, Sardis (see map), and burned it. Imagine New York in September 2001; and the response. The rage of the world’s only superpower was terrifying. BATTLE SITES The rebellion was crushed, the Greek cities punished, and the Athenians TOWNs / City states retreated back to their own city across the sea. But they were far from Above: Greece in 510. Below: the Persian Empire. Greece is found in the far left hand corner of this vast area. safe. In 490, the Persian King Darius (Daryash in the original Persian), still raging at this tiny city’s barefaced cheek, launched an invasion, pouring P e r s I a n E m p I r e ships and men across the Aegean towards Greece (see map, 2). The 510 B.C. generals he sent to lead the invasion (he himself remained in Persia) landed their great force at Marathon, near Athens; but the Athenians, on their home soil, were able to defeat the invaders. (The slightly distorted legend of a lone runner dashing the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens gave the modern race its name and distance.) Against all the odds, Athens survived. But the Persians had unfinished business with what was for them an arrogant little foreign city over the sea. In 480, Darius’ son and successor Xerxes (Hsharyasha) launched his own invasion of Greece (see map, 3). This one was much more successful, and 5 6 his armies – ‘millions’ of troops, Greek historians tell us! – poured down the Greek peninsula, enlisting allies and destroying cities as they went. The southern Greek city-states, including Athens, allied together to fight the Persian menace. 300 Spartans, the greatest fighters of the Greek world, held the Persian multitude at the narrow pass of Thermopylae. For days on end they fought and died, one by one, before they were finally betrayed, encircled and destroyed. Their story does not need the CGI of the film ‘300’ to render it an astonishing tale of bravery and self-sacrifice. An inscription they left in the narrow pass read: ‘O go and tell the Spartans, passer-by, that here, obedient to their will, we lie.’ There was no-one left to carry that message in person. The Spartan blockade, broken though it was, may have saved Greece, by The pass at Thermopylae. The sea is just out of shot on the right; the sea and the cliffs allowed the Spartans giving their arch-rivals the Athenians time to decide on their own strategy. to maintain their defence, until the Persians were shown a secret mountaintop route to outflank them. In Athens, in the assembly of the people, where decisions were debated and voted on, there was panic. The god Apollo had spoken through his VICTORY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES – 480-431 BC oracle (holy prophet) at Delphi, telling the Athenians to Although the decision to abandon the city must have seemed horrific put their trust in wooden walls… when the destruction began, it proved the key to victory in the war against the Persians. The massive Persian fleet which had accompanied the …and for the deeply religious Athenians, this phrase formed the heart of invading army now entered the narrow waters around Athens, confident their debate. How were these words to be interpreted? Should they build of victory. But emerging from around the island of Salamis the Athenians wooden walls to defend themselves? Why of wood, not stone? Where and their allies, desperate and cornered, won the victory (nike) of their should they build them? Or could the oracle mean siege towers? lives. The Persians lost their fleet, and thousands of soldiers. At last, a noble named Themistokles persuaded his fellow citizens that the Xerxes, watching from his splendid throne on the Athenian mainland, ‘wooden walls’ mentioned by the god were the wooden hulls of ships, and sobbed in rage and disbelief. For him, the sight of his glorious, world- it was voted to abandon the city to the Persians’ rage. The entire city fled conquering troops and ships, foundering and drowning, must have been to the fleet and shortly after, the Persian horde descended on Athens. It impossible to accept; as the 1975 images of Americans, fleeing in panic was payback time for the looting of Sardis. Houses and temples were from the rooftops of the US embassy in South Vietnam, were to the USA.