Page 44 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

greece, ancient 863

If anything in this life is certain, if history
has taught us anything, it is that
you can kill anyone.
(in Godfather II) • Al Pacino (b. 1940)

Despite rapid population growth, Athenian citizens ing some Athenians) came to feel that Athenian demo-
remained comparatively few.War losses were substantial, cratic and imperial policies were profoundly unjust.
and about a dozen colonies, dispatched to consolidate Invoking the “freedom of the Greeks” against unjust
their emerging empire, also removed several thousand tyrants, whether home grown or coming from abroad,
landless citizens. At the city’s maximum, in 431 BCE, became and remained a heartfelt protest, long after the
adult male citizens numbered somewhere between enlarged scale of war had made the freedom of separate
35,000 and 50,000, of whom as many as 20,000 drew cities unsustainable.
salaries from the state for rowing in the fleet and for
other forms of public service, such as serving on juries in The Peloponnesian Wars
the law courts.The total population of Attica was prob- and the Coming of Philip
ably between 250,000 and 350,000 persons, almost Sparta, where collective heroism dated back to Lycourgos
half of whom were disfranchised foreigners and slaves. (Lycurgus), soon took the lead in challenging the emerg-
So as in Sparta, many though not all Athenian citizens ing Athenian empire.Two bouts of war ensued.The first,
had become militarized “equals,” disciplined to row and waged on and off between 460 and 445 BCE, turned out
maneuver their triremes more swiftly and accurately than to be a draw; but the next Peloponnesian war (431–404
others, just as years of training allowed Spartan soldiers BCE), as the Athenian historian Thucydides called it,
to prevail on land. ended in the overthrow of Athenian empire and democ-
While the Athenian democracy thus concentrated on racy.Yet the victorious Spartans were compromised from
warfare, trade and artisan work fell mainly into the the start, as they prevailed only after accepting Persian
hands of resident foreigners. Slaves, too, played an money to finance the creation of the mercenary fleet they
important economic role as miners of newly discovered needed to defeat the Athenians at sea. The scale and
veins of silver ore in Attica. Silver from those mines intensity of these struggles altered Greek society very rap-
financed the two hundred Athenian triremes that fought idly. Fighting became professionalized and commercial-
at Salamis; the mines also supplied silver for the Attic ized; both Athens and Sparta hired troops and sailors
drachmae that soon became a standard currency from outside the polis to supplement armies and navies
throughout most of the Mediterranean coastlands. of citizens. Within Athens, rich and poor parted com-
Athens’s combination of economic and military pany when conspirators twice (411 and 404 BCE) over-
power, based on oil and wine exports, other far-ranging threw the democracy. To be sure, democracy was soon
market exchanges, and the personal participation in war restored in Athens, at least in form; but the solidarity
by farmer-soldiers in the phalanx and landless rowers in between rich and poor in pursuit of collective greatness
the fleet, was unmatched elsewhere. Athenian poliswide never came back. Instead, independent farmer-citizen-
collaboration always remained somewhat precarious, soldiers gave way to mercenaries, while Athens, and
but under Pericles, who dominated the city’s politics Greek society everywhere,divided more and more sharply
between 445 and 429 BCE, the Athenians indeed con- between landowners and dependent tillers of the soil.
verted Homeric individual heroism into collective hero- Simultaneously, commercial prosperity subsided as
ism on behalf of their polis. Rich and poor alike pursued the Greeks lost their primacy in producing oil and
honor more than personal gain, and their willing coop- wine for overseas markets. Politics changed to match,
eration brought unusual success. allowing larger landed property holders to monopolize
Yet that success was profoundly ambiguous, since vic- what long remained vivacious political struggles among
torious Athenians became collective tyrants, suppressing themselves at home and with neighboring cities. After
the freedom of others.Accordingly, most Greeks (includ- 404 BCE, the victorious Spartans quickly became even