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World history
Course: World history > Unit 2
Lesson 2: Classical Greece- Classical Greece
- The Greek polis
- The Greek polis
- State-building: the Greek polis
- Greco Persian Wars
- Second Persian Invasion
- Classical Greek Society and Culture
- Philosophy: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
- Classical Greek society
- Classical Greek culture
- Classical Greek society
- Classical Greek culture and society
- Classical Greece
- Prelude to the Peloponnesian War
- The Peloponnesian War
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The Peloponnesian War
An overview of the Peloponnesian War, including the Archidamian War, the Athenian attack on Syracuse, and the Decelean War.
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- Why are these wars (Greco-Persian, Peloponnesian) so important that they are taught to children across Europe and in other societies of European origin? There are so many other conflicts in ancient history that we don't hear about in school.(14 votes)
- Because the greeks are seen as the forefathers of the european culture. And these wars are important in forming greece as a major world power.(23 votes)
- What was the point of Syracuse? why did the Athenians want it?(8 votes)
- Hi Joshua—Athens wanted more power, land, and resources. That's why Athens wanted Syracuse. If they had successfully taken Syracuse, they would have probably won the war against the Spartans. Unfortunately the Athenians failed. This phase of the Peloponnesian war took two years.
Hope this helps! :)(10 votes)
- athe says the spartens sent the Athenians back why was that such a dishonor for them you think they'd be like yay more soldiers for us? 1:19(3 votes)
- I heard the spartan slaves or "helots" (who are revolting against the Spartans at that time) were actually native greeks called the Messinians. Though slaves were considered an okay thing to have in Ancient Greece, the slaves were always non-greek speaking foreigners. So the act of subjugating fellow greeks (the Messinians) by the Spartans didn't sit very well with the Athenians and the other Greek Poleis. The Spartans knew this, and so they were worried the Athenians would become sympathetic toward the Messinians plight, and instead of helping the Spartans to put down the helot revolt, the Athenians would instead try and set them free. And sense the Spartans relied completely on slave labor for food and things, they just couldn't take that chance. So the Spartans turned away the Athenians away before that could (possibly) happen.(14 votes)
- If Athens was so powerful at the time, why was Decelea able to move over to the Spartan side? () What was to prevent Athens from simply occupying it, especially with Decelea and Athens being is such close proximity to one another. 6:41(7 votes)
- for one thing, this is not a video game. Peoples lives are lost in war. And Decelea was a strategic location(0 votes)
- I'm Greek and I find this very interesting because i didnt know about this until now. In the other videos it says that all of this history is on account from Herodotus. i'm not sure if he was athenian and was on their side and contributed bias to the athenian side of the war, but I was interested that Sparta was coincidentally interrupted by the bad earthquake. What does Herodotus say specifically about the earthquake? I imagine his writing about it very apocalyptic for some reason(4 votes)
- That Sparta was interrupted by the bad earthquake(0 votes)
- What were the navys like back then?(1 vote)
- Navies "back then" involved wooden ships that, under the power of sail or of slaves who rowed them, transported fighting men and supplies from one place to another.(3 votes)
- When Rome took over Athens the romans took the statue of Athena from the Parthenon right?(1 vote)
- Yes you are right they also made a simalier Parthenon in Rome. Because the Romans worship the same gods but different names. For example Zeus is a greek god the Romans call him Jupiter. And Zeus's wife Hera is called Juno in Rome.(3 votes)
- What was the point of Syracuse?(1 vote)
- He says the point at around themark. 4:55(2 votes)
- why does greeks kept making a peace treaty with a specific time frame? it feels like they were trying to dodge the situation instead of coming to a solution(1 vote)
- Well, the conflict wasn't resolved, peace doesn't mean a resolution was reached. The two sides were just exhausted and needed time to recover.(2 votes)
- Is Attica in Athens or Athens in Attica ? I got confused(1 vote)
- Athens is in Attica. Attica is the southern peninsula of Greece.(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] As we've already
seen, the 5th Century BCE starts off with Athens and
Sparta and various Greek city-states fighting on
the same side against the Persian invaders. But as we saw in the last
video, as soon as the Persians are dealt with, tensions
start to rise between Athens and Sparta and their various allies. Sparta gets worried that
the Athenian Navy is looking maybe a little bit too
strong, they were decisively important in the Second Persian Invasion, and they build this Delian
League, whose purpose is to go on the offensive
against the Persians, but more and more so it
was starting to look like an Athenian empire. And a lot of this you can
imagine, it's like a game of Risk. The more you take over, the
more resources you have, the more that you can
build more ships and have more soldiers so that you
can take on even more. So as Sparta and Athens
are starting to become more and more rivals, Sparta's
getting insecure about Athens' influence and their resources,
and their military power. And we even saw it in
the last video, you have an earthquake in Sparta,
potentially right around the same time that Sparta
was planning an invasion of Athens, leaving the
Spartans vulnerable. There's a Helot uprising,
these Spartan slaves. The Athenians send Hoplites to
apparently help the Spartans but the Spartans are
suspicious of it and they send them back. And then it culminates
with the skirmish you have between Megara and Corinth,
which were historically two Spartan allies, but
Athens decides to take sides, gets an alliance with Megara,
and that's one thing too many for the Spartans, and so they declare war, and you have what's called
the First Peloponnesian War. But that's not the Peloponnesian
War, that's the first time that you start
having very open conflict between the Spartans and the Athenians. And these conflicts last
for, on the order of about 15 years, and they're
ended with what's called the Peace of 30 Years. But as we will see, this
Peace of 30 Years only lasts about 15 years. And the whole time,
tensions continue to arise. The Delian League, or you could
call it the Athenian power, the Athenian empire I should say, is getting more and more powerful. The Athenian Navy is getting
more and more powerful. And once again, things
culminate, and now this is the beginning of the
actual Peloponnesian War, the thing that people are
referring to when they talk about the Peloponnesian War. In 431 BCE, the King of Sparta is convinced or is, I guess
you could say he is influenced to, even though he
himself was somewhat skeptical of the idea, he decides to invade Attica. Attica's something
you'll hear a lot about. It is this region right
over here, this little out-jutting of land, that Athens is on. And this first phase of
the Peloponnesian War is called the Archidamian War,
named for the King of Sparta who somewhat reluctantly
decides to invade Attica. And so that's stage one, Archidamian War. And the Archidamian War,
its essential ingredients are you have Sparta with its dominant army going and having repeated
attacks onto Attica, and the Athenians with their dominant navy going and having raids
throughout the Peloponnese and along the Aegean Coast. So here you have the Athenians,
let me do the Athenians and the Spartans in two
different colors, actually. So here you go. Let's do the Spartans in this red color, attacking Attica with their
army, and now let's have the Athenians with this
light blue color coming here and attacking various
points, various points on the Peloponnese and in
the Aegean, further extending their influence. Now that first phase ends, and
it goes on for quite a bit, it goes on for about 10 years, ends with the Peace of Nicias, but as you will see and that was actually intended
to be a 50-year peace, but you'll see it
doesn't last long at all. The skirmishes continue,
and in 415, the Athenians say hey, we want to extend our power. Remember, it's like this
game of Risk, the more city-states you take over,
the more citizens that you're able to tax, the
more soldiers you will have, the more wealth you will
have, the more shipbuilding capability you will have. So the Athenians get this
great idea to sail all the way to Syracuse and just to be
clear where Syracuse is, Syracuse is over here
on the coast of Sicily. Now this is a long distance
in this ancient world. They get this idea to sail
all the way to Syracuse to try to take it over,
and essentially to extend their empire. So this right over here is
in 415, this long voyage to take over Syracuse,
and it is disastrous. The fleet that tries to go
is able to be destroyed, and they get the folks in
Syracuse are able to get the assistance of the Spartans,
and so that Greek fleet is destroyed. And this is often viewed
as the second phase of the Peloponnesian War. And so this is the Attack at Syracuse. Attack at Syracuse, the failed
attempt of the Athenians to get Syracuse, to get Syracuse. And this is a two-year period
of time, because once again, this is no joke to send
your navy and to try to get at Syracuse. And then that takes us
into the third phase, the third phase of the Peloponnesian War, let me scroll this over a little bit. The third phase is often
called the Ionian War. Ionian War. Ionia is this region
that's now in modern day, off the coast of modern-day Turkey. You have many of the
city-states that were part of this Athenian empire,
they're starting to revolt. You can imagine that the
Spartans are trying to help those revolts because they're
trying to get the Athenians wherever they are. This is often also
called the Decelean War. Decelea, I'm probably
not pronouncing it well, is a little village right over
here at the top of Attica, and it was a strategic
location that went over to the Spartans and that's
where the Decelean War gets its name. But over the course of this
third phase, the Spartans get help from the Persians. Remember this was their enemy,
they had unified the Spartans and Athenians had unified
against the Persians, but some time has passed. We're now 70 or 80 years later,
and the Spartans say hey, we want to win this thing decisively. They get the help of the
Persians and finally in 405 BCE there's decisive naval
battle at Aegospotami, and I'm sorry to all of you
Greeks out there that might be listening, I know my
pronunciation is not perfect or close to perfect, but
this is a decisive victory right over here for the Spartans. They're able to destroy the Athenian Navy, and that causes, that's
the decisive victory, and then in 404, this is in 405, in 404, the Athenians surrender and
the famous Peloponnesian War is over, the Spartans are victorious. But it's not a great victory
because as you can imagine, you have towns that have
been destroyed, large parts of Greece have been weakened,
and it leaves the whole area open to attack from others. And as we will see in the next
century, in the 4th century, we have Phillip of Macedon,
or Macedon depending on how you want to pronounce it,
who's able to use that vulnerable, and the
Macedonians or the Macedonians they are related to the
Greek people, but he's able to use that vulnerability
that happens over the course of the 5th century to attack
the city-states of Greece, but he actually is able to unify them.