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172-600: After Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War , Thrasybulus led the democratic resistance to the new oligarchic government, known as the Thirty Tyrants , imposed by the victorious Spartans upon Athens. In 404 BC, he commanded a small force of exiles that invaded the Spartan-ruled Attica and, in successive battles, first defeated a Spartan garrison and then the forces of the oligarchy. In

344-467: A free city under Roman rule, some of the institutions of Lycurgus were restored, and the city became a tourist attraction for the Roman elite who came to observe exotic Spartan customs. In 214 AD, Roman emperor Caracalla , in his preparation for his campaign against Parthia , recruited a 500-man Spartan cohort ( lokhos ). Herodian described this unit as a phalanx , implying it fought like

516-536: A "place in Lacedaemonia" named after Agis. The actual transition may be captured by Isidore of Seville 's Etymologiae (7th century AD), an etymological dictionary . Isidore relied heavily on Orosius ' Historiarum Adversum Paganos (5th century AD) and Eusebius of Caesarea 's Chronicon (early 5th century AD), as did Orosius. The latter defines Sparta to be Lacedaemonia Civitas , but Isidore defines Lacedaemonia as founded by Lacedaemon, son of Semele, which

688-602: A Greek alliance against the Persians at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. The decisive Greek victory at Plataea put an end to the Greco-Persian War along with Persian ambitions to expand into Europe. Even though this war was won by a pan-Greek army, credit was given to Sparta, who besides providing the leading forces at Thermopylae and Plataea, had been the de facto leader of the entire Greek expedition. In 464 BC,

860-695: A center for processing citrus and olives. Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution , which were supposedly introduced by the semi-mythical legislator Lycurgus . His laws configured the Spartan society to maximize military proficiency at all costs, focusing all social institutions on military training and physical development. The inhabitants of Sparta were stratified as Spartiates (citizens with full rights), mothakes (free non-Spartiate people descended from Spartans), perioikoi (free non-Spartiates), and helots (state-owned enslaved non-Spartan locals). Spartiate men underwent

1032-454: A competent speaker, but was frequently overshadowed or pushed aside by more charismatic or spectacularly successful leaders. Buck has compared him to Winston Churchill, another advocate of imperial policies who held fast to his beliefs after the tide of history had turned against him, and who rose to his peak of prominence at his country's darkest hour. Throughout his two decades of prominence, whether in or out of leadership, Thrasybulus remained

1204-577: A congress of their allies to discuss the possibility of war with Athens. Sparta's powerful ally Corinth was notably opposed to intervention, and the congress voted against war with Athens. The Athenians crushed the revolt, and peace was maintained. The more immediate events that led to war involved Athens and Corinth. After a defeat by their colony of Corcyra , a sea power that was not allied to either Sparta or Athens, Corinth began to build an allied naval force. Alarmed, Corcyra sought alliance with Athens. Athens discussed with both Corcyra and Corinth, and made

1376-484: A considerable number of votive offerings. The city-wall , built in successive stages from the 4th to the 2nd century, was traced for a great part of its circuit, which measured 48 stades or nearly 10 km (6 miles) (Polyb. 1X. 21). The late Roman wall enclosing the acropolis, part of which probably dates from the years following the Gothic raid of 262 AD, was also investigated. Besides the actual buildings discovered,

1548-617: A defensive alliance with Corcyra. At the Battle of Sybota , a small contingent of Athenian ships played a critical role in preventing a Corinthian fleet from capturing Corcyra. In order to uphold the Thirty Years' Peace, the Athenians were instructed not to intervene in the battle unless it was clear that Corinth would invade Corcyra. However, the Athenian ships participated in the battle, and the arrival of additional Athenian triremes

1720-467: A double effect on Greek thought: through the reality, and through the myth.... The reality enabled the Spartans to defeat Athens in war; the myth influenced Plato's political theory, and that of countless subsequent writers.... [The] ideals that it favors had a great part in framing the doctrines of Rousseau , Nietzsche , and National Socialism . The ancient Greeks used one of three words to refer to

1892-606: A duty on ships passing through the Hellespont , and collected tribute from many of the islands of the Aegean. In 388 BC, as he led his fleet South through the Aegean, his soldiers ravaged the fields of Aspendus . In retaliation, the Aspendians raided the Athenian camp by night; Thrasybulus was killed in his tent. The gains that Thrasybulus made on this campaign were soon reversed, however, by Persian intervention. Alarmed by

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2064-400: A force under Thrasybulus and his fellow trierarch Theramenes to rescue the survivors. This operation was thwarted, however, by a sudden storm which drove the rescue force to land, and a great number of Athenians—estimates as to the precise figure have ranged from near 1,000 to as many as 5,000—drowned. The result was one of the great Athenian political scandals of the war, which culminated in

2236-498: A great victory at the Battle of Sphacteria . In a shocking turn of events, 300 Spartan hoplites encircled by Athenian forces surrendered. The Spartan image of invincibility took significant damage. The Athenians jailed Sphacterian hostages in Athens and resolved to execute the captured Spartans if a Peloponnesian army invaded Attica again. After these battles, the Spartan general Brasidas raised an army of allies and helots and marched

2408-495: A land attack and subject to Spartan control. According to Thucydides, although the Spartans took no action then, they "secretly felt aggrieved". Conflict between the states flared up again in 465 BC, when a helot revolt broke out in Sparta. The Spartans summoned forces from all of their allies, including Athens, to help them suppress the revolt. Athens sent out a sizable contingent (4,000 hoplites ), but upon its arrival, this force

2580-461: A message to Sparta saying "If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out.", the Spartans responded with the single, terse reply: αἴκα , "if". When Philip created the League of Corinth on the pretext of unifying Greece against Persia, the Spartans chose not to join, since they had no interest in joining a pan-Greek expedition unless it were under Spartan leadership. Thus, upon defeating the Persians at

2752-469: A minor Spartan victory by their skillful general Lysander at the naval battle of Notium in 406 BC. Alcibiades was not re-elected general by the Athenians and he exiled himself from the city. He would never again lead Athenians in battle. Athens won the naval battle of Arginusae . The Spartan fleet under Callicratidas lost 70 ships and the Athenians lost 25 ships. But, due to bad weather, the Athenians were unable to rescue their stranded crews or finish off

2924-511: A number of other states. For a time during this conflict, Athens controlled not only Megara but also Boeotia . But at its end, a massive Spartan invasion of Attica forced Athens to cede the lands it had won on the Greek mainland, and Athens and Sparta recognized each other's right to control their respective alliance systems. The war was officially ended by the Thirty Years' Peace , signed in

3096-587: A number of points were situated and mapped in a general study of Spartan topography, based upon the description of Pausanias . In terms of domestic archaeology, little is known about Spartan houses and villages before the Archaic period, but the best evidence comes from excavations at Nichoria in Messenia where postholes have been found. These villages were open and consisted of small and simple houses built with stone foundations and clay walls. The Menelaion

3268-546: A period now called the Athenian Empire . By mid-century, the Persians had been driven out of the Aegean and had ceded control of vast territories to Athens. Athens had greatly increased its own power; a number of its formerly independent allies were reduced, over the course of the century, to the status of tribute-paying subject states of the Delian League. This tribute was used to fund a powerful fleet and, after

3440-529: A powerful Peloponnesian state that had remained independent of Lacedaemon. With the support of the Athenians, the Argives forged a coalition of democratic states in the Peloponnese, including the powerful states of Mantinea and Elis . Early Spartan attempts to break up the coalition failed, and the leadership of the Spartan king Agis was called into question. Emboldened, the Argives and their allies, with

3612-669: A result of the so-called Lycurgan Reforms. Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaimonians, chapter 1 In the Second Messenian War , Sparta established itself as a local power in the Peloponnesus and the rest of Greece. During the following centuries, Sparta's reputation as a land-fighting force was unequalled. At its peak around 500 BC, Sparta had some 20,000–35,000 citizens, plus numerous helots and perioikoi. The likely total of 40,000–50,000 made Sparta one of

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3784-582: A retreat to Athens, but Nicias at first refused. After additional setbacks, Nicias seemed to agree to a retreat until a bad omen, in the form of a lunar eclipse , delayed withdrawal. The delay was costly and forced the Athenians into a major sea battle in the Great Harbor of Syracuse. The Athenians were thoroughly defeated. Nicias and Demosthenes marched their remaining forces inland in search of friendly allies. The Syracusan cavalry rode them down mercilessly, eventually killing or enslaving all who were left of

3956-467: A squadron of the Athenian fleet at the Battle of Cyzicus , a stunning Athenian victory. In this battle, the Athenians drew the Spartan fleet out to pursue a small force led by Alcibiades; when the Spartans had gotten a good distance from land, two squadrons under the command of Thrasybulus and Theramenes appeared in their rear to cut off their retreat. The Spartans were forced to flee to a nearby beach, where Alcibiades landed his men in an attempt to seize

4128-472: A steady advocate of traditional Athenian imperial democracy, and he died fighting for the same cause he was advocating on his first appearance in 411. Peloponnesian War The Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), often called simply the Peloponnesian War ( Ancient Greek : Πόλεμος τῶν Πελοποννησίων , romanized :  Pólemos tō̃n Peloponnēsíōn ), was an ancient Greek war fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for

4300-611: A stopover in Aspendus on the Eurymedon River on account of his soldiers' recent transgressions against local farmers and their farmsteads. In 413 BC, a massive Athenian expedition force was obliterated in Sicily . In the wake of this defeat, Athens found itself facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Cities throughout its Aegean empire began to rebel, and a Peloponnesian fleet sailed to assist them. Seeking to contain

4472-415: A strict oligarchic government on Athens, which came to be known as the Thirty Tyrants . This government executed a number of citizens and deprived all but a few of their rights, eventually growing so extreme that even the moderate oligarch Theramenes fell afoul of the government and was executed. Fearing for their lives, numerous Athenians fled to Thebes . Thrasybulus had been one of the first to oppose

4644-605: A variant form by Josephus . Jewish historian Uriel Rappaport notes that the relationship between the Jews and the Spartans expressed in this correspondence has "intrigued many scholars, and various explanations have been suggested for the problems raised ... including the historicity of the Jewish leader and high priest Jonathan 's letter to the Spartans, the authenticity of the letter of Arius to Onias, cited in Jonathan's letter, and

4816-464: A vassal harbor, Gytheio , on the Laconian Gulf . Lacedaemon (Greek: Λακεδαίμων ) was a mythical king of Laconia. The son of Zeus by the nymph Taygete , he married Sparta , the daughter of Eurotas , by whom he became the father of Amyclas , Eurydice , and Asine. As king, he named his country after himself and the city after his wife. He was believed to have built the sanctuary of

4988-502: A vicious debate between Theramenes and the generals at Athens over who was to blame for the disaster, after which the generals were executed. Thrasybulus, for unknown reasons, seems to have had very little involvement in this debate. In 404 BC, following a defeat at the Battle of Aegospotami , Athens was forced to surrender, ending the Peloponnesian War. In the wake of this surrender, the Spartan navarch Lysander imposed

5160-481: A violent earthquake occurred along the Sparta faultline destroying much of what was Sparta and many other city-states in ancient Greece. This earthquake is marked by scholars as one of the key events that led to the First Peloponnesian War . In later Classical times, Sparta along with Athens , Thebes , and Persia were the main powers fighting for supremacy in the northeastern Mediterranean. In

5332-477: Is a shrine associated with Menelaus , located east of Sparta, by the river Eurotas, on the hill Profitis Ilias ( Coordinates : 37°03′57″N 22°27′13″E  /  37.0659°N 22.4536°E  / 37.0659; 22.4536 ). Built around the early 8th century BC, the Spartans believed it had been the former residence of Menelaus. In 1970, the British School in Athens started excavations around

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5504-476: Is consistent with Eusebius' explanation. There is a rare use, perhaps the earliest of "Lacedaemonia", in Diodorus Siculus ' The Library of History, but probably with Χώρα (‘’chōra’’, "country") suppressed. Lakedaimona was until 2006 the name of a province in the modern Greek prefecture of Laconia . Sparta is located in the region of Laconia, in the south-eastern Peloponnese . Ancient Sparta

5676-423: Is described as "the country of lovely women", an epithet for people. The residents of Sparta were often called Lacedaemonians. This epithet utilized the plural of the adjective Lacedaemonius (Greek: Λακεδαιμόνιοι ; Latin: Lacedaemonii , but also Lacedaemones ). The ancients sometimes used a back-formation , referring to the land of Lacedaemon as Lacedaemonian country . As most words for "country" were feminine,

5848-505: Is difficult to reconstruct because the literary evidence was written far later than the events it describes and is distorted by oral tradition. The earliest certain evidence of human settlement in the region of Sparta consists of pottery dating from the Middle Neolithic period, found in the vicinity of Kouphovouno some two kilometres (1.2 miles) south-southwest of Sparta. This civilization seems to have fallen into decline by

6020-463: Is unclear in Herodotus' text and has been interpreted in a number of ways). Aristotle describes the kingship at Sparta as "a kind of unlimited and perpetual generalship" (Pol. iii. 1285a), while Isocrates refers to the Spartans as "subject to an oligarchy at home, to a kingship on campaign" (iii. 24). Civil and criminal cases were decided by a group of officials known as the ephors , as well as

6192-802: The Aegean . He had his satrap Tissaphernes make alliance with Sparta against Athens . In 412 BC, this led to the Persian reconquest of most of Ionia . Tissaphernes also helped fund the Peloponnesian fleet. Facing the resurgence of Athens, from 408 BC, Darius II decided to continue the war against Athens and give stronger support to the Spartans . He sent his son Cyrus the Younger into Asia Minor as satrap of Lydia , Phrygia Major and Cappadocia , and general commander ( Karanos , κἀρανος) of

6364-1000: The Arcadian Achaeans to the northwest. The evidence suggests that Sparta, relatively inaccessible because of the topography of the Taygetan plain, was secure from early on: it was never fortified. Nothing distinctive in the archaeology of the Eurotas River Valley identifies the Dorians or the Dorian Spartan state. The prehistory of the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the Dark Age (the Early Iron Age) at this moment must be treated apart from

6536-679: The Battle of the Granicus , Alexander the Great sent to Athens 300 suits of Persian armour with the following inscription: "Alexander, son of Philip, and all the Greeks except the Spartans, give these offerings taken from the foreigners who live in Asia". Sparta continued to be one of the Peloponesian powers until its eventual loss of independence in 192 BC. During Alexander's campaigns in the east,

6708-596: The Charites , which stood between Sparta and Amyclae , and to have given to those divinities the names of Cleta and Phaenna . A shrine was erected to him in the neighborhood of Therapne . Tyrtaeus , an archaic era Spartan writer, is the earliest source to connect the origin myth of the Spartans to the lineage of the hero Heracles ; later authors, such as Diodorus Siculus , Herodotus, and Apollodorus , also made mention of Spartans understanding themselves to be descendants of Heracles. Thucydides wrote: Suppose

6880-585: The Corinthian War , Sparta faced a coalition of the leading Greek states: Thebes , Athens , Corinth , and Argos . The alliance was initially backed by Persia, which feared further Spartan expansion into Asia. Sparta achieved a series of land victories, but many of her ships were destroyed at the Battle of Cnidus by a Greek-Phoenician mercenary fleet that Persia had provided to Athens. The event severely damaged Sparta's naval power but did not end its aspirations of invading further into Persia, until Conon

7052-824: The Greco-Persian Wars were over. After defeating the Second Persian invasion of Greece in the year 480 BC, Athens led the coalition of Greek city-states that continued the Greco-Persian Wars with attacks on Persian territories in the Aegean and Ionia. What ensued was a period which Thucydides called the Pentecontaetia , in which Athens increasingly became an empire, carrying out an aggressive war against Persia and increasingly dominating other city-states. Athens brought under its control all of Greece except for Sparta and its allies, ushering in

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7224-534: The Mycenaean Greek citadel at Therapne , in contrast to the lower town of Sparta. This term could be used synonymously with Sparta, but typically it denoted the terrain in which the city was located. In Homer it is typically combined with epithets of the countryside: wide, lovely, shining and most often hollow and broken (full of ravines), suggesting the Eurotas Valley . "Sparta" on the other hand

7396-640: The Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC and prospered during the Roman Empire , as its antiquarian customs attracted many Roman tourists. However, Sparta was sacked in 396 AD by the Visigothic king Alaric , and underwent a long period of decline, especially in the Middle Ages , when many of its citizens moved to Mystras . Modern Sparta is the capital of the southern Greek region of Laconia and

7568-477: The Thirty Tyrants , a reactionary regime set up by Sparta. In 403 BC, the oligarchs were overthrown and a democracy was restored by Thrasybulus . Although the hegemony of Athens was broken, the Attic city completed the recovery of its autonomy in the Corinthian War and continued to play an active role in Greek politics. Sparta was later defeated by Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. A few decades later,

7740-592: The hegemony of the Greek world . The war remained undecided until the later intervention of the Persian Empire in support of Sparta. Led by Lysander , the Spartan fleet (built with Persian subsidies) finally defeated Athens which began a period of Spartan hegemony over Greece. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. The first phase (431–421 BC) was named the Ten Years War, or

7912-564: The 17th year of the war, word came to Athens that one of their distant allies in Sicily was under attack from Syracuse, the main city of Sicily. The people of Syracuse were ethnically Dorian (as were the Spartans), while the Athenians, and their ally in Sicilia, were Ionian. The Athenians felt obliged to help their ally. They also held visions, rallied on by Alcibiades , who ultimately led an expedition, of conquering all of Sicily. Syracuse

8084-420: The 4th century BC could not sustain an imperial policy. R. J. Buck suggests that Thrasybulus, who came of age in the heady days when the democracy and empire under Pericles were at their fullest extent, never accepted that the devastating losses Athens had suffered in the Peloponnesian War made the return of those times impossible. Thrasybulus was a capable general, particularly successful in naval warfare, and

8256-487: The 4th century BC his son was able to pay a substantial fine of 10 talents . By 411 Thrasybulus had established a reputation as a pro-democracy politician. Throughout his career, Thrasybulus consistently advocated several policies. He was a proponent of Athenian imperialism and expansionism and a strong supporter of Periclean democracy. According to Demosthenes , Thrasybulus was one of the "great and distinguished orators." Plutarch notes that he had "the loudest voice of

8428-435: The Aegean, and Sparta's other allies were also slow to furnish troops or ships. The Ionian states that rebelled expected protection, and many rejoined the Athenian side. The Persians were slow to send promised funds and ships, frustrating battle plans. At the start of the war, the Athenians had prudently put aside some money and 100 ships that were to be used only as a last resort. These ships were then released, and served as

8600-651: The Archidamian War, after the Spartan king Archidamus II , who invaded Attica several times with the full hoplite army of the Peloponnesian League , the alliance network dominated by Sparta (then known as Lacedaemon). The Long Walls of Athens rendered this strategy ineffective, while the superior navy of the Delian League (Athens' alliance) raided the Peloponnesian coast to trigger rebellions within Sparta. The precarious Peace of Nicias

8772-445: The Athenian cause. But instead of attacking, Nicias procrastinated and the campaigning season of 415 BC ended with Syracuse scarcely damaged. With winter approaching, the Athenians withdrew into their quarters and spent the winter gathering allies. The delay allowed Syracuse to request help from Sparta, who sent their general Gylippus to Sicily with reinforcements. Upon arriving, he raised a force from several Sicilian cities, and went to

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8944-404: The Athenian fleet in several major engagements. At the Battle of Cynossema , he commanded the right wing of the fleet and prevented Athenian defeat by extending his flank to prevent encirclement; the battle ended in Athenian victory. Shortly afterwards Thrasybulus again commanded a wing of the Athenian fleet at the Battle of Abydos , another Athenian victory. Thrasybulus was again in command of

9116-484: The Athenian fleet, in 405 BC, at the Battle of Aegospotami , destroying 168 ships. Only 12 Athenian ships escaped, and several of these sailed to Cyprus , carrying the strategos (general) Conon , who was anxious not to face the judgment of the Assembly . Facing starvation and disease from the prolonged siege , Athens surrendered in 404 BC, and its allies soon surrendered as well. The democrats at Samos , loyal to

9288-449: The Athenian population died. Athenian manpower was correspondingly drastically reduced and even foreign mercenaries refused to hire themselves out to a city riddled with plague. The fear of plague was so widespread that the Spartan invasion of Attica was abandoned, their troops being unwilling to risk contact with the diseased enemy. After the death of Pericles, the Athenians turned somewhat against his conservative, defensive strategy and to

9460-539: The Athenian ravaged the Spartan coastline and provoked the old Spartan fear of a helot revolt. After a few more years of fighting, in 387 BC the Peace of Antalcidas was established, according to which all Greek cities of Ionia would return to Persian control, and Persia's Asian border would be free of the Spartan threat. The effects of the war were to reaffirm Persia's ability to interfere successfully in Greek politics and to affirm Sparta's weakened hegemonic position in

9632-415: The Athenians had broken the peace, essentially declaring war. The first years of the Peloponnesian war are known as the Archidamian War (431–421 BC), after Sparta's king Archidamus II . Sparta and its allies, except for Corinth, were almost exclusively land-based, and able to summon large armies which were nearly unbeatable (thanks to the legendary Spartan forces ). The Athenian Empire, although based in

9804-467: The Athenians to give up what they had gained. Thrasybulus has been widely recognized as a successful military commander. Most of the major ancient historians assigned credit for the dramatic Athenian victories of 411 BC to Alcibiades, but a few, such as Cornelius Nepos , pointed to the decisive role that was played in these battles by Thrasybulus. More recent historians, such as Donald Kagan and R. J. Buck, have tended to support this analysis, pointing to

9976-408: The Athenians." And the Athenian general Conon described Thrasybulus as a man who was "bold in counsel." During his period of prominence within the democracy, he seems to have led what might now be termed a populist faction. According to the historical account provided by Xenophon, he was murdered by locals during the night while acting as general of a military expedition on its way to Rhodes while on

10148-468: The Athenians; but instead of withdrawing, the Athenians sent another hundred ships and another 5,000 troops to Sicily. Under Gylippus, the Syracusans and their allies decisively defeated the Athenians on land; and Gylippus encouraged the Syracusans to build a navy, which defeated the Athenian fleet when they tried to withdraw. The Athenian army tried to withdraw overland to friendlier Sicilian cities, but

10320-404: The Greek political system. Sparta entered its long-term decline after a severe military defeat to Epaminondas of Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra . This was the first time that a full strength Spartan army lost a land battle. As Spartan citizenship was inherited by blood, Sparta increasingly faced a helot population that vastly outnumbered its citizens. The alarming decline of Spartan citizens

10492-467: The Menelaion in an attempt to locate Mycenaean remains in the area. Among other findings, they uncovered the remains of two Mycenaean mansions and found the first offerings dedicated to Helen and Menelaus. These mansions were destroyed by earthquake and fire, and archaeologists consider them the possible palace of Menelaus himself. Excavations made from the early 1990s to the present suggest that

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10664-522: The Munychia, a hill that dominated the port, and awaited the coming attack. The forces of the Thirty, supported by the Spartan garrison, marched to Piraeus to attack him. Thrasybulus and his men were outnumbered 5 to 1, but held a superior position and presumably benefited from consternation amidst the ranks of the oligarchs. In the battle, the exiles put the oligarchic forces to flight, killing Critias ,

10836-547: The Peloponnese. Athens stretched their military activities into Boeotia and Aetolia , quelled the Mytilenean revolt and began fortifying posts around the Peloponnese. One of these posts was near Pylos on a tiny island called Sphacteria , where the first war turned in Athens's favor. The post off Pylos exploited Sparta's dependence on the helots, slaves who worked the fields while its citizens trained to be soldiers. The Pylos post began attracting helot runaways. In addition,

11008-796: The Peloponnesian League would respect each other's autonomy and internal affairs. A further provocation was Athens in 433/2 BC imposing trade sanctions on Megarian citizens (once more a Spartan ally after the First Peloponnesian War). It was alleged that the Megarians had desecrated the Hiera Orgas . These sanctions, known as the Megarian decree , were largely ignored by Thucydides , but some modern economic historians have noted that forbidding Megara to trade with

11180-483: The Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the fifth century BC and the golden age of Greece . The main historical source for most of the war is the detailed account in The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides . He states that he began writing his history as soon as the war broke out and took his information from first-hand accounts, including events he witnessed himself. An Athenian who fought in

11352-616: The Persian invasion from their deposed king Demaratus , which prompted them to consult the Delphic oracle. According to Herodotus, the Pythia proclaimed that either one of the kings of Sparta had to die or Sparta would be destroyed. This prophecy was fulfilled after king Leonidas died in the battle. The superior weaponry, strategy, and bronze armour of the Greek hoplites and their phalanx fighting formation again proved their worth one year later when Sparta assembled its full strength and led

11524-401: The Persian troops. There, Cyrus allied with the Spartan general Lysander . In him, Cyrus found a man willing to help him become king, just as Lysander himself hoped to become absolute ruler of Greece by the aid of the Persian prince. Thus, Cyrus put all his means at the disposal of Lysander in the Peloponnesian War. When Cyrus was recalled to Susa by his dying father Darius , he gave Lysander

11696-454: The Sicilian Expedition, Lacedaemon encouraged the revolt of Athens's tributary allies, and indeed, much of Ionia rose in revolt. The Syracusans sent their fleet to the Peloponnesians, and the Persians decided to support the Spartans with money and ships. Revolt and faction threatened in Athens itself. The Athenians managed to survive for several reasons. First, their foes lacked initiative. Corinth and Syracuse were slow to bring their fleets into

11868-405: The Spartan assembly. This debate was also attended by an uninvited delegation from Athens, which also asked to speak, and became the scene of a debate between the Athenians and the Corinthians. Thucydides reports that the Corinthians condemned Sparta's inactivity until then, warning Sparta that if it remained passive, it would soon be outflanked and without allies. In response, the Athenians reminded

12040-406: The Spartan city-state and its location. First, "Sparta" refers primarily to the main cluster of settlements in the valley of the Eurotas River . The second word, "Lacedaemon" ( Λακεδαίμων ), was often used as an adjective and is the name referenced in the works of Homer and the historians Herodotus and Thucydides . The third term, "Laconice" ( Λακωνική ), referred to the immediate area around

12212-420: The Spartan elite forces to defeat them. The result was a complete victory for the Spartans, which rescued their city from the brink of strategic defeat. The democratic alliance was broken up, and most of its members were reincorporated into the Peloponnesian League. With its victory at Mantinea, Sparta pulled itself back from the brink of utter defeat, and re-established its hegemony throughout the Peloponnese. In

12384-407: The Spartan fleet. Despite their victory, these failures caused outrage in Athens and led to a controversial trial . The trial resulted in the execution of six of Athens's top naval commanders. Athens's naval supremacy would now be challenged without several of its most able military leaders and a demoralized navy. Unlike some of his predecessors, the new Spartan general, Lysander, was not a member of

12556-433: The Spartan garrison of Athens, supported by Athenian cavalry, was sent out to oppose him, Thrasybulus led his force, now 700 strong, in a surprise daybreak raid on their camp, killing 120 Spartans and putting the rest to flight. Five days later, Thrasybulus led his force, which had already grown to the point that he could leave 200 men at Phyle while taking 1,000 with him, to Piraeus , the port of Athens. There, he fortified

12728-624: The Spartan king Agis III sent a force to Crete in 333 BC to secure the island for the Persian interest. Agis next took command of allied Greek forces against Macedon, gaining early successes, before laying siege to Megalopolis in 331 BC. A large Macedonian army under general Antipater marched to its relief and defeated the Spartan-led force in a pitched battle. More than 5,300 of the Spartans and their allies were killed in battle, and 3,500 of Antipater's troops. Agis, now wounded and unable to stand, ordered his men to leave him behind to face

12900-582: The Spartan royal families and was also formidable in naval strategy; he was an artful diplomat, who had even cultivated good personal relationships with the Achaemenid prince Cyrus the Younger , son of Emperor Darius II . Seizing its opportunity, the Spartan fleet sailed at once to the Dardanelles , the source of Athens's grain . Threatened with starvation, the Athenian fleet had no choice but to follow. Through cunning strategy, Lysander totally defeated

13072-409: The Spartan ships. The Spartans, however, with the assistance of a Persian army, began to drive this Athenian force into the sea; seeing this, Thrasybulus landed his own force to temporarily relieve pressure on Alcibiades, and meanwhile ordered Theramenes to join up with Athenian land forces nearby and bring them to reinforce the sailors and marines on the beach. The Spartans and Persians, overwhelmed by

13244-467: The Spartans of Athens's record of military success and opposition to Persia, warned them of confronting such a powerful state, and encouraged Sparta to seek arbitration as provided by the Thirty Years' Peace. The Spartan king Archidamus II spoke against the war, but the opinion of the hawkish ephor Sthenelaidas prevailed in the Spartan ecclesia . A majority of the Spartan assembly voted to declare that

13416-553: The Spartans: Areus king of the Lacedemonians to Onias the high priest, greeting: It is found in writing, that the Lacedemonians and Jews are brethren, and that they are of the stock of Abraham : Now therefore, since this is come to our knowledge, ye shall do well to write unto us of your prosperity. We do write back again to you, that your cattle and goods are ours, and ours are yours. The letters are reproduced in

13588-570: The Thirty. He was initially cautious about offending Sparta, but, when Persian support became available at the start of the Corinthian War , he became an advocate of aggressive action, and about this time seems to have regained his preeminence in Athenian politics. He initiated the rebuilding of the Long Walls , which had been demolished at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and commanded the Athenian contingents at Nemea and Coronea ; these two defeats, however, damaged his political stature, and he

13760-592: The accomplishments of one of democracy's strongest advocates. Throughout his career, Thrasybulus defended democracy at Athens against its opponents. He was one of the few prominent citizens whom the Samians trusted to defend their democracy, and whom the fleet selected to lead it through the troubled time of conflict with the 400. Later, in his opposition to the Thirty Tyrants, Thrasybulus risked his life when few others would, and his actions were responsible for

13932-465: The adjective was in the feminine: Lacedaemonia ( Λακεδαιμονία , Lakedaimonia ). Eventually, the adjective came to be used alone. "Lacedaemonia" was not in general use during the classical period and before. It does occur in Greek as an equivalent of Laconia and Messenia during the Roman and early Byzantine periods, mostly in ethnographers and lexica of place names. For example, Hesychius of Alexandria 's Lexicon (5th century AD) defines Agiadae as

14104-573: The advancing Macedonian army so that he could buy them time to retreat. On his knees, the Spartan king slew several enemy soldiers before being finally killed by a javelin. Alexander was merciful, and he only forced the Spartans to join the League of Corinth, which they had previously refused. During the Punic Wars , Sparta was an ally of the Roman Republic . Spartan political independence

14276-487: The ancient Greek world. Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the war, was reduced to a state of near-complete subjection, while Sparta became established as the leading power of Greece. The economic costs of the war were felt all across Greece, poverty became widespread in the Peloponnese, while Athens was devastated and never regained its pre-war prosperity. The war also wrought subtler changes to Greek society,

14448-526: The area around the Menelaion in the southern part of the Eurotas valley seems to have been the center of Mycenaean Laconia . The Mycenaean settlement was roughly triangular in shape, with its apex pointed towards the north. Its area was approximately equal to that of the "newer" Sparta, but denudation has wreaked havoc with its buildings and nothing is left of its original structures save for ruined foundations and broken potsherds . The prehistory of Sparta

14620-471: The arrival of multiple forces from several directions, were defeated and driven off, and the Athenians captured all the Spartan ships which were not destroyed. In 409 and 408, Thrasybulus remained in command, but his actions are difficult to trace. He appears to have spent much of the time campaigning in Thrace , recapturing cities for the empire and restoring the flow of tribute from the region. In 407 BC, he

14792-554: The battle, the Athenians obliterated the Spartan fleet, and succeeded in re-establishing the financial basis of the Athenian Empire. Between 410 and 406, Athens won a continuous string of victories, and eventually recovered large portions of its empire. All of this was due, in no small part, to Alcibiades. From 414 BC, Darius II , ruler of the Achaemenid Empire had started to resent increasing Athenian power in

14964-458: The bitter last, held on slightly longer, and were allowed to flee with their lives. The surrender stripped Athens of its walls, its fleet, and all of its overseas possessions. Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved. However, the Spartans announced their refusal to destroy a city that had done a good service at a time of greatest danger to Greece, and took Athens into their own system. Athens

15136-424: The city had revolted from them, resolved to stand by the democracy while continuing to prosecute the war against Sparta . One of the first actions Thrasybulus took as general was to bring about the recall of Alcibiades, a policy that he had supported since before the coup. After persuading the sailors to support his plan, Thrasybulus sailed to retrieve Alcibiades and returned with him to Samos. The aim of this policy

15308-477: The city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was at all equal to their fame. Their city is not built continuously, and has no splendid temples or other edifices; it rather resembles a group of villages, like the ancient towns of Hellas, and would therefore make a poor show. Until

15480-471: The conflict between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta, each of which supported friendly political factions within other states, made war a common occurrence in the Greek world. Ancient Greek warfare , originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, was transformed into an all-out struggle between city-states , complete with mass atrocities. Shattering religious and cultural taboos, devastating vast swathes of countryside, and destroying whole cities,

15652-467: The conquest of all of Italy and Carthage , and to use the resources and soldiers from these new conquests to conquer the Peloponnese. The Athenian force consisted of over 100 ships and some 5,000 infantry and light-armored troops. Cavalry was limited to about 30 horses, which proved to be no match for the large and highly trained Syracusan cavalry. Upon landing in Sicily, several cities immediately joined

15824-459: The conspiracy and notified four prominent Athenians, the generals Leon and Diomedon, Thrasybulus, and Thrasyllus , at that time a hoplite in the ranks. With the support of these men and the Athenian soldiers and sailors in general, the Samian democrats were able to defeat the conspirators when they attempted to seize power. A ship was dispatched to Athens to notify the city of this success against

15996-402: The core of the Athenians' fleet throughout the rest of the war. An oligarchical revolution occurred in Athens, in which a group of 400 seized power. Peace with Sparta might have been possible, but the Athenian fleet, now based on the island of Samos , refused the change. In 411 BC, this fleet engaged the Spartans at the Battle of Syme . The fleet appointed Alcibiades their leader, and continued

16168-471: The course of the Peloponnesian War , Sparta, a traditional land power, acquired a navy which managed to overpower the previously dominant flotilla of Athens, ending the Athenian Empire . At the peak of its power in the early 4th century BC, Sparta had subdued many of the main Greek states and even invaded the Persian provinces in Anatolia (modern day Turkey), a period known as the Spartan hegemony . During

16340-450: The crisis, Athens tapped its reserve fund to rebuild its fleet and dispatched what ships it had to establish an advance naval base at Samos. In this general atmosphere of crisis, aristocrats at Athens who had long desired to overthrow the democracy there began to agitate publicly for a change of government, and formed a conspiracy to bring an oligarchy to power in Athens. Their plans included recalling Alcibiades , who had been exiled by

16512-403: The democratic government. These oligarchs initiated their plans at Samos, where they successfully encouraged a number of Samian oligarchs to begin a similar conspiracy. A dispute has arisen among modern historians over Thrasybulus' involvement in this plot. Donald Kagan has suggested that Thrasybulus was one of the founding members of the scheme and was willing to support moderate oligarchy, but

16684-605: The early 20th century, the chief ancient buildings at Sparta were the theatre , of which, however, little showed above ground except portions of the retaining walls ; the so-called Tomb of Leonidas , a quadrangular building, perhaps a temple, constructed of immense blocks of stone and containing two chambers; the foundation of an ancient bridge over the Eurotas; the ruins of a circular structure; some remains of late Roman fortifications ; several brick buildings and mosaic pavements. The remaining archaeological wealth consisted of inscriptions, sculptures, and other objects collected in

16856-470: The early part of the war, Thucydides was exiled in 423 BC and settled in the Peloponnese, where he spent the rest of the war collecting sources and writing his history. Scholars regard Thucydides as reliable and neutral between the two sides. A partial exception are the lengthy speeches he reports, which Thucydides admits are not accurate records of what was said, but his interpretation of the general arguments presented. The narrative begins several years before

17028-572: The end of the 3rd century BC, and democracy, albeit interrupted several times by conquest or revolution, continued there until Roman times, several centuries later. The second-century travel writer Pausanias called Thrasybulus "the greatest of all famous Athenians" for overthrowing the Thirty as well as his other exploits, making clear that he thought him greater than even Pericles. Thus Thrasybulus won praise as an Athenian patriot and staunch, principled democrat. He has been criticized by modern historians, however, for failing to recognize that Athens in

17200-401: The expedition without being tried (many believed in order to better plot against him). After arriving in Sicily, Alcibiades was recalled to Athens for trial. Fearing that he would be unjustly condemned, Alcibiades defected to Sparta and Nicias was placed in charge of the mission. After his defection, Alcibiades claimed to the Spartans that the Athenians planned to use Sicily as a springboard for

17372-405: The faction that sought to reject the peace offer, regained his position atop Athenian politics. In 389 BC, he led a force of triremes to levy tribute from cities around the Aegean and support Rhodes , where a democratic government was struggling against Sparta. On this campaign, Thrasybulus relaid much of the framework for an Athenian empire on 5th century BC model; he captured Byzantium, imposed

17544-457: The famous flogging ordeal administered to Spartan boys ( diamastigosis ). The temple, which can be dated to the 2nd century BC, rests on the foundation of an older temple of the 6th century, and close beside it were found the remains of a yet earlier temple, dating from the 9th or even the 10th century. The votive offerings in clay, amber, bronze, ivory and lead dating from the 9th to the 4th centuries BC, which were found in great profusion within

17716-476: The fear of a revolt of helots emboldened by the nearby Athenians drove the Spartans to attack the post. Demosthenes outmaneuvered the Spartans in the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and trapped a group of Spartan soldiers on Sphacteria as he waited for them to surrender. But weeks later he proved unable to finish them off. Instead, the inexperienced Cleon boasted in the Assembly that he could end the affair, and did win

17888-479: The first credible history. Between the 8th and 7th centuries BC the Spartans experienced a period of lawlessness and civil strife, later attested by both Herodotus and Thucydides. As a result, they carried out a series of political and social reforms of their own society which they later attributed to a semi-mythical lawgiver, Lycurgus . Several writers throughout antiquity, including Herodotus, Xenophon, and Plutarch have attempted to explain Spartan exceptionalism as

18060-401: The fleet. The Athenian fleet, the dominant Greek naval force, went on the offensive, winning at Naupactus . In 430 BC, an outbreak of a plague hit Athens. The plague ravaged the densely packed city, and in the long run, was a significant cause of its final defeat. The plague wiped out over 30,000 citizens, sailors and soldiers, including Pericles and his sons. Roughly one-third to two-thirds of

18232-408: The following year and lost all its empire. Lysander imposed puppet oligarchies on the former members of the Delian League, including Athens, where the regime was known as the Thirty Tyrants . The Peloponnesian War was followed ten years later by the Corinthian War (394–386 BC), which, although it ended inconclusively, helped Athens regain its independence from Sparta. The Peloponnesian War changed

18404-460: The following year excavations were made at Thalamae , Geronthrae , and Angelona near Monemvasia . In 1906, excavations began in Sparta itself. A "small circus" (as described by Leake ) proved to be a theatre-like building constructed soon after 200 AD around the altar and in front of the Temple of Artemis Orthia . It is believed that musical and gymnastic contests took place here, as well as

18576-463: The future. Outraged, the Corinthians encouraged Potidaea to revolt and assured them that they would ally with them should they revolt from Athens. During the subsequent Battle of Potidaea , the Corinthians unofficially aided Potidaea by sneaking contingents of men into the besieged city to help defend it. This directly violated the Thirty Years' Peace, which stipulated that the Delian League and

18748-416: The harvest. Moreover, Spartan slaves, known as helots, needed to be kept under control, and could not be left unsupervised for long. The longest Spartan invasion, in 430 BC, lasted just 40 days. The Athenian strategy was initially guided by the strategos , or general, Pericles , who advised the Athenians to avoid open battle with the far more numerous and better trained Spartan hoplites, relying instead on

18920-470: The hostages for the towns captured by Brasidas, and signed a truce. With the death of Cleon and Brasidas , both zealous war hawks for their nations, the Peace of Nicias was able to last six years. However, it was a time of constant skirmishes in and around the Peloponnese. While the Spartans refrained from action themselves, some of their allies began to talk of revolt. They were supported in this by Argos ,

19092-418: The issue, he arranged a settlement between the forces of Thrasybulus and the oligarchs in the city. Democracy was restored, while those oligarchs who wished to do so withdrew to Eleusis. In power, Thrasybulus pushed through a law which pardoned all but a few of the oligarchs, preventing a brutal reprisal by the victorious democrats. For his actions, Thrasybulus was awarded an olive crown by his countrymen. In

19264-462: The kings were primarily religious, judicial, and military. As chief priests of the state, they maintained communication with the Delphian sanctuary, whose pronouncements exercised great authority in Spartan politics. In the time of Herodotus c. 450 BC, their judicial functions had been restricted to cases dealing with heiresses ( epikleroi ), adoptions and the public roads (the meaning of the last term

19436-470: The larger Greek city-states; however, according to Thucydides, the population of Athens in 431 BC was 360,000–610,000, making it much larger. In 480 BC, a small force led by King Leonidas (about 300 full Spartiates, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans, although these numbers were lessened by earlier casualties ) made a legendary last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae against the massive Persian army, led by Xerxes . The Spartans received advance warning of

19608-481: The late Bronze Age , when, according to Herodotus, Macedonian tribes from the north (called Dorians by those they conquered) marched into the Peloponnese and, subjugating the local tribes, settled there. The Dorians seem to have set about expanding the frontiers of Spartan territory almost before they had established their own state. They fought against the Argive Dorians to the east and southeast, and also

19780-482: The leader of the Thirty. After this victory, the remainder of the Thirty fled to Eleusis , and the oligarchs within Athens began squabbling amongst themselves. New leaders were selected, but were unable to deal with Thrasybulus, and were forced to send to Sparta for help. The Spartans, however, did not send the aggressive Lysander, but the more conservative Pausanias . Pausanias' force narrowly defeated Thrasybulus' men, but only with great effort, and, unwilling to push

19952-619: The length of Greece to the Athenian colony of Amphipolis in Thrace. Amphipolis controlled several nearby silver mines whose that supplied much of the Athenian war fund. A force led by Thucydides was dispatched but arrived too late to stop Brasidas capturing Amphipolis; Thucydides was exiled for this, and, as a result, had conversations with both sides of the war which inspired him to record its history. Both Brasidas and Cleon were killed in Athenian efforts to retake Amphipolis (see Battle of Amphipolis ). The Spartans and Athenians agreed to exchange

20124-540: The local museum, founded by Stamatakis in 1872 and enlarged in 1907. Partial excavation of the round building was undertaken in 1892 and 1893 by the American School at Athens . The structure has been since found to be a semicircular retaining wall of Hellenic origin that was partly restored during the Roman period. In 1904, the British School at Athens began a thorough exploration of Laconia , and in

20296-465: The middle of the century, massive public works in Athens, causing resentment. Friction between Athens and the Peloponnesian states, including Sparta, began early in the Pentecontaetia. In the wake of the departure of the Persians from Greece, Sparta sent ambassadors to persuade Athens not to reconstruct their walls, but was rebuffed. Without the walls, Athens would have been defenseless against

20468-446: The mighty Athenian fleet. The Lacedaemonians were not content with simply sending aid to Sicily; they also resolved to take the war to the Athenians. On the advice of Alcibiades, they fortified Decelea , near Athens, and prevented the Athenians from making use of their land year round. The fortification of Decelea prevented overland supplies to Athens, and forced all supplies to be brought in by sea at greater expense. More significantly,

20640-410: The more aggressive strategy of bringing the war to Sparta and its allies. Rising to particular importance in Athenian democracy at this time was Cleon , a leader of the hawkish elements of the Athenian democracy. Led militarily by a clever new general Demosthenes (not to be confused with the later Athenian orator Demosthenes ), the Athenians managed some successes as they continued their naval raids on

20812-556: The name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in the Eurotas valley of Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese . Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek military during the Greco-Persian Wars , in rivalry with the rising naval power of Athens . Sparta

20984-503: The nearby settlement of Mystras , and Sparta fell further in even local importance. Modern Sparta was re-founded in 1834, by a decree of King Otto of Greece . Sparta was an oligarchy . The state was ruled by two hereditary kings of the Agiad and Eurypontid families , both supposedly descendants of Heracles and equal in authority, so that one could not act against the power and political enactments of his colleague. The duties of

21156-512: The nearby silver mines were totally disrupted, with as many as 20,000 Athenian slaves freed by the Spartan hoplites at Decelea. With the treasury and emergency reserve of 1,000 talents dwindling, the Athenians were forced to demand even more tribute from her subject allies, further increasing tensions and the threat of rebellion within the Empire. Corinth, Sparta, and others in the Peloponnesian League sent more reinforcements to Syracuse, to drive off

21328-408: The old Spartans as hoplites, or even as a Macedonian phalanx . Despite this, a gravestone of a fallen legionary named Marcus Aurelius Alexys shows him lightly armed, with a pilos-like cap and a wooden club. The unit was presumably discharged in 217 after Caracalla was assassinated. An exchange of letters in the deutero-canonical First Book of Maccabees expresses a Jewish claim to kinship with

21500-415: The oligarchs. Upon its arrival, however, the crew was arrested, as the news of a democratic victory was far from welcome to the new oligarchic government. Learning of this, the army at Samos deposed its generals and elected new generals who were believed to be more steadfast in their support of democracy, Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus among them. The army, stating that they had not revolted from the city but that

21672-509: The oligarchy and had been exiled to Thebes shortly after its rise to power. There, he was welcomed and supported by the Theban leader Ismenias and his followers, who assisted him in preparing for a return to Athens. In 403 BC, he led a party of 70 exiles to seize Phyle, a defensible location on the border of Attica and Boeotia. A storm prevented the forces of the Thirty from expelling him immediately, and numerous exiles flocked to join him. When

21844-605: The peak of the city-state's power had come and gone. In 396 AD, Sparta was sacked by Visigoths under Alaric I . According to Byzantine sources, some parts of the Laconian region remained pagan until well into the 10th century. The Tsakonian language still spoken in Tsakonia is the only surviving descendant of the ancient Doric language . In the Middle Ages, the political and cultural center of Laconia shifted to

22016-517: The peninsula of Attica, spread out across the islands of the Aegean Sea; Athens drew its immense wealth from tribute paid by these islands. Athens maintained its empire through naval power. Thus, the two powers were relatively unable to fight decisive battles. The Spartan strategy during the Archidamian War was to invade the land around Athens. While this invasion deprived Athenians of the productive land around their city, Athens maintained access to

22188-531: The precinct range, supply invaluable information about early Spartan art. In 1907, the location of the sanctuary of Athena "of the Brazen House" (Χαλκίοικος, Chalkioikos) was determined to be on the acropolis immediately above the theatre. Though the actual temple is almost completely destroyed, the site has produced the longest extant archaic inscription in Laconia, numerous bronze nails and plates, and

22360-487: The prosperous Athenian empire would have been disastrous for the Megarans, and so have considered the sanctions a contributing causing of the war. Historians who attribute responsibility for the war to Athens cite this event as the main cause. At the request of Corinth, the Spartans summoned members of the Peloponnesian League to Sparta in 432 BC, especially those who had grievances with Athens, to make their complaints to

22532-435: The quick restoration of democracy. In the words of Cornelius Nepos, This most noble action, then, is entirely Thrasybulus's; for when the Thirty Tyrants, appointed by the Lacedaemonians, kept Athens oppressed in a state of slavery, and had partly banished from their country, and partly put to death, a great number of the citizens whom fortune had spared in the war, and had divided their confiscated property among themselves, he

22704-489: The relief of Syracuse. He took command of the Syracusan troops, and in a series of battles defeated the Athenian forces, and prevented them from invading the city. Nicias then sent word to Athens asking for reinforcements. Demosthenes was chosen and led another fleet to Sicily, joining his forces with those of Nicias. More battles ensued and again, the Syracusans and their allies defeated the Athenians. Demosthenes argued for

22876-422: The revenues from all of his cities of Asia Minor. Cyrus the Younger would later obtain the support of the Spartans in return, after having asked them "to show themselves as good friend to him, as he had been to them during their war against Athens", when he led his own expedition to Susa in 401 BC in order to topple his brother, Artaxerxes II . The faction hostile to Alcibiades triumphed in Athens following

23048-450: The revived democracy established in 403 BC, Thrasybulus became a major and prestigious leader, although he was soon superseded at the head of the state by Archinus . Thrasybulus seems to have advocated a more radically democratic policy than the populace was willing to accept at the time; he called for reinstating pay for political service, and sought to extend citizenship to all the metics and foreigners who had fought alongside him against

23220-506: The rigorous agoge training regimen, and Spartan phalanx brigades were widely considered to be among the best in battle. Spartan women enjoyed considerably more rights than elsewhere in classical antiquity . Sparta was frequently a subject of fascination in its own day, as well as in Western culture following the revival of classical learning. The admiration of Sparta is known as Laconophilia . Bertrand Russell wrote: Sparta had

23392-487: The rivalry between Athens and Sparta ended when Macedonia became the most powerful entity in Greece and Philip II of Macedon unified all of the Greek world except Sparta, which was later subjugated by Philip's son Alexander in 331 BC. Sparta Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece . In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon ( Λακεδαίμων , Lakedaímōn ), while

23564-409: The role that Thrasybulus played in crafting Athenian strategy in all these battles, and specifically to the decisive action he took at Cyzicus, which saved Alcibiades's force from being swamped, and turned a potential Athenian defeat into a stunning victory. R. J. Buck has suggested that Thrasybulus suffered from an "anti-democratic tradition of ancient historiography," which led many writers to minimize

23736-446: The sea, and did not suffer much. Many of the citizens of Attica abandoned their farms and moved inside the Long Walls , which connected Athens to its port of Piraeus . At the end of the first year of the war, Pericles gave his famous Funeral Oration (431 BC). The Spartans also occupied Attica for periods of only three weeks at a time; in the tradition of earlier hoplite warfare, the soldiers were expected to go home to participate in

23908-617: The situation before the war as: "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon , made war inevitable". The nearly 50 years before the War had been marked by the development of Athens as a major power in the Mediterranean world. Its empire began as a small group of city-states, called the Delian League  – from the island of Delos , on which they kept their treasury – that formed to ensure that

24080-555: The strategic city of Naupaktos on the Gulf of Corinth . In 459 BC, there was a war between Spartan allies Megara and Corinth , which were neighbors of Athens. Athens took advantage of the war to make an alliance with Megara, giving Athens a critical foothold on the Isthmus of Corinth . A 15-year conflict, commonly known as the First Peloponnesian War , ensued, in which Athens fought intermittently against Sparta, Corinth, Aegina , and

24252-512: The stream of Dorian Spartan history. The legendary period of Spartan history is believed to fall into the Dark Age. It treats the mythic heroes such as the Heraclids and the Perseids , offering a view of the occupation of the Peloponnesus that contains both fantastic and possibly historical elements. The subsequent proto-historic period, combining both legend and historical fragments, offers

24424-550: The sudden reappearance of something resembling the Athenian empire that had driven them from the Aegean in the 5th century BC, the Persians began supporting Sparta, and a Persian fleet was soon in the Hellespont, threatening Athens' grain supply. Peace was quickly concluded, on the same terms that the Athenians had rejected in 392 BC; Thrasybulus' campaigns, though impressively successful in spreading Athenian influence, had little long-term effect, since they prompted Persia to force

24596-407: The summer of 416 BC, during a truce with Sparta, Athens invaded the neutral island of Melos , and demanded that Melos ally with them against Sparta, or be destroyed. The Melians rejected this, so the Athenian army laid siege to their city and eventually captured it in the winter. After the city's fall, the Athenians executed all the adult men, and sold the women and children into slavery . In

24768-491: The support of a small Athenian force under Alcibiades , moved to seize the city of Tegea , near Sparta. The Battle of Mantinea was the largest land battle within Greece during the Peloponnesian War. The Lacedaemonians, with their neighbors the Tegeans, faced the combined armies of Argos, Athens, Mantinea, and Arcadia . In the battle, the allied coalition scored early successes, but failed to capitalize on them, which allowed

24940-408: The supposed 'brotherhood' of the Jews and the Spartans." Rappaport is clear that "the authenticity of [the reply] letter of Arius is based on even less firm foundations than the letter of Jonathan". Spartans long spurned the idea of building a defensive wall around their city, believing they made the city's men soft in terms of their warrior abilities. A wall was finally erected after 184 BCE, after

25112-699: The third phase of the war (413–404 BC), named the Decelean War, or the Ionian War, when the Persian Empire supported Sparta to recover the suzerainty of the Greek cities of Asia Minor , incorporated into the Delian League at the end of the Persian Wars . With Persian money, Sparta built a massive fleet under the leadership of Lysander, who won a streak of decisive victories in the Aegean Sea, notably at Aegospotamos , in 405 BC. Athens capitulated

25284-480: The topics of the war's conclusion and aftermath. Born in Athens, Xenophon spent his military career as a mercenary , fighting in the Persian Empire and for Sparta in Asia Minor , Thrace and Greece. Exiled from Athens for these actions, he retired to live in Sparta, where he wrote Hellenica around 40 years after the war had ended. His account is generally considered favourable to Sparta. A briefer account of

25456-574: The town of Sparta, the plateau east of the Taygetos mountains, and sometimes to all the regions under direct Spartan control, including Messenia . The earliest attested term referring to Lacedaemon is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀨𐀐𐀅𐀖𐀛𐀍 , ra-ke-da-mi-ni-jo , "Lakedaimonian", written in Linear B syllabic script, the equivalent of the later Greek Λακεδαιμόνιος , Lakedaimonios ( Latin : Lacedaemonius ). Herodotus seems to use "Lacedaemon" for

25628-402: The wake of these victories, democracy was re-established at Athens. As a leader of this revived democracy in the 4th century BC, Thrasybulus advocated a policy of resistance to Sparta and sought to restore Athens' imperial power. He was killed in 388 BC while leading an Athenian naval force during the Corinthian War . Almost nothing is known of Thrasybulus's background or early life. His father

25800-674: The walls of Amphipolis and grave of Brasidas , excavated in the 20th century. Some buildings and artworks produced during the war have survived, such as the Erechtheion temple and Grave Stele of Hegeso , both in Athens; these provide no information on military activity but do reflect civilian life during the war. Several plays by the Athenian Aristophanes were written and set during the war (particularly Peace and Lysistrata ), but these are works of comedic fiction with little historical value. Thucydides summarised

25972-434: The war ( Pericles , Nicias , Alcibiades and Lysander ) in his Parallel Lives . Plutarch's focus was on the character and morality of these men, but he does provide some details on the progress of the war that are not recorded elsewhere. Written in the first century AD, Plutarch based his work on earlier accounts which are now lost. More limited information on the war is derived from epigraphy and archaeology , such as

26144-413: The war in Athens's name. Their opposition led to the reinstitution of a democratic government in Athens within two years. Alcibiades, while condemned as a traitor, still carried weight in Athens. He prevented the Athenian fleet from attacking Athens; instead, he helped restore democracy by more subtle pressure. He also persuaded the Athenian fleet to attack the Spartans at the battle of Cyzicus in 410. In

26316-403: The war, explaining why it began, then reports events year-by-year. The main limitation of Thucydides' work is that it is incomplete: the text ends abruptly in 411 BC, seven years before the conclusion of the war. The account was continued by Xenophon , a younger contemporary, in the first book of his Hellenica . This directly follows Thucydides' final sentence and provides a similar record, on

26488-408: The war. Thrasybulus did return to action, however, at the Battle of Arginusae in 406 BC. There, he was a trierarch in the Athenian relief fleet sent out to assist the admiral Conon , who was blockaded at Mytilene . That battle was a major Athenian victory; after the battle, the generals in charge took the majority of their ships to attack the Peloponnesian fleet blockading Conon , leaving behind

26660-474: The whole war is provided by the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus in books 12 and 13 of his Bibliotheca historica . Written in the first century BC, these books appear to be based heavily (possibly entirely) upon an earlier universal history by Ephorus , written in the century after the war, which is now lost . The Roman-Greek historian Plutarch wrote biographies of four of the major commanders in

26832-405: The winter of 446/5 BC. The Thirty Years' Peace was first tested in 440 BC, when Athens's powerful ally Samos rebelled from its alliance with Athens . The rebels quickly secured the support of a Persian satrap , and Athens faced the prospect of revolts throughout its empire. The Spartans, whose intervention would have been the trigger for a massive war to determine the fate of the empire, called

27004-410: Was "to have the same friends and enemies" as Sparta. The overall effect of the war in Greece proper was to replace the Athenian Empire with a Spartan empire. After the battle of Aegospotami , Sparta took over the Athenian empire and kept all its tribute revenues for itself; Sparta's allies, who had made greater sacrifices in the war than had Sparta, got nothing. For a short time, Athens was ruled by

27176-445: Was alienated by the extreme actions taken by the plotters. R. J. Buck, on the other hand, maintains that Thrasybulus was probably never involved in the plot, possibly because he was absent from Samos at the time of its inception. Upon their return to Athens, the conspirators succeeded in ending democratic rule and imposing an oligarchy of 400 rulers. At Samos, however, the coup did not go forward as smoothly. Samian democrats learned of

27348-479: Was built on the banks of the Eurotas , the largest river of Laconia, which provided it with a source of fresh water. The Eurotas valley was a natural fortress, bounded to the west by Mt. Taygetus (2,407 m) and to the east by Mt. Parnon (1,935 m). To the north, Laconia is separated from Arcadia by hilly uplands reaching 1000 m in altitude. These natural defenses worked to Sparta's advantage and protected it from sacking and invasion . Though landlocked, Sparta had

27520-418: Was commented on by Aristotle . Sparta never fully recovered from its losses at Leuctra in 371 BC and the subsequent helot revolts . In 338, Philip II invaded and devastated much of Laconia, turning the Spartans out, though he did not seize Sparta itself. Even during its decline, Sparta never forgot its claim to be the "defender of Hellenism" and its Laconic wit . An anecdote has it that when Philip II sent

27692-403: Was dismissed by the Spartans, while those of all the other allies were permitted to remain. According to Thucydides, the Spartans did this out of fear that the Athenians would switch sides and support the helots; the offended Athenians repudiated their alliance with Sparta. When the rebellious helots were finally forced to surrender and permitted to evacuate the state, the Athenians settled them at

27864-410: Was divided and defeated. The entire Athenian fleet was destroyed, and virtually the entire Athenian army was sold into slavery. Following the defeat of the Athenians in Sicily, it was widely believed that the end of the Athenian Empire was at hand. Their treasury was nearly empty, its docks were depleted, and many of the Athenian youth were dead or imprisoned in a foreign land. After the destruction of

28036-475: Was enough to dissuade the Corinthians from exploiting their victory, thus sparing much of the routed Corcyrean and Athenian fleet. Following this, Athens instructed Potidaea in the peninsula of Chalkidiki , a tributary ally of Athens but a colony of Corinth, to tear down its walls, send hostages to Athens, dismiss the Corinthian magistrates from office, and refuse the magistrates that Corinth would send in

28208-402: Was in command of a fleet sent to besiege Phocaea ; this siege had to be lifted, however, after the Spartans under Lysander defeated the main Athenian fleet at Notium . This defeat led to the downfall and exile of Alcibiades. Thrasybulus was either removed from command on the spot by Alcibiades or not reelected at the end of his term; either way, he was out of office from then until the end of

28380-399: Was named Lycus, and he was a native of the deme of Steiria in Athens. He was probably born between 455 and 441 BC, although dates as late as the later 430s BC have been suggested. He was married, and had two children. Several facts make it clear that he was from a wealthy family; he held the office of trierarch , which involved significant personal expenditures on several occasions, and in

28552-428: Was not much smaller than Athens, and conquering all of Sicily would bring Athens immense resources. In the final preparations for departure, the hermai (religious statues) of Athens were mutilated by unknown persons, and Alcibiades was charged with religious crimes. Alcibiades demanded that he be put on trial at once, so that he could defend himself before the expedition. However, the Athenians allowed Alcibiades to go on

28724-465: Was not only the first, but the only man at the commencement, to declare war against them. John Fine points to the clemency shown by Thrasybulus and other democrats in the wake of their victory over the Thirty as a key contribution towards reestablishing stable government in Athens. While many city-states throughout the Greek world broke down into vicious cycles of civil war and reprisal, Athens remained united and democratic, without interruption, until near

28896-589: Was put to an end when it was eventually forced into the Achaean League after its defeat in the decisive Laconian War by a coalition of other Greek city-states and Rome, and the resultant overthrow of its final king Nabis , in 192 BC. Sparta played no active part in the Achaean War in 146 BC when the Achaean League was defeated by the Roman general Lucius Mummius . Subsequently, Sparta became

29068-491: Was replaced at the head of the state by Conon , whose victory at Cnidus had ended Sparta's dreams of naval empire. Thrasybulus largely faded from view for several years as Conon led the Athenian fleet to a series of victories, but in 392 BC Conon was imprisoned by the Persian satrap Tiribazus while attending a peace conference at Sardis ; although released, he died in Cyprus without returning to Athens. Thrasybulus, leading

29240-533: Was signed in 421 BC and lasted until 413 BC. Several proxy battles took place during this period, notably the battle of Mantinea in 418 BC, won by Sparta against an ad-hoc alliance of Elis , Mantinea (both former Spartan allies), Argos , and Athens. The main event was the Sicilian Expedition , between 415 and 413 BC, during which Athens lost almost all its navy in the attempt to capture Syracuse , an ally of Sparta . The Sicilian disaster prompted

29412-426: Was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), from which it emerged victorious after the Battle of Aegospotami . The decisive Battle of Leuctra against Thebes in 371 BC ended the Spartan hegemony , although the city-state maintained its political independence until its forced integration into the Achaean League in 192 BC. The city nevertheless recovered much autonomy after

29584-451: Was to win away Persian support from the Spartans, as it was believed that Alcibiades had great influence with Tissaphernes . Alcibiades was elected as general alongside Thrasybulus and the others. Shortly after this, following the revolt of Euboea , the government of the 400 at Athens was overthrown and replaced by a broader oligarchy, which would eventually give way to democracy. In the months following these events, Thrasybulus commanded

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