How Was The Delian League Successful

There are times in history that something will happen and it will defy all logic. It was one of those times when a few Greek city/states joined together and defeated the invasion force of the massive Persian Empire. The Greeks were able to win the Greco-Persian War because of their naval victories over the Persians, a few key strategic victories on land, as well as the cause for which they were fighting. The naval victories were the most important contribution to the overall success against the Persians. The Persian fleet was protecting the land forces from being outflanked and after they were defeated the longer had that protection. While the Greeks had very few overall victories in battle they

Athens and Sparta were both dominant powers in ancient Greece. However, a legendary rivalry existed between the two. When Athens ended its alliance with Corcyra in 433 B.C. and began to surround Potidaea, it threatened Corinth’s position. Sparta feared that Athens was becoming too powerful and tried to avert war. The Spartans believed that peace was possible if the Athenians would revoke measures against Sparta's ally, Megara. The Athenian leader, Pericles, refused to concur with this because Sparta and Athens had earlier agreed that conflicts would be solved by negotiation. If the Athenians would yield to Sparta's request, they would in fact be accepting Sparta’s orders. This was unacceptable, and as a result, war broke out. Athens and its Delian League were attacked by Sparta and its Peloponnesian League. Diodorus mentions that the Spartans did not just declare war, but sought additional support from Persia.

Promoting Greek unity gave the Greeks greater strength in numbers during the wars. Plutarch states “The greatest of all his achievements was to put an ending to all the fighting within Greece, to reconcile the various cities with one another and persuade them to lay aside their differences because of the war with Persia”. Themistocles’ relationship with naval commander Eurybiades also was very important. With Themistocles’ great foresight and decision making, the value of this working relationship with Eurybiades was the ability of Eurybiades to trust in Themistocles and his opinions. This proved very effective in the battles of Artemisium and Salamis. Thucydides praises this: “This man was supreme at doing precisely the right thing at precisely the right moment.” All of these pre-war efforts are contributions to which Themistocles played a great role in Greek victory.

The Greeks closest to the Persian Empire after the war created the Delian League to protect them from the Persians. The Greeks chose the Athenians to lead them. The Spartans were originally asked to lead them, but the kind was very arrogant, so they retracted their offer. The Spartans then created the Peloponnesian League because they didn’t think the Athenians should lead the Delian League because they were getting too much credit for defeating the Persians in the war. The two leagues didn’t get along at all. This rivalry eventually turned into the Peloponnesian War. This war went on for about 30 years. After the war, the government changed in Athens.

Athens and Sparta started off as allies standing side by side when they took on the Greco-Persian Wars lasting between 499 B.C. and 449 B.C.. They remained superior among the city-states for over a half

Argos received an excuse from the Delphic oracle to keep it from battle (Hdt. VII.148-152), and Messene was “so corrupted that [it] even tried to prevent Sparta’s attempts to come to Greece’s aid” (Plato, 692d). Other city-states avoided participation in the wars as well. The oracle also excused Crete from fighting (Hdt. VII.169), and the tyrant Gelon of Syracuse refused to let his state help Greece’s cause (Brunt 158-162). If these poleis had chosen to fight, the Persians may have been intimidated by the large Greek forces and avoided war. The Greeks instead presented an image of a nation torn by cowardice, thereby making the Persians more confident in attacking Greece. This lack of unity among the city-states created some

Persia, under King Darius’ rule expanded its level of influence into Western Europe with hopes of conquering Athens, Greece between 522-486 B.C. Attempting to, “quell once and for all a collection of potentially troublesome rebel states,” Darius desire to conquer Greece would ultimately lead to one of the most influential battles of ancient history (Cartwright, Marathon,

Athens conquered the Persia in 479 B.C. and began dominating Greece politically, economically, and culturally.” The Athenians organized allies to ensure the freedom of the Greek cities. Members of

The Athenians used the Delian League to enhance their prestige. They bettered themselves by strengthening their army and weakened other by taking resources for them. The Delian League gave Athens

Originally, The Delian League was an alliance created to continue the onslaught on the Persia after the Greeks successfully repelled the second Persian invasion - the founding principle was "offense is the best line of defense" and speculations that Persia could one day arrange another invasion (Butler, 2007).

Equally significant in containing Greek power early on was the tradition of rule by tyrants, who, as a result of their “habit of providing simple for themselves…made safety the great aim of their policy, and prevented anything great proceeding from them…” (I.17). Here too, however, a sweeping change took place just before the Persian invasion as Sparta put down Greek tyrants and set up democracy in Athens. It was these two significant changes—the construction of a navy in Athens and the institution of democracy as its government—that put Athens in a position to assume the role of major Mediterranean power, and it was the Persian invasion that gave it the chance to take advantage of that position (I.18).

The second factor that led to the persian wars was Greece involvement in helping the ionian to revolt against the persians. With Aristagoras, fearing the reaction of the persian king Darius to his defeat, he took the leader of the revolutionary movement after his failed expedition against the Naxos, Aristagoras deposed the other pro-Persian Ionian tyrants and set up democracies in their place, basically like the Athenian democracy. However, Athens and another city-state, Eretria, did send ships and troops who joined the Ionians, marched into the provincial capital, In Herodotus Histories book states that “the forces of the Ionian League march against Sardis and “liberate” it but in the ensuing celebration, the Ionians burn the city down”, though they did not capture the citadel. The Persians criticized the Greeks as invading terrorists. However when persians failed on their first attack by using the strategy of land, this time they decided to attack by sea this was because the Persians were especially mad at the Athenians because the Athenians had invaded them during the ionian revolt, if they got Athens, then maybe they would attack the rest of

At the end of the Peloponnesian War in the late fifth-century B.C.E., the Greek city-state of Sparta reigned supreme. Having defeated their longtime rival Athens, Sparta firmly established a dominant position in the Greek world, one that modern historians refer to as Spartan hegemony. However, Sparta’s position as the foremost power in Greece would be challenged over the next several decades, and ultimately ending with their defeat at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C.E. by the Boeotian League, spearheaded by the city-state of Thebes. Both ancient and modern sources alike have provided assessments about how this shift in power could have occurred in such a short amount of time. Much focus is often placed on the problems facing Spartan society in the late fifth-century to early fourth-century B.C.E., including the influx of wealth after the Peloponnesian War, which led to increased inequality, and to the declining population of full Spartan citizens. However, more attention has often been on the Spartan foreign policy during this period and its role in the failure of Spartan hegemony. During this thirty-year hegemony, Agesilaus, one of the Spartan kings from 400 to 358 BCE, dominated Spartan politics and pursued policies in his own self-interest and against Sparta’s. Furthermore, during his reign, Agesilaus adopted a hostile foreign policy towards the other Greek city-states and become obsessed with wanting to destroy Thebes.

In 477 BC the Delian League was formed as an alliance between Greeks to pay for war expenses (Pericles). The treasury was based in Athens and all members pledged an “eternal alliance under Athenian leadership (Pericles). An audit was agreed upon of each cities financial situation ensuring that each paid their fair share (Pericles). It was further decided that Athens would provide the commander of the Delian League and that person would

The Peloponnesian War was the turning point in Athenian hegemony in Ancient Greece. It was fought in 431 B.C. between the Delian League, led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. According to Thucydides, Athens’ imposing hegemonic status and its overwhelming quest for more power made the Peloponnesian War and Athens’s eventual fall from power inevitable. Despite the Athenians having a far more superior navy and being considerably wealthier, they were defeated and made subjects of Sparta. In this paper, I will discuss Thucydides’ and Socrates’ reasons for why