Periclean Athens and the Beginnings of the Peloponnesian War

The Causes of the War

- resentment of emerging power of Athens

• garrisons (phrourai), cleruchies and colonies
• Spartan doves and hawks – dual hegemony and cold war anxiety
• Corinth

- Samos 440

- Corcyrean civil war 435-433

- quarrel with Corinth over Potidea 432-429

- Aegina and autonomy 432

- Megarian Decree

- Spartan and Athenian war aims

Archidamian War 431-421

- Theban Invasion of Plataia 431-428

- Spartan raids into Attica 431-429, 427-425

- Athenian retreat to the city and the great Plague

- Death of Pericles and the rise of Cleon

- Intervention in Sicily 427

- Battles at Pylos 425, Delium 424, Amphipolis 422

- The Peace of Nicias 421

Pericles' Funeral Oration and the Ideas of Athens

- Pericles' vision of Athens (2. 34-6)

- plague and disorder (2.47-54)

- stasis (factional strife) as disease in Corcyra (3.81-4)

- Mytilenean Debate and Democracy at War (3.36-50)

- Melian Dialogue and Empire (5.84-116)

Divisions in the War

- Doves and Hawks at Athens and in Sparta

- Cleon and the new politicians in Athens

- oligarchs vs. democrats

- Dorians vs. Ionians

Places to Know:

Euripides (c. 485 - 406)

- 19 extant plays out of 92 - 6 victories

- Trojan Women performed in 415, after Melos

Aristophanes (c. 447 - c.386)

eleven plays survive from the forty which he is said to have written (Archarnians - 425, the Knights - 424, Clouds - 423, Wasps - 422, Peace - 421, Birds - 414, Women at the Thesmophoria and Lysistrata - 411, Frogs - 405, Assemblywomen - 392, Wealth - 388)

Sophistic Revolution

sophos = wise, clever

Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490-420)

- lawgiver at Thurii

- contrary arguments (dissoi logoi)

- man is the measure of all things

- civic virtue must be taught (for a fee)

Gorgias of Leontini (c. 485 - c. 380)

- ambassador for Leontini to plead for Athens' aid in 427

- treatise on non-existence, Defenses of Helen and Palamedes

- teacher of rhetoric not virtue

Hippias of Elis (dates uncertain, but second half of 5th century)

- master of memory

- extemporaneous speaking

- Olympic victor list provides standard chronology

- skilled in crafts of all kinds

- study of the ancient poets, corrections for moral content

- custom vs. nature (nomos vs. phusis)

Prodicus of Ceos

- The Choice of Heracles

- precise definitions of words

- the gods are useful things made into divinities

Thrasymachus of Chalcedon

Antiphon the Athenian

Critias (480-403)

- Studied with Socrates, backed Alcibiades

- denounced in the Affair of the Herms

- part of the oligarchy of 400; leader of the Thirty Tyrants

- poet: wrote Tennes, Rhadamanthys, Peirithoos, and Sisyphus