When the Persians retreated after their defeats at Salamis and Plataea, the Athenians returned to rebuild their city, sacked in 480 BC. Although the Persians had been defeated, no one knew whether they would regroup and attempt conquest once again. In this climate of uncertainty, the Athenians decided a strong set of fortification walls was needed. The leading statesman of the time was Themistokles, whose far-sighted promotion of shipbuilding in the 480s (paid with silver mined at Laurion, in south-east Attica) had saved Athens from annihilation at the Battle of Salamis. Under his guidance new walls were quickly erected around Athens and its port of Peiraeus. Any available stone was used for the lower portions of the walls, including pieces from destroyed buildings and even sculpted funerary stelai; the upper reaches were made of mud brick. During the following decades town and port were linked by the Long Walls, a corridor of parallel walls, with a third wall reaching eastwards to protect the secondary harbor at Phaleron (Figure 16.1).
Precautions against a Persian return were also undertaken on a larger stage. The Delian League, formed in 478 bc, was a coalition of states under the leadership of Athens that maintained a large navy, with states contributing either ships or money. The member states tended to be the coastal and island cities of the Aegean and the Sea of Marmara. The sacred island of Delos, centrally located, was selected as the site of the League’s treasury. Periodic battles with the Persians did
Figure 16.1 Attica take place, notably along the south coast of Turkey and in Egypt, but the Persians never seriously threatened the mainland of Greece or the Aegean islands. Indeed, a formal peace may have been concluded with the Persians in the middle of the century. Nevertheless, Athens tightened her grip over the member states, gradually transforming the League into an Athenian empire. The Persian menace may have receded, but Sparta and her allies presented new challenges. Member states no longer had the option of furnishing ships. Only money was accepted: a tribute, not a contribution. Pretences of equality were further stripped when, in 454 BC, the treasury of the League was moved from Delos to Athens.
According to tradition, before the Battle of Plataea, the Greek city-states had taken an oath never to rebuild the temples destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC: “Of the shrines burnt and overthrown by the barbarians I will rebuild none, but I will allow them to remain as a memorial to those who come after of the impiety of the barbarians” (Wycherley 1978: 106, from Lycurgus, Against Leokrates 80—81). Conspicuous among these ruins were the sacred buildings on the Athenian Acropolis, the cult center of Athens. By the middle of the fifth century, however, the Athenians decided to rebuild. The sentiment sworn in the Oath of Plataea seemed irrelevant: the Persian threat had diminished, and more significantly, Athens had become a major power. Under the leadership of Perikles, the leading statesman from ca. 461 to 429 BC, the Athenians expressed their city’s greatness in a major reconstruction of the sanctuary to Athena on the Acropolis.
Athenian ambitions did not go unchallenged. Opponents in central and southern Greece, including such economic centers as Corinth, persuaded Sparta to lead their cause. War broke out in 431 BC: the Peloponnesian War. This confrontation between Athens and Sparta and their allies lasted until 404 BC, ending with a Spartan victory and occupation of Athens and the pulling down of the Athenian walls. But the war had exhausted Sparta as well; it was unable to capitalize on its success. In 394 BC, Athens, now freed of Spartan tutelage, rebuilt its walls under the leadership of Konon and regained a measure of its former importance.
World History
