The Peloponnesian War ended with the Spartan capture of Athens in 404 BC. The Spartans ordered the dismantling of the city walls and installed a compliant government. But the Spartan triumph was short-lived; the Athenians soon retook control of their city. Spartan leaders proved incapable of governing in the outside world, and particularly susceptible to the lure of money and bribes. In addition, losses of soldiers during the war had severely reduced the already small Spartan citizenry. In 371 BC, a Spartan army was defeated at the Battle of Leuctra by a federated state led by Thebes. Sparta, invincible no longer, never recovered from this blow.
Thebes and later the Arcadian League held sway briefly, but neither dominated mainland Greece in a sustained way as had Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BC. While the city-states continued to quarrel, a new force was rising on the northern edge of the Greek world that would soon sweep them away. Philip II came to power in Macedonia in 359 BC. Although speaking a dialect of Greek, the Macedonians lay on the fringes of Greek culture and had contributed little to Greek political, socio-economic, and artistic life. Philip II was of a different mettle from his predecessors. Strengthening Macedonia through military reforms, he eventually challenged the city-states to the south, including Athens, and defeated them at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. Two years later, while preparing to lead the combined Macedonian and Greek forces eastwards against the Persian Empire, he was assassinated.
Philip’s ambitions were fulfilled by his son, Alexander III, better known as Alexander the Great. Only twenty years old when he succeeded his father, Alexander soon led his conquering
Figure 17.1 The conquests of Alexander the Great
Army into Asia and defeated the Persians in three key battles: Granicus (in north-west Turkey), Issos (in south Turkey), and Gaugamela (in northern Iraq). After sacking Persepolis, he marched as far east as the Indus River (Figure 17.1). His soldiers refused to go further, so he turned back; he died soon after of a fever in Babylon, in 323 BC. He was thirty-three years of age. With Alexander’s conquests, West Asia and Egypt were brought into the fold of Greek culture. The newly formed Greek kingdoms of the Hellenistic period would be much influenced, however, by the Near Eastern and Egyptian cultures they were now controlling.
World History
