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History of the peloponnesian war sparknotes
History of the peloponnesian war sparknotes
History of the peloponnesian war sparknotes
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A House Divided: Athens, Sparta, and the Inevitable Fall of Greece
The stunning Greek defeat of the Persians, the specter of which lurks behind the events of the Peloponnesian Wars, was for Herodotus proof of the superiority of Hellenic form of government and way of life, and Herodotus ends his history at this pinnacle of Greek history. Thucydides then accepts the task of chronicling Greece’s unraveling from a position as the dominant power of the Mediterranean, and a center of cultural, technological, and political development to the final result of the Peloponnesian Wars—a fractured, demoralized, and dependent Greece that lies wide open to foreign conquest. This result is, for Thucydides, apparent from the beginning of the conflict. Greece can only dominate when the balance of power between Athens and Sparta is maintained, and the destruction of either is tantamount to the destruction of the whole. An accurate understanding of the national characters of Athens and Sparta makes it clear which of the two will ultimately be the victor of a long, arduous military struggle, but the same understanding of national character makes it equally apparent that the one which can dominate militarily cannot lead Greece. The speeches made at the First Lacedaemonian Congress emphasize not only the character of the two nations in conflict, but more broadly, the inevitability of Hellenic demise as a result of this conflict.
Thucydides sets down the development of the relationship between the power of Athens and Sparta in the Archeology. Athens emerges from the Persian Wars as the undisputed commercial superpower in Greece. Where Sparta is located in the fertile Peloponnesus, and is thus able to sustain itself on agriculture alone, making trade unnecessary and allowing it to maintain its own laws and customs for “more than four hundred years” (I.18.1), Athens’ infertile land forces it to turn to olive oil for revenue, and it consequently develops a flourishing trade economy even before the Darius set his sights on Greece. The Persian invasion itself makes a sea power out of Athens, allowing it to establish a Mediterranean empire, and export its culture and government to the rest of Greece (I.18.2, I.6.3). This serves to unify the scattered Ionian and Doric cities under the umbrella of the Hellenes culturally where the Spartan campaign to remove tyrants unifies it politically by giving Greeks relative freedom and subordinating it uniformly to the law, and the joint coalition against the Persians ultimately secured it militarily (I.
Thucydides set out to narrate the events of what he believed would be a great war—one requiring great power amassed on both sides and great states to carry out. Greatness, for Thucydides, was measured most fundamentally in capital and military strength, but his history delves into almost every aspect of the war, including, quite prominently, its leaders. In Athens especially, leadership was vital to the war effort because the city’s leaders were chosen by its people and thus, both shaped Athens and reflected its character during their lifetimes. The leaders themselves, however, are vastly different in their abilities and their effects on the city. Thucydides featured both Pericles and Alcibiades prominently in his history, and each had a distinct place in the evolution of Athenian empire and the war it sparked between Athens and Sparta. Pericles ascended to power at the empire’s height and was, according to Thucydides, the city’s most capable politician, a man who understood fully the nature of his city and its political institutions and used his understanding to further its interests in tandem with his own. After Pericles, however, Thucydides notes a drastic decline in the quality of Athenian leaders, culminating in Alcibiades, the last major general to be described in The Peloponnesian War. While he is explicit in this conclusion, he is much more reticent regarding its cause. What changed in Athens to produce the decline in the quality of its leadership?
In the first chapter of God Behaving Badly, David Lamb argues that God is unfairly given a bad reputation. He claims these negative perceptions are fueled by pop culture and lead many to believe the lie that the God of the Old Testament is angry, sexist, racist, violent, legalistic, rigid, and distant. These negative perceptions, in turn, affect our faith. Ultimately, Lamb seeks to demonstrate that historical context disproves the presumptuous aforementioned. In addition, he defends his position by citing patterns of descriptions that characterize God throughout the Old Testament. “Our image of God will directly affect how we either pursue or avoid God. If we believe that the God of the Old Testament is really harsh, unfair and cruel, we won’t want anything to do with him” (Lamb 22). Clearly, they way Christians choose to see God will shape their relationship with Him.
While Simon Hornblower acknowledges the limitations of the alliance, he is perhaps the strongest proponent of the importance of Persia’s financial support. He recognizes that Sparta’s victory at Notion in 407 was as much the result of poor Athenian leadership as Persian money, and that this financial backing did not prevent the disastrous loss at Arginusai the following year. Despite these statements, Hornblower is adamant that “The Peloponnesian War had been won because of Persian money.” P.F. Rhodes continues this reasoning in A History of the Classical Greek World, 478-323. He contends that Persia’s assistance helped Sparta effectively combat Athens at sea, and allowed them to remain engaged until Athens could no longer continue. These theories all center around the question of why Sparta won the war. However, if we flip our perspective and examine why Athens lost the war, Persia’s money becomes considerably less significant. It is to this examination that we now turn our
Of all the history of the Ancient Greece, there were two events that showed really well how disunity among the Greeks highly contributed to its downfall, which were the Peloponnesian War and Successors’ War. Interestingly, both wars occurred after a unity and followed by a unity that was carried out by “outsiders”. This may have actually shown that the Greeks had never learned from their past
The Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) was a conflict between the Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta that resulted in the end of the Golden Age of Athens. The events of the war were catalogued by the ancient historian Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides’ writings showed the ancient Greek belief that there is a parallel between the city-state and the character of its citizens; in order for the city-state to be successful, its citizens must be virtuous. Thucydides did not believe that the true cause of the Peloponnesian War were the immediate policies of the Athenian Empire against the city-states in the Peloponnesian League but rather the fundamental differences in the character of the two city-states
The book written by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, contains two controversial debates between distinguished speakers of Athens. The two corresponding sides produce convincing arguments which can be taken as if produced as an honest opinion or out of self-interest. The two debates must be analyzed separately in order to conclude which one and which side was speaking out of honest opinion or self-interest, as well as which speakers are similar to each other in their approach to the situation.
...heir product they were supposed to sell. Trey spends all of their saved up money gambling at casinos because he was trying to make profit. Desperate for cash, Kristina and Trey "fake" a break in to her old house and steal her mothers checks and jewelry. They make a run for it when Kristina sees her picture in the newspaper, tooken in one of the banks she cashed her mothers checks in. Sleeping off a monster buzz, they get pulled over by a cop for parking somewhere they are not supposed to. The cop asks to search the car, to find a a open lockbox, full of meth. Kristina’s mother also turned them in for stealing from her. As the author states in the end of the book, Kristina and Trey will no longer share an apartment, a car, a bed, a pipe, a cigarette, a kiss, promises, dreams or vows. The only thing they will share is a baby. That is, if they get out of jail in time.
The causes of the Peloponnesian War proved to be too great between the tension-filled stubborn Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta. As Thucydides says in Karl Walling’s article, “Never had so many human beings been exiled, or so much human blood been shed” (4). The three phases of the war, which again, are the Archidamian war, the Sicilian Expedition and the Decelean war, show the events that followed the causes of the war, while also showing the forthcoming detrimental effects that eventually consumed both Athens and eventually Sparta effectively reshaping Greece.
We have now examined Thucydides' strongest arguments for Athenian rule. It is clear that Athens had a stronger claim to rule than the Melians had to remain sovereign. We also know that Athens' claims hold up when we examine them for validity. Thucydides beliefs in Athens' claims were therefore well founded.
The Peloponnesian War is the conflict between the pelopoponesians league led by Sparta and the Delian league, led by Athens. Much of our knowledge on the causes and events of the Peloponnesian War, depends on the Athenian Thucydides 460-400 BC, writer of the History of the Peloponessian War. He servd as an Athenian commander in Northern Greece during the early years of the war until the assembly exiled him as he lost an outpost to the enemy. During this exile, he was able to interview witnesses on both sides of the conflicted. Unlike Heredotus he concentrated on contemporary history and presented his account of the war in an annalistic framework that only occasionally diverts from chronological order. In his account, he discuses the precursors to the war, including the 30 years truce and revolutions, such as the stasis in Corcyra. When looking at wars, the primary focus is normally the fighting itself, such as what we see for World War II. However, it is important to look at the anatomy of war, meaning what effect the war has on the people who are experiencing it first hand, and the consquences that the conflict has on the rest of the world. Therefore in this essay I shall discuss, drawing directly from Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, how the civilians reacted to the war, their involvement and socio economic factors. Furthermore, the first section of my essay shall focus on the direct effect of war on the people, regarding the plague, and violence and hopelessness that was experienced. Then I shall go on to discuss more general effects of the war and how it affected the Greek world, discussing the social and economic losses that occurred such as the cost of the war in attica, the coup d’etat that occurred in gove...
Since the Environmental Movement, traditional land art evolved, on one hand, to climate art, and on the other, influenced landform building. “The principles of landform building,” according to architect and theorist Stan Allen, “offer a new lens with which to reexamine phenomena as diverse as the megastructure of the 1960s, the current fascination with green building, artificial ski slopes, or the vast multi-use stadia being constructed today.” These principles include the inhabitation of the landscape, which much of contemporary architecture has incorporated into its design. However unlike land art’s wild terrains, such as the salt lake of Spiral Jetty or the vast desert of Double Negative, contemporary architecture has incorporated principles of land art into densely populated urban typology, of which the following two projects serve as significant examples.
Studies show that up to nine percent of teenagers meet criteria for depression at any one time, with as many as one in five teens having a history of depression at some point during adolescence (Cheung et al., 2007). Symptoms in adolescents can manifest differently than in adults due to the physical and social challenges that teenagers encounter. Some of the challenges that teenagers encounter that might lead to depression are peer pressure, changes due to developing bodies, changing hormone levels, peer pressure and sports among others. These challenges present in a teenager’s life can cause high levels of stress and anxiety that affect the teenager’s life in different areas such as school, work, family and their personal, social and family lives. Due to the challenges confronted when living with depression, it is completely necessary to seek professional help once symptoms
Some teens, when faced with adult problems, do not know how to cope with them. That is why more parents, teachers, and friends need to be alert about troubled teens. Once a teenager is faced with depression, he or she will need extra special treatment to get their lives back on track. The National Mental Health Association has found that four out of five people who attempt suicide show at least one of the following depressive signs: an obsession with death, suicide threats, a drastic change in appearance or personality, strange behavior, a change in eating or sleeping habits, a drastic drop in grades, and the desire to give away one's belongings('The Demon Called Depression,';pg.
Because of the tranquil times, the civilization’s society had more time to focus on writing, math, astronomy, and artistic fields, as well as trade and metallurgy. Out of all the city-states of Greece, two excelled over all the rest, Sparta and Athens. Even though they were the most advanced and strong civilizations, they were bitter enemies. While Athens focused mainly on the people’s democracy and citizen rights, Sparta were ferocious and enslaved its original inhabitants, making them unable to leave and kept under a close eye to prevent insurgence (History of Greece:The Golden Age of Greece). Additionally, Sparta had strict and trained soldiers that underwent intense physical exercising and instruction.
Clifford, Richard J., A Commentary by… Proverbs, The Old Testament Library. Editorial Advisory Board; James L. Mays, Carol A. Newsom, David I. Petersen. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1999.