Oct 12, 2008
The Macedonian king Amyntas I dies (year approximate) and is succeeded by his son, who will reign for about 50 years as Alexander I. Macedonia has for more than a decade been a vassal state of Persia (see 480 B.C.).
The Greek philosopher-sage-mathematician Pythagoras of Samos dies at Metapontum in the Dorian colony of Lucania at age 80 (age and year approximate). None of his writings will survive.
Pythagoras dies by some accounts at the hands of enemies who have pursued him to the edge of a bean field, where he has allowed himself to be seized rather than run into the field because he has a potentially fatal sensitivity to fava beans (Vicia faba), the only beans that will be available to Europe until the 16th century A.D. The red blood cells of sensitive individuals lack the enzyme needed to break down the peptide glutathione and may suffer hemolytic anemia within a few minutes of exposure to the pollen of the fava plant (or within a few hours of eating the beans). Symptoms may include jaundice and high fever; in severe cases death may occur within a day or two.
The late Pythagoras has speculated that human life begins with a blend of male and female fluids, or semens, originating in the body parts.
"In ancient times, people were few but wealthy and without strife," writes the Chinese philosopher Han Fei-zi (Fei-Tsu). "People at present think that five sons are not too many, and each son has five sons also and before the death of the grandfather there are already 25 descendants. Therefore people are more and wealth is less; they work hard and receive little. The life of a nation depends on having enough food, not upon the number of people."
Greek city-states in Ionia rebel against their Persian masters and receive support from Athens, as well as from every Cypriot kingdom but Amathus; Sparta, however, tries to restore Hippias as tyrant (chief archon) in place of the late Cleisthenes (whose date of death has gone unrecorded) and put an end to the successful Athenian democracy which threatens to serve as an example to people in other city-states, who are ruled (as are the Spartans) by an elite few oligoi (oligarchs).
Persian forces suppress the rebellion of their Ionian city-states after having laid siege to Paphos and Soli.
The feast of St. Valentine proclaimed by the Church for February 14 honors a Christian priest martyred in the 3rd century; it replaces a holiday honoring the Roman goddess Juno that began as the fertility festival of Lupercalia (see 753 B.C.).
The Chinese philosopher Kong Fuzi (Confucius) resigns as prime minister of Lu at age 56 when the ruler gives himself up to pleasure. In the next 12 years, Confucius will wander from state to state teaching precepts dealing with morals, the family system, and statecraft, with maxims that comprise a utilitarian philosophy. A brief record of Confucian teachings will be embodied in the Analects, one of the Four Books of Chinese classics, and his Golden Rule will be honored (often in the breach) throughout the world: "What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do unto others" (see Matthew, 84 A.D.; Nonfiction, 1657 A.D.).
Greece's 5-year Ionian revolt ends with the city-states that tried to break free from Persia still under Persian rule. The Greek author Hecateaeus of Miletus is one of the emissaries sent to negotiate with the satrap Artaphernes and persuades him to restore the Constitutions of the Ionic cities (see 492 B.C.).
Athenians elect the 31-year-old politician Themistocles to the position of chief judicial and civilian executive officer (archon). A member of the aristocratic Lycomid family whose mother was a non-Athenian concubine, he is a citizen only by virtue of the legislation put through by the late Cleisthenes in 508 B.C. making all of the city-state's free men citizens. Themistocles will sponsor the first Athenian public works designed to make the rocky bays of Piraeus, nine kilometers from Athens, into defensible harbors that will replace the nearer (but unguarded) beaches of Phaleron.
Persia's Darius I sends his son-in-law Mardonius to succeed the satrap Artaphernes in Ionia, commissioning him to attack Athens and Eretria (see 494 B.C.). Mardonius flies in the face of customary Achaemenid policy by abolishing the tyrants who rule in Ionia and restoring democracy (but see 491 B.C.).
Darius I sends a Persian fleet to invade Greece but it is destroyed in a great storm (see 490 B.C.).
Persia's Ionian satrap Mardonius invades Thrace and Macedonia but is deprived of his command when his fleet is wrecked off Mt. Athos with enormous loss of life (see 492 B.C.). He has crossed the Hellespont (Dardanelles), named for the legendary Helle who fell from the Golden Ram (source of the Golden Fleece) as it sped toward Colchis, and drowned. Almost the narrowest point separating Asia and Europe, the waterway is a deep channel that carries water from the Black Sea to the Aegean (see Marathon, 490 B.C.).
Persia's Darius I assembles a fleet of more than 600 ships in the spring, gathers an army of 15,000 men at Tarsus under the joint command of his nephew Artaphernes and the Midean nobleman Datis, lets the exiled Athenian tyran Hippias go along as guide, and sends the force to punish Athens for her support of the Ionian revolt (see 491 B.C.). From a point 40 kilometers northeast of Athens between Mount Pentelikon and the Gulf of Marathon, the Athenians send a messenger to request aid from Sparta against their common foe, but the Spartans reply that they will participate only at the end of a 6-day religious festival. Outnumbered nearly three to one, the 10 Athenian generals dither for more than a week until the 64-year-old aristocrat Miltiades the younger persuades the supreme military commander Callimachus to take immediate action, and the Battle of Marathon September 15 gives Athens her first great military triumph. Having learned that the Persian cavalry was being watered and out of action, Miltiades seizes the opportunity, bolsters his flanks, leads his army of 11,000 heavily armored Athenians one mile in a trot across the plain, covers the ground so quickly that Persian arrows mostly overshoot his men, and repulses the invasion force. The Athenian hoplites use their nine-foot spears to kill some 6,400 of the more lightly armored invaders, drive hundreds into a marsh, burn seven of the enemy's ships, and suffer only 192 dead before the surviving Persians put to sea. The people of Athens make it appear that the city is heavily defended, and when Datis comes in sight with his fleet he makes no attempt to land (see 489 B.C.).
Greek philosopher and mathematician Zeno of Elea dies at age 65 (age and year approximate), having gained renown for his paradoxes. He has proved that one can never walk out of a room, since before one goes the full distance one has to go half that distance, forever; using this paradox, he has argued that under the assumption of infinite divisibility of space and time, motion can never even begin.
The Greek satirist Lucian of the 2nd century A.D. will tell of a courier, Pheidippides, racing on foot to Athens (a distance of about 22 miles) with news of the victory on the plains of Marathon before falling dead of exhaustion. The historian Herodotus in this century will write of another courier, Philippides, who ran from Athens to Sparta (perhaps 160 miles) in less than 48 hours to seek aid against the Persians. Later historians will question both stories, but so-called "marathon" races of 25 miles and more will gain popularity in the 20th century A.D. (see sports [Boston Marathon], 1897 A.D.).
Persia's Darius I has a thousand animals slaughtered each day for the royal table at his capital of Persepolis (or so the historian Xenophon will record; see 401 B.C.).
An Athenian fleet of 70 ships under the command of Miltiades the younger embarks in the spring to conquer the islands thought to have sided last year with Persia's Darius I. The expedition fails, Miltiades returns to Athens, his political rivals demand that he be put to death, he is fined 50 talents, and he dies of a gangrenous leg wound, probably in prison (see Thermopylae, 480 B.C.).
Persia's Achaemenid king Darius I (the Great) dies at age 64 after a 36-year reign in which he has suppressed numerous rebellions and built a vast empire despite failures to conquer Greece. His 34-year-old son has governed Babylon for 12 years and will reign until 465 B.C. as Xerxes I, having been designated heir to the throne in preference to his elder brother Artabazanes; Xerxes sends an army to Egypt, where a usurper has been in power for 2 years (see 484 B.C.).
Persia's Achaemenid king Xerxes I ravages the Nile Delta to punish the Egyptians, who have permitted a usurper to rule their country (see 486 B.C.). He appoints his brother Achaemenes satrap (governor) of Egypt (see 482 B.C.; Salamis, 480 B.C.).
The founder of Buddhism Siddhartha Gautama dies at Kusinagara, Oudh, at age 80 (year and age approximate), having taught that only the contemplative life brings self-enlightenment and the state of perfect blessedness achieved by the extinction of individual existence but that while the unholy are condemned to transmigration through many existences the death of the body does not bring nirvana. The Buddha's teachings will spread to Burma, Ceylon, China, Japan, Siam, and Tibet (see 260 B.C.).
Persia's Xerxes I sends his brother-in-law Megabyzus with an army to quell an uprising at Babylon, where two successive pretenders to the throne have appeared. Megabyzus defeats the second pretender, one Shamash-eriba, and wreaks havoc on the city, tearing down its fortresses, looting its temples, and carrying off a huge golden statue of the god Bel-Marduk to be melted down. Babylonian rulers have traditionally legitimized themselves by holding the hands of the god's gold image at the new year festival (Akitu), and Megabyzus wants to prevent any future Babylonian king from doing so. Xerxes gives up his titles king of Babylon and king of Egypt, calling himself simply king of the Persians and the Medes.
Persia's Xerxes I builds a pontoon bridge to span the Hellespont (Dardanelles) and invades Greece with an army of nearly 200,000, having been urged by his brother-in-law Mardonius and others to avenge the defeat suffered by his father, Darius I, at Marathon 10 years ago. Sparta joins with Athens and the other city-states to repel the invaders, Persian arrows at the Battle of Thermopylae August 19 come in such thick volleys as to block out the sun, but when the Spartan leader Dienekes hears of this he will be quoted by the historian Herodotus as having said, "Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade." His force of 300 Spartans holds the Persians at bay for 2 days with help from 700 Thespians under Leonidas, enabling the main Greek force of 11,000 hoplites to escape, but Leonidas then orders most of his men to retreat, remaining behind with his 300-member royal guard to fight on until the defenders are engulfed and every man destroyed. The Spartan nobleman Simonides of Ceos leaves an epitaph that says in part, "Stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here, obedient to their commands." Athenians panic at reports that the Persians have broken through the pass at Thermopylae and are advancing from Macedonia toward their undefended city; they flee to Salamis and the Peloponnese. The Persians occupy Attica and sack Athens, burning the Acropolis.
Macedonia's Alexander I provides secret aid to the Greeks but is obliged to campaign with Xerxes, who allows him to seize the Greek colony of Pydna and push his frontiers forward eastward to include Crestonia and Bisaltia, giving him control of the rich silver mines on Mount Dysorus.
The Battle of Salamis September 23 brings victory to the Greeks, whose Athenian general Themistocles has lured the Persians into the Bay of Salamis, between Athens and the island of Salamis, where their triremes cannot maneuver. Each side has ships measuring about 120 feet long and 18 wide manned by 170 oarsmen in banks of three on each side. Artemisia I, queen of the Greek city of Halicarnassus and of the nearby island of Cos, commands five ships in support of her Persian overlords, who also have the support of Achaemenes, brother of Xerxes and satrap of Egypt (he commands the Egyptian contingent of the Achaemenid fleet), but the Cypriot kings and the Ionians send naval contingents to support the Athenians, more than 1,000 Persian vessels are rammed and sunk by fewer than 400 Greek ships, the splintered decks of the triremes provide a blood-smeared battleground, and Xerxes withdraws to Persia (possibly at the advice of Artemisia I). He leaves behind an army under the command of his brother-in-law Mardonius.
The Battle of Plataea August 27 ends the Persian invasions of Greece as a Greek army under Pausanius routs the Persian commander Mardonius, who has tried without success to separate Athens from her allies and is killed in the battle, leaving his forces without a coherent command.
Greek states join to create a Delian League (so called because it is based on the Aegean island of Delos) to protect themselves from further attack by the Achaemenian Persians. Athens leads the mutual-protection organization with a view to supporting Ionians in Anatolia and taking revenge on the Persians, and it is Athens who supplies the commanders in chief and decides which states are to provide how many ships and how much money, but it will be another 10 years before the league takes more than sporadic action.
Iron comes into use in China nearly 1,000 years after its use became common in the Near East and half a century after its introduction into Europe (see 1000 B.C.).
Poetry: The Greek poet Pindar moves to Thebes at age 44 after 2 years at the Sicilian court of Hieron at Syracuse. "Hopes are but the dreams of those who are awake," writes Pindar, who composes great lyric odes (epincia) to celebrate triumphs in the Olympian games and other athletic events.
Theater: The Persians (Persae) by Athenian playwright Aeschylus, 53, who gained his first prize for drama in 484 and has founded classical Greek tragedy by taking a relatively simple form and infusing it with heroic and unsophisticated magnificence.
Roman citizens establish a Tribune to represent the rights and interests of ordinary people in a society governed by the rich.
Romans worship a pantheon of gods whose roles are comparable to those of the Greek gods Zeus, Athena, etc. but have different names: Jupiter; his wife, Hera; the goddess of wisdom, Minerva; the sun god Apollo, etc.
Alfalfa is grown by the Greeks, who have been introduced to the plant by the Persians and use it as fodder for their horses.
The Greek lyric poet and epigrammatist Simonides of Ceos dies at age 68 (age and year approximate), having won many Athenian competitions with his dithyrambic verses, which were written to be changed.
Theater: The Athenian prize for drama goes to the playwright Sophocles, 28, who defeats Aeschylus in the annual contest. Sophocles will be remembered for ages to come for his Ajax and other tragedies.
The Delian League sends a large fleet along the southern coast of Anatolia under the command of the Athenian general Cimon. His Greek troops drive out Persian garrisons and bring cities along the coast under Greek control (see 466 B.C.).
Theater: Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus. Performances of Greek dramas begin at sunrise.
Delian League troops under the command of Cimon defeat a Persian fleet on the Eurymedon at Pamphylia, sack the Persian army's camp, and rout Cyprian reinforcements.
Benghazi is founded on the North African coast by citizens of Cyrenaica, who will make it their capital.
Persia's Achaemenid king Xerxes I is assassinated at age 84 (approximate) along with his older son in a conspiracy led by his commander of the guard Artabanus who has been joined by his minister Artabanus and his brother-in-law Megabyzus. Having ruled for 21 years, Xerxes has been persuaded by his wife, Amestris, to kill his brother's family lest a nephew gain power. The king is succeeded by his younger son, who is raised to the throne at Susa by Artabanus but whom he kills a few months later in hand-to-hand combat. The new king will reign until 425 B.C. as Artaxerxes I, putting down a revolt led by his brother, the satrap of Bactria.
Spartan helots (serfs) revolt following a series of earthquakes that have devastated the city-state on Greece's Peloponnesian peninsula (the helots were reduced to serfdom in the 8th century). Sparta asks Athens for help in suppressing the rebellion, and she then sends the Athenians home to keep their ideas of democracy from gaining a foothold (see 461 B.C.).
Athenian-Spartan relations break down after 17 years in which both Greek city-states have cooperated as members of the Delian League despite Spartan reluctance to make heavy overseas commitments (see helot rebellion, 464 B.C.). Athens has colluded with Sparta's enemies and helped Spartan helots establish their own cities (see Pericles, 457 B.C.).
Egyptians rebel once again against Persian rule; led in battle by Inaros, they kill the Persian satrap Achamemenes, a brother of the late Achaemenid king Xerxes I (year approximate). Persia's Artaxerxes I appoints the general Megabyzus satrap of Syria and sends him with a large army to restore Achaemenid rule in Egypt (see 454 B.C.).
The Athenian politician and naval strategist Themistocles dies at age 64 (age and year approximate), having more than anyone else saved Greece from Persian conquest.
A delegation from Rome's Senate calls the general Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus from his small farm to defend the city from attack by the approaching Aequi, an ancient people whose forces have advanced to the Alban Hills. Cincinnatus is named dictator of Rome, gathers troops, attacks, and defeats the Aequi, resigns his dictatorship, and returns to his farm, all within 16 days (see 431 B.C., Society of the Cincinnati, 1784 A.D.).
Theater: The Oresteian trilogy by Aeschylus includes the plays Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers (Choephoroi), and The Eumenides. Its story of the blood feud in the house of Atreus will have a powerful influence on future writers and thinkers. Clytemnestra is murdered by her son Orestes for her murder of his father, Agamemnon, and although he has been urged to commit the act by the god Apollo, he is pursued by the Furies. Orestes flees to Athens, where the goddess Athena establishes the court of Areopagus, grants forgiveness to Orestes, and changes the name of the Furies to "the kindly ones."
Athens has between 75,000 and 150,000 slaves, who represent 25 to 35 percent of the population. Some 20,000 work in the mines at Laurium producing the silver that Athenians trade for foodstuffs and other imports.
A 28-year Golden Age begins in Athens as the statesman Pericles makes the city preeminent in the world in architecture and the arts while preparing for the inevitable conflict with Sparta.
Pericles studies with the philosopher Anaxagoras, 43, who has been teaching at Athens for the past 5 years and who introduces a dualistic explanation of the universe: all natural objects are composed of infinitesimally small particles, or atoms, containing mixtures of all qualities, and the human mind acts upon masses of these particles to produce visible objects.
The playwright Aeschylus dies at age 69. He will be survived through the ages by tragedies that include Prometheus Bound and The Suppliants.
A 6-year Egyptian rebellion against Persia ends as the Syrian satrap Megabyzus restores Achaemenid authority despite Athenian support to Egypt. The rebel leader Inaros surrenders after receiving a pledge from Megabyzus, but the Persian queen mother, Amestris, will scheme to break the pledge, prompting Megabyzus to return to Syria and rebel (he and Artaxerxes will later become reconciled, he will subsequently offend the king, Artaxerxes will exile him to Cyrtae on the Persian Gulf, and he will remain there for 5 years before feigning leprosy and being allowed to return).
Macedonia's Alexander I dies after a 50-year reign (year approximate). He has organized a hoplite army of foot companions (pezhetairoi) and provided it with basic political rights as a counterweight to the nobility (cavalry "companions," or hetairoi). Known as Alexander the Philhellene because of his sympathies for the neighboring Greeks, he has gained admission to the Olympic games, entertained the poet Pindar at his court, and erected a golden statue at Delphi made from Persian war booty.
Celts overrun the British Isles; the Indo-European people have crossed the channel separating the islands from the European mainland.
The Temple of Theseus is completed at Athens.
Nonfiction: History by the Greek historian Herodotus, 36, gives an account of the Graeco-Persian War that lasted from 490 to 479 along with lengthy digressions giving geographical descriptions of the eastern Mediterranean, relating anecdotes, making anthropological observations, and reporting legends. Herodotus will be called the "father of history" (date approximate).
Hostilities between Persia and Athens end after decades of conflict.
Rebuilding of the Acropolis at Athens begins under the direction of architects Iktinos and Kallicrates, whose work will continue over the next 15 years as Pericles rebuilds what the Persians destroyed in 480 B.C. to make Athens a brilliant city (see Parthenon, 438 B.C.).
The Temple of Poseidon is completed south of Athens at Cape Sunion.
Theater: The Athenian prize for drama is won by the playwright Euripides, 43, who made his first effort to win the prize 14 years ago but whose sensational plays have won him more notoriety than approval.
The Greek philosopher Heracleitus at Ephesus in Asia Minor teaches that everything is mutable: "all is flux." Principles are constantly modified through an incontrovertible law of nature that governs the universe in which worlds are alternately being created and destroyed.
Heracleitus is the first man to declare that dreams are not journeys into the supernatural but are rather retreats into a personal world (see Freud, 1900 A.D.).
Theater: Antigone by Sophocles is a tragedy in which the heroine defies Creon, king of Thebes, and buries a declared traitor, claiming authority higher than the king's. She is condemned to death and kills herself before Creon, who has changed his mind, can save her or save his son (who has been betrothed to Antigone and who also commits suicide).
The Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens is consecrated after 9 years of construction to designs by Iktinos, Kallicrates, and Pheidias (see 448 B.C.). Built atop the rubble left by invading Persian forces in 480, the great marble temple is 69½ meters long, 30.88 meters wide, with a 3.30-meter entablature above exterior columns 10.43 meters in height—17 columns on each of its two sides, eight on each of its two ends.
Famine strikes Rome with such severity that thousands of people throw themselves into the Tiber to escape their hunger pains.
Sculpture: The gold and ivory statue of Zeus by the Athenian sculptor Pheidias is completed at Olympia for a temple designed by the architect Libon (year approximate). Pheidias has worked for about 5 years to construct a giant wooden framework and sheath it with ivory, which he has heated to temperatures that permit its molding into precise shapes that could be fitted together for the towering work. His 40-foot high statue of the king of the gods has a wreath of olive sprays on its head and holds in its right hand an ivory-and-gold figure of Victory, its left hand holds a scepter inlaid with a variety of metals, an eagle is perched on the scepter, the statue will be called one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and it will survive until 462 A.D.
Pericles concludes a defensive alliance with Corcyra (Corfu), a strong naval power in the Ionian Sea and a bitter enemy of Corinth. Pericles also renews alliances with the Rhegium and Leontini in the west, threatening Sparta's food supply route from Sicily. Corinth appeals to Sparta to take arms against Athens, and the appeal is backed by Megara (which has been ruined by Pericles's economic sanctions) and by Aegina (which is heavily taxed by Pericles and has been refused home rule).
The Peloponnesian Wars that will occupy 20 of the next 27 years begin in Greece following a revolt in the spring by the Potidaea in Chalcidice against their Athenian masters. Pericles blockades the Potideae; they refuse to arbitrate. Pericles has walls built to protect the area between Athens and the port of Piraeus and thereby safeguard the city's food supply, but the naval and military demands of the blockade drain Athens; Sparta's oligarchy seizes the opportunity to declare war on Athens; and Corfu declares war on Corinth.
The 37-year-old soldier-scholar Socrates participates in his first military campaign at Potideaea and saves Alcibiades, an 18-year-old nephew of Pericles.
Spartan troops will lay waste the countryside around Athens in the Peloponnesian Wars, coming within seven miles of the city, and destroying not only grain fields but also olive trees, vineyards, and orchards that will not recover for decades.
Sparta's Archidamus II gains support by calling for the liberation of the Hellenes from Athenian despotism, and he sets out to annihilate Athens, beginning a Peloponnesian War that will continue until 404 B.C. Pericles works to make Athens-Piraeus an impregnable fortress, with a wall that keeps the corridor between the city and its port safe from invaders. In a ringing funeral oration that will be quoted for millennia, he says, "It is for such a city, then, that these men died in battle, thinking it right not to be deprived of her, just as each of their survivors should be willing to toil for her sake." Pericles plans to lay waste the Megarid each spring and autumn while the Spartans are occupied with sowing and reaping their own crops.
Roman forces repulse attacks by the Aequi (see Cincinnatus, 458 B.C.). The tribesmen have presented a menace for decades and will not be completely subdued until the end of the next century.
The Greek physician Empedocles propounds the notion that the body has four "humors"—blood, bile, black bile, and phlegm; his concept will dominate medical thinking for centuries to come.
Pepper from India is fairly common in Greece, but the Greeks use Piper nigrum as medicine, not as a food seasoning.
Theater: Medea by Euripides depicts the reactions of a wife discarded in favor of a younger rival. The fiery barbarian princess destroys her rival and kills her own children by the faithless Jason.
Athens sends a peace mission to Sparta in August but it has no success. Potidaea capitulates to Athenian siege forces in the winter, but by that time the Athenian port of Piraeus is in the grip of plague that has arrived on a ship bearing grain from North Africa.
Every natural event has a natural cause, says the Greek philosopher Leucippus.
An epidemic of blinding, paralytic deadly fever strikes Piraeus. Possibly a malignant form of scarlet fever that originated in Ethiopia, the plague has symptoms that begin with headache and progress to redness of the eyes, inflammation of the tongue and pharynx, sneezing, coughing, hoarseness, vomiting, diarrhea, and delirium. The plague does not affect the Peloponnese, but the Spartans kill everyone who falls into their hands lest they catch the disease, which rages also in the little Italian town of Rome.
Sicilian-born Greek philosopher-statesman-physiologist-religious teacher-poet Empedocles dies in the Peloponnese at age 60 (approximate), having taught that the souls of sinners must transmigrate for 30,000 seasons through many mortal bodies, being hurled about from one element (fire, air, water, or earth) to another and that this punishment can be avoided only by purification, especially by avoiding the meat of animals (whose souls may once have inhabited human bodies).
The Athenian admiral Phormio wins naval victories at Chalcis and Naupactus at the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf, but in Athens thousands die of the plague. It kills Pericles in September, ending the Golden Age of Greece. Pericles lingers on his deathbed for 3 months, trying various potions and magic before finally succumbing (his mistress Aspasia moves in with the cattle dealer Lysicles, who has risen in power and influence).
Plague kills at least one-third the population of Athens. The entire city indulges in drunkenness, gluttony, and licentiousness as the citizens lose their fear of the gods and respect for law. "As for the first," the historian Thucydides will write, "they judged it to be just the same whether they worshipped them or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and as for the latter, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offenses."
Spared by the plague is the physician Hippocrates the Great (as distinguished from one previous and five future Greek physicians named Hippocrates). He is the first to say that no disease is entirely miraculous or adventitious in origin and that disease is not sent as punishment by the gods. He uses dissection and vivisection of animals to study anatomy and physiology, but he often applies the results of his experiments to human bodies without further evidence. Hippocrates adds to medical terminology Greek words that will be translated into such English words as chronic, crisis, convalescence, exacerbate, paroxysm, relapse, and resolution. Fever expresses the struggle of the body to cure itself, he says; health results from the harmony and mutual sympathy of the humors (see Empedocles, 431 B.C.; Fu Xi, 2700 B.C.). Hippocrates's cult of Aesculapius is named after a physician who may have lived in about 1250 B.C.; it marks the beginning of scientific medicine.
The Hippocratic Oath:
I swear by Apollo Physician, by Aesculapius, by Health, by Heal-all, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture: To regard my teacher in this art as equal to my parents; to make him partner in my livelihood, and when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his offspring equal to my brothers; to teach them this art, if they require to learn it, without fee or indenture; and to impart precept, oral instruction, and all the other learning, to my sons, to the sons of my teacher, and to pupils who have signed the indenture and sworn obedience to the physicians' Law, but to none other. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but I will never use it to injure or wrong them. I will not give poison to anyone though asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a plan. Similarly I will not give a pessary to a woman to cause abortion. But in purity and in holiness I will guard my life and my art. I will not use the knife on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will do so to help the sick, keeping myself free from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from fornication with woman or man, bond or free. Whatsoever in the course of practice I see or hear (or even outside my practice in social intercourse) that ought never to be published abroad, I will not divulge, but consider such things to be holy secrets. Now if I keep this oath, and break it not, may I enjoy honor, in my life and art, among all men for all time; but if I transgress and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.
A revolt at Mitylene in June opens to question the impregnability of the Athenian maritime empire. Mitylene is the chief city of Lesbos, and the Athenians at first refuse to believe reports that their vassal state has rebelled (see 427 B.C.).
Theater: Hippolytus by Euripides shows the irreconcilable conflict between sexual passion and asceticism.
Sparta's Archidamus II dies after a 49-year reign. The Spartan admiral Alcidas, sent to help the rebels on Lesbos, makes a hurried raid on Ionia in Anatolia and flees home after seeing two Athenian warships.
Mitylene surrenders to the Athenian garrison on Lesbos in July after a rebellion that has cost Athens many lives (see 428 B.C.); Athens has sent out a trireme with orders to kill every citizen of Mitylene, the oarsmen do not want the orders implemented and row slowly, the Athenians realize they have made a mistake and send out a second trireme the following day, it covers the 350 kilometers in about 24 hours and reaches Mitylene just after the arrival of the earlier ship, Athens punishes the city but not with the cruel severity originally ordered.
Plataea surrenders in August after its garrison has come close to death from starvation. The Athenians slaughter the Plataeans in cold blood and completely destroy the city at the insistence of Thebes.
Corfu's democratic faction kills supporters of Sparta in a savage massacre and secures the island for Athens.
The Athenian general Demosthenes and the demagogue Cleon revitalize the city's military and naval forces despite opposition from Nicias, a rich merchant who represents the Athenian middle class and favors peace with Sparta. Demosthenes outlines a vigorous strategy of offense designed to make Sicily, Boeotia, and the Peloponnese itself spheres of Athenian influence.
Demosthenes proceeds in June to Acarnania with a handful of troops. He raises a large army of local levies with the hope of invading Boeotia by way of Phocis, while Nicias invades by way of Tanagra to threaten Thebes from the southeast, but natives in the Aetolian forests trap his army and cut it to pieces. Demosthenes barely escapes with his life; he reaches the Athenian base at Naupactus and secures it just in time to defend it against a large Spartan army from Delphi under Eyrylochus. Victories by Demosthenes at Olpae and Idomene destroy Peloponnesian and Ambraciot influence on the Ambraciot Gulf. Demosthenes shatters Spartan prestige and returns in triumph to Athens.
Persia's Achaemenid king Artaxerxes I dies at Susa after a 40-year reign and is buried at what will become Naqsh-e Rustam. He is succeeded by his son, who will reign only until 423 B.C. as Sogdianus (Secydianus).
An Athenian fleet summoned by Demosthenes bottles up the Spartan navy in Navarino Bay. Demosthenes has built and garrisoned a fort on the Pylos promontory of Messenia and defended it against the attacking Spartans. A Spartan force landed on the island of Sphacteria is cut off from rescue, the Spartan naval commander surrenders under a temporary armistice, but peace talks break off when Athens refuses to surrender the Spartan ships.
Nicias resigns his generalship, his successor Cleon increases by 50 percent and more the tribute demanded from most members of the Athenian Empire, and Cleon lands reinforcements on Sphacteria to overwhelm the Spartans. He brings 292 heroic Spartan defenders back to Athens and places them in dungeons to safeguard Attica from invasion, Sparta sues for peace, but Cleon refuses.
Theater: Hecuba by Euripides; The Acharnians by Aristophanes, 25, a comic playwright whose first play won a second prize 2 years ago and whose new comedy is an attack on war.
A congress at Gela in the spring hears the statesman Hermocrates of Syracuse urge the exclusion of foreign powers. The Sicilians send home an Athenian naval force.
Pagondas of Thebes crushes an Athenian army at Delium, making skillful use of cavalrymen. "The Athenians," the historian Thucydides will write, "fell into confusion in surrounding the enemy and mistook and killed each other." The Spartan general Brasidas thwarts Athenian efforts to take Megara; he then marches rapidly through Boeotia and Thessaly to Chalcidice, where he offers liberty and protection to cities rebelling against Athens, whose troops include the scholar Socrates. The city of Amphipolus surrenders, and a naval force from Thasos in the north arrives under the command of Thucydides in time only to save Eion at the mouth of the Strymon (the vengeful Cleon exiles Thucydides for 20 years).
Theater: Oedipus Rex (or Oedipus Tyrannus) by Sophocles (date approximate). Oedipus, king of Thebes, has left his native Corinth to escape fulfillment of a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, but Oedipus investigates the murder of his predecessor, Laius of Thebes, and discovers that he himself killed Laius, that Laius rather than the king of Corinth was his father, and that his wife, Jocasta, is also his mother. Jocasta kills herself, and Oedipus blinds himself (the tragedy will deeply affect future generations_; The Knights by Aristophanes.
Persia's Achaemenid king Sogdianus (Secydianus) is deposed after a 2-year-reign by his half brother Ochus, an illegitimate son of the late Artaxerxes I who has served as satrap (provincial governor) of Hyrcania. Born to a Babylonian concubine, Ochus has Sogdianus executed and will reign until his death in 404 B.C. as Darius II Ochus, but he will be dominated by the eunuchs of his court and by his ambitious wife, Parysatis.
Athens concludes the Truce of Laches in April to check the progress of Sparta's Brasidas, who ignores the truce and proceeds to take Scione and Mende in hopes of reaching Athens and freeing the prisoners taken 2 years ago at Sphacteria. Athens sends reinforcements under Nicias, who retakes Mende.
Theater: Maidens of Trachi by Sophocles (date approximate); The Clouds (Nephelai) by Aristophanes at the Dionysia Festival, Athens (it wins the third and last prize but its caricature of the philosopher Socrates as a professional sophist totally misses the mark, since Socrates has actually opposed and exposed sophistry).
Cleon of Athens meets Brasidas outside the city of Amphipolis; both men are killed in a battle whose participants include the philosopher Socrates, now 47.
The philosopher Socrates impresses his fellow Athenians with his courage and endurance but remains generally aloof from politics as he devotes himself to examining the conventional moral attitudes of his fellow citizens, using what will be called the "Socratic method" of questioning his pupils for their definitions of such familiar concepts as courage, justice, and piety, noting contradictions in their replies, pretending to share their ignorance, and using this pose to probe for more honest and penetrating analyses.
Theater: The Wasps by Aristophanes.
The Peace of Nicias April 11 brings a temporary end to the Peloponnesian War. The moderate democrat Nicias has arranged the cessation of hostilities, but Alcibiades engineers an anti-Spartan alliance between Athens and the democracies of Argos, Mantinea, and Elis.
Sevastopol has its beginnings in the Greek colony of Chersonesus founded in the southeastern Crimean Peninsula.
Theater: The Peace by Aristophanes.
Corinth and Boeotia refuse to support last year's Peace of Nicias, and although Athens has released her Spartan prisoners, she has retained Pylos and Nisaea because Sparta has claimed that she is unable to turn over Amphipolus. A new Quadruple Alliance (Athens, Argus, Mantinea, and Elis) organized by Alcibiades confronts a Spartan-Boeotian alliance in July; middle-class Athenians do not support Alcibiades, but he dominates Athenian life and politics.
Theater: The Suppliant Women by Euripides.
Sparta's king Agis gathers a strong army at Philus and descends upon Argos by marching at night from the north. His Boeotian forces fail him in the clutch, but he is able to conclude a treaty with Argos.
Theater: Andromache by Euripides (not produced at Athens); Electra by Sophocles, who takes his theme from The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, but whose play is more melodramatic than tragic (date approximate).
The Battle of Mantinea in August is the greatest land battle of the Peloponnesian War and gives Sparta a stunning victory over Argos, which has broken its treaty with Sparta's Agis at the insistence of Alcibiades and has threatened Tegea. Alcibiades has not been reelected general, and Sparta breaks up the Athenian confederation with the unwitting help of Alcibiades's political enemies in Athens.
Athenian forces are turned back in Chalcidice.
The Athenian political leader and general Nicias challenges Alcibiades for leadership of Athens, giving a spectacular demonstration of piety in the dedication of a temple of Apollo at Delos. He leads a sunrise procession of costumed choristers from the nearby island of Rheneia over a bridge of boats he has had built to span the distance.
The Greek city of Segesta in Sicily sends emissaries to Athens with a request for aid against its powerful enemy Syracuse. Athenians question the validity of the Segesta's promises of money for such help, ambassadors sent from Athens return with 60 talents of silver. Alcibiades urges the Athenians to conquer Syracuse, subdue Sicily, crush Carthage, and thus gain added forces that will enable them to finish the war against Sparta, making Athens the dominant power in the Mediterranean. His bold offensive plan wins the support of most Athenians but not Nicias (see 415 B.C.).
Athenians prepare an armada of 60 ships to attack Syracuse, but on the eve of its departure the Athenians are given a bad omen: the Hermae busts in the streets of Athens are mysteriously mutilated May 22 by having the symbolic penises on their sides removed. Alcibiades is accused of having originated the crime and also of having profaned the Eleusinian mysteries. He demands an immediate inquiry but is ordered to set sail. When he reaches Sicily, Alcibiades is recalled to Athens to stand trial. He escapes to Sparta on the return voyage, learns that he has been condemned to death in absentia, openly joins with the Spartans, and persuades them to send Gylippus to assist Syracuse and to fortify Decelea in Attica.
Athenian forces land at Dascon in Syracuse Great Harbor in November, but their victory is of little use.
Theater: The Trojan Women by Euripides is presented shortly after the massacre by Athenians of the male population of Melos, whose people have tried to remain neutral in the Peloponnesian War.
The Athenian army moves on Syracuse from Catana in April and begins a wall to block Syracuse's land approaches while the fleet blocks approach to the city from the sea, but the Athenian commander Lamachus is killed, leaving Nicias in command of the expedition. Supplies run short, the fleet is defeated, and "The Peloponnesians also came down and butchered them," Thucydides will write, "especially those in the water, which was thus immediately spoiled, but which they went on drinking just the same, mud and all, bloody as it was, most fighting to have it." Sparta's Gylippus arrives to strengthen the Syracusans, and Athens responds to appeals from Nicias by sending out 73 vessels in a second armada under the command of Demosthenes (see 413 B.C.).
Theater: The Birds (Ornithes) by Aristophanes at the Great Dionysia Festival as Athens awaits the outcome of its military expedition in Sicily.
Demosthenes arrives at Syracuse in July but is defeated in a nocturnal attack and sustains heavy losses (see 414 B.C.). He urges Nicias to leave, but soothsayers persuade Nicias to remain after a lunar eclipse August 27 has aroused superstitious fears among the men, he refuses to allow a retreat, and when he finally consents it is too late. The Athenian fleet is bottled up in the harbor and destroyed in the Battle of Syracuse in September. Demosthenes and Nicias are captured and executed in cold blood after taking to the hills with an army of foot soldiers.
Persia's Achaemenid king Darius II Ochus determines to regain the Greek coastal cities of Asia Minor, controlled by Athens since 448 B.C. He orders his satraps (provincial governors) Pharnabazus of Dascylium and Tissaphernes of Lydia and Caria to collect overdue tribute; Pharnabazus lends support to Sparta in her operations on the Hellespont, Tissaphernes forms an alliance with Sparta and by next year will have regained most of Ionia.
Survivors of the massacre at Syracuse are sent to the quarries, where most will starve to death, die from overwork, be executed, or otherwise succumb.
Theater: Electra by Euripides, who puts the legend of Orestes's revenge in modern dress and depicts the ancient matricide as a contemporary crime.
Alcibiades loses the confidence of the Spartans, antagonizes their king Agis, and retires to the court of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. He advises Tissaphernes to withdraw his support from Sparta (see 407 B.C.) while conspiring with the oligarchic party at Athens as Sparta's allied cities break away in a series of revolts.
The discredited democracy of Athens is overthrown in July by the oligarchic extremists Antiphon, Peisander, and Phrynichus, who open secret and treasonable negotiations with Sparta. They are overthrown in turn by the moderate Theramenes, who establishes the "Constitution of the Five Thousand." The Athenian navy recalls Alcibiades from Sardis, his election is confirmed by the Athenians at the persuasion of Theramenes, and an Athenian fleet defeats a Spartan fleet in the Hellespont at Cynossema in September.
Theater: Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides, whose heroine priestess of Artemis finds that the intended victims of human sacrifice are her brother Orestes and his friend. She outwits the barbarian king and organizes an escape; Lysistrata and The Women at the Thesmophoria (Thesmophoriazusae) by Aristophanes. The women in Lysistrata revolt against war by denying their sexual favors to their husbands.
Alcibiades crushes the poorly commanded Spartan navy and its supporting Persian land army in March at Cyzicus in the Sea of Marmora. Sparta makes peace overtures but the new Athenian demagogue Cleophon lets the opportunity escape. Democracy is restored in Athens.
Alcibiades recaptures Byzantium, ends the city's rebellion from Athens, clears the Bosphorus, and secures the Athenian supply route for grain from the Euxine (Black) Sea region.
Theater: Philoctetes by Sophocles, who returns for his theme to the Trojan War of the 12th century B.C.
Alcibiades enters Athens in triumph June 16 after an absence of 7 years. He is appointed general with autocratic powers and leaves for Samos to rejoin his fleet. The Spartan admiral Lysander arrives at Ephesus in the fall and builds up a great fleet with help from the new Persian satrap Cyrus the Younger. Spartans have been notoriously bad naval commanders, Lysander is an exception, and he has spread rumors that Alcibiades is the illegitimate son of Agis's queen (the Spartans countenance open marriage to prevent a decline in population) and is actually a true Spartan.
Theater: Orestes by Euripides, who continues the theme of his 413 B.C. tragedy Electra; The Phoenician Women by Euripides and other playwrights who have helped to complete the work. Euripides leaves Athens in dissatisfaction and travels to the court of Archelaus in Macedonia.
The 93rd Olympiad held at Olympia introduces a new event: a two-horse chariot race (see 520 B.C.; four-horse chariot race, 680 B.C.).
"The beauty of Helen was a pretext for the gods to send the Greeks against the Phrygians" (in the Trojan War), says Euripides in Orestes, "and to kill many men so as to purge the earth of an insolent abundance of people." Greek city-states have few resources and are not organized to support large numbers.
The Spartan admiral Lysander refuses to be lured out of Ephesus to do battle with Alcibiades, who exhausts his supplies and has to sail north and plunder some enemy coastal towns. Alcibiades leaves behind an Ionian Sea squadron under the command of his boyhood friend Antiochus, who violates orders and taunts Lysander. Sparta's fleet responds to the challenge, sallies forth from Ephesus, and routs the Athenians at Notium, administering a defeat that gives the enemies of Alcibiades at Athens an excuse to strip him of his command.
Persia's Darius II Ochus determines to back Sparta with all the resources at his command. His satrap Tissaphernes has been chary in his support of Sparta, fearing that a total victory over Athens would be detrimental to Persian interests (see 412 B.C.), so Darius appoints his son Cyrus the Younger in place of Tissaphernes as commander in chief of Asia Minor and provides him with the funds needed to rebuild the Spartan fleet (see 405 B.C.).
The playwright Euripides dies in the winter at the court of Archelaus in Macedonia at age 77, leaving incomplete his Iphigenia at Aulis but leaving behind also his masterpiece The Bacchants. The last great Greek tragedy, it will be produced at Athens by his son.
Triremes under the command of the Spartan admiral Lysander defeat an Ephesus-based Athenian squadron while Alcibiades is away raising funds. Disgraced, Alcibiades flees to the Hellespont and is replaced by a board of generals, one of whom is bottled up in Mitylene by Callicratidas, a Spartan admiral who has replaced Lysander. Athens raises a huge fleet and sends it off under Admiral Conon to relieve the siege of Mitylene; he is defeated, but returns with a second fleet and gains victory in the Battle of Arginusae. Sparta offers peace, which Cleophon rejects, and Sparta yields to demands by Persia's Cyrus that Lysander command a fleet in the Hellespont.
The 180-ship Athenian fleet follows Lysander to the Hellespont, where the two sides face each other for 4 days in September at Aegospotami, with the Athenian ships drawn up on the beach; Lysander surprises the Athenians in their anchorage on the fifth day, from 3,000 to 4,000 Athenians are captured and put to death, and only 10 to 20 triremes escape under the command of Conon. The Spartan king Pausanius lays siege to Athens while Lysander's fleet blockades Piraeus (see 404 B.C.).
Theater: The Frogs by Aristophanes at the Lenia Festival in Athens: "Alone among the gods, Death loves not gifts." (The Greeks believe the god of the underworld to be implacable and make no efforts to propitiate him.)
The Erectheum is completed in Ionic style on the Acropolis after 16 years of construction. The female figures that support its roof are called Caryatids because they are modeled after girls from the town of Caryae.
The Athenian demagogue Cleophon is tried and executed, Athens capitulates April 25 after being starved into submission, and the First Pelopennesian War finally ends after 27 years of hostilities between Athens and Sparta, leaving the Athenian empire and the Greek city-state culture in ruins (see 405 B.C.). Theramenes secures terms that save the city from destruction, but her long walls are torn down to the sound of flutes, and her empire is dissolved. The oligarchy of the "Thirty Tyrants" takes power under Critias, who has Theramenes forced to drink poison hemlock on charges of treason. Alcibiades is murdered in Phrygia at the behest of Sparta.
Athens's oligarchy (the Thirty Tyrants) exiles the Athenian general Thrasybalus, who frustrated an oligarchic revolt in Samos 8 years ago, was elected general by his troops, effected the recall of Alcibiades, and helped him in some successful naval expeditions. Thrasybalus retires to Thebes but returns late in the year with 70 men, seizes a hill fort (Phyle) on Mt. Parnes outside Athens, attracts 1,000 supporters to his ranks, and repels an attack mounted by the oligarchs (see 403 B.C.).
Persia's Achaemenid king Darius II Ochus dies of illness at Babylon after a 19-year reign in which he has helped Sparta break the power of Athens. He is succeeded by his son, who will reign until 359 B.C. as Artaxerxes II, rebuilding the royal palace at Susa but losing Egypt (see Cyrus, 401 B.C.).
A plague sweeps Athens as hunger weakens the people's resistance.
Foreign merchants may number half the Athenian citizenry, and the city-state's overall population of 60,000 to 70,000 includes slaves who may number more than one third of the total.
The Battle of Munychia in the fall ends in victory for the Athenian general Thrasybulus, who has skirmished with an army sent by Sparta's king Pausanius. Thrasybalus effects a reconciliation with the oligarchs who expelled him last year, restores Athenian democratic institutions, and grants amnesty to all except oligarchic extremists, but a decree by which he has secured voting rights for his noncitizen followers is rescinded.
The Chinese philosopher Zi Si (Tzu Ssu) dies at age 81. A grandson of Confucius, he is credited with having written the "Doctrine of the Mean," which broadens the concept of the mean as the state of equilibrium and will survive as part of the Record of Rites (Li Chi) and be classified as one of the Four Books.
Lydia's satrap Cyrus the Younger leads a revolt against his brother Artaxerxes II in a struggle for Persia's Achaemenian throne. Cyrus fields an army estimated to number 50,000, including nearly 13,000 Greek mercenaries under the command of the Spartan general Clearchus, but he is far outnumbered by Artaxerxes, whose forces are estimated at 100,000 (charioteers constitute a large part of each army). Artaxerxes defeats Cyrus and kills him at the Battle of Cunaxa on the left bank of the Euphrates River north of Babylon. The Greeks have been Cyrus's best trained and best equipped troops; when they return to their camp after the battle they find that it has been plundered and that Cyrus's other troops have been routed. Wounded in the battle by Cyrus, who charged at the center of his line with 600 cavalrymen, Artaxerxes invites Clearchus and his senior officers to a feast, where they are treacherously murdered; junior officers refuse to surrender, and the Greek essayist Xenophon, 33, takes command of 10,000 men, leading them back to the Greek colony of Trapezus on the Euxine (Black) Sea in a 5-month journey that 6,000 will survive and that he will describe in his Anabasis.
The Greek historian Thucydides dies at age 60, leaving behind an account of the Golden Age of Pericles and of the Peloponnesian War up to 404 B.C. He has tried to be objective and will be called "the father of scientific history." People go to war, he has said, over "honor, fear, and self-interest."
Theater: Oedipus at Colonus by the late Sophocles. Presented at Athens, it is the greatest tragedy of the playwright who died 5 years ago at age 90; his life spanned the ascendancy and decline of the Athenian Empire.
500 B.C.–476 B.C. 475 B.C.–451 B.C. 450 B.C.–426 B.C. 425 B.C.–401 B.C.
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