This is the essay for the 6th week of the 9th Grade Tom Woods Homeschool. It’s an answer to two questions, one about the Persian War and other about the Peloponnesian war.

1. Describe the circumstances leading to the Persian Wars. Why were they significant events in Western History?

2. Why was the Peloponnesian War fought? What was its long-term significance?

 

These circumstances started around 549 BC. This is when the Persians were fighting the Lydians, which were during that time ruling the Ionians. Ionia is located on the western side of Anatolia (present-day Turkey). The Persians asked the Ionians if they could revolt against the Lydians, that would help the Persians a lot if the Lydians had to worry about to fronts. Instead, the Ionians refused to do a revolt. The Persians were still able to conquer and defeat the Lydians, but they weren’t happy that the Ionians hadn’t supported them. In 547 BC the Persians had defeated the Lydians and were approaching the Ionian region.

The Ionians wanted a deal with terms they had with a previous civilization, which was that they would be the subjects of the Persians. The Persians declined the request because they were unhappy that the Ionians declined their previous offer of doing a revolt. Instead, the Persians invaded the region of Ionia. The Ionians prepared for defense. The Persians easily conquered the Ionian region and a few cities population fled entirely to Sicily. After a few years of the Persians ruling over the Ionians, the Persians had had it with the Ionians being difficult to rule, so they started thinking about alternate methods of ruling the Ionians. They decided to sponsor a tyrannical ruler for every Ionian city. There was a difference between these tyrannical rulers and usual tyrannical rulers. Most tyrannical were strong and very able leaders, while the tyrannical rulers, that the Persians had sponsored were basically place-men for the actual Persian rulers. In all tyrannically ruled region, the rulers have absolute power, because they are backed by the military, so they don’t have to care for their citizens at all.

Eventually, the Ionians got sick of the tyrannical rule and started planning a revolt against the Persians in 499 BC. Inside some of these Ionian cities, Greeks lived. So when the Ionians started revolting they asked the Spartans and other Greeks city-states for assistance. The Spartan King has no idea how far away the Ionia is, and after the messenger explained, he said that they would starve to death before they would make it to Ionia. In result, the Spartans refuse the offer. Luckily for the Ionians, Athens sends a whole 20 ships to support the uprising. This is unbelievable because at that time Athens had a relatively small navy, in which they had only 50 ships in total. These 20 ships was a huge percent from their entire navy. Even with the Athenians support the Persians were able to defeat the Ionians revolt. Now the Persians were angry against the Athenians because they helped the Ionians against the revolt. This was during a time when Persia considered Athens as a subordinate in a diplomatic agreement. Oh, I haven’t talked about that yet! Well then now I will.

This agreement was that the Athenians needed the Persians to help to stop the Spartans from intervening with their internal affairs. The Persians would help only if they got a little bit of earth and water from the Athenian messengers. These Athenians didn’t know what this meant so they just gave the Persian king a little bit of dirt and water. When they were returning home they realized what it meant was that the Persians now had sovereign control over the ground and water inside Athens.

Back to what I was saying earlier. So when the Athenians helped the Ionians in their revolt, the Persians were completely baffled, because they considered having sovereign control over the Athenian ground and water. Due to this the Persians, started preparing for an invasion of Athens. It was quite long of a story, but now you know what caused the Persian wars.

Ok, onto the second question. So why was the Peloponnesian war fought? (luckily) It’s a little more simple to explain than what caused the Persian wars. After the Persian war was fought, the Athenians set up the Delian league, which a group of city-states that each year would give Athens either ships or money so the Greeks would be more prepared for another Persian invasion. The money Athens received would be used to build ships meant for the defense of Greece. In 480 BC they did defend Greece against a second Persian invasion, but after that, the Athens actually started fighting the Persians by themselves and claiming some of their territories in the Aegean and Ionia. This period in Greece is referred to as the Pentecontaetia. During this period the Athenians become more and more of an empire at which point Athens has all the city-states (except Sparta and its allies) under its control. At 450 BC the Athenians had pushed the Persians completely out of the Aegean and gained massive amounts of territory. They also had turned several of their independent allies into nothing more than a tribute-paying subject city-state of the Delian league. By this point, all the city-states were quite restless about this, but when they found out that the tribute money that was being given to Athens, was not being used on ships, the problem reached its boiling point. Athens was instead using the tribute money for Public Art projects for their city. One city-state had tried to leave the Delian league, but Athens wouldn’t allow it to happen. Now Sparta and his allies were furious and declared war on Athens.

Now you know why the Peloponnesian war started, but what was its long term significance? That I will explain quickly. After Athens was defeated, at the end of the Peloponnesian war the, Spartans now built their own empire, which replaced the Athenian one. All this fighting between the Grecian city-states had caused them to become weaker as a whole than they were before they started. This made it much easier for the Macedonian king Phillips II and after him Alexander the Great to conquer the entirety of Greece.