Classical Era

The period of the independent city-states, what modern historians call the Classical period of Greece, begins in 480 BC with the unsuccessful Persian invasion of Greece and ends with the death of Alexander III in 323 BC. Diodorus of Sicily wrote a universal history in the first century BC. About a third of this history survives, including the section on the Classical period in Greece.

In 480 and again in 479 BC the Persian invaders, under King Xerxes, sacked the city of Athens, not sparing even the sacred site of the Acropolis. The invaders were repulsed, thanks to the inspired naval strategy of the Athenian commander, Themistocles, who also masterminded the rebuilding of Athens’ city walls in 479/478 BC.

Athens formed a naval alliance against Persia now known as the Delian League (after the island of Delos where the oaths were exchanged in 478 BC). Her empire developed out of the league, and expanded to cover the Aegean area. In the fifth century BC, Athens became the economic and cultural centre of Greece and the most densely populated city in the Greek world.

The reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles in the late 460s and 450s shifted the military and political influence from the Athenian hoplites to the ‘thetes’, the lowest of Athens’ four property classes, who rowed the trireme warships. Conflict between Athens and the city-state of Sparta began in 461 BC and culminated in the Second Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), during which Athens was finally defeated and lost her empire. In the years after 404 BC, no Greek state would be powerful enough to unite the whole of Greece under its leadership.

It was Macedonia that benefited from the discord between the Greek states. From the 350s onwards Macedon under Philip II began to expand. In 337 BC, Philip tried to set up a form of government that would be acceptable to the Greeks. He established the League of Corinth which included all the Greek states, except Sparta. The League was an innovative combination of military alliance and permanent governmental council with himself elected as its first ‘hegemon’ (‘leader’). The member states did not have to pay tributes and under the terms of the agreement, could enjoy full freedom and autonomy in their internal affairs. The League's first act was to declare war on the Achaemenid empire but before Philip could assume the command, he was assassinated at his daughter's wedding at Macedon’s ceremonial capital of Aegae.