City Minutes: The Athenian Empire

The most frustrating part of Athenian history is that they are almost as great as they're constantly insisting they are. Athens lacked the ancient prestige of cities like Sparta and Thebes, but their big break came when they single-handedly stopped a Persian invasion at the Battle of Marathon. And by the time they repelled the second invasion, the power had gone right to their heads. With the might of a navy nobody could dream of matching, they turned the Aegean Sea into their personal piggy bank. They tried to do the same thing to Sparta, but 30 years of war and getting their empire confiscated showed Athens the consequences of hubris. Thing is, lots of Greek cities had their day in the sun. What set Athens apart was their ideas about everything. The invention of democracy brought a culture of discussion and investigation into every aspect of Athenian life. Beyond the broadening of politics, literature, theater, philosophy, and art were all deeply invested in the workings of the state. And the resulting inflation of the Athenian ego is apparent in architectural megaworks like the Parthenon. Though Athens failed to conquer the Greek world by force, the victory lay in their culture, which, in the long run, would turn Athens into a byword for Greece. The beauty and brilliance of ancient Athens is that Athens was actually only half of the city. A four-mile walk away from the Acropolis leads down to the port of Piraeus, which connected the otherwise landlocked Athenians to the Aegean Sea. Originally, Piraeus harbored fishers and merchants, but as a result of the Persian Wars, Athens came to rapidly appreciate the port's military applications. The newly established Athenian navy was built and housed in the shipyards of the heavily fortified Piraeus, and the port city itself was connected to Athens by a set of long walls, creating an oddly shaped but strategically invaluable twin-city fortress. In the mid-fifth century, Piraeus was the maritime springboard for Athens' imperial ambitions across the Aegean Sea. But once they started fighting Sparta, Piraeus and its walls were the sole reason Athens was not immediately destroyed. See, Sparta's plan was burn all the Athenian farmland and starve them out. Normally, this is an instant win, but the long walls ensured that Athens had easy access to their navy So the city shrugged off a 30-year siege before Athens finally surrendered. Without the sea, there'd have been no empire, and without Piraeus, there was no sea. For all the glories and strategic mid-maxing of Athens and Piraeus, the real heart of Athenian power was at the edge of a cliff almost 30 miles away. At the far southern end of the Attica Peninsula, Cape Sunion was originally a standard religious site, but it took on a much grander role after 483 BC with the discovery of silver mines in the nearby town of Lavrion. Athens used this newfound cash to fund the creation of a fleet, which came in astoundingly clutch during the Second Persian War three years later. From there, Sunion's subterranean money printer powered the growth of Athens' navy into a force that would dominate the Aegean Sea. And as far as geography goes, Sunion was ideal. It not only stood guard over the Saronic Gulf and the ports of Piraeus, but it was at the cross of major north-south and east-west sailing routes. So this cape was the perfect vantage point to monitor and control the entire sea. And Athens doubled down on their projection of power by building a magnificent temple to Poseidon atop the cape, in full view of passing ships. This exceptionally unsubtle declaration of maritime dominance is probably the most characteristically Athenian thing that Athens ever did. It's gorgeous, it's petty as hell, and I love it. Now, technically, the Athenian Empire wasn't called an empire, but rather a league of allied city-states who pooled their resources to better defend from future Persian invasions. And this league was based right in the middle of the Aegean Sea at the island of Delos. As the mythical birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, Delos was among the most sacred sites in the Greek world, sporting a massive multi-deity temple complex and drawing pilgrims and merchants from all over. This centrality and pan-Hellenic appeal made it the perfect candidate to host a league of Greek states. Or at least pretend to. From its founding in 478, the Delian League organized and paid for the collective defense of the Aegean, accepting tribute in ships, soldiers, or silver. The island's treasury and the Temple of Apollo also paid for various cultural projects like the Delia, a religious festival with games and theater performances. Of course, Athens would later drop the coy facade and openly leverage the pan-Hellenic culture of Delos to promote the glory of Athenian culture. In 454, the Athenians robbed the league without an ounce of remorse by relocating the entire treasury to Athens, later housing it in the Parthenon. The desertion of Delos made it more than clear Athens had stopped pretending they weren't an empire. As far as the Athenian treasury was concerned, money just showed up. But that process was conspicuously inverted for the allied states who had to shell out every year. In the half-century since the founding of the Delian League, cities increasingly realized that funding the Athenian navy was a roundabout way of paying for their own oppression. So the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos hatched a scheme. With Spartan assistance, they'd revolt from Athens and unify the other cities on the island under their leadership. But the Athenian navy was quick on the draw, blockading the island and besieging the cities. Mytilene's hopes for Spartan reinforcements didn't bear out as they arrived only after Mytilene already surrendered. So now the question in the assembly was what to do about all this. And the ensuing Mytilenean debate illustrates the callousness of the Athenian mindset. As punishment, they chose to kill all the men and enslave the women and children. The next day, the assembly snapped out of their bloodlust and decided to only kill some of the men, but they had to change their mind, sending out a second ship before the first one arrived to slaughter everybody. Athens made an example out of Mytilene, but it revealed far more about themselves. In a somewhat shocking twist of fate, other cities also had navies. Sparta's ally Corinth had an excellent fleet to their name, as did one of their colonies, Corcyra. This island at the north end of the Ionian Sea was a major link between mainland Greece and the reaches of southern Italy. So for centuries since its founding, Corcyra was prosperous and functionally independent, resulting in a long-standing rivalry with their mother city. This came to a head in the 430s when Corinth tried to bring its former colony into line, but was repelled with help from Corcyra's new best friend, Athens. This seemingly isolated incident on the other side of Greece had chaotic implications for mother cities and their many, many colonies, which inadvertently led right into the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Despite support for the Athenian alliance and the leading democratic faction, several oligarchs wished to buddy up with Corinth and Sparta. In 427, this diplomatic scheming devolved into open slaughter, with both factions killing whomever they could get their hands on. Sparta thought this opening might let them take the island, but Athenian reinforcements drove them off. Corcyra remained in the Delian League and kept on sending ships, but they proved just how devastating it was to get caught between the empires. There had never been a Greek city as clever, powerful, or viciously glory-hungry as Athens, all of which combined to make a nearly pan-Hellenic state. And as we've seen, it took a lot more than just a necropolis. At home, they played to their skills, resources, and geography, while in Greece at large, they leveraged diplomacy and pure exploitation to fuel their glory. That reckless, endless grasping would later be their ruin, but with a narrative this strategically intricate and flat-out dramatic, it's clear why Thucydides literally invented history just to keep us talking about it. Thank you so much for watching. I appreciated the feedback on the original City Minutes short, so I sincerely hope that you enjoy this new horizontal and longer-form iteration. Whatever you do think, please let me know in the comments so I can improve for next time, and I'll see you then.