The Delian League, success or failure. The Delian league was a confederation of ancient Greek cities founded in 478 B.C after the Persian wars (Gill, 2017, para.1). The League's headquarters were located on the island of Delos ( Δήλος ) were the League met in the Temple of Apollo (Cartwright, 2013, para.6).
The purpose of the league was to unite and fortify them from the attacks of the Persians. In this sense, they were a lot like a cartel, since they all united their production and supply of weapons, where they previously had been market rivals (Gill, 2017, para.1). Because of Athens being the biggest naval power, Athens became the leader (the ‘hegemon’) of the league. Each member paid a membership fee, and in the beginning, the
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The first ten years of the league, it's alliance was a military success as Thrace and Aegean were cleansed of pirates and Persians alike (Gill, 2017).
In 454 BCE Pericles the statesman of Athens and leader of the Delian League moved the treasury to Athens (Public Broadcasting Service, n.d.). He did this because an expedition to Egypt to aid the prince Inarus, who was anti-Persian failed and thus Pericles claimed the treasury would be safer in Athens (Cartwright, 2016).
But Athens revealed a rather imperialistic behaviour. Their economic and political influence gave them the power to continuously demand tribute from the league's member. But Athens didn't use it all for strengthening military powers, but a lot of it for building projects in Athens. For example renovating buildings and Temples such as the Parthenon that had been destroyed by the Persian invasion earlier (Gill, 2017).
Without the money from the Delian League, the Parthenon and other architecture that we consider today would have never been build. So in this sense, the League, was a cultural success as
Investigating Athens' Treatment of Her Allies During the period of 478-431, Athens’ treatment of her allies changed dramatically as she rose to become the leader of an empire. The establishment of the Delian League marked the beginning of a significant series of events, which lead to Athens’ rise to extreme power. From the evidence of Thucydides and the inscriptions, it is possible to track the progress of these events and the rapidly changing treatment that Athens enforced upon her allies. The Delian League was an establishment formed in 478 BC. A large number of Greek cities formed an alliance under this league and together aimed to provide a strong defence against Persia, under the leadership of Athens.
"It might be suggested the ability of the allies to pay tribute is the strength of Athens" (The Old Oligarch, I, 15). Indeed. It is this characteristic in particular of the Delian League that leads it to be rightfully called the Athenian Empire. If each state had maintained its own fleet, and sent it to join the League in its expeditions, they would have held on to a significant measure of independence. Instead, a critically large enough portion of the league members abdicated control over their own military (by their own choice or by force) and simply paid cash to Athens, giving that city the ability to maintain an empire through the use of military might.
The Delian League was an incredibly unique political system that would dominate the Greek world in the fifth century B.C.E. This dominance, maintained through the sheer military might of the Athenian navy, led to an unprecedented strengthening of the Aegean economy and Greek culture as a whole. Economic prosperity in Athens led to the strengthening of the Athenian democracy. Unfortunately, the whims of the Athenian Demos and demagoguery led to a massive weakness in the political system. Within the context of the fifth century B.C.E. the Delian League was a successful political system and served as an extension of the Athenian Polis.
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.
Athens government and military is considerably different from their neighbors. According to Pericles, Athens government is not a copy of our neighbors...
The Delian League was an empire that included most of the island and coastal states around the northern and eastern shores of the Aegean Sea. As a result of this, Athens had a strong navy. Athens was also financially prepared for war, owning a large fund they had amassed from the regular tribute paid to them from their empire.
...ssert that it is just to expand their empire because they are stronger, and it has always been established that the weaker are to be ruled by the stronger. Those with power to use force, "have no need to go to law," and the weaker must give in to the stronger. The Athenians felt that their intentions were just, and according to Thrasymachus, they were.
The relatively basic buildings of Athens must have crushed the pride of the people, however, due to the oath taken at Plataea not to rebuild any of the temples, the people remained humbled by their modest buildings in their cities. Some of the states in Greece joined together in a league to sustain a navy that could protect them from more attacks from the Persians. The money given by each of the states was kept at a treasury in Delos, the Greeks then referred to the band of states as the Delian League. Eventually, it became obvious that Athens would be the leaders of the league and so the money was transferred to Athens. After rebuilding and fortifying the city, the Athenians made peace with Persia in 449BC.
The roots of the Peloponnesian war can be traced long before 431 BCE, when it officially started. It can be traced back to as early as the Persian Wars, where the Athenians had found their home burned by the hands of the Persians. That disaster left the Athenians with no home and no sanctuary. Even though that was a defeated battle amidst a victorious war, they still had reason to believe that the Persians will come back for more. Apprehensive at the thought of having their city burned yet another time, the Athenians knew they had to do something. Naturally, they chose to get help. Gathering up the neighboring city-states around them, the Athenians formed the Delian League; an alliance working directly to defend the whole of Greece from Persian attacks (Kagan 8). In the beginning, this worked out well; everybody got their say on what went on in the league, and everybody was satisfied. However, the Athenians saw that if they were to take more power, the members of the league would not be strong enough to resist. Therefore, that was exactly what they did; they took more and more power until what was the Delian League became the Athenian Empire (Kagan 8). As they grew even more powerful and wealthy, their neighbors of Sparta and the Peloponnesian League, Sparta's alliance, could not help but notice (Kagan 13). In 431 BCE, lighted b...
In the years following the Persian Wars in 479 B.C., Athens had come out on top being the most dominantly powerful of any Greek city with a navy that had superior strength that increased day by day. The Athenians “ruled with heavy-handed, even brutal force as well as with reason” (Kagan 2). This was due largely to the fact that Athens had a stable and effective government, which only increased their advantage in proving themselv...
Herodotus explains how Themistocles often “demonstrated how supreme his powers of analysis were” (Herodotus, pg. 297). It was Themistocles’s inspired planning that allowed Athens to have two hundred ships ready for battle before the Persian Empire could invade (Herodotus, pg. 497). Prior the Persian War the public treasury of the Athenians received generous revenue from the Laurium mines (Herodotus, pg. 497). It was decided that every Athenian citizen would be given 10 drachmas as personal dividend (Herodotus, pg. 497), this only benefitting a select few who were citizens. Themistocles however had a different proposal that would benefit the entire Polis. Proposing that they stop the distributions of dividends and instead divert the funds for state defence (Herodotus, pg. 497). He concluded that the funds should be spent building two hundred ships for war against the Aeginetans (Herodotus, pg. 497). This available resource of ships for war and the decisions for Athenians to become sailors proved crucial for Greeks continued independence, as these ships and knowledge were needed to oppose the
Athens was a much more superior polis compared to Sparta because the Athenians invented new ideas and creations that supported the people, such as democracy, the Athenians led the Delian League, and Sparta created the Peloponnesian League after the Athenians created their alliance, and the Athenians changed the ways of their government many times to suit the people, and the Spartans did not.
Athens was one of the largest Greek city states. (Stockton, 4). It was about one thousand square miles (Stockton, 4). Athens was founded in the 8th century BC (Muller). It was at first ruled by the college of archons. (Muller). After a term of one year, the archons became members of the Council of Elders (Muller). The people had a voice in the popular assembly, the Ekklesia (Muller). However, it did not have real power until 600 BC. By then, it was an established institution of Athens (Muller). It became the central policy making body in the 5th century. There were two main governmental bodies, the Assembly and the Council. (Acropolis). The Assembly was responsible for policy making. (Acropolis) The Council was responsible for administration and implementing the Assembly’s policies. Not everyone could participate in Athenian politics. Slaves, resident aliens, and women were excluded.
Prior to the advent of Greek navies, Thucydides claims that “wars by land there were none, none at least by which power was acquired; we have the usual border contests, but of distant expeditions with conquest the object we hear nothing among the Hellenes” (I.15.2).... ... middle of paper ... ... The privations and suffering war forces people to turn their attention to themselves and lose sight of the good of their city, just as Pericles predicted it would, and without a leader like him willing to direct them away from this mindset rather than pander to it to get votes, the political constitution of the city was doomed to dissolve.
In conclusion was the league a success at all? The league did have successes and would have had many more but the member nations were not ready to co-operate. It is fair to say the league was a failure although it is not fair to say it was failure due to its structure.