empires and dynasties: Greece their father, were patrons of the arts, but this was not enough to protect them from popular ill will, and Hipparchus was murdered by Harmodius and Aristogiton in 514 b.c.e These men were forever after hailed as the “tyrannicides,” and the Athenians drove Hippias into exile in 510 b.c.e When the tyranny at Athens ended, the Athenians adopted a new constitution that instituted a radical democracy At this same period the tyrannies in the Greek cities of Asia Minor came to an end due to the conquest of that territory by the Persians The Great King of Persia, Cyrus the Great (r 558–ca 529 b.c.e.), established friendly puppet governments in these cities and soon came into conflict with the Greeks of Europe There followed the so-called Persian Wars, which provided the occasion for Herodotus’s great work of history, the first in the European tradition, and the first significant test of the democracy at Athens, the city that found itself playing a central role in defending the Greek world from Persian ambitions THE FIFTH CENTURY B.C.E Against all reasonable expectation, the Greek cities that joined Athens and Sparta in resisting Persia were successful in defeating first the armies of Cyrus and then the massive invasion of his grandson, Xerxes (r 486–465 b.c.e.) By 479 b.c.e the Greeks had beaten the Persian fleet at Salamis, defeated the Persian army at Plataea, and chased down and destroyed the retreating forces at Mycale After the defeat of Persia, an alliance of Greek cities, including many of those on the islands of the Aegean Sea, came together for mutual defense against future Persian threats Initially the Spartans, the preeminent military force of the day, led this coalition But the Spartans proved to be overbearing, and Athens gradually took over leadership of this league, which came to be known as the Delian League, because its treasury was on the island of Delos Athens’ power was based on its naval fleet, as Sparta’s was based on its infantry In 482 b.c.e., just before Xerxes invaded Europe with his army, the Athenians had discovered a rich vein of silver in their territory, at Laurium Their initial plan was to distribute this wealth among the citizens, but a certain Themistocles (ca 524–ca 460 b.c.e.) persuaded his countrymen to use this treasure to build up the navy When the Persians invaded Greece and entered and sacked Athens, the Athenians were able to evacuate to the island of Salamis, thanks to their fleet, and then to defeat the Persians at sea With his advice thus vindicated, Themistocles assumed a position of prominence—not by virtue of any particular office, but merely by force of character and persuasion After the Persian Wars, he planned a series of walls around the city of Athens that connected the city to its harbor Athens was thus safe from invasion and could use its fleet to wage war and provide food from abroad in time of war After Athens assumed leadership of the Delian League, the Athenians gradually turned this confederacy into an empire, with themselves at its head They persuaded the member 411 states to cease providing ships for the common defense and simply to provide funds, which the Athenians would use to build up their own navy, ostensibly to protect all the Greeks against Persia By the first third of the fift h century b.c.e this “league” had become an archē, an “empire,” and the “dues” for the common good had become tribute paid to Athens In 454 b.c.e the treasury of the league was moved from Delos to Athens, ending all pretence, and in 440 b.c.e., when the island of Sámos tried to excuse itself from the league, the Athenians sent military forces to enforce their rule The rise of Athenian power alarmed the rest of the Greeks, and particularly Sparta, which began collecting allies to oppose Athens In 431 b.c.e war broke out between Athens and its allies and between Sparta and its allies This war, called by the Athenians the Peloponnesian War because Sparta was in the Peloponnese, is the subject of the historical account by Thucydides The war lasted 25 years, though there were a few periods of truce The most prominent Athenian at the outbreak of the war was Pericles (ca 495–429 b.c.e.), who was a descendant of the aristocratic Alcmaeonidae, who had ruled Athens before the time of Solon and prevented Cylon from becoming tyrant Like Themistocles, Pericles’ prominence had less to with any particular political office than with his qualities as a leader, but his aristocratic lineage, even in Athens of the radical democracy, almost certainly added to his authority Pericles was most active in persuading the Athenians to rebuild the temples on the Acropolis, a building program that resulted in the monumental architecture visible there today—the Parthenon, the Propylaea, and the Erechtheum He was also a staunch advocate for war with Sparta The Spartans knew this, and in public debates among the ambassadors from cities of Greece, Spartans and their allies made frequent references to “the accursed” leader of the Athenians This was a reference to Pericles’ aristocratic lineage and his Alcmaeonid ancestors who had killed Cylon after the would-be tyrant had taken refuge in a temple War between Sparta and Athens came, to the satisfaction of Pericles, but in its second year he died of the plague that devastated the urban population of the city According to the historian Thucydides, the Athenians who assumed leadership after his death were not aristocrats but demagogues, rising to power through championing the people and playing on their prejudices, and the city’s policies suffered for it By the end of the century the Athenians had squandered many of their advantages, having launched a disastrous expedition against Sicily in 413 b.c.e and experienced a shortlived oligarchic coup d’état in 411 b.c.e The Spartans, in the meantime, had begun receiving monetary and military support from Persia The Spartans finally ambushed and destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 405 b.c.e After a prolonged siege, the Athenians surrendered The Spartans dismantled the Athenian empire, nullified the democratic constitution of Athens, and instituted an oligarchy of 30 rulers, chosen from the Athenians friendly toward Sparta