Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 4th Century, BC

The Problem: The Classical Age (esp. in 5th Cent. Athens) was a seminal period in Western / European history. After the Peloponnesian War (which ended in 404) there was a marked change in in the creative vitality of Greek culture and civilization in a public context. It is not so much that there was a decline in achievement, but rather that it no longer had the public (theater, etc.) dimension that characterizes the classical polis. Achievement there was, but discussion shifted from the public places to the "schools" of Plato and of Aristotle and of Hippocrates (to name but three examples). How can we account for this shift?

1. Background to the Classical Age (510-370): chronologically bracketed by the Persians Wars (490-479 BC) and the Peloponnesian War (432-404 BC). Also a period of intense conflict between city-states. It is one of the great paradoxes of western civilization that periods of great intellectual and political achievement come also in the context of war and turmoil. Specifically, conflicts found their origin in
   1. The tension between individual cities each of which hoped to control the access to resources necessary for urban life (agon/arete) and the strong sense of autonomy felt by the citizens of the threatened state.
   2. The Persians, who had a healthy respect for Greek martial ability after their defeats in 490 and 480, subsidized this strife as a way to protect their own empire.
2. The impact of the Peloponnesian War. Namely the war exhausted all parties... phases of the war
   1. In the first phase, from 432 to 424, there is rough parity as the Spartans and allies regularly invade Attica and are themselves attacked by the Athenians by sea.
   2. In the second phase, 418-410, the Athenians attempt but fail to conquer Sicily; even so, they hold their own in the Aegean.
   3. In the third phase 410-404, Persia, having been assured that it will receive back the Greek cities of Anatolia, provides Sparta with the men and ships she needs to defeat the Athenians and force surrender. Note, this betrayal of the Greek cities in western Anatolia demonstrates that the Greeks fear each other more than they feared a foreign enemy.
   4. The Athenian defeat was in part due to the fact that
      1. she squandered her resources at Syracuse ("imperial overstretch")
      2. lacked effective leaders. Too many of them were inept, immoderate, dogmatic, tyrannical or just plain treasonous.
      3. the strength of her system, the energy of consensual government, allowed her to survive these disadvantages; more critical was the alliance made between Sparta and Persia for this provided the Spartans with the means (money and ships) they lacked to defeat the Athenians.
      4. Thereafter neither Athens nor any other Greek state had the resources to pursue an imperial strategy and / or support the kind of cultural program found at Athens in the 5th century
3. The privatization of speculation: Though Athens remains a democracy, there was some retreat from the public speculation about everything; less tolerance.
   1. The general effects of the war, as outlined by Thucydides, suggest that Greeks believed that the horrors /brutality of the war were both cause and consequence of a generalized moral decline and of a trend to deny humanity to one's enemies. That it was a problem is clear in the tragedies that were produced at Athnes during this period. E.g., Suppliant Women of Euripedes..
   2. Some Athenians attributed their defeat to the radical democracy, to its demagogic leaders, and to the effects of the new / scientific thinking. There had always been suspicion of the latter. By speculating about all things, including customs and traditional religion, the 'sophists' appeared to be undermining the moral order.
      1. Appeared to be amoral. Skepticism: Nothing can be known with certainty. Agnosticism: We cannot know whether god(s) exist. Law and its moral imperative have no other authority than expediency. I.e., might makes right
      2. There is a fine line between hearing both sides of an argument and the amoral (for a defense of the "open society" see Pericles' Funeral Oration in DWP ch. 3). Hence the Sophists, who taught critical thinking, appeared to me amoral, and the defeat in the war viewed essentially a moral failure.
      3. The most notable sign of the new intolerance was the death of Socrates in 399 BC
      4. The overall effect was to separate politics and philosophy, serious speculation removed from the agora to the Academy (of Plato) or the Garden of Epicurus.
4. Socrates, Plato and Contemporary Morality: The transition in philosophy from 'physics' to 'ethics', Socrates is the key figure.
1. His life and death (in 399).
2. His philosophy. --difficult to distinguish between Plato and Socrates, but there is a definite shift away from the pursuit of knowledge of the material world now to the study of ethics and morality.
   1. Goodness or virtue is knowledge; knowledge of how to live well (cf. Thucydides on this subject). Note the goal of the polis is to provide for the good life; for the fulfillment of the human potential as a rational human being.
   2. Virtue cannot be taught.
   3. No one willingly/knowingly does wrong.
   4. True happiness is the result of virtue/knowledge
3. The Crito of Socrates / Plato: it is rational to obey the laws.
   1. We have a contract with the laws of of the city; we may leave if we don't like them but such that are there must be obeyed or society will collapse.
   2. A just man man does no harm; to violate the laws harms the collective, therefore a just man will obey the law even bad ones.
5. The Anabasis of the 10,000
6. The failure city-state / polis in the 4th Century is characterized by continuous conflict . The costs, in terms of political stability, standard of living and public morality, were very high. For the evidence, see the last lecture, especially the section on the civil war at Corcyra and also DWP Ch 3 doc. 2 (the Melian Dialogue). The major factors.
   1. Within the cities there was continuous social conflict between the democratic and the oligarchic factions.
   2. Between the cities there was an ever-changing set of alliances as various states, each with the desire to retain autonomy, combined against any real or perceived imperialist.
   3. Equally, it was clear to Persians and Greeks that the Greeks, should they be able to unify themselves, could easily destroy the Persian Empire.
   4. As a result, outsiders (Persia first, then Macedonia) entered in the power vacuum, and became the effective arbiters of the Greek world. By 287, the Persian king could claim: King Artaxerxes thinks it is just that the [Greek] cities of Asia should belong to him; that he should leave independent the rest of the Hellenic cities. Should either of the belligerents not accept this peace, I will war against them with those who are in agreement with me, both by land and by sea, with ships and with money.
7. Having weakened themselves through internal strive for two centuries, the Greek city states were vulnerable to the rising power of Macedonia. Under Philip and later Alexander, Macedonia had adopted and further developed the traditional Greek hoplite system into a powerful new weapon, the phalanx. With it Alexander was able to conquer all the the near and middle east (336-323). The significance lies rather in the cultural area.
   1. The systematic organization and preservation of classical literature: carried out primarily at Alexandria (Egypt).
   2. The development of a scientific infrastructure such as we know it (the Academy and Lyceum at Athens, the Museion at Alexandria)
   3. Though Greek culture predominates (Greek civic architecture is found everywhere in the ANE), Greek culture was also much influenced by the Semitic especially in areas of religion and philosophy (mystery cults, Stoicism), science (Mesopotamian astronomy) and public administration.
   4. The development of a culturally cosmopolitan world, ideas of a common humanity that would much affect Christianity.