Peloponnesian League (Spartan Alliance)

Tegea, …

…Mantineia, and the smaller Arcadian towns have all accepted forced alliances with Sparta by 550 BCE, and discord between the towns will subsequently prevent them from uniting against Spartan power.

Sparta has taken the southeast portion of the Peloponnesus from Argos but failed, despite three decades of warfare, to subdue Tegea, its chief rival in Arcadia.

On the diplomatic level, Sparta, the greatest of the Dorian states, deliberately plays the anti-Dorian card in the mid-sixth century in an attempt to win more allies.

Sparta's Dorianism is unacceptable to some of its still-independent neighbors, whose mythology remembers a time when the Peloponnese had been ruled by Achaean kings such as Atreus, Agamemnon, and his son Orestes (in a period modern scholars will call Mycenaean).

The central symbolic act recorded by tradition is the talismanic bringing home to Sparta of the bones of Orestes himself, as a way for Sparta to claim that it is the successor of the old line of Atreus.

The result is an alliance with Tegea, which in turn inaugurates a network of such alliances, to which has been given the modern name of the Peloponnesian League.

A valuable fifth-century inscription found in the 1970s concerning a community in Aetolia (north-central Greece) illuminates the obligations imposed by Sparta on its allies: above all, full military reciprocity: i.e., the requirement to defend Sparta when it is attacked, with similar guarantees offered by Sparta in return.

Another, more obviously pragmatic, reason why Sparta attracts to itself allies in areas like Arcadia is surely fear of Argos.

Athenian alliances, not just with Sparta's enemy Argos but in 519 with Boeotian Plataea are the first firm evidence of the tension between Athens and Sparta that is to determine much of Classical Greek history.

The Plataeans, faced with coercion from their bigger neighbor Thebes, had sued for this alliance at the prompting of Sparta itself; this, however, is evidence of among other things Spartan-Athenian hostility because Sparta's motive, it is said, is to stir up trouble between Thebes and Athens.

Hippias, frightened by the murder of his brother in 514 BCE, has become increasingly repressive, and the Alcmaeonids try unsuccessfully with other Athenian nobles to fight their way back to power two years later.

They are more successful when they enlist the help of Delphi.

The Spartans are repeatedly urged by Delphi to set Athens free, and it is finally a Spartan army under Cleomenes I invades Attica, besieges the tyrant's party on the acropolis, and forces their surrender and evacuation.

Hippias takes refuge with the Persian governor at Sardis.

The Spartans have no wish to see a democratic Athens, but they misjudge the mood of the people.

In the struggle for power that follows the fall of the tyranny, Cleisthenes, the head of the prominent Alcmaeonidae family, fails to impose his leadership, and Isagoras, the leader of the more reactionary nobles, is elected chief archon in 508 BCE.

It is at this point, according to later tradition, that Cleisthenes takes the people into partnership and transforms the situation.

Now in his early sixties, reorganizes the Athenian tribes into demes—political divisions based on locality—and extends citizenship to include nearly all resident aliens, apparently to pack the assembly with new voters who will support him.

In this first introduction of democracy to Athens, the liberal Cleisthenes fulfills the tendencies begun by Solon and enforced by Peisistratus.

Before the year 508-507 is over, the main principles of a complete reform of the system of government have been approved by the popular Assembly, a relative of the Alcmaeonids has been elected chief archon for the following year, Isagoras has left Athens to invoke Spartan intervention, and Sparta has declared for Isagoras.

The Spartan king demands the expulsion of “those under the curse,” and Cleisthenes and his relatives are again exiles.

Sicyon's institutions survive after the fall of the city’s tyrants until the end of the sixth century BCE, when Cleisthenes, grandson of Cleisthenes of Sicyon, is again exiled from Athens and Dorian supremacy is reestablished in Sicyon, perhaps by the agency of Sparta under the ephor Chilon, and the city is enrolled in the Peloponnesian League.

Its policy henceforth will usually be determined either by Sparta or Corinth.

The prosperity of Euboea, the large, mostly mountainous island adjacent to the east coast of the Greek mainland, has been checked by several decades of war, beginning about 700 BCE, between Chalcis and Eretria.

Though it lost influence in the West, Eretria may have emerged from the war the stronger power, but by the classical period, Chalcis has become the leading city of Euboea.

The Euboeans, having lost their former trade advantages on the mainland, are forced into an alliance with Boeotia and Sparta against Athens.

Athenians in 506 capture Chalcis and settle the Lelantine Plain with their own citizens.

Cleomenes raises a large Peloponnesian army for use against Athens in an armed intervention intended to reinstate Hippias around 504, but the enterprises fails after the Corinthian contingent mutinies with the support of the other Spartan king, Demaratus.

Near East (501–490 BCE): The Ionian Revolt and the Road to Marathon

Ionian Revolt and Persian Response

The tensions simmering in western Anatolia erupt into the Ionian Revolt in 499 BCE. Instigated by Aristagoras, the acting ruler of Miletus, this widespread uprising sees the Ionian Greek cities, previously subdued by Persia, rise in rebellion against the authority of Darius I. Aristagoras, initially a client of Persia, turns rebel following a failed attempt to conquer Naxos with Persian support. Fearing punishment, he incites his fellow Ionians to revolt, appealing successfully to mainland Greek cities—most notably Athens and Eretria—for support.

The Ionians, emboldened by temporary success, capture and burn Sardis, the regional Persian capital in Lydia, in 498 BCE. This event shocks the Persians, who launch swift counterattacks, regaining control over most rebellious cities by 494 BCE. Persian forces decisively crush the Ionian fleet at the naval Battle of Lade near Miletus, effectively ending the revolt. Miletus, the intellectual and cultural jewel of Ionia, suffers a severe Persian reprisal, as the city is sacked and many of its inhabitants killed or enslaved. The Ionian cities are placed under more stringent Persian oversight, their autonomy severely curtailed.

Darius I’s Retribution and Expansion

The Ionian uprising, though ultimately unsuccessful, profoundly reshapes Greek-Persian relations. Darius I, angered especially by Athenian and Eretrian involvement in the Ionian Revolt, demands symbolic gestures of submission—tokens of earth and water—from the Greek cities. Many comply, but Sparta and Athens resolutely refuse.

Intent on retribution and aiming to consolidate his hold over the Greek world, Darius commissions military expeditions against mainland Greece. The Persian general Mardonius initially leads an invasion in 492 BCE, reconquering Thrace and Macedonia, but the mission falters when his fleet is severely damaged by storms off the treacherous Athos peninsula.

Internal Developments in Judea and Samaria

In the Levant, meanwhile, tensions persist between the returned Judahites and the neighboring Samaritans. These Samaritans, considered religiously and ethnically distinct by their Judahite neighbors, solidify their own identity centered around the exclusive reverence for the Pentateuch. The communities remain socially and religiously separate, each developing increasingly distinct traditions.

Prelude to Marathon

By 490 BCE, Persian forces, now led by generals Datis and Artaphernes, renew their offensive, successfully attacking Eretria on the island of Euboea, capturing and destroying the city in reprisal for its support of the Ionian rebels. This decisive Persian victory emboldens the empire’s plans to subdue all of Greece, setting the stage for an even more fateful confrontation.

The Persian expeditionary force subsequently lands near Marathon, northeast of Athens, triggering preparations for a climactic battle that will not only determine Greek autonomy but also significantly alter the historical trajectory of both the Persian Empire and the emerging power of the Greek city-states.

Legacy of the Era

The era 501–490 BCE thus marks a pivotal turning point in ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean history. The Ionian Revolt and subsequent Persian reprisals ignite broader hostilities, leading directly to the famed Battle of Marathon. The events of this period reinforce Persian authority in Anatolia and the Near East, crystallize ethnic and religious identities in Judea and Samaria, and lay the foundations for intensified cultural and political confrontations that shape the classical world.

Argos, which has fought intermittently with Sparta and often allied itself with Athens, is attacked in 494 by Cleomenes I of Sparta, who surprises the Argive soldiers during their supper and defeats them at the Battle of Sepeia near Tiryns, fully establishing Spartan dominance in the Peloponnese.

The closet thing to a contemporaneous source for the description of the battle is, as for many events in this time period, the Histories of Herodotus (written approximately fifty years later, circa 440 BCE).

According to Herodotus, the Spartan army tricked the Argives into believing that the Spartans were going to their evening meal, and when the Argives did the same, the Spartans seized up their arms and attacked them, gaining an overwhelming victory.

The battle is a controversial one in terms of the Spartan legend for, according to Herodotus, Cleomenes massacred the remaining Argives—most by burning them alive in the sacred grove of Argos to which they had fled for refuge.