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| Statue A from the Riace Bronze Sculptures, found undersea near Calabria |
In the year 459 the Athenians and Spartans were at war in what would become known as the First Peloponnesian War. The Spartans were probably still fighting a helot uprising and the Athenians were fighting a major campaign against the Persians in Egypt, having committed perhaps 200 ships and their crews to that war. Thus, even though the war had begun the previous year, it is not clear that either side had really engaged each other. However the dates are somewhat unclear from this time, so some of what I mention in this year may in fact have occurred the year previously.
Some scholars place the alliance between Athens and Megara in this year, but I think it more likely that this occurred the year previously, as it was likely a cause for the war. However, I would certainly not be dogmatic about it.
The Athenians fought the Corinthians and the Corinthian allies from Epidaurus at a place called Halieis. Both Athens and Corinth were naval powers, but this battle was fought on land. The Athenians suffered a defeat, but probably not a very serious one. The Athenian navy was more successful than their land army, and won a victory over the Corinthians in a naval battle fought near the tiny island of Cecryphaleia, which was near to Aegina. Aegina was a traditional foe of Athens and the presence of their enemies in force must have frightened the Aeginetans.
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| Roman copy of a bust of Pericles |
A large Athenian force then landed on the island of Aegina and began to besiege the city. The Spartans had sent a force of three hundred soldiers to aid the Aeginetans, but it was nowhere near enough to sally forth and rout the Athenians. The siege dragged on, as siege warfare was not advanced in this time period among the Greeks. The Spartans meanwhile were decidedly inactive, which leads me to suspect that they were still fighting the helot uprising at this time.
Around this time, in Asia Minor, Archeptolis, son of the Themistocles, became governor of Magnesia. He governed the region as a vassal of the Persian kings and followed his father's example in minting coins in his own name, which may also include a portrait of his face upon the obverse of the coins.
In Sicily, the leader of the native people (the Sicels) took over the settlement of Morgantina. This town was probably taken from one of the Greek cities, Catana or Camerina.
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| Coin of Archeptolis, son of Themistocles, ruler of Magnesia |
The Corinthians had reasoned correctly and the Athenians had no proper land forces ready to counter the Corinthian attack. The cemetery of Kerameikos in Athens has a number of funerary monuments that give casualty lists for various years. The casualty lists for these years are, by any standards, high. There was a statue, excavated from the Acropolis Hill and created around this time that shows Athena exhausted and mourning, presumably for the Athenians who were paying such a heavy cost for their many battles and many wars.
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| Contemplative Athena |
The Megarians had their own troops of course, although they were outnumbered by the Corinthians. The Athenians joined forces with the Megarians and an inconclusive battle was fought between the two sides, quite near to the city of Megara itself. Neither side had much advantage, but the Corinthians, not wanting to stay so close to the hostile city of their foes, simply went home after the battle, thinking they had won, or at least, not lost.
Now it was tradition in ancient Greek warfare for the victor to erect a trophy to show all the world that they had been victorious. The Athenians believed that they had won the battle and thus put up a trophy after the Corinthians had gone home. The Corinthians were galled by the insult and went back to Megara to put up their own trophy. The Athenians and Megarians saw a small Corinthian detachment putting up their own trophy and they sallied out to punish this impudence.
The Corinthian detachment was put to flight and the Athenians pursued this group until it re-joined the main Corinthian army. Being disoriented by their own fleeing troops and the rapidity of the Athenian attack, the main Corinthian army was routed. Many Corinthians simply ran all the way back to Corinth, which was not very far away. A detachment of Corinthians got caught in a fenced enclosure on a farm and the Athenians surrounded them and killed them, which was a major blow to the Corinthian land army.
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| Bust of Pericles in Vatican Museum |
In Sparta, Pleistarchus, the son of the famed Leonidas and Gorgo, died. He was succeeded by Pleistonax, who was the son of the disgraced regent Pausanias, as the Agiad King of Sparta. Nicomedes, son of Cleombrotus, acted as a regent however, as the king was still a young man.
The playwright Aeschylus won the tragedy prize at the Great Dionysia Festival that year. The trilogy of plays that he presented that year was the Oresteia. This is the first full trilogy of plays that survives to us from the classical era. It is also arguably one of the finest works of tragedy ever written.
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| Theatre of Dionyus in Athens. The seating and stage date from the later Roman era |
The next play is "The Libation Bearers", where Orestes, son of Agamemnon and his wife Clytemnestra, returns unknown from exile to avenge his father, eventually trapping and killing Aegisthus and then his own mother. On the one hand he has fulfilled the will of the gods and of justice by slaying his father's murderer. On the other hand Orestes has committed the heinous crime of matricide and thus he is pursued by the Erinyes, or as their name translates, the Furies.
In the third play, "Eumenides", the haunted Orestes wanders the earth only to arrive in Athens. Here he pleads to Athena, goddess of wisdom. She answers his prayer by allowing Orestes to stand trial, where he is eventually found innocent. The nature of vengeance then changes. The primordial cycle of revenge gives way to the laws of the state and of reason. The Furies become the embodiment of the fury of the law and the place of the trial, the Areopagus, became a permanent law court for Athens. It is a majestic trilogy spanning heights and lows and is one of the greatest works of Greek literature.
Aeschylus also wrote a satyr play, called Proteus, to accompany the dark and gloomy majesty of the Oresteia, but the play is lost to us. Sophocles received the second prize for his plays that year, but these are (to my knowledge) unknown. Euphonius received the prize in the Comedy competition.
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| A kylix showing the murder of Cassandra by Clytemnestra |
Cassandra: Terror! Terror, terror indeed!
Chorus: What terror, Cassandra? Is there some terror in your heart?
Cassandra: Do you smell that? In there. Do you smell that? The palace is clogged thick with the stench of slaughter!
Chorus: What are you saying? It is the smell of animals sacrificed on the altar!
Cassandra: It is like the stench that emanates from a tomb.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1305-1312, written circa 458BC
Around this time a painter named Agatharchus flourished in Athens. He was reputed to have been a great painter and is said by a later Roman writer to have painted the backdrops to one of Aeschylus' plays and to have used a form of perspective and vanishing points.
In the first place Agatharchus, in Athens, when Aeschylus was bringing out a tragedy, painted a scene, and left a commentary about it. This led Democritus and Anaxagoras to write on the same subject, showing how, given a centre in a definite place, the lines should naturally correspond with due regard to the point of sight and the divergence of the visual rays, so that by this deception a faithful representation of the appearance of buildings might be given in painted scenery, and so that, though all is drawn on a vertical flat facade, some parts may seem to be withdrawing into the background, and others to be standing out in front.
Vitruvius, De Architectura, Preface to Book 7, written circa 20BC
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| Vase by the Persephone Painter |
In the year 457 the Phocians attacked the region of Doris near Boeotia. This region was the reputed homeland of the Spartans and it was felt that this insult to Spartan power could not be ignored. The Spartans must have felt that they were no longer threatened by the helot uprising, or possibly the rising had been finished at this time. In any case, they were able to raise a large army and slip across the Gulf of Corinth, eluding the Athenian navy. The Spartans, under the command of Nicomedes, fought with the Phocians and compelled them to cease attacking Doris.
The Spartans had won a victory, but were now in a tricky situation. The Athenians were aware that a large Spartan force had left the Peloponnese and their navies now watched the seas. The land route led them by the city of Megara along the narrow isthmus and the Athenian land armies were mustering now to stop the Spartans from passing this way.
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| Pediment detail from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia |
The reason for the Spartan retreat may have been more than just their heavy losses. Athens had previously concluded an alliance with Argos, and the Spartans may have feared leaving their lands exposed for too long to attack from an enemy so near to them. The Athenian navy meanwhile could still roam unchecked and attack anywhere on the coasts of the Peloponnese at will.
The Athenians were in no way dismayed however and immediately gathered more troops from their allies and subjects. Two months later they marched northwards again, commanded by their general Myronides who had led them to victory over the Corinthians, knowing that the Spartans had abandoned the region. The Thebans and other Boeotians were defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Oenophyta. The Athenians then converted this into a tangible and lasting success for their empire and forced all of Boeotia (except Thebes) and Phocis to join the Delian League. This is sometimes referred to as the Athenian Land Empire. The walls of Tanagra were destroyed, to make sure it couldn't stand against Athens again and the regions of Locri and Phocis were also ravaged by the Athenian troops before peace was made. The Athenians then gave the administration of Delphi, a very important role, to their Phocian allies.
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| Pediment detail from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia |
Athens was going from strength to strength. The Long Walls of Athens, that enclosed the ports of Piraeus and Phalerum, were also finished around this time, making Athens practically invulnerable to land invasion by Corinth, Thebes or even Sparta.
The battle was fought at Tanagra in Boeotia. After heavy loss on both sides, victory declared for the Lacedaemonians and their allies. After entering the Megarid and cutting down the fruit trees, the Lacedaemonians returned home across Geraneia and the isthmus. Sixty-two days after the battle the Athenians marched into Boeotia under the command of Myronides, defeated the Boeotians in battle at Oenophyta, and became masters of Boeotia and Phocis. They dismantled the walls of the Tanagraeans, took a hundred of the richest men of the Opuntian Locrians as hostages, and finished their own long walls. This was followed by the surrender of the Aeginetans to Athens on conditions; they pulled down their walls, gave up their ships, and agreed to pay tribute in future.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I, written circa 400BC
Athens had had success in nearly every venture that they had attempted. They had been defeated by Sparta to be sure, but only barely defeated, and they had recovered from that defeat to take over much of central Greece. Their sea power was unassailable by any Greek state and with their alliance with Megara, they nearly had the entire Peloponnese in a stranglehold. The only cloud on the horizon was that their armies in Egypt had still not managed to win the war against the Persians and Egyptians besieged in a fortress in Memphis.
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| Ruins of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia |
Around the year 456 the Athenians, revelling in their successes of the previous years, seem to have decided to launch a punitive expedition against the Spartans. They had control of the seas with their many triremes and the Peloponnese was nearly an island. They would attack all around the shores and coastlines of the Peloponnese, harassing Sparta from every side and weakening her allies. The expedition was probably mustered in this year, but may not have set sail until the following year.
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| Later Roman bust of Aeschylus copied from a Greek original |
Around this time the Athenian playwright Aeschylus died while abroad in Sicily. He was the first of the three tragic playwrights who would be become famed in antiquity. His works comprise the oldest surviving plays from anywhere in the world. There are later legends that he was killed by an eagle mistaking his bald head for a rock and dropping a tortoise on it to shatter the tortoise. This is rather obviously a later legend, but too wonderful not to relate. His plays were so beloved by the people that they were sometimes re-staged at festivals. This is commonplace now, but at this time, plays were generally staged once in a competition and then not staged again.
But of all the praises that were given to Aeschylus before and after his death, the one that he was most proud of was that he had fought in the Battle of Marathon, and not been found wanting. This was engraved upon his tombstone in Athens.
Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian,
who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela;
of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak,
and the long-haired Persian knows it well.
Funerary Inscription of Aeschylus
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| Vase by the Altamura Painter |
In the year 455 the Athenian fleet sailed around the coast of the Peloponnese. They attacked and burned the port of Gythion in the southern Peloponnese. This was where the Spartans and their allies in that region had been storing supplies and building a navy in a meagre bid to challenge the naval dominance of the Athenians. It was probably the best port in the region and would later become important for the Spartans of later generations. The Athenian burning of the port by the admiral Tolmides and his navy would have set back any hopes of the Spartans to even contest the seas or give any naval aid at all to their allies.
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| Vase by the Achilles Painter |
Sailing around the Peloponnese, Tolmides attacked and took Chalcis and Naupactus on the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth. He then sailed further into the Gulf of Corinth and attacked the city of Sicyon, near Corinth itself. Tolmides won a battle here but was unable to take the city of Sicyon itself. Some Achaean cities along the northern coast of the Peloponnese seem to have switched to Athenian allegiances however.
All was not going to plan for the Athenians however. The long siege in Egypt had been broken. The Athenians and rebel Egyptians under Inaros and Amyrtaeus, had been besieging the Persians and loyalist Egyptians in a fortified area of Memphis known as White Castle. The siege had apparently dragged on for years, and the Athenians had probably been unable to fully capture the Nile waterway and stop the resupply of the Persian garrison. While the siege had dragged on, the Persians had been mustering a counterattack.
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| Obverse of Athenian Tetradrachm showing head of Athena with test cut |
The Athenians must have known that something had gone terribly wrong in Egypt and prepared a counter-stroke. An additional 50 ships were prepared to sail to the relief and rescue of the Egyptian expedition.
The Athenians may also have finally realised that they had overstretched themselves. There seems to be a general cessation of hostilities around this point and what I suspect happened is as follows. The Athenians approached the Spartans with an offer of a temporary truce. The Spartans, who now saw Athenian garrisons within the Peloponnese itself, must have been glad to accept. They in turn gave terms to the helots who were still holding out against the Spartans on Mt Ithome. The rebel helots were allowed to leave on the condition that they would never return. The rebels left the Peloponnese under a promise of safe conduct and went to Athens. The Athenians then settled these refugee rebels in the captured city of Naupactus, which was very close to the Peloponnese and a threat to naval traffic in the Gulf of Corinth. Thus the Third Messenian War drew to a close.
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| Statue A from the Riace Bronze Sculptures, found undersea near Calabria |
The settlement of the helots at Naupactus led to tension between Athens and Sparta, but I would argue that this tension occurred during a temporary truce, rather than being a cause of the war. If the Spartans were not facing an internal threat of some sort it is difficult to explain their almost complete inaction in the early parts of the war.
In this year Euripides produced his first known tragedy, called Peliades. It did not win a prize and the play itself has not survived from antiquity.
Around this time a bronze statue was made known as Statue A of the Riace bronzes. Unlike most Greek bronze sculptures from this period, the statue has survived, perhaps being thrown overboard in a storm near the coast of Calabria in Italy, along with a slightly later statue. When statues were discovered by a diver, it was thought that it might actually be a recent drowning victim, so lifelike was the statue at first glance. Both this statue and the later statue have been recovered and restored. Their creators and the purposes for which they were made remain unknown, although some have suspected that they may have represented two of the figures known as "Seven Against Thebes", from a play by Aeschylus.
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| Coin of Alexander I of Macedon |
It seems that there was a war of sorts between the two cities of Segesta and Selinunte in the region of eastern Sicily. But this is merely based on an anachronistic statement of Diodorus Siculus and we do not know if it was merely written in error or if there was indeed a war.
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| Roman bust of Panyassis from the buried city of Herculaneum |
Around this time unrest grew in southern Italy against the still considerable influence of the Pythagoreans. This quasi-mathematical, quasi-religious cult is generally seen today as a harmless yet slightly strange society of philosophers. In antiquity however they do seem to have had connections to political power, generally allying themselves with aristocrats against the common people and justifying this by saying that only the wise should rule. This led to a lot of unrest against them, and as democracies became more popular in the western Greek cities, in Sicily and Italy, the Pythagoreans became ever more hated.
This hatred came to a head, possibly in this year, and the meeting places of the Pythagoreans were burned. The Pythagoreans fled, with many of them leaving the western regions and travelling to mainland Greece. Here they set up new centres of teaching, at Phlius and Thebes. They influenced later thinkers but they never again attained political prominence. They did however carry nostalgic memories of a time when philosophers ruled cities.
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| Coin of Segesta in Sicily |
Philolaus believed that everything rotated around a central flame that was far off, high up and invisible. The central fire could not be seen, as it was blocked by the disk of the sky, but presumably this was what gave light to the stars. There was also a counter-earth added to the system to make the number of heavenly bodies 10, rather than 9. Bare fragments of his work survive and the witnesses to Philolaus' work are generally later philosophers who are at least partly hostile to his thinking. We know that Philolaus was also interested in music and in the types of mathematical relationships in harmonies.
But Philolaus the Pythagorean says that it revolves round the fire in an oblique circle, in like manner as the Sun and Moon.
Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, 15.LVIII, written circa AD320
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| Remains of a temple in Memphis in Egypt |
To further compound the disaster, the relief force that the Athenians had sent approached Egypt, unaware of the disaster. This comprised 50 ships; a sizeable force, but not a huge one. The Persian navy caught the Athenian reinforcements and utterly defeated them. The Athenians and their Greek allies had grown used to easily defeating the Persians and their overconfidence made them pay a terrible price. The defeat of the Egyptian expedition was nearly complete. The Athenians and their allies lost 250 ships and perhaps 50,000 men. It was a defeat so heavy that it should have ended most empires.
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| Statue of the goddess Neith from Sais, one of the centres of the Egyptian rebellion |
Arriving by land he defeated the Egyptians and their allies in a battle, and drove the Hellenes out of Memphis, and at length shut them up in the island of Prosopitis, where he besieged them for a year and six months. At last, draining the canal of its waters, which he diverted into another channel, he left their ships high and dry and joined most of the island to the mainland, and then marched over on foot and captured it. Thus the enterprise of the Hellenes came to ruin after six years of war. Of all that large host a few travelling through Libya reached Cyrene in safety, but most of them perished. And thus Egypt returned to its subjection to the King, except Amyrtaeus, the king in the marshes, whom they were unable to capture from the extent of the marsh;
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I, written circa 400BC
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| Vase by the Hasselmann Painter |
It might be wondered how Athens could survive such a defeat at all. After all, Athens probably only had around 200,000 inhabitants? The exact numbers of Athenians is debateable, but I think the answer is that the soldiers and sailors who died in Egypt were from all the cities of the Delian League. Thus the actual loss of Athenian citizens was perhaps closer to 10,000 with the rest spread across the other maritime cities who made up the League. The loss in Egypt was still a heavy loss, but the loss of life from their allies and subject states perhaps explains why there were no immediate rebellions against Athenian rule.
The Athenians, under the leadership of Pericles, responded with characteristic vigour. The truce between Athens and Sparta, if it existed in the first place, was surely broken by the Spartans once they heard of the defeat that the Athenians had suffered on the Nile. There seems to have been an uprising in Thessaly against Orestes, a leader of the Thessalians and an ally of Athens. The Athenians marched northwards to restore him, but Pericles was unable to force the Thessalians to take back their exiled ruler.
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| Athenian funerary stele showing a woman and a slave |
In this year, Pericles made the position of juryman a paid position. This meant that poorer people who were too old to serve in the navy could still earn money by serving the state. It was a measure designed to strengthen the poorer classes and bolster the democracy of Athens. It was opposed by the aristocratic faction in Athens, but these had little influence. Pericles was to all intents and purposes the absolute ruler of Athens, despite it being a democracy. Pericles was an astute politician, but seems to have not been an excellent general. He was not terrible, but his campaigns led to no great victories for Athens.
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| Coin of Catana in Sicily |
On the southern coast of Italy, some exiles from the defeated city of Sybaris attempted to refound the city. However, the nearby city of Croton, who had originally defeated and exiled the Sybarites, expelled them once more. It is perhaps ironic that sybarite and sybaritic, are almost synonyms for hedonist and hedonistic, yet the actual history of the city of Sybaris seems to show mostly hardship.
The Olympic Games were held this year. Lachon of Chios won the boy's stadion race. Cleodorus won the boy's wrestling. Lykos of Larissa won the stadion race, as well as winning the hoplitodromos. Euboulos won the diaulos. Hippobotus won the dolichos. Ariston of Epidaurus won the boxing. Leontiskos of Sicilian Messene won the wrestling, for the second Olympic Games in a row. Damagetos of Rhodes won the pancration. Damagetos was the son of Diagoras, a famous boxer who had won two victories at the Olympic Games, four in the Isthmian, two in the Nemean and at least one in the Pythian Games. Psaumios of Camerina owned the team of horses that won the tethrippon chariot race, while Python was the owner of the horse that won the horse race.
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| Ostraca showing the name of Cimon, son of Miltiades |
The power of Pericles was undiminished and he passed a new citizenship law, restricting Athenian citizenship to those whose parents were both Athenian. This was again popular with many of the common people, who may have been concerned with wealthy foreigners arriving and becoming citizens, but there must have been some opposition to the law. There is no record of Cimon using his influence to oppose it however. Cimon must have been quite an old man at this time however.
Some believe that there was an alliance of sorts forged between Cimon and Pericles. Pericles would lead the political development of Athens, while Cimon would use his military skill to lead the Athenian armies in the field. Cimon would also use his pro-Spartan connections to foster a truce and perhaps even forge a peace with Sparta. If such an alliance truly existed it was to the benefit of the Athenians.
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| Coin of Acragas from around this time |
In Sicily, Ducetius led his army of Sicels and attacked Motyon, which was held by the Greek city of Acragas and is possibly the archaeological site currently known as Vassallaggi. This was considered to be too threatening by the Syracusans and despite having previously supported Ducetius, they now supported Acragas against the Sicels. Ducetius was undeterred however and took Motyon in despite of the Syracusans.
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| Athenian funerary stele of a young girl and two doves |
In Sicily, Ducetius, the leader of the Sicels, fought a battle with the Greek cities of Syracuse and Acragas, which were probably the two strongest Greek settlements on the island. He was defeated at a place called Nomae and his army was scattered. Fearing the wrath both of the people of Acragas and his own people, Ducetius fled to his enemies, the Syracusans, and made himself their suppliant. The Syracusans took pity on their defeated foe, who had once been their ally, and instead of killing him, sent him into exile overseas to Corinth, not to return without the permission of the Syracusans. The people of Acragas were angry that their enemy had been released unilaterally by the Syracusans, but the Syracusans refused to answer to Acragas and gave some measure of the protection to the defeated Sicels left behind.
Meanwhile in Athens, Cimon had not been idle and had raised a great fleet of 200 triremes to send against the Persians. He attacked Cyprus with his main force, but split off a fleet of 60 triremes to sail southwards to Egypt to support the faltering revolt of Amyrtaeus. The Athenians and their allies laid siege to Kition, but were unable to take the city, as siege warfare was not well developed in those days. The Persians were mustering a response to Cimon's attack and were preparing their own navy and land army.
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| A modern bust of Cimon in Cyprus |
The Athenians were not informed of Cimon's death and were told that he was still in command and drawing up the plans of battle. The Athenian general Anaxicrates was actually in command however. The Athenians defeated the Persians on land and sea at Salamis-in-Cyprus, giving Cimon the honour of being one of the few generals to win a posthumous victory. However, the victory was a hollow one, as the Athenians had not enough men or ships to exploit their victory. Taking the body of Cimon, the expeditionary force returned to Athens, joined by the ships that had been sent to Egypt, which had also achieved very little.
Cimon was buried in Athens, but was remembered by shrines in Cyprus where he had died. In more recent times statues have been placed to honour his memory there. More than any other person he had ensured the military greatness of Athens, particularly in her wars with Persia in the aftermath of the invasion of Xerxes. He was probably the single greatest military commander that Athens ever had. His death left a void in Athenian politics and his role as leader of the aristocratic party was filled by Thucydides of Alopece, who, just to clarify, was not the more famous historian Thucydides, who would come to prominence later.
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| Vase by the Altamura Painter |
This year Crates won the Comedy prize for his plays at the Great Dionysia Festival. Very little survives of his works, but there are a few fragments of his work that remain. No single play remains intact however.
Many events took place around the mid-fifth century BC and, as there is no convenient year that these can be confidently ascribed to, I shall mention them here. In the realm of the theatre, it is possible that Sophocles wrote his early play "Women of Trachis" around this time, but this is unclear. The work survives to us, but is not accounted as one of the best works of Sophocles. Some scholars place it here, others assign it to a later date.
Around this time, the Achilles Painter, the Altamura Painter (who was the brother of the Niobid Painter), the Hasselmann Painter and the Persephone Painter all flourished. These were Attic painters who painted their creations in workshops just outside the city of Athens, near the cemetery and whose art was highly valued in antiquity and which survives today in many museums around the world.
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| Vase by the Persephone Painter |
Corax then took him to court to get him to pay his fee, however Tisias pleaded his own case. He made the rather innovative argument that if Corax won his case then, Tisias would not pay the fee, as the teaching of Corax would be shown to be useless (as Tisias could not win his case). On the other hand if Tisias won the case, then Tisias wouldn't pay the fee (as the non-payment of the fee was what Tisias was wanting).
The story is a fun one and could lead to many imaginary debates. Corax and Tisias probably existed but nothing of their work survives and this particular story is probably false. Tisias may have been the teacher of the later orator Isocrates.
Around this time the doctor Herodicus of Selymbria flourished. He is said to have favoured exercise therapy, sometimes recommending that his patients walk the 30km to Megara from Athens. His prescriptions for healthy living were probably of minimal use to anyone who had a genuinely life-threatening ailment, but would have been of interest to the populace in general and athletes in particular. It was said that he was one of the teachers of Hippocrates, who would later become the most famous doctor of the ancient world.
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| Relief of Zeus and Hera from Selinunte Temple E |
Another astronomer who flourished around this time was the astronomer Harpalus. Little is known about him, save that he improved on certain calculations of Cleostratus, an astronomer from two generations previous who may have been influenced by the Babylonian astronomical records.
Around this time the philosopher Melissus of Samos flourished. He came from the island of Samos but had been taught in the Magna Graecia region of Italy under the tutelage of Parmenides. He is usually treated as being part of the Eleatic school of philosophy. His philosophy is quite similar to that of Parmenides, arguing for a timeless, changeless state of Being. Like the other Eleatics, Melissus was concerned to show that the concept of change was an illusory one. He restated many of the points of Parmenides, but also spoke on how there could be no true vacuum. Thus, if there was no true vacuum, there was no empty space for Being to move to. It is an odd argument, like all of the arguments of the Eleatics, but worth considering, if only as a way of testing the mind.
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| Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise: Even though Achilles is ten times faster, he will never catch the tortoise |
These puzzling paradoxes seem to have captivated the imagination of various philosophers and many spent time trying to disprove them. A later work by Plato suggests that these paradoxes may never have been intended for publication, but that once they were known, they could not be recalled. Zeno's Paradoxes seem obviously wrong, but without a knowledge of physics and logic it can be hard to say exactly why. In this unprovable error and puzzlement lay their enduring appeal.
In the realm of architecture around this time, the Corinthian order was invented. This was a type of column that had an elaborate capital, adorned with decorations and acanthus leaves and other decorations. This became known as the third Classical Order, along with Doric and Ionic. However it did not immediately become popular and the Doric and Ionic orders were primarily used in this period. It would become very popular some centuries later.
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| Site of the water clock in the Athenian Agora |
In Sicily, the Temple of the Dioscuri was built in Acragas around this time. In Selinunte, the Temple E was built. Scholars are unclear as to whether this was a temple to Hera or to Aphrodite. The temple contains a number of surviving reliefs that are preserved in a museum in Palermo. The temple itself stands impressively today, but was reconstructed using the fallen material in the 1950's.
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| Temple of the Dioscuri in Acragas |
Around this time the early logographers wrote. These were people who were interested in the stories of times past and who wrote down lists of times, people and places. They were concerned with genealogies and festivals, being almost like a cross between a Mesopotamian chronicler and a later Greek historian. By and large they showed no critical faculty in discerning between the mythical and the historical. They also were not overly concerned with cause and effect. But their compiled lists and tales were often used by later classical historians. They were not the first historians. They were not really historians at all. But they are an important symptom of the birth of historiography in Greece.
Hellanicus of Lesbos was one such of these. He wrote lists of the priestesses of Hera, lists of the winners of the Carnea festival, a genealogy of a mythical Peloponnesian king named Phoronis, as well as some of the earliest writings about Rome, and histories of Troy, Persia and Attica. Thucydides later notes that Hellanicus' work was not particularly good, but he seems to have been used as a source by later historians.
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| Selinunte Temple E |
The logographers were not even all Greek. One such writer was Xanthus of Lydia, who wrote a history of his native Lydia, which was a lost work known as the Lydica. He also is said to have written a work about Persian religion, known as Magica, after the Persian Magi.
Ultimately almost none of what the logographers wrote has survived to the present day. But I thought that it was worth mentioning their work. Even the word logographer has fallen out of our vocabulary. Their entire enterprise has been subsumed by the discipline of history. In one sense of the word, logographers are prehistoric, the last remnants of a less critical age.
In the realm of sculpture, the Severe style, or Early Classical, can be said to end, and the Mature Classical, can be said to begin. Around this time the sculptor Polycleitus formulated the Kanon, or Canon of statuary. This defined perfection in sculpting the human body as a matter of perfect proportions and symmetry. Polyclitus defined the exact proportions that he believed best exemplified these principles.
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| Roman marble copy of the Doryphoros of Polycleitus |
Another important sculpture made around this time is the Discobolus, created by the sculptor Myron. This showed an athlete in the moment of spinning with a disc in hand, instants before releasing the disc. There is motion and power in the statue, but the figure is still perfectly calm. Again, this statue did not survive antiquity, but it survives in numerous Roman marble copies.
And thus the period draws to a close, with advances being made in history, mathematics and astronomy. New poets, painters, sculptors and architects were creating art of the highest quality. Philosophy and physics were under consideration. The playwrights wrote tragedies, comedies and satyr plays, with the art of theatre reaching a recognisable form.
In the political world, Athens and Sparta had spent much of the decade at war with each other. The Athenians had generally been victorious in their wars, but Sparta had concluded the helot revolt, while Athens had suffered a grievous defeat against Persia with the failure of the Egyptian expedition. Athens was led by Pericles, who continued the trend of strengthening the democracy, and had seen the loss of Cimon, their greatest general. The Persian Wars themselves were drawing to a close, as both the Persians and the Athenians were becoming tired of the decades-long struggle. Elsewhere in the Greek world, the Syracusans had exiled Ducetius, who had threatened their hegemony with his failed attempt to create a Sicel state. It is not an often studied period of history, but there is enough here to make it worth the time to take a second glance.
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| Roman copy of the Discobolus of Myron |
Pindar, Odes, written circa 475BC
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, written circa 458BC
Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, written circa 458BC
Aeschylus, Eumenides, written circa 458BC
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, written circa 400BC
The Parian Chronicle, written circa 216BC
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, written circa 40BC
Vitruvius, De Architectura, Preface to Book 7, written circa 20BC
Plutarch, Life of Themistocles, written circa AD100
Plutarch, Life of Cimon, written circa AD100
Plutarch, Life of Pericles, written circa AD100
Pausanias, Description of Greece, written circa AD150
Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, written circa AD320
Secondary Sources:
Historical eruptions on Mount Etna
Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Part I
Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Part II
Related Blog Posts:
Greece 469-460BC
459-440BC in the Near East
459-440BC in Rome
449-440BC in Greece
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