Greece - Korina Miller [62]
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Rivalry with Sparta
Sparta did not let Athens revel in its new-found glory. The jockeying for power between the two led to the Peloponnesian Wars (Click here) in 431 BC, which dragged on until 404 BC, when Sparta gained the upper hand. Athens was never to return to its former glory. The 4th century BC did, however, produce three of the West’s greatest orators and philosophers: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The degeneracy into which Athens had fallen was perhaps epitomised by the ignominious death sentence passed on Socrates for the crime of corrupting the young with his speeches.
In 338 BC Athens, along with the other city-states of Greece, was conquered by Philip II of Macedon. After Philip’s assassination, his son Alexander the Great, a cultured young man, favoured Athens over other city-states. After Alexander’s untimely death, Athens passed in quick succession through the hands of his generals.
Roman & Byzantine Rule
The Romans defeated the Macedonians and in 186 BC attacked Athens after they sided against them in a botched rebellion in Asia Minor. They destroyed the city walls and took its precious sculptures to Rome. During three centuries of peace under Roman rule known as the ‘Pax Romana’, Athens continued to be a major seat of learning and the Romans adopted Hellenistic culture. Many wealthy young Romans attended Athens’ schools and anybody who was anybody in Rome at the time spoke Greek. The Roman emperors, particularly Hadrian, graced Athens with many grand buildings. Christianity became the official religion of Athens and worship of the pagan Greek gods was outlawed.
After the subdivision of the Roman Empire into east and west, Athens remained an important cultural and intellectual centre until Emperor Justinian closed its schools of philosophy in 529. The city declined into an outpost of the Byzantine Empire.
Between 1200 and 1450, Athens was continually invaded – by the Franks, Catalans, Florentines and Venetians, all opportunists preoccupied with grabbing principalities from the crumbling Byzantine Empire.
Ottoman Rule & Independence
Athens was captured by the Turks in 1456, and nearly 400 years of Ottoman rule followed. The Acropolis became the home of the Turkish governor, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque and the Erechtheion was used as a harem.
On 25 March 1821 the Greeks launched the War of Independence (declaring independence in 1822). Fierce fighting broke out in the streets of Athens, which changed hands several times. The Western powers eventually stepped in and destroyed the Turkish-Egyptian fleet in the famous Bay of Navarino in October 1927.
Initially, the city of Nafplio was named Greece’s capital. After elected president Ioannis Kapodistrias was assassinated in 1831, Britain, France and Russia again intervened, declaring Greece a monarchy. To avoid taking sides, the throne was given to 17-year-old Prince Otto of Bavaria, who transferred his court to Athens – which became the Greek capital in 1834.
At the time, Athens was little more than a sleepy village of about 6000 residents, many having fled after the 1827 siege. Bavarian architects created a city of imposing neoclassical buildings, tree-lined boulevards and squares. The best surviving examples are on Leoforos Vasilissis Sofias and Panepistimiou, though sadly many of these building were demolished. Otto was overthrown in 1862 after a period of discontent, during which there were power struggles and military and external interventions, including British and French occupation of Piraeus aimed at quashing ‘the Great Idea’, Greece’s doomed expansionist goal. The new imposed sovereign was Danish Prince William, crowned Prince George in 1863.
The 20th Century
Athens grew steadily throughout the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and enjoyed a brief heyday as the ‘Paris of the eastern Mediterranean’. This ended abruptly in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne, which resulted in nearly a million Greek refugees from Turkey descending on Athens.
Athens suffered appallingly during