Delian league
The Delos League (Greek: Συμμαχία της Δήλου) founded in 478 BC. C., was a political-military group, led by Athens, which included numerous Greek city-states, between 150 and 330, from Attica, from the islands of the Aegean Sea and the coasts of Asia Minor. Its headquarters were on the island of Delos. Its purpose was to continue the fight with the Persian Empire after the Greek victory at the Battle of Plataea at the end of the second Persian invasion of Greece.
The modern name of the League derives from its official meeting place, the island of Delos, where congresses were held in the temple and where the treasure was located until, in a symbolic gesture, Pericles transferred it to Athens in 454 B.C. C.
Shortly after its creation, Athens began to use League funds for its own purposes, which led to conflicts between Athens and the less powerful members of the League. Around 431 B.C. C., the threat that the League represented for the Spartan hegemony, combined with the control of the Delica League by Athens, caused the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War; the League dissolved at the conclusion of the war in 404 BC. C. under the direction of Lisandro, the commander of Sparta.
Background
The Greco-Persian Wars originate from the conquest of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and particularly Ionia, by the Achaemenid Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great shortly after 550 B.C. The Persians found the Ionians difficult to govern, eventually settling for patronizing a tyrant in each Ionian city. Although Greek states had often been ruled by tyrants in the past, this form of government was in decline. the year 500 a. C., Ionia seems to have been ripe for rebellion against these Persian clients. The simmering tension finally erupted into open revolt due to the actions of the Miletian tyrant Aristagoras. Trying to save himself after a disastrous Persian-sponsored expedition in 499 B.C. In BC, Aristagoras chose to declare Miletus a democracy. This triggered similar revolutions throughout Ionia, spreading to Dória and Aeolis, thus beginning the Ionian Revolt.
The Greek states of Athens and Eretria were drawn into this conflict by Aristagoras, and during his one season of campaigning (498 BC) they contributed to the capture and burning of the Persian regional capital of Sardis. After this, the Ionian revolt continued (without further outside help) for another five years, until it was finally completely crushed by the Persians. However, in a decision of great historical significance, the Persian king Darius the Great decided that, despite having subdued the revolt, there remained the unfinished business of punishing Athens and Eretria for supporting the revolt. The Ionian Revolt had seriously threatened the stability of Darius's empire, and the states of mainland Greece would continue to threaten that stability if not dealt with. Thus, Darius began to contemplate the complete conquest of Greece, beginning with the destruction of Athens and Eretria.
In the next two decades there would be two Persian invasions of Greece, causing, according to Greek historians, some of the most famous battles in history. During the first invasion, Thrace, Macedonia, and the Aegean islands were added to the Persian Empire, and Eretria was duly destroyed. However, the invasion ended in 490 BC. with the decisive Athenian victory at the battle of Marathon.After this invasion, Darius died, and the responsibility for the war passed to his son Xerxes I.
Xerxes then personally led a second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 B.C. in BC, bringing a huge (although often exaggerated) army and navy into Greece. The Greeks who decided to resist (the "allies") were defeated in the twin and simultaneous battles of Thermopylae on land and the of Artemisium in the sea. All Greece, except the Peloponnese, having thus fallen to the Persians, the Persians, seeking to destroy the allied navy once and for all, suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Salamis. The following year, 479 B.C. In BC, the allies assembled the largest Greek army ever seen and defeated the Persian invasion force at the Battle of Plataea, ending the invasion and the threat to Greece.
The allied fleet defeated the remnants of the Persian fleet at the Battle of Mycala, near the island of Samos, on the same day as Plataea, according to tradition. This action marks the end of the Persian invasion, and the beginning of the next phase in the Greco-Persian wars, the Greek counterattack. After Mycale, the Greek cities of Asia Minor revolted again, with the Persians now powerless to stop them. The allied fleet then sailed to the Thracian Chersonese, still held by the Persians, and besieged and captured the city of Sestos. The following year, 478 B.C. C., the allies sent a force to capture the city of Byzantium (present-day Istanbul). The siege was successful, but the behavior of the Spartan general Pausanias alienated many of the allies, prompting Pausanias' withdrawal.
Structure
This organization was a maritime military alliance (symachia), created and initially controlled by the Athenian statesman Aristides (who wrote the statutes and put it into operation), in the year 478 BC. C., at the end of the medical wars, in order to be able to defend themselves from possible new attacks by the Persians. It was also a consequence of the loss of hegemony by Sparta, which was succeeded by Athens in command of the expeditions.
Members of the league had the obligation to provide men, ships and money for war campaigns. For its part, the city of Athens undertook to organize and direct these campaigns and to ensure that the other cities were not assaulted or invaded by the Persians. The important decisions were made in the Synods, councils attended by representatives of all the confederate polis, having the right to speak and vote in these. Although, certainly, these had little relevance in decision-making about the League, since Athens monopolized 50% of the votes in these councils.
Alliance Performances
The military forces of the League conquered the Aegean Sea and its coasts under the command of the Athenian Cimon. They faced and defeated the Persian navy and conquered many lands that they later colonized, as well as opening safe sea routes to the Euxinus Pontus or Black Sea.
After achieving these successes against the Persians, Cimon thought of an expansion into Egypt, where they were also undergoing a Persian invasion. But the confederates did not look favorably on this military incursion that could only bring benefits to Athens and that was going to cost them a good part of the treasury. Both the expedition and the campaigns against the Persians in Egypt were unsuccessful, and Athens eventually had to negotiate for peace. The negotiator was the Athenian statesman Callias, and what was agreed was that the Persians would leave the Aegean Sea and the coasts of Asia Minor free, while Athens had to renounce its intervention in the politics of Egypt and Cyprus (see Peace of Callias). In this way the war between the Greeks and the Persians came to an end.
Hegemony of Athens
After all these events, Athens chose Pericles as its new leader. Pericles began his rule by ending a policy of conquest. He made Athens the first and most important Greek city and achieved total hegemony over the other cities of the Delian League, which were transformed from allied cities into subjugated cities. It was the beginning of an Empire subject to Athens, who was the one who directed the army, the navy and diplomacy and who also wanted to establish their own political regime in the cities. In 454 B.C. C., frightened by the failure of the expedition sent to Egypt, it was ordered to transfer the treasure of the League to the city of Athens, where he would be safer. All these facts, together with the increase in taxes required for the maintenance of the war, caused the cities of the League to rebel and begin to feel like enemies of Athens, which also imposed its currency, its system of weights and even the way of government.
The financial resources of the Athenian State were not very comfortable. All the greatness of Athens in the Pericles century, its constructions, public works, religious buildings, sculptures, etc. they could not have been carried out without the great resource of the treasury of the Delian League.
End of the League
They continued, however, to be dominated by Athens until her defeat by Sparta in 404 B.C. C., as a consequence of the Peloponnesian War. From this point on, the alliance dissolved until 377 BC. C., in which he had a rebirth to protect himself in this case from the power of Sparta. However, Athens was already unable to impose its authority. This so-called Second Athenian League ceased to exist definitively in 338 BC. C. when Filipo II of Macedonia defeated the Athenians in the battle of Chaeronea.