hello everyone and welcome to video three this may be a two-parter but we'll see how it goes the subject of this last video will be tensions in the mediterranean world during the time of ancient athens especially in its democratic system so let's take a look again here's ancient greece with all those different city-states right about a thousand and what's bordering uh ancient greece there's kind of a big bully might be the right word what it is it's an empire and it's persia it's persian empire and you can see how big it is so the persian empire is very very powerful this is its sphere of influence this is what it controls and owns all around here asia mine in north africa that's what the persian empire has control over so you can imagine how much access they have the resources how much access they have to soldiers you name it and then look at what it's brushing up against little old grease so the persian empire wants to keep expanding west and greece obviously wants to keep on doing its own thing so a war is going to break out between persia and the greek city-states and it's going to start in the region of the ionian islands so here as the persian empire they actually for a little bit control these islands here they set up puppet governments they treat the folks there like crap so the ionian islands they reach out to greece for assistance and for the most part as you can see from this map most greek city-states are going to try to help the ionian islands but there's some who are going to be allied with persian so the ionian islands reach out to the greek city-states for help and then war is pretty much declared and this is going to be known as the persian war this is what the historian herodotus wrote about and as you can see that it's going to last a few years it's gonna go through the tail end of the rule of darius the first and then also xerxes those are the leaders of persia at this time of the persian empire so the greek city-states versus the persian empire this is who's fighting whom during the persian war and what the greek city states are going to do is that they're going to develop what's called the balance of power system and a balance of power system is when there's multiple entities that are facing a large threat a large and powerful threat let's just say obviously you know persia's empire is huge it's massive and they're all going to be on the same page because they all answer to darius or xerxes now the greek city-states they're going their own ways as we look talked about in the second video different systems of government different militaries different geographies different cultures you name it so a balance of power system is when small groups join forces join resources in order to balance the threat and power of a larger invading force that's a balance of power system imagine if you have a scale like a justice scale and on one side you put a 25 pound weight it goes boom right but then you add five five pound weights on the opposite side it'll balance out that's the idea behind a balance of power system collective security so in your reading it does touch on these really quick in the book and i would like you to you know just think about who beat whom in each of these battles because more than likely they're going to show up on a quiz so make a long story short persia they're defeated but it's not like the greeks own the persian empire they just beat them back to the point of frustration to where it purges excuse me persia is done messing with greece so after the persian war what next you know because the greek city-states they're always going to be worried about the threat of the persian empire or maybe some other empire coming down and uh you know destroying a lot of stuff so there's going to be two city-states in particular that that are going to form competing collective security operations one is the peloponnesian league that is led by sparta and the other one is the delian league which is led by athens so let's focus on athens as again this class is about democracy and athens had the democratic kratos after this big war against this large non-greek empire huge changes in athens we talked about the dillian league what that was is that it's a group of different city-states who all had navies but they're all going to pool their resources they're all going to join forces with all their different navies and create a league right athens is the one who's going to run it they're the ones who definitely did some heavy lifting against persia during the war they have the largest navy out of the dillian league they have a lot of unique things going for him so they're the leader that's important to remember and after the war athenian naval power is going to grow it's not just in terms of military but it's also going to be trade so athenian ships can go to places like what's now known as ukraine or egypt or all over and they can bring back different grains and all different sorts of stuff from these new trading partners and they can also bring back slaves too uh which is important when we take a look at the changes to the navy in a military context because it's when we looked at who makes up the militaries for different city-states the wealthy or the cavalry the for the most part citizen soldiers who could afford weapons and armor are the hoplites land army infantry well instead of being reliant upon slaves in democratic athens you could have the poorer citizens the poor citizens they could become the rowers they could experience glory in the athenian navy rather than be reliant upon slaves to row the big ships so by importing slaves into athens the slaves can handle the economic tasks while the poorer citizens that were known as theaters t-h-e-t-e-s the theaters the six-pack joes they can go on the ships and participate in the military which kind of makes athens unique as didn't have to be elites who would serve in the military so some defense construction is going to happen as well you can see the map on the right and a three-dimensional image of what we're called the long walls so here's athens proper and the thick black lines around athens are the fortifications that were the long walls so it's these tall stone walls that would protect athens from any evading invading force excuse me and they also built along this road long walls as well and this road would give access to what was called piraeus and piraeus also pictured here was athens port city it'd be like norfolk virginia or san diego for the united states so it doesn't really matter since athens has naval power that you know that they're protected on the land because again their big military force is going to be able to go in and out in and out of this port city the rest should be protected that is very important and this gentleman over to the left whose name was pericles he is going to reform the kratos in athens first thing that he does is he makes it more of a pure democracy next people talk about a certain oligarchic mixture that happened before the war against persia pericles is going to make it more democratic where any citizen that's important to remember any citizen of athens who must have been athenian born he kind of tightens that up a little bit they can participate and by participate i mean they can propose ideas and then any of them can vote on it there's no king there's no mayor there's none of that stuff it's a pure democracy for the city-state of athens he's also going to make it to where civic positions are going to be chosen by lottery but military leaders those can be chosen by popular vote under pericles we're going to have a large building program because when persia invades and sacks athens a lot of this is destroyed so this is the acropolis as you can see over here in the modern picture it's it's kind of like a little bit of a hill that that sits in the middle of athens and because the pericles we're going to get the statue of athena we're going to get the parthenon all sorts of these cool buildings that are very important to the wealth of athens but also to its devotion from its citizens that's a horrible picture on the right i apologize so eventually with this dillian league some of these city-states over here in the yellow they're going to say you know it's been fun i don't want to play ball with this league anymore um you know like i'm done paying money in it i don't think i want to risk our navy and it so on and so forth well athens doesn't like this under pericles and athens is going to change this league into subjects of their own empire because let's just say that if one of these city-states says i'm no longer going to participate in this dillian league athens is going to show up with their large and powerful navy they're going to say are you sure and if the city state says yeah i'm sure i don't want to participate athens is going to sack meaning that it's going to militarily invade and take over and probably destroy that city take its wealth take its ships take its money and then quote unquote make that city state a democracy which is not very democratic so in other words it's going to use fear and military power to make these other city-states subjects of its empire so that's a paradox of which we will consider throughout our time here can a democracy and an empire coexist you know and then just for comparison purposes you can see the peloponnesian league down here in red right not a lot of naval power they're all land-based military so because of all these different things tensions with the city state of sparta are going to increase and remember sparta has got a different military they've got a land army athens has a navy there's the peloponnesian league that's sponsored by sparta and then there's the dillian league that's sponsored by athens athens is the democracy and a pure democracy quote unquote under pericles whereas sparta has the dual monarchy different histories different cultures different economies so on and so forth and the war that's going to break up between these two um it ignites when one of the city-states that's part of the peloponnesian league is going to try to join the dillian league making a long story short uh tensions are going to break out there's going to be a war between the greek city-states of athens and sparta and they're also going to drag a few of their allies in that as well now the thing to be careful about this is not an a greek civil war it is not because as we talked about during the second video city states are what people identify identified to first and foremost i am athenian you are spartan we are greek that didn't really matter so it's not a civil war all these different city-states were always in competition from the get-go so it's a large war between athens and sparta that's pretty much going to rip the peninsula apart and have a big time change on the future of greece going forward so i'm going to stop it here and i'm going to make a part 2. please stay tuned thank you