Leah Lazar
speaker
97 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 16 Jul
Leah Lazar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But in various ways, the Athenian power stretched beyond the Aegean, so also into the Black Sea, the Ionian Islands on the western coast of Greece, and even to Italy and Sicily at points in the 5th century.
That's correct.
Sparta had leadership of the alliance of states that had fought against the Persians, but Athens took over the leadership in the aftermath of the Greco-Persian Wars.
It's really hard to know how Athenian power was received by the allied communities because there are multiple issues with the evidence.
Firstly, we have much more evidence for the Peloponnesian war period, the later part of the fifth century, than we do for the earlier part.
And also the majority of our evidence is Athenian.
So we're really getting Athenian perspectives on this.
We're not getting the perspectives of other cities, especially less powerful communities.
I think it's fair to say, though, from the sources that we do have, there were varied responses to Athenian power.
As Polly has mentioned, there was resistance, there was revolt, and in some cases, violent reintegration of those communities back into the League.
Other communities also negotiated with the Athenians for more favourable positions within the alliance.
And I think there's some evidence in some cases for ideological buy-in on the part of particular communities to the Athenian imperial project.
So to give an example, at least by the 420s BC, so a bit later than what we've been talking about so far, we have evidence to suggest that the Athenians demanded that allied cities sent delegations and offerings to Athenian religious festivals.
This was an important part of the ideology of empire, this religious aspect.
And centuries later, we find a small city in western Turkey called Prayini still sending those delegations and offerings.
And I wonder whether it's evidence that Prayini really bought into this religious aspect of Athenian power, so much so that they're still doing this years and years later.
Precisely.
It might have been the case that some of these cities were between a rock and a hard place with Persia or with other powers outside of the Delian League and that Athens was simply the better of two options.
Absolutely.
So coinage had been invented about 200 years or so earlier than this in what is now Western Turkey.
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