Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It was known as the Delian League and it existed in the 5th century BC, a league of Greek cities spearheaded by Athens formed at the end of the Greco-Persian Wars. that would ultimately transform into the Athenian Empire.
And we've got on the show no one better than the leading expert in ancient Athenian imperialism in the story of the development of the Delian League, and that is Professor Polly Lowe from the University of Durham. We're going to give you the surviving evidence and we'll let you decide how far we can draw parallels, how far we can draw links between modern day NATO and the ancient Delian League.
What are the similarities, but also what are the stark differences? Let's go. In the 5th century BC, Athens became a superpower. Defiance against the mighty Persian Empire, epitomised by a famous naval victory at Salamis, saw this city emerge from the conflict stronger than ever before.
The Athenians commanded a newly built navy, unmatched by any other Greek city, and they spearheaded a powerful new alliance. A league of cities dotted along the Aegean coastlines and beyond, seeking security and vengeance against the Persians. It was known as the Delian League, after the sacred island of Delos in the central Aegean. This would prove to be no ordinary alliance.
Over time, through coercion, tribute and its unrivalled maritime dominance, Athens would transform this league of cities into its empire. forced to support Athens with money against Persians and fellow Greeks alike. Today, we're going to explore the story of this Delian League and how it transformed into an Athenian Empire.
We'll explore how it functioned, the relationship between Athens and its dependent allies, key events, foreign expeditions, internal revolts, tribute, you name it. And just as interesting, what do we still not know about this League? Because there is still a lot of mystery surrounding it. Welcome to the Ancients.
I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the Delian League with our guest, Professor Polly Lowe. Polly, it is a pleasure to have you back on the podcast.
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Chapter 2: What is the Delian League and its significance in ancient history?
It's been too long since we last talked all things Thucydides. I think more than five years ago now. You're one of our first ever guests on The Ancients. And we've got you back now to talk about the Delian League. And it feels like if you want to learn more about how Athens made its empire, you have to learn about this league. You have to learn about this alliance.
Yes, absolutely. And in many ways, the Delian League and the Athenian Empire are what could be argued to be the same thing. They're both modern English terms that we apply to this organisation that Athens leads in the 5th century.
And first and foremost, I've got to ask about the name, the Delian League. Why is it called that and not just the Athenian Empire from the get-go?
So the name, I mean, obviously it's an English name. It's not a name that we find in the Greek sources. It comes from the island of Delos, which is sort of smack bang in the middle of the Aegean. And that is where, Thucydides tells us, the Athenians called a meeting of Greek states who wanted to be part of this alliance. And it met on Delos, so not in Athens originally, which was sort of
symbolically important. And that's where originally, according to facilities, the collective meetings of the alliance took place.
Thank you for sorting that out first and foremost. No doubt we will return to the island of Delos as this chat goes on. We're going to do it chronologically. We're going to create a narrative of the storyline of this league. So set the context for us first of all, Polly, when discussing the Delian League, how far back in time are we going? What century, what period in ancient history?
So the date of the creation of the League is 478-7 BCE, but we have to go a little bit, not a very long way back, probably back to the Persian Wars. So 490, first Persian invasion of mainland Greece, Battle of Marathon, and then the second much larger invasion in 484-79. That's
Invasion was resisted successfully by an alliance of Greek states, which included Athens, but also included Sparta and a number of other Greek states. Persians are defeated, retreat, withdraw from mainland Greece back into Western Anatolia, what's now Turkey, which was still at that point still part of the Persian Empire. So then the question in 478, 477 is, well, what happens next?
What does this alliance of Greek states mean? Do they carry on fighting the Persians? Do they say, okay, well, that's enough. They're out of Greece. We can sort of stop and go back to how things were before. So that's what sparks that meeting of Greeks on the island of Delos.
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Chapter 3: How did the Delian League form after the Persian Wars?
Surely many of those cities who had also recently been united fighting the Persians don't feel like the Persians are never going to come back again. They may well come back. And surely that could be, as you say, it's debated, but a key motive behind why this new alliance is formed.
Yes, I think there's a sense of unfinished business. So one thing is that there are Greek city-states in Western Anatolia, coast of modern Turkey, which are still, after the Persian retreat from mainland Greece, part of the Persian Empire and don't want to be part of the Persian Empire, or at least some Greeks would say we need to liberate those cities. So that's part of the motivation.
The other thing, and this is what Thucydides includes, is a desire for revenge. which is a really important driving force in international politics in the Greek world. It's something that in contemporary international politics, I think states don't at least publicly talk about revenge, but that's quite acceptable.
And it's a real leitmotif of relations between Greeks and Persians, which they sort of retroject all the way back to the Trojan War, that this is one side attacks the other, and then the other side justifiably wants to seek revenge.
Chapter 4: How did tribute and coercion contribute to the Athenian Empire?
So what Thucydides says is that the declared purpose of this alliance was to seek revenge on the Persians, the Persian king, for the damage that he'd inflicted on the Greeks.
So it's the Greek strike back kind of thing, is it, over the Persian holdings around the Aegean and so on. You mentioned how Athens with Sparta deciding not to take part in this alliance. Athens is clearly the most powerful city in it.
But regarding the other cities that decide to join this league that had fought alongside the Athenians against the Persians, I mean, Polly, how wide a geographic area are these cities located? Should we just be thinking mainland Greece or is it further than that?
Yet again, we don't know for sure, and it depends which source we believe. It's actually really hard even to come up with a ballpark number for how many states are in this alliance at the start. So it could be 100 or so, but it might be fewer than that. It might be... We think there's probably about 300 in the alliance at its biggest point, but... It wasn't that big at the start.
Remembering, of course, that many Greek city-states in this period are tiny. There are a few hundred male citizens, so total population probably under a thousand. So even a hundred of these states is not a huge number of people or a very big total population. But it may have been much smaller than that.
And that same uncertainty about the geographical area is probably focused actually not so much on mainland Greeks as on the islanders. So the Socatic Islands and the islands of the Eastern Aegean, primarily, heading up a little bit into the North Aegean.
And then over, as it extends, so in the sort of initial operations in the very early years of the League, heading out to the east and those Greek cities on the coast of Western Anatolia.
And these are islands today, I'm guessing like Samos or Lesbos, Naxos, Thassos, those islands we should be thinking of?
Exactly, exactly those islands, yep. Interesting.
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Chapter 5: What were the dynamics between Athens and its allies in the Delian League?
Is it very much that they're all sending troops to help fight the Persians in the, you know, the Greek cities strike back this idea?
This is what makes the Delian League really different and distinct from other alliances that have existed up to this point in the Greek world. The Greeks have been making alliances for a long time by this point, but the traditional model, as you suggest, has always been that you send men, contribute through military power.
What Thucydides says is one of the things that's discussed and decided at this first meeting on Delos is is whether states are going to contribute with manpower, particularly ships, because this is a naval-based alliance, or whether they prefer instead to send money to Athens and then the Athenians will buy and build and crew the ships.
This is one of the things that, well, Thucydides says, and most people would agree with him, enables this alliance to turn into an empire because most states, and by the end of the alliance, pretty much all of the states, contribute money rather than manpower. That means that Athens ends up with a monopoly on military power, which reduces the ability of other states to resist Athens.
How does this Delian League fare over the following years? Do we know much about the Delian League and its activities against Persia in the 470s BC?
So we know a little bit. Again, this is almost entirely from what Thucydides tells us. And it's a very, very compressed account because after all, this isn't, strictly speaking, what he's meant to be talking about. So we can't blame him completely. But we know that there are operations against Persia. So it's not the case that they completely forget about the war against Persia.
So they go up to the north. The region, now it's in northern Greece, if you go to Thessaloniki and headed east from there along the coast heading towards Turkey. There's a place up there called Aion, which was occupied by the Persians. It's strategically very important. It's at the mouth of an important river, which gives access to timber.
which is a vital resource, particularly if you want to build ships and also precious metals. The Athenians, that's one of their first operations. They kick the Persians out of there and claim it as an Athenian possession. Then there are further operations in Western Anatolia against the Persians.
And then heading down that coast and a bit further east again, culminating, and we're maybe skipping a bit far ahead of your narrative, in the battle at the Eremitan River. So we're down into the 460s by that point.
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