¹Actually, only twelve of these new states sent representatives to Philadelphia that summer … because tiny Rhode Island was afraid to join the new Union, fearing it would lose all sovereignty to a new governing authority.  Rhode Island would, however, soon join … when it was clear that the new Constitution protected the states' authority – rather than removed it.

At some very distant point in time, dating anywhere between 1900 BC and 1500 BC, a number of different Aryan speaking peoples moved westward from southwestern Russia and invaded/settled in wave after wave into the land we know as Greece. 

These invaders, sometimes identified as "Mycenaeans" or sometimes as "Achaeans," spoke an early form of Greek and would become known to later Greeks as the military heroes in Homer's epic war story or poem, the Iliad.  There on that southernmost Peloponnese Peninsula they established fortified towns in the valleys between the many mountainous ridges that reach down to the sea and divide Greece into a number of distinct geographic units.    Each town was headed by a chieftain or warlord (or "king" as we later termed them).

Eventually a number of important Greek cities, such as Athens and Thebes that developed later, could easily trace their origins back to Mycenaean times.

The Dorians ... and a Greek "Dark Age"

But this Mycenaean/Achaean strength eventually began to decline, and after approximately 1150 BC Greek culture fell into a 400 year-long Dark Age.  This was either caused by, or led to, yet another wave of Greek invaders from the Northeast, the "Dorians."  All archeological evidence seems to indicate that probably (though not certainly:  debate lingers on) the Dorians disrupted life in Greece in a very major way.

Certainly the Doric invasion set off a reactive wave of Greek migrations in around 1000 BC – principally to the shores of western Asia Minor.  Ionians from Attica (around Athens) retreated across the Aegean to the central western shores of Asia Minor (to Miletus) and gave their name "Ionia" to this particular region along the Asia Minor coastline.  Aeolians (perhaps a later group of Greeks to appear on the scene) settled the north western shores of Asia Minor.  Dorians themselves eventually continued their own migration across the Aegean to the shores of southwestern Asia Minor and then onward to Crete.

In any case, the warlike Dorians eventually settled themselves into the Peloponnesian peninsula – where they ruled over the helots, the enslaved or enserfed Greeks who had originally lived in the area.  Eventually Sparta grew up as the leading city-state at the heart of Doric culture – famous for the intense military discipline all its citizens (women as well as men) were put under.  But interestingly, Athens (and its hinterland of Attica) managed to fend off the Dorians – and retain its older Achaean culture. 

In the 700s BC Greece began to experience a commercial revival, growth of its population – and emergence of political powers in reviving Greek towns in the form of local aristocracies (rule by the heads of prominent families).  But prosperity also strengthened the power of the more numerous commoner class, who found champions in the form of tyrants – who would use their political power to support the political cause of the Greek lower classes.  Political revolutions of sorts thus shook the Greek world as new prosperity put power in the hands of all sorts of people.  As a result democracy (rule by the common people or demos) – or something like it – resulted in a number of cities.

This rise of the common classes however inspired a strong political reaction in Sparta, where a small elite of Spartan military citizens, who ruled over the vast numbers of subject peoples in surrounding towns and villages, took an ever-tougher stance of rulers over ruled – creating Sparta's famed military aristocracy.

With this economic revival of Greece there was also a large increase in the population – causing a serious strain on Greece's available farmland to feed that population.  However, the surrounding seas, which the Greeks viewed not as a barrier but as a source of life (in fact a superhighway for them to move across), offered them an escape from their problems.  Thus, excess population was sent out to create new settlements or colonies – extensions of sorts of the sending cities.  A new wave of Greek migration thus developed.

During the 700s and 600s BC Greeks sailed east and west and discovered lands that they could colonize with their excess population (much as other cultures were doing at the time, notably the Phoenicians – located along the Syrian coast – with whom the Greeks had active commercial relations).

From the city of Corinth colonies were established to the West on the island of Sicily and on the southern Italian peninsula (this would eventually come to be called Magna Graecia or "Greater Greece").  One of those colonies, Syracuse (founded in 733 BC), soon became a major city by its own right.  Some of the Euboean towns (just north of Attica) sent settlers to the Syrian coast.  From Miletus and other coastal towns in Asia Minor (a region known as Ionia) settlers were sent through the Dardanelles straits into the Black Sea where they then established numerous Greek towns around the coast.  Settlers also headed south to the Egyptian and Libyan coasts of Africa.  Others sailed west beyond Sicily and established towns along the coast of what is modern day France (notably at Marseille).  By the 500s BC they were reaching to Spain and northern Italy.

Thus in the course of the 600s BC "Greece" came to describe an area much larger than the land we today call Greece.  In those ancient days "Greece" encompassed a whole huge area along the northern half of the Eastern and central Mediterranean Sea.  And if we include the various Greek cities planted along the coast of the Western Mediterranean (such as Marseilles in southern France) we are describing a culture that was very extensive.

Soon Greek towns along the Western coast of Ionia (Western Turkey) and Magna Graecia (Sicily and Southern Italy) would achieve tremendous cultural growth of their own – often surpassing in quality the level of culture of the sending cities back home.

Greek democracy

The Greeks were also a people given to much thought about the best way to shape, run, and occasionally reform Greek society.

All Greeks originated as proud tribal peoples, complete with their tribal assemblies that all men were expected to attend ... for their services would be frequently called on and it was best that they personally had "bought into' the social decision, especially on the matter of war, in order to assure their commitment to the cause.  And out of this experience grew the idea of the people governing themselves.  Each tribe, even when it grew in number and became "civilized" (meaning the people now lived in cities with temples, commercial buildings, apartments, town walls, etc.), saw itself as practicing "democracy" – government (kratos) by the citizens (demos) of the towns or cities themselves.

However the definition of demos or citizen was not as broad as it is today.  The category "citizen" by no means included all inhabitants of the city-states but only those males of a recognized tribal pedigree ... meaning full members by birth of one or another of the old tribes originally making up the community.  Foreigners or xenoi living in the cities – which often included a huge number of the industrial or commercial workers (and certainly also the many slaves) – were actually quite numerous in Greek culture.  These individuals did not qualify for democratic privileges ... even if they were descendants of several generations of xenoi living and working in these "democratic" city-states.

Athenians and Spartans.  Leading the way in this democratic development was the city-state of Athens.  But the path by which Athenian democracy would develop was very, very stormy ... just as was the rise to political prominence of Athens itself.

During most of Greece's Archaic Period the Spartans had been considered the dominant political power or hegemon in Greece.  But during the 500s BC Athens, which was well positioned at the center of this huge Greek world, and possessing a number of natural advantages (a very strong citadel, a wide fertile region surrounding it, and closeness to the sea), soon rose to its own prominence.  Also, having the strongest navy of all the Greek city states (thanks to its political leader Thucydides), Athens was early looked to in order to provide leadership in organizing the city states into a great Greek navy, one designed to keep the Persians away from Greek shores.  But the Athenians proved themselves as well on land as foot soldiers.

Thus Greek leadership was divided between — and often competed for — by both Sparta and Athens (Corinth and Thebes were also powerful, though only at a secondary level).

But Athens was wracked by internal problems.  Athens' rich and powerful aristocracy, long used to dominating Athens' political and economic life from its political council, the Areopagus, found itself increasingly challenged by the Athenian commoners (not really all that common, since they still occupied a much higher status than the more numerous xenoi ("foreigners") in Athens and the even more numerous slave portion of the Athenian population).

The aristocrats first attempted to control Athens' affairs with a very tough legal code or constitution (in which the penalty for a wide range of offenses was death) laid down by Draco (ca. 620 BC) – and thus very "Draconian" – which, though an improvement over the older oral laws and traditions, still did not satisfy the political desires of the commoners.  However his constitution did provide for the creation of a Council of Four Hundred, its members drawn from the commoners by lot.

A generation later, in the early 500s BC, another aristocrat, Solon, serving as archon (one of several leaders governing Athens), was commissioned to reform this constitution.  He attempted to find a compromise between the contending social classes by ranking the citizens into four classes and giving each of them a certain number of economic and political duties and rights.  But soon after his departure from power, class rivalries gradually returned.  Peisistratus, a nephew of Solon, seized power on behalf of the poorer citizens, thus becoming "tyrant," actually meaning at the time "champion of the poor."  His political base was never secure and he was in power – and exiled – frequently from 546 to 527 BC as political confusion continued to grip Athens.

Eventually a compromise was achieved (509 BC) – in no small part due to the need to secure unity in the face of the political threat posed by both Sparta and Persia.  A popular politician named Cleisthenes was elevated to power to reform the constitution.  He reorganized the tribal basis of Athenian citizenship from four to ten tribes – membership based no longer on class but on residence in the city.  From these tribes were drawn (by lot) members of the all-important legislative and judicial councils. He saw this not so much as "democracy" as isonomia: full legal equality of all (male) citizens.

The challenge of the Persian Wars

In the latter part of the 500s BC, just as a number of Greek towns were beginning to grow in power as "city-states," the Persians surprised the world by conquering Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt … and Greek Ionia.  Thus was the mighty Persian Empire born.  This was the first time ever that nearly the whole of the Near East had been brought under a single rule.

Some of the Greeks living in Ionia did not particularly take well to this Persian domination (though others did, even serving in the Persian military) and rose up in revolt against Persian rule in the 490s BC.  The citizens of Athens were quick to back the Ionian rebels – who, however, were eventually forced back under Persian rule.

This action of Athens and other Greek city-states in supporting the Greek Ionian rebellion drew the wrath of Persia … and led to a Persian desire to crush any further Athenian or other Greek "meddling" in Persian affairs.  Thus the Persian Greek wars began.

This Persian response to Greek "meddling" in turn forced the two leading Greek city-states, Sparta and Athens, into cooperation (in fact forcing a general Greek unity among all the Greek cities that had previously been lacking).

The Battle of Marathon (490 BC).  Quite surprisingly (to the Persians, anyway!), in a number of major encounters, the Greeks succeeded in defeating the Persian armies and navy sent to Greece, thus not only helping to secure Greek freedom, but elevating Greece – and in particular Athens – to a new status politically.

In the first encounter, Athenian hoplites (troops) were able to surround, attack directly, and completely rout the Persian troops that had just arrived by sea at the Greek coast at Marathon (the Spartans were no help in this engagement, claiming to be deeply involved in a religious ceremony at the time). The Persian survivors (they lost over 6,000 troops, in contrast to Athens' loss of 190 troops) retreated to Asia, where they prepared themselves for a second attempt.  However, a revolt in Egypt against Persian domination delayed that second attempt.

The Persian king Xerxes, who took over when his father died in 486 BC, was as dedicated to the reduction of Greece, and the total destruction of Athens.  After having crushed the Egyptian revolt, and after three-years of military preparation, Xerxes was finally ready to undertake just such a mission.  However, Sparta now joined Athens in the effort to fend off the Persians.  But most of the other Greek city-states still chose to stay out of the action.

Setbacks at Thermopylae and Artemisium (480 BC).  The Persians now approached Greece both by land and by sea, with the first encounter taking place at a narrow pass at Thermopylae, along the eastern coastal road in Thessaly (northern Greece).  A small group of Spartan-led troops were able for three days to hold off the invading Persians, before a Greek traitor showed the Persians a path around the pass, and the Greek troops were ultimately surrounded and slaughtered there.

At the same time the Athenian-led Greek fleet managed to fight off the Persian fleet at Artemisium, until news of the Greek defeat broke the Greek spirit and the Greek fleet withdrew to Salamis.  The Persians then continued their advance through Greece, destroying city-state after city-state as they went, including the city of Athens as well.
 
The sea battles at Salamis (480 BC) and Plataea (479 BC).  But the Persians were blocked at the narrow isthmus that opens the huge Peloponnesian peninsula to the rest of Greece, and thus Xerxes decided that a victory at sea would be required to finish off the Greek resistance.  But under the brilliant leadership of the Athenian general Themistocles, the Greek navy was able to gain a very decisive victory at Salamis over the Persian navy.

The next year, Xerxes was ready to try again to conquer Greece, and sent his troops to Greece, where they assembled at Plataea.  A battle which then took place there did not go well for the Persians, who lost their commanding general and then found their camp surrounded, and ultimately destroyed by the Greek hoplites.  At the same time, another sea battle – at Mycale – did not go well for the Persian fleet, making the Persian defeat even more obvious.
These were horrible setbacks for the Persians, ones they would never recover from – at least in their dealings with the Greeks.

Yet for the Greeks it proved to be a major turning point in the history not only of Greece but even of Western civilization itself.  From this point on, Greece, led most importantly by Athens, would leave a deep political, social, intellectual and moral impact on Western civilization … one that would shape that civilization not only in the many centuries of Greek political and cultural greatness, but even down to today, where that same legacy is built deeply into the ways of the West.

Athenian democracy under challenge

Actually, Athenian democracy was more an attitude than a political institution or policy.  The commoners were jealous of their political rights and quick to defend them against any appearance of usurpation from any source.  Tragically, this "democratic" attitude was easily molded by the shapers of "popular opinion" – by the political satire of the popular theaters of Athens ... and by the political maneuvering of clever speakers in the Athenian Assembly, in particular by the Sophists and their wealthy disciples – sort of the ancient version of modern day trial lawyers, who specialized in playing on the prejudices and fears of the people in order to whip up this or that popular mood ... which they skillfully directed according to their own personal ambitions. 
 
The Sophists.  As the Athenians' public life in the middle and second half of the 400s BC developed in its richness and importance, wealthy families hired tutors for their sons in order to prepare them for leadership roles in the public assemblies.  This was where the laws guiding Athens would be shaped.  This was where economic, diplomatic and military decisions that were key to the well-being of the community would be made.  They wanted their sons to become persuasive in their rhetoric, quick in public debate and noble in their public bearing – so that they would find themselves at the heart of the doings of these public assemblies.

A particular class of wise ones or "Sophists" (Greek sophia = "wisdom") gladly offered their teaching services for a fee to these families.  They built their learning or wisdom around the need to produce practical results in the form of skilled or adept students. These Sophists were sort of the ancient version of modern-day trial lawyers, who specialized in using very clever and highly persuasive "rational" arguments in order to win their cases.  As demagogues, they proved highly skillful in cultivating the prejudices and fears of the people … to whip up this or that popular mood.

As for the higher issues of life such as truth, goodness, justice, etc., in general the Sophists tended to be agnostic – that is, they professed to have no knowledge about (or even concern for) such ultimate or transcendent things.  Indeed, they functioned as if such things did not really matter in the course of actual existence.  Success was measured not in possessing the knowledge of ultimate truth, but in knowing how to use truths (or "truthiness" as it is sometimes termed today) for personal political and economic gain.

Democratic cruelty

Ostracism.   At the same time that wealthy Athenian families were very busy in creating something of a newly-rising ruling class of "more enlightened" individuals, at the level of the lower social orders tendencies were also developing that would serve to weaken further the moral foundations of Greek democracy.

One of these tendencies was the long-standing practice of "ostracism" or the exiling of Athenians by their fellow citizens, because for one reason or another they had fallen out of popular favor.  At a special general assembly, citizens were invited (usually by these Sophist-trained demagogues) to record the name of a person they might want exiled on a broken piece of pottery and deposit it in urns.  These pottery shards or ostraka were then tallied by a public official.  The person receiving the most votes (although at least a minimum of 6,000 votes) was "ostracized" and thus automatically exiled for ten years.

Themistocles is ostracized.  In 472 or 472 BC the Athenian general Themistocles … who had been one of the Athenian commanders at the Battle of Marathon, who then led the Athenians to develop massive sea power and subsequently devised the scheme to trap and destroy the Persian navy at Salamis, and who was the leading political figure over the next ten years … was brought before the ever-suspicious Athenian Assembly – fed by rumors coming from the Spartans of a role in a political conspiracy (entirely false in fact, designed cleverly by the Spartans to destroy their rival Themistocles) – and adjudged by the Athenian commoners to be guilty of the crime of arrogance.  He was thus was ostracized.  He fled to Macedonia – then moved on to Ionia … where the Persian Emperor Artaxerxes offered to bring him into Persian service as a regional governor!

Tragically for Athens itself, it would take some time and distance from this sad episode before the Athenians would recognize the cruelty that they had delivered to the one man … who not only saved Athens from Persian destruction, but put the Greeks on the path to greatness.

Athenian arrogance / Athenian imperialism

Another (and similar) major problem facing the Athenian democracy would be the arrogant attitude it came to assume with respect to its fellow Greek city states – and the resentment this would breed among these other Greeks.  At this point Athens no longer was led by wise men with a deep sense of high-minded virtue, but by cynical, manipulative, self-serving politicians, setting a similar moral tone for the entire Athenian community.

With the passing of time, as the Persian threat seemed to dwindle – but Athenian collection of dues from its allies for "defense" purposes continued nonetheless – resentment by members of the Delian League against Athens grew, especially when it became obvious that this money the other cities were sending to Athens had little to do with Greek defenses and more to do with a lavish Athenian building program going on during Athens' "glory days."  Consequently, Athens' Greek allies in the Delian League felt as if they had been seduced into surrendering their independence to a growing Athenian Empire.  Certainly also, the money they were sending Athens could have been used to improve their own cities.  Anger against Athens began to grow among the other Greek city-states.

Sparta, the major rival to Athenian power, with its well-disciplined land army, was quick to take advantage of this discontent and organized a rebellion against Athens in 431 BC.  Also Thebes, seeing the growing mood of Greek rebellion against Athens, decided to make a bid for dominance in Greek affairs.

The Peloponnesian Wars, and the decline of Athens. Thus wars (the "Peloponnesian Wars") broke out in Greece (431-421 BC; 421-404 BC; 395-378 BC), wars that tended to ravage Greece – yet seemed to resolve nothing.  The worst of these were the engagements between 431 and 404 BC.  Truces would be declared only to have one party or another decide that it was advantageous to break those treaties and start up a new round of wars.  Also political leaders played treacherous games of shifting their loyalties according to their personal advantage.

Pericles' efforts to keep Athenian spirits high.  For a while the great general and Athenian political leader Pericles was able to keep Athenian spirits high as it struggled with the hostility of the surrounding Greek world.  But Athens had taken on a war that would drain it economically and spiritually … and offer no gain whatsoever in return.  Consequently, Athens found itself bleeding to death economically and spiritually.

Decline.  Thus things went quickly downhill for Athens.  A long-lasting siege of Athens by Sparta created devastating conditions within Athens, taking the lives of many Athenians, including Pericles (429 BC).  Athens' new leader Alcibiades (Pericles' nephew) proved to be largely a disaster for Athens, as he led Athens on ruinous expeditions and switched loyalties constantly ... including even siding with Athens' enemies, first Sparta (415-412 BC) and then Persia (412-411 BC) during his cynical political career!

Ruin.  The war gradually led not only Athens but also much of the rest of Greece to ruin.  Finally, in 405 BC, the Spartans (now allied with the Persians) defeated Athens even at sea – and Athens was forced into a humiliating surrender, forced to tear down her town walls, surrender her fleet and give up all her overseas possessions.  Only Sparta's compassion prevented Corinth and Thebes from getting their wish to level all of Athens and also enslave the entire Athenian population.

Socrates is condemned to death.  Even more tragically, the West's most famous philosopher, Socrates – who was loudly critical of the amoral antics of the Sophists – would eventually (late 400s BC) become the object of the satire of the playwrights (notably Aristophanes) and the demagoguery of the Assembly speakers.  Both groups turned the public against him.

In 399 BC the Assembly voted for Socrates' death ... given somewhat honorably in that he was to inflict this punishment on himself (poison, usually).  Actually, they expected Socrates to do what most Athenians did when the Assembly turned against them: flee Athens.  This was certainly the counsel of Socrates's devoted disciples.  But Socrates reasoned that to flee would be to discredit the very truths and moral principles to which he had dedicated his life in his teachings.  Thus he took the poisonous hemlock and died, surrounded by his disciples.

Socrates's death by the decision of Athens' democratic Assembly consequently caused democracy to be intensely distrusted by some (Socrates' famous student Plato, for instance) or at least not highly regarded (Plato's equally famous student Aristotle, for instance).

Apology
Republic
Laws
Statesman
Crito
Critias
Gorgias
Meno
Parmenides
Phaedo
Phaedrus
Sophist
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Theaetetus
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