o his horror, his request was actually granted, and Athens invested even more money and manpower into the trip. Sounds like somebody was getting terrible advice from their broker!
|Fig.3: After Sicily, the next time the |
moon would play a large role in
deciding the outcome of a military
expedition was Napoleon's failed
attempt to use its cheesy surface
for rations during his Invasion
It pretty much went downhill for Athens from then on. A coup ousted the assembly in 411 BC, and Athens came under the control of a group known as the Four Hundred, ruling alongside their beloved One Hundred and One Dalmatians. This created a mini-civil war situation within Athens for the next two years, which Sparta and their allies were more than happy to take advantage of. Athens managed to hang in there, and even scored a major naval victory at the Battle of Arginusae. Unfortunately, the celebration was marred by the fact that several Athenian sailors were unable to be rescued due to a storm, and many blamed the generals for never seeing Black Hawk Down and knowing never to leave a man behind. There was a whole big trial and everything, and six of Athens' top generals were executed in Greek history's biggest over-reaction until Socrates was forced to commit suicide for breaking off a cracker in the hummus. Athens never got over the loss, and the Spartans, under the cunning general Lysander, would finally ditch their arm floaties and truly fight on the seas. They won a naval battle at Aegosoptami, destroying the rest of Athens' navy and taking away their privileges to swim in the deep end. With their sea empire gone, Athens had no choice but to surrender for good in 404 BC.
The Peloponnesian War was finally over, but its effects would echo throughout Greece for decades to come. Now that Sparta was top dog, they started doing the same annoying things Athens did after the Persian War: bossing around their allies, forcing neutral city-states under their control, leaving the toilet seat up. So eventually Athens allied with their former enemies in Corinth and Thebes against Sparta. But then Athens became powerful again, and they switched sides against them. Eventually Thebes emerged as the dominant state, followed by Corinth, then Sparta again, then Athens for a little bit, then Hoboken for some odd reason, then Thebes once more. This merry-go-round of hegemony in Ancient Greece was mercifully ended by King Philip of Macedon, ruler of the land to the north that conveniently started getting stronger as Greece was busy destroying itself. Once Philip conquered Greece in 338 BC, his son Alexander (who is believed to have been pretty Great) conquered most of the known world (fig.4), plus a slice of Antarctica for good measure.