The Classical period is the age most people picture when they think of Ancient Greece: marble temples, tragedies in open-air theatres and philosophers debating in the agora. It began with a struggle for survival and ended with a young Macedonian king conquering the known world.
The Persian Wars
When the Ionian Greeks rebelled against Persian rule, Athens sent help, and the Persian kings answered with invasions. In 490 BC the Athenians and Plataeans defeated the Persians at Marathon. Ten years later Xerxes returned with an enormous army. Leonidas and his Spartans made their famous stand at Thermopylae, and the Athenian-led fleet won a decisive victory at Salamis. In 479 BC the Greeks finished the job at Plataea.
The Golden Age of Athens
Athens emerged as a naval power at the head of the Delian League, an alliance that slowly became an empire. Under Pericles the city rebuilt the Acropolis, crowned by the Parthenon, and became a magnet for talent. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides wrote tragedies, Aristophanes mocked politicians in comedy, Herodotus and Thucydides invented history as we know it, and Socrates questioned everyone he met.
War between Greeks
Rivalry between Athens and Sparta exploded into the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). Plague, a disastrous expedition to Sicily and Persian gold for Sparta’s fleet finally forced Athens to surrender. Sparta’s dominance did not last: Thebes broke it at the battle of Leuctra in 371 BC.
The rise of Macedon
Exhausted by decades of conflict, the city-states were overshadowed by Macedon in the north. Philip II defeated Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea in 338 BC, and his son Alexander led a Greek and Macedonian army against Persia and toppled its empire. When Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC, the Classical age died with him.
