Classical Greece 431 BC
In 431 BC the marble of the Parthenon is still brilliant white. Pericles' Athens rules the Aegean with its triremes, and Sparta is mustering the hoplites of the Peloponnese. In the east the Great King of Persia looks on, and in the north no one yet pays much attention to Macedon.
The age at a glance
Greece was not one country but hundreds of poleis, or city-states. In Athens the citizens decided war and peace with a show of hands in the Assembly; in Sparta two kings and the ephors led warrior citizens who trained all their lives on the labour of the helots, the bonded farmers. Cities such as Thebes, Corinth and Syracuse were split between oligarchs and democrats. That is why, in this era of the game, the knight's place is taken by the hoplite, the tournament by the Olympic Games, and many poleis elect their leaders as republics.
After the Persian Wars, Athens built a maritime empire on the tribute of the Delian League while Sparta led the Peloponnesian League. When the two alliances clashed in 431 BC, all Greece had to choose a side. Beyond Greece lay Achaemenid Persia, ruling from Asia Minor to Egypt; Carthage in the western Mediterranean; the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace and the Scythians north of the Black Sea; and countless Celtic, Germanic and Iberian tribes. Rome is still a small republic in the middle of Italy.
Major events in the game
- The Peloponnesian War It begins with Archidamus' invasion of Attica in 431 and runs through the plague at Athens and the death of Pericles in 430–429, Pylos in 425, the Sicilian Expedition of 415–413 and Aegospotami in 405, ending with the surrender of Athens in 404.
- Spartan and Theban supremacy The King's Peace (387), the Spartan seizure of the Cadmea (382) and the liberation of Thebes (379); at Leuctra in 371 Epaminondas defeats Sparta and frees Messenia.
- Macedon and Alexander Philip II crushes the Greeks at Chaeronea in 338, and Alexander brings down the Persian Empire by way of the Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela. After his death in Babylon in 323 come the Wars of the Successors.
- The rise of Rome The game's timeline runs to the very end of the age: the Pyrrhic War, the three Punic Wars and Hannibal's Cannae, the destruction of Corinth and Carthage in 146 and the Battle of Actium in 30 BC.
- Years before Christ Years in this era are counted BC. The numbers get smaller as time passes, and 1 BC is followed by AD 1.
The current of history and the turning points
The current of history of this era is "The Peloponnesian War". When you start, an invitation asks whether you stand with Athens of the sea (the Delian League) or Sparta of the land (the Peloponnesian League), and a choice awaits at every stage, through the plague, the Sicilian Expedition and Aegospotami, to the ending in 404.
- If the Sicilian Expedition had succeeded (413 BC) Can the great Athenian armada take Syracuse? If the expedition wins, the grain and ships of Sicily become Athenian, Sparta never fortifies Decelea, and the war ends in an Athenian victory.
- If Sparta had won at Leuctra (371 BC) Can Thebes break the Spartan phalanx? If Sparta wins, Messenia is never freed, and instead of Thebes' brief supremacy the Greece of Sparta goes on.
What you did and on which side moves the odds of each turning point, and a changed outcome carries through the historical events that follow and even onto the map of the next era.
How to play this era
The poleis are small and the alliances dense, so which league you stand with decides your fate more than any single holding you win. Born outside Greece, it becomes a very different game: handle the Great King's gold in a Persian satrapy, threaten the Greek cities as a king of Thrace or Scythia, or grow the small kingdom of Macedon and take Greece before Alexander does.
Major powers
| Power | In the game |
|---|---|
| Athens | A sea empire led by Pericles. With the tribute of the Delian League and a trireme fleet it controls the Aegean and the route to the Black Sea, and the Assembly decides war and peace. |
| Sparta | A warrior state ruled by two kings and the ephors. Leader of the Peloponnesian League; on land no one can stand against its phalanx. |
| Thebes and Corinth | Sparta's allies. Thebes, leader of the Boeotian League, is Athens' neighbour and bitter enemy; Corinth, between two seas, is a trading city allied with Syracuse. |
| Persia | The largest realm on the map. The King of Kings Artaxerxes rules the satraps and kings of Egypt, Sardis, Phoenicia and Cyprus, and buys his way into Greek quarrels with gold. |
| Macedon and Thrace | The northern kingdoms. Perdiccas' Macedon is still small, but Sitalces' Odrysian kingdom, an ally of Athens, can raise a huge army. |
| Carthage and Syracuse | The two powers of the western sea. They fight over Sicily generation after generation, and it is to this island that the Athenian expedition sails. |
| Celtic, Germanic and Scythian tribes | The world beyond the Alps and on the steppe. Small but spread over vast lands; as the age goes on, the Gauls come south as far as Rome and Delphi. |
Life in that age
Most Greeks were farmers growing olives, vines and barley, and when war came a citizen took his place in the hoplite ranks with a spear and shield he had paid for himself. Poor Athenian citizens who could not afford armour rowed the triremes, and those rowers became the strength of Athenian democracy. Every city had its agora, gymnasium, theatre and temples, and festivals such as the Panathenaea and the Olympic Games drew people together. That is why oracles, plays and games appear so often among the events.
Beneath the free lived the slaves, whose labour kept the Athenian silver mines and the Spartan fields going. In Athens Socrates and the sophists argued in the agora, and Thucydides was writing the history of this very war. Women were expected to keep to the household, yet they had festivals of their own such as the Thesmophoria, and Spartan women owned land and property.