Felipe Arraño’s Reviews > Athens: A History, From Ancient Ideal to Modern City > Status Update

The tension between the realities of the present and the receding myth of the past is what unifies Athenian history from the beginning of the fourth century (p. 218). Athenian and Spartan military activity in Asia was curtailed after a peace treaty with the Persians (p. 219). Thebans massacred Spartans (p. 221). Athens tried to reinstate the Empire but it only had few members (p. 222). The Macedonians were non-Greek because their basic social unit was the tribe, not the citizen-state (p. 227). Philip II (father of Alexander the Great) was perceived as Athens and Spartans in the past: someone who can champion Greece against the Persian threat, as a menace to Greek citizen-state liberty, as an allay, etc; thus, Greece was never united before its conquest (p. 227). Macedonians conquered Greece, Philip was granted Athenian citizenship and in 337 with a general confederacy of Greek states, declared war on Persia (p. 230).