More on the Golden Age

• 3 famous tragedy playwrights
• Aeschylus
• wrote 80 plays, such as a trilogy- a 3 play sequence
• wrote the Orrestea
• Orestea
• Based on the family Agamemnon, the Mycenaean king of the Trojan War
• Sophocles
• Wrote more than 100 plays
• Oedepus the king (Oedipus Rex)
• Antigone
• Euripides
• Featured strong women in his works
• Medea
• Comedy writers
• Aristophanes wrote the first great comedies
• the Birds
• Lysistrata
• Lysistrata was about Athenian women begging the husbands to stop the Peloponnesian war. 
• Athenians could listen to criticisms of themselves, showing their freedom and openness.
• History
• Herodotus 
• wanted the accurate recording of historical events
• wrote the book "The Persian War"
• "The Persian War" may have been the first historical book written
• Thucydides
• The Greatest historian of the classical age
• Believed certain types of events and political situations recur over time.
• Peloponnesian War
• Tension between Athens and Sparta
• war was inevitable
• war was declared at 431 B.C.
• Athenian Army
• Strong navy
• Weak Army
• Spartan military
• Weak Navy
• Strong Army
• Spartans marched onto Athenian territory, burning the food supply
• A plague struck Athens, killing 1/3 of the population, including Pericles
• in 421, the two sides signed a truce
• the peace did not last long
• in 415, Athens sent 20000 soldiers to the island of Sicily
• Athenian military was completely destroyed in 413 B.C.
• They surrendered in 404 B.C.