The Chaldeans were concerned about the reconstruction and beautification of the city of Babylon, which had been destroyed by the Assyrians. However, this constant concern would lead to their ruin to a new invader, other Indo-European people, the Persians. In 555 BC King Nabonidus, in an effort to beautify Babylon, disdain their controls to his co, Belshazar, famous for his cruelty, which allowed to the general discontent of the inhabitants of Babylon, the advance of the Persians, which took over the city in 539 BC under the command of Cyrus the Great, who proclaimed himself king of kings.
This example is to be noticed, the fact that in many cases the social unrest or civil society, not transcended in a revolution, but were a sign of weakness of a kingdom, weakness that was exploited by a neighbor powerful, to seize the city more easily. This type of situation is repeated throughout history, this is how a culture and a strong kingdom absorbed another, imposing their customs and traditions, and adopting those which it considers appropriate, thus generating new social and economic structures in which he has the weapons and government positions dominates over the conquered and the press to benefit from his artistic work.
The Persians would be the inheritors of imperial power in ancient Mesopotamia, and like its predecessors, expand your domain by means of force. However they were not limited to the classic conquest in the Middle East and Egypt, but went beyond to the Mediterranean. Conquered the Ionian cities of Asia Minor and sought to go to the heart of ancient Greece in the Peloponnese. But this was not a conquest as the previous ones, because for the first time, an eastern kingdom was met with a free people who had already spread throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea side, a people for whom was unthinkable to fall into slavery, and instead, I used to be the one who gave the orders and establish the laws of coexistence, this town was Greek or Hellenistic.
The Greeks were always clear that it was better to keep your freedom, honor and dignity rather than fall into slavery, would rather die with honor than live in disgrace, and indeed it was this ideology that clashed with the Persian Empire, which I thought I had a divine mission to bring good to all existing towns. These worldviews collided at an early stage, so it was inevitable war between the two peoples, one-sided war in many respects, since the Persians had an army of thousands of soldiers and Phoenician fleet much higher than the Greek, but the Greeks had a more developed civilization and technology were great strategists in the field of battle, wearing helmets and armor to protect the extremities, shields, swords drawn and spears, and sandals also had the advantage that the war would develop on its territory, which knew perfectly and it was inhospitable to foreigners because of their great cliffs, mountains and lack of natural harbors.
Indeed, the war came to the Balkan peninsula, and that was where the Greeks, with its small number of soldiers resisted the Persian attack to death. The polis of Sparta and Athens were the protagonists of the battles, while the Spartans, with their skilled soldiers, fighting for land, naval strategies applied Athenians to defeat the invading Phoenician fleets. These Greeks knew how to use the qualities of its territory to create the best strategies of resistance and as a result, the large number of the Persian forces was counterproductive for themselves as easily their boats collided, and their horses, chariots and soldiers were overflowed by the cliffs, was well as the Persians could not overcome the powerful Greek phalanx or the skillful military and naval strategies. By mid-century
V BC the Greeks ended the power Persian once and for all and thus retained their freedom. Especially Athens clung to form a military link between the various Aegean Greek polis to permanently expel the Persians from Asia Minor, and they got it, but at a high price because these cops would be subjugated to the domain and prevented from Athens to drop out of the Delian League, so they were forced to pay a constant tribute and surrender their ships to join the fleet, which was controlled by Athens. Athens
take advantage of this accumulation of rich tributes to expand his new empire and embellish their own polls, but this outpouring of luxury and the concentration of power in few hands, soon brought considerable social unrest of the various polis of the Empire, since they never had the same benefits as the Athenian people. Many of these regions of the Aegean tried to withdraw from the League and be independent, but the Athenians promptly repressed all defector to demolish its walls punishment and confiscation of their ships, which left them completely unprotected.
Thus Athens became the leading merchant and naval fleet in the Mediterranean, she was in charge of trade and security of the sea, but soon formed his own suspicious Spartan League to compete with Athens and that was how Start the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), which was developed within the Greek territory and among the Greeks. Was a long war in which Athens and Sparta cops followed their allies, fought to gain hegemony between the cops and expand its regional influence. However, these internal conflicts alone caused the wear of both powers and defeat of the Athenians, to spend a short period of Spartan hegemony, then finally Theban Macedonian Alexander the Great.
For hegemonic polis Athens as the Delian League is to be noted that it was for the excessive accumulation of power and wealth, coupled with his arrogance and abuse of other Greek polis, which caused the downfall of his empire. Like all imperial structure in history, Athens had its birth, its development, its rise and decay, because like any empire, so much inequality, injustice and abuse of neighbor gradually accumulated discontent in the community until the right moment to get this energy burst and out of the hands of Athenian hegemony. There are many cases within a nation or government, in which injustice and poverty brought considerable social unrest which will eventually be reflected in rebellion, and then will express a similar case is very important in history, that of the Romans.
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