History
480 – 323 BCE
The Classical period opens with the Greek cities' astonishing victory over the Persian Empire and closes with the death of Alexander the Great. Between them falls the most celebrated age of Greek civilization.
The defeat of Persia in the Persian Wars (490 and 480–479 BCE) left Athens the leading naval power of Greece. Under Pericles the city reached its height — building the Parthenon, fostering the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and developing the most thoroughgoing democracy of the ancient world — even as its growing empire alarmed its rivals.
The long rivalry of Athens and Sparta erupted in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), which ended in Athens' defeat and broke the political confidence of the age. It was in this troubled, brilliant Athens that Socrates questioned his fellow citizens; from his death in 399 BCE grew the philosophy of Plato and the Academy.
Exhausted by their wars, the city-states fell in 338 BCE to Macedon under Philip II, and his son Alexander then carried Greek arms and culture across the known world — ending one age and beginning the next.
PLATO SCROLL