Delian League

(noun)

Founded in 478 BCE, an association of Greek city-states under the leadership of Athens, whose purpose was to fight the Persian Empire during the Greco-Persian Wars.

Related Terms

(noun)

An association of Greek city-states under the leadership of Athens, the purpose of which was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victories at the end of the Second Persian invasion of Greece.

Related Terms

Examples of Delian League in the following topics:

  • Effects of the Persian Wars

    • The violent actions of Spartan leader Pausanias at the siege of Byzantium, for instance, alienated many of the Greek states from Sparta, and led to a shift in the military command of the Delian League from Sparta to Athens.
    • This set the stage for Sparta’s eventual withdrawal from the Delian League.
    • The Spartans, although they had taken part in the war, withdrew from the Delian League early on, believing that the war’s initial purpose had been met with the liberation of mainland Greece and the Greek cities of Asia Minor.
    • Once Sparta withdrew from the Delian League after the Persian Wars, it reformed the Peloponnesian League, which had originally been formed in the 6th century and provided the blueprint for what was now the Delian League.
    • The Delian League was the basis for the Athenian Empire, shown here on the brink of the Peloponnesian War (c. 431 BCE).

  • The Persian Wars

    • The Persian Wars led to the rise of Athens as the head of the Delian League.
    • This formed the basis for an exclusive Ionian "cultural league."
    • In the course of doing so, Athens enrolled all the island states, and some mainland states, into an alliance called the Delian League— so named because its treasury was kept on the sacred island of Delos, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire, prepare for future invasions, and organize a means of dividing the spoils of war.
    • Historians also speculate that Sparta was unconvinced of the ability of the Delian League to secure long-term security for Asian Greeks.
    • The Spartan withdrawal from the League allowed Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power within the Hellenic world.

  • Athens

    • These victories enabled Athens to bring most of the Aegean, and many other parts of Greece, together in the Delian League, creating an Athenian-dominated alliance from which Sparta and its allies withdrew.
    • Athens moved to abandon the pretense of parity among its allies, and relocated the Delian League treasury from Delos to Athens, where it funded the building of the Athenian Acropolis, put half its population on the public payroll, and maintained the dominant naval power in the Greek world.
    • Originally intended as an association of Greek city-states to continue the fight against the Persians, the Delian League soon turned into a vehicle for Athens's own imperial ambitions and empire-building.

  • The Rise of Classical Greece

    • The Greeks continued to expel Persian forces from Greece and surrounding areas, but the actions of Spartan General Pausanias at the siege of Byzantium alienated many of the Greek states from the Spartans, causing the anti-Persian alliance to be reconstituted around Athenian leadership in what became known as the Delian League.
    • The Delian League continued the campaign against the Persians for the next three decades.

  • Introduction to the Peloponnesian War

    • The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) was fought between Athens and its empire, known as the Delian League, and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta.
    • The Argive democratic alliance was broken up, and most members were reincorporated into Sparta’s Peloponnesian League, reestablishing Spartan hegemony throughout the region.
    • Members of the Peloponnesian League continued to send reinforcements to Syracuse in hopes of driving off the Athenians, but instead, Athens sent another 100 ships and 5,000 troops to Sicily.

  • The Parthenon

    • The opisthodomos is large, accounting for the size of the treasury of the Delian League, which Pericles moved from Delos to the Parthenon.

  • The League of Nations

  • World War I and the League of Nations

    • The League of Nations was created as an international organization after WWI.
    • Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them.
    • In the 1930s, Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain, and others.
    • The countries on the map represent those that have been involved with the League of Nations.
    • Explain the historical rise and fall of the League of Nations after World War I

  • The League of Nations

    • The league was the brainchild of U.S.
    • The Paris Peace Conference approved the proposal to create the League of Nations in January 1919, and the league was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles.
    • Representation at the league was often a problem.
    • Harding, continued American opposition to the League of Nations.
    • The league cannot be labeled a failure, however, as it laid the groundwork for the United Nations, which replaced the League of Nations after World War II and inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the league.

  • Immigration Restriction League

    • The Immigration Restriction League called for restrictions on immigration of people from certain parts of the world.
    • The League was founded in Boston and had branches in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
    • The influence of the Immigration Restriction League declined but it remained active for nearly twenty years.
    • The League disbanded after the death of its president, Prescott F.
    • Portrait of George Edmunds, a founding member of the Immigration Restriction League