User:Pattymac9/Battle of Aegina

The Battle Of Aegina took place in the year 458 BCE. The battle was fought between Aegina and Athens with Aegina receiving aid from the Peloponnesian League. The battle took place on the open sea as part of the Third Messenian War. Athens was able to capture 70 of Aegina's ships and found land. Eventually laying siege to the city-state of Aegina. The siege was approximately 2 years in length and resulted in Aegina paying tribute to Athens. There was reports made by Thasos, that for the first time, Athens was actually trying to augment Aegina into the Delian league, while Diodutus claims that Aeginetans had recently increased their fleet of Triremes in preparation for battle. At roughly the same time as the Aeginetans increased the size of their fleet, the South Harbor of Aegina had become much stronger. For the Battle of Aegina, Thucydides report that both sides were present, in which Athens battles Aegina along with their allies and Athens exited the battle victorious.

Results of the Battle
Aegina was defeated and were forced to pay tribute to Athens. As well as becoming tributaries to the Delian League, Aegina was also required to tear down their fortifications and defences along with surrendering their fleet to Athens.

Enmity with Athens
Aeginetans were very close to the Epidaurians, in which they traded with among other things. However they became enemies with the Epidaurians when the Aeginetans began building boats and ended up revolting from the Epidaurians which became the inciting incident for a long-standing enmity with the Athenians. Damia and Auxesia were the goddesses of human and agricultural fertility and were very sacred beings to the Epidaurians. The Aeginetans stole multiple sacred images of the goddesses. These images being Damia and Auxesia which sacred olive trees, olive trees in which Epidaurus and Athens had made an agreement on. The agreement was that the Epidaurians could use the sacred olive trees when their land was infertile and when they made the images, their land became fertile again. Causing the Epidaurians to tell Athens to deal with the stolen images themselves to which Athens was unsuccessful.

Pre-Battle of Aegina
The Battle of Salamis was a battle that took place in the year 480 BCE. Aegina had established itself as a strong naval force and Athens also having a strong fleet, but still inferior to the Aeginetans. Aegina also had a strong trading position, that of which they wanted to protect at all costs. Which required them to take a Persian attitude. This attitude was much to the chagrin of Athens, who was directly opposed to this. For the battle of Salamis, Aegina and Athens sided with each other which caused their relationship to somewhat improve. However, 20 years later, the allegiance fell apart and that began the battle of Aegina, in which Aegina was defeated despite having a stronger fleet.