Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) was fought between the Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. The conflict is thoroughly recounted by historian Thucydides, an Athenian general, in his work History of the Peloponnesian War. It resulted in victory by Sparta.

The war is generally divided into three main phases: (1) the Archidamian War; (2) the Peace of Nicias; and (3) the Ionian War. The Archidamian War refers to repeated invasions of Attica by Sparta, while Athens’ superior navy raided the coast of the Peloponnese. This ten-year period of war was concluded by a brief truce, known as the Peace of Nicias, which was undermined in 415 BC by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. During this final phase of the war, from approximately 412-404 BC, the majority of the action took place. In this phase, Sparta allied with Persia and supported rebellions in Athens’ subject states in order to weaken the Athenian empire. Athens’ naval fleet was then destroyed at Aegospotami in 405 BC. This effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in the following year.

According to Thucydides, the war was caused by fear of the growth of Athens’ power through the mid-5th century BC. Athens was well-known as a great sea power, while Sparta was a great land power. Because Athenian soldiers could not compete with the superiorly-trained hoplites of Sparta, the Athenian general Pericles realized that the war was essentially a defensive war of attrition. He is famous for employing the strategy of staying inside the Long Walls and assaulting Sparta by navy.

The aftermath of the Peloponnesian War reshaped the ancient Greek world. Prior to 431 BC, Athens was the strongest city-state in Greece. After the war, the Golden Age of Athens was over and Sparta was established as the leading power of Greece. The economic cost of war was also felt throughout the Peloponnese and Athens was never able to regain its pre-war prosperity. As part of a treaty negotiated after the wars, Athens agreed to the destruction of the Long Walls and Sparta installed the Thirty Tyrants, a pro-Spartan oligarchy, to govern the defeated city.

Written by Steven Fife, published on 02 September 2009 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.