Peloponnesian War mark & Ancient Greek civilization

Peloponnesian War mark & Ancient Greek civilization

Ancient Greece in 431 BC was not a nation. It was a large collection of rival city-states located on the Greek mainland, on the west coast of Asia Minor, and on the many islands of the Aegean Sea.

   Most of the city-states had become allied with one or the other of the leading military powers, Athens and Sparta. Athens was a great naval power, while Sparta relied mainly on its army for superiority. In 431 BC these alliances went to war against each other in a conflict called the Peloponnesian War. The war, which went on for 27 years, is named for the Peloponnesus, the peninsula on which Sparta is located (Hanson 2006).  

The result of the war was the crushing defeat of Athens and the end of its maritime empire. A more long-range result was the weakening of all the city-states. This made them vulnerable to a takeover by Macedonia several decades later. A brilliant account of the war was written by the historian Thucydides as events unfolded. His work still stands as a definitive source of information on the war.  

The Athenian Empire and the Spartan Alliance coexisted as long as a balance of power was maintained between them. A truce called the Thirty Years' Treaty had been signed by both powers in 445 BC. Within a decade the truce was breaking down as Athens sought to extend its empire. In 433 Athens allied itself with Corcyra, a colony of Corinth, but Corinth was an ally of Sparta. Incited by Corinth, Sparta accused Athens of aggression and threatened war. Athens, under the leadership of Pericles, refused to back down. War began in the spring of 431, when Thebes, a Spartan ally, attacked Plataea, an ally of Athens (Hanson 2006). 

The war fell into three phases. First came ten years of intermittent fighting, concluded by an uneasy truce in 421. This truce phase, named after the Athenian general Nicias, lasted until 415. The final phase began when Athens launched a massive and ill-fated assault against Sicily. This campaign was so catastrophic for Athens that the city barely recovered militarily. In 411 the democracy at Athens was also temporarily overturned, and the city remained in political turmoil for years. When the democracy was restored, its leaders could not agree on truce terms, and many wanted to continue the war ...