The Peloponnesian War

431–404 BC Greece (Athens against Sparta)

In short

Athens, powerful at sea, and Sparta, extremely strong on land, fought each other for almost thirty years, dragging nearly all the Greek cities in with them. At the start of the war a terrible epidemic struck Athens, crowded with refugees, and killed Pericles too. The Athenians attempted a great expedition against Syracuse, in Sicily, which ended in disaster. In the end Sparta, helped by Persian money, won, and Athens had to pull down its Long Walls.

Why it matters The war left the Greek cities exhausted and divided, opening the way for new conquerors.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Peloponnesian War”

See it on the line Era quiz Read the full card Printable worksheet

Illustration: The Peloponnesian War (Greece (Athens against Sparta)) — Illustration created with AI for Storiascopio

Where: Greece (Athens against Sparta)

Study card about 5 minutes of reading

The story

Two powers, two ways of life

After the victory over the Persians, Greece found itself with two cities much stronger than the others. Athens was a sea power: it had the best fleet, led the Delian League and its allies paid it tribute. Sparta was a land power, with a formidable army and at the head of another alliance, the Peloponnesian League. Athens was a democracy, Sparta a city of soldiers with two kings. They were different in everything, and each feared the other.

Thucydides, the Athenian historian who lived through that war and told its story, wrote that the real cause was not the individual incidents but the growth of Athens' power, which frightened Sparta. The pretexts, instead, were others. Athens had supported the city of Corcyra against Corinth. Then there had been tension around Potidaea, a colony of Corinth that was under Athenian control: when Potidaea refused to obey Athens, the city was besieged. To these were added disputes with Megara. So, in 431 BC, war broke out.

Ten years of attacks and counterattacks

Pericles' strategy was simple. The Spartans were extremely strong in battle, so Athens should not face them: the inhabitants of Attica would take refuge inside the Long Walls, while the fleet brought supplies and attacked the coasts of the Peloponnese. The Spartans would devastate the fields, then tire and negotiate. The first phase of the war, from 431 to 421 BC, is called the “Archidamian” after Archidamus II, the Spartan king who led the invasions.

In the summer of 430 BC a terrible epidemic broke out in an overcrowded Athens. Thucydides described it in his book. According to one estimate, about a third of the population died. Among the victims was Pericles, in 429. After him Athens found itself with less cautious leaders. In 421 BC the Peace of Nicias was signed, meant to last fifty years, but it did not hold.

The disaster in Sicily

In 415 BC the Athenians decided on a bold move: to send a great fleet to Sicily, against powerful Syracuse. A brilliant and ambitious politician, Alcibiades, supported the venture; Nicias, who led the party of peace and the moderates, was against it. 134 triremes, the warships, set out under the command of three generals: Alcibiades, Nicias and Lamachus. Soon after the departure, the scandal of the Herms (mutilated sacred statues) broke out in Athens, Alcibiades was accused and fled to Sparta. Nicias besieged Syracuse, but Lamachus died and help arrived from Sparta and Corinth, the general Gylippus, who defeated the Athenians. A second expedition, led by Demosthenes, ended even worse.

It was a catastrophe: Athens lost an enormous number of ships and men, many of whom remained prisoners in Sicily.

Sparta and the Persians' money

After 413 BC the war entered its final phase, called the “Decelean”. Sparta urged Athens' allies to rebel, and obtained financial help from the Persians, who wanted to see Athens weakened. With that money it built a fleet. Athens made further mistakes, and the situation collapsed. In 405 BC, at Aegospotami, the Spartans, commanded by Lysander, took the Athenian fleet of about 180 ships by surprise and destroyed it: according to Xenophon only nine triremes were saved.

The surrender

Without a fleet, and with its main supply route cut, Athens was trapped. After some months of siege by land and sea the city surrendered, in 404 BC. The Spartans demanded: hand over the whole fleet, except twelve ships; dissolve the Delian League; tear down the Long Walls; accept a Spartan garrison; recall the exiles and adopt an oligarchic government. This government, led by Critias, has gone down in history as the “Thirty Tyrants”. The war, which had lasted about twenty-seven years, was over.

Why it happened

The causes were deep and older than the episodes that set the war off. After the Persians Athens had become too strong: it led an alliance of tribute-paying cities and had a fleet without rivals. Sparta and its allies, especially Corinth, felt threatened, and feared that Athens wanted to impose its rule on the whole of Greece.

What made the war break out were specific incidents: Athenian help to Corcyra against Corinth, the siege of Potidaea, the measures against Megara. For Thucydides, though, they were only occasions. The real spring was the fear that the power of a growing city caused in the other: a theme that scholars have taken up many times to read the conflicts of later centuries too.

What changed

The war destroyed trust between the Greek poleis. Athens lost its empire, its walls and its fleet, and suffered the regime of the Thirty Tyrants. Sparta gained power over much of Greece, but governing an empire was a different thing from winning a war, and after a few years fighting between the cities began again. So Athens, Sparta and Thebes weakened one another.

All this made it easier for a power from the north, Macedonia, to rise and in the 4th century BC subdue Greece. The freedom of the poleis, which had survived the Persians, did not survive their own internal wars.

For the history of culture, the war had a paradoxical effect: Thucydides wrote his work, which is considered a model of history writing based on the search for facts. Xenophon also told the final part. Even today we know a great deal about the war thanks to them. Curiously, a real peace treaty was never signed, and only in 1996 did the mayors of Athens and Sparta sign a symbolic document to officially close it.

Key people and places

People

Thucydides: Athenian historian who lived through the war and told its story; his work stops at 411 BC.
Pericles: Leader of Athens at the start of the war: he died of plague in 429 BC.
Alcibiades: Brilliant and controversial Athenian politician: he promoted the expedition to Sicily and then went over to Sparta.
Nicias: Athenian general, against the expedition to Sicily but then its commander; he signed the peace of 421.
Lysander: Spartan commander who won at Aegospotami in 405 BC.

Places

Syracuse: Great Greek city of Sicily, where the Athenian expedition ended in disaster.
Aegospotami: A place on the Dardanelles strait where the Athenian fleet was destroyed in 405 BC.
Potidaea and Corcyra: The two cities whose conflicts pushed the crisis over the edge.
Long Walls: Walls that protected Athens: tearing them down was the sign of its defeat.

Good to know

Thucydides described in his book the terrible epidemic of Athens, which today we cannot identify with certainty.
For the expedition to Sicily 134 triremes set out, an enormous fleet for the time.
At Aegospotami, according to Xenophon, only 9 of the roughly 180 Athenian triremes were saved.
After the war Athens was allowed to keep only 12 ships.
In 1996 the mayors of Athens and Sparta signed a document declaring over a war that had never had a peace treaty.