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| 431–404 B.C., decisive struggle in
ancient Greece between Athens and Sparta. It ruined Athens. The rivalry
between Athens’ maritime domain and Sparta’s land empire was of long
standing. Athens under Pericles (from 445 B.C.)
had become a bastion of Greek democracy, with a foreign policy of
regularly intervening to help local democrats. The Spartans, however,
favored oligarchies like their own. |
| The war began after sharp contests between Athens and Corinth over
Corcyra (now Kérkira) (433) and Potidaea (432). The first important
action was the initial invasion of Attica by a Spartan army in 431.
Pericles brought the rural population within the walls, and the Athenian
fleet began raids, winning victories off Naupactus (now Návpaktos).
Meanwhile a plague (perhaps bubonic) wiped out (430–428) probably a
quarter of the population of Athens, and Pericles died. His successor, Cleon, won a great
victory at Sphacteria (now Sfaktiriá) and refused a Spartan bid for
peace. |
| The Spartan leader Brasidas now brilliantly surprised Athens with a
campaign in NE Greece, taking (424) Athenian cities, including Olynthus
and Amphipolis. Fighting went on over these even after an armistice
(423) and ended in a decisive Spartan victory at Amphipolis, in which
Brasidas and Cleon were both killed (422). The new Athenian leader, Nicias, arranged a
peace (421), but his rival Alcibiades
persuaded the Athenians to invade powerful Syracuse. In the greatest
expeditionary force a Greek city had ever assembled, Alcibiades and
Nicias both had (415) commands, but before the attack on Syracuse had
begun, Alcibiades was recalled to Athens to face a charge of sacrilege.
He fled to Sparta; at his advice the Spartans set up a permanent base at
Decelea in Attica and sent a military expert, Gylippus, to Syracuse. The
incompetent Nicias lost his chance to surprise Syracuse, and after two
years his force was wiped out (413). |
| Soon Persia was financing a Spartan fleet. Alcibiades sailed it across
the Aegean, and there was (412) a general revolt of Athenian
dependencies. At Athens the Four Hundred, an oligarchic council, managed
(411) a short-lived coup, and Alcibiades, who had quit the Spartans,
received (410) an Athenian command. He destroyed the Spartan fleet at
Cyzicus (410). The new Spartan admiral, Lysander, built
(407) a fleet with Persian aid and won a naval battle off Notium, and
Alcibiades was driven from Athens. The Athenians won one more victory at
Arginusae, near Lesbos, in 406 and again declined an offer of peace. |
| The next year Lysander wiped out the Athenian navy (at Aegospotamos,
405) and then besieged Athens, which capitulated in 404. Lysander
installed an oligarchic government (the Thirty Tyrants) at Athens, which
never regained its former importance. For about 30 years afterward
Sparta was the main power in Greece. |
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| Bibliography |
| The primary source for the Peloponnesian War (to 411) is Thucydides;
Xenophon’s Hellenica is an inferior sequel. See also G. E. M.
de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972). |