The primary causes were that Sparta feared the growing power and influence of the Athenian Empire. The Peloponnesian war began after the Persian Wars
The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire and Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conqu…
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Sep 21, 2021 · The Peloponnesian war began after the Persian Wars ended in 449 BCE. The two powers struggled to agree on their respective spheres of influence, absent Persia's influence. This disagreement led to friction and eventually outright war. Additionally, Athens and its ambitions caused increasing instability in Greece.
Jul 30, 2009 · I.1.23 History of the Peloponnesian War. While Thucydides seemed quite certain that he had settled the question of the cause of the Peloponnesian War for all time, historians continue to debate the origins of the war. The main reasons proposed are: Sparta was jealous of other powers and desired more power for itself.
Peloponnesian War, (431–404 bce), war fought between the two leading city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta. Each stood at the head of alliances that, between them, included nearly every Greek city-state. The fighting engulfed virtually the entire Greek world, and it was properly regarded by Thucydides, whose contemporary account of it is considered to be among …
There are two dominant factors that led to Sparta's victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Firstly, Sparta was able to stop the supply of food and other vital goods from reaching Athens.
Importance of the Peloponnesian War. Fought between the allies of Sparta and the empire of Athens, the crippling Peloponnesian War paved the way for the Macedonian takeover of Greece by Philip II of Macedon and, following that, Alexander the Great 's empire. Before the Peloponnesian War, the city-states ...
The main reasons proposed are: Sparta was jealous of other powers and desired more power for itself.
When Athens decided to invade Thasos, Sparta would have come to the aid of the north Aegean island, had Sparta not suffered a natural disaster. Athens, still bound by alliances of the Persian War years, tried to help the Spartans, but was rudely asked to leave. Kagan says that this open quarrel in 465 BCE was the first between Sparta and Athens.
Fragile Balance of Power. A complicated, partially ideological political conflict between Spartan-ally Corinth and her neutral daughter city and strong naval power Corcyra led to Athenian involve ment in Sparta's realm. Corcyra appealed to Athens for help, offering to Athens the use of its navy.
Athens feared a revolt, with good reason, since the Potidaeans had secretly acquired a promise of Spartan support, to invade Athens, in violation of the 30 years treaty.
Sparta had a set of loose alliances by means of individual treaties that extended to the Peloponnese, excepting Argos and Achaea. The Spartan alliances are referred to as the Peloponnesian League .
Sparta was unhappy at no longer having all the military glory.
Peloponnesian War, (431–404 bce ), war fought between the two leading city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta. Each stood at the head of alliances that, between them, included nearly every Greek city-state. The fighting engulfed virtually the entire Greek world, and it was properly regarded by Thucydides, whose contemporary account of it is considered to be among the world’s finest works of history, as the most momentous war up to that time.
In the following years their respective blocs observed an uneasy peace. The events that led to renewed hostilities began in 433, when Athens allied itself with Corcyra (modern Corfu ), a strategically important colony of Corinth.
The end came in 405 when the Athenian navy was destroyed at Aegospotami by the Spartan fleet under Lysander, who had received much aid from the Persians.
The so-called Peace of Nicias began in 421 and lasted six years. It was a period in which diplomatic maneuvers gradually gave way to small-scale military operations as each city tried to win smaller states over to its side. The uncertain peace was finally shattered when, in 415, the Athenians launched a massive assault against Sicily. The next 11 years made up the war’s second period of fighting. The decisive event was the catastrophe suffered by the Athenians in Sicily. Aided by a force of Spartans, Syracuse was able to break an Athenian blockade. Even after gaining reinforcements in 413, the Athenian army was defeated again. Soon afterward the navy was also beaten, and the Athenians were utterly destroyed as they tried to retreat.
The Athenian alliance was, in fact, an empire that included most of the island and coastal states around the northern and eastern shores of the Aegean Sea. Sparta was leader of an alliance of independent states that included most of the major land powers of the Peloponnese and central Greece, as well as the sea power Corinth.
The years of fighting that followed can be divided into two periods, separated by a truce of six years. The first period lasted 10 years and began with the Spartans, under Archidamus II, leading an army into Attica, the region around Athens.
Urged on by the demagogue Cleon, the Athenians voted to massacre the men of Mytilene and enslave everyone else, but they relented the next day and killed only the leaders of the revolt. Spartan initiatives during the plague years were all unsuccessful except for the capture of the strategic city Plataea in 427.
The Peloponnesian War weakened Greek civilization militarily and economically. In the war's aftermath, the city-states of Greece were not as unified as they had once been under the Delian League. Furthermore, the resources of once powerful city-states like Athens had been exhausted.
The third cause of the Peloponnesian War was likely due to Sparta's rebellion. War really wouldn't have been possible at all if Sparta had not risen to challenge Athenian hegemony. The Peloponnesian War was underway once Sparta and its allies moved to challenge Athens.
Firstly, Sparta was able to stop the supply of food and other vital goods from reaching Athens. This threatened to starve out the people of Athens. At the same time, Sparta was able to win a decisive naval battle in 405 BCE that completely destroyed Athenian naval power. Without its all-important navy, Athens could not function, let alone fight a war. As a result, Athens surrendered in 404 BCE.
The Delian League was an alliance formed after the Persian Wars (500 - 479 BCE) as a means to deter future attacks on Greece from the mighty Persian Empire. Athens became the natural leader of the Delian League since it had the largest navy with which to combat Persian advances. The other city-states of Greece paid tribute to Athens to help support the military coalition. As a result, Athens enjoyed a great deal of prosperity under the Delian League. However, this ultimately worked to foster animosity towards Athens and can be counted as a major cause of the war.
Background of the War. The Peloponnesian War was a general conflict between the rival city-states of Greece that lasted from 431-404 BCE. Classical Greek civilization did not have a central government or ruling empire but was instead made up of small, independent communities called city-states.
Firstly, the political structure of classical Greek society was itself a cause of war. With many independent city-states competing for resources and cultural influence, war was always a danger. Secondly, the alliance known as the Delian League had brought the city-states of Greece into an uneasy military alliance that many members began ...
Following Sparta's victory in the war, Greece became weakened, which allowed for the rise to power of the Kingdom of Macedon and later, Alexander the Great. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member. Create your account.
The political structure of ancient Greece was decentralized. City-states were population centers, and their surrounding areas were organized into a single political unit. Each city-state functioned as its own independent government. Greece was made up of over a thousand city-states, with no central ruler over them all.
The Delian League was created in response to the Persian Wars. Being decentralized put the Greek city-states at a huge risk when attacked by foreign powers; it was difficult to amass large armies, especially in the smaller city-states.
Sparta was the only city-state that could match the power and influence of Athens. Sparta and its allies, mostly members of the Delian League, grew upset at Athens' power. Together, they moved to challenge the city-state.
Vocabulary. The Peloponnesian War was a war fought in ancient Greece between Athens and Sparta—the two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece at the time (431 to 405 B.C.E.). This war shifted power from Athens to Sparta, making Sparta the most powerful city-state in the region. The war featured two periods of combat separated by ...
The Spartan army began by raiding lands within an Athenian allied territory, particularly a region near Athens called Attica. The Athenians had built walls stretching from their seaport to the city of Athens.
After years of open warfare, Sparta offered peace and Athens accepted. The agreement was made official with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. The treaty stated that Athens and Sparta would defend each other for the next 50 years. However, the treaty only lasted six.
Instead, the Athenians used their navy to deliver troops into the Spartan territory to conduct raids on settlements.
It would be another decade of warfare before the Spartan general Lysander defeated the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami. This defeat led to Athenian surrender. As a result, the Peloponnesian War was concluded. Simultaneous to the end of this conflict came the end of the golden age of ancient Greece.
One of Sparta’s allies, Corinth , had directly engaged the Athenian army. As a Spartan ally, Corinth resumed hostilities toward Athens when Athens threatened Corinth ’s interests in the region surrounding Corcyra. This eventually drew Sparta into the conflict.
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The economic costs of the war were felt all across Greece; poverty became widespread in the Peloponnese, while Athens was completely devastated, and never regained its pre-war prosperity. The war also wrought subtler changes to Greek society; the conflict between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta, each of which supported friendly political factions within other states , made war a common occurrence in the Greek world.
Friction between Athens and the Peloponnesian states, including Sparta, began early in the Pentecontaetia. In the wake of the departure of the Persians from Greece, Sparta sent ambassadors to persuade Athens not to reconstruct their walls (without the walls, Athens would have been defenseless against a land attack and subject to Spartan control), but was rebuffed. According to Thucydides, although the Spartans took no action at this time, they "secretly felt aggrieved". Conflict between the states flared up again in 465 BC, when a helot revolt broke out in Sparta. The Spartans summoned forces from all of their allies, including Athens, to help them suppress the revolt. Athens sent out a sizable contingent (4,000 hoplites ), but upon its arrival, this force was dismissed by the Spartans, while those of all the other allies were permitted to remain. According to Thucydides, the Spartans acted in this way out of fear that the Athenians would switch sides and support the helots; the offended Athenians repudiated their alliance with Sparta. When the rebellious helots were finally forced to surrender and permitted to evacuate the state, the Athenians settled them at the strategic city of Naupaktos on the Gulf of Corinth.
After defeating the Second Persian invasion of Greece in the year 480 BC, Athens led the coalition of Greek city-states that continued the Greco-Persian Wars with attacks on Persian territories in the Aegean and Ionia. What then ensued was a period, referred to as the Pentecontaetia (the name given by Thucydides), in which Athens increasingly became in fact an empire, carrying out an aggressive war against Persia and increasingly dominating other city-states. Athens proceeded to bring under its control all of Greece except for Sparta and its allies, ushering in a period which is known to history as the Athenian Empire. By the middle of the century, the Persians had been driven from the Aegean and forced to cede control of a vast range of territories to Athens. At the same time, Athens greatly increased its own power; a number of its formerly independent allies were reduced, over the course of the century, to the status of tribute-paying subject states of the Delian League. This tribute was used to support a powerful fleet and, after the middle of the century, to fund massive public works programs in Athens, causing resentment.
Orange: Athenian Empire and Allies; Green: Spartan Confederacy. Persia regains control over Ionia. unknown number of civilian casualties. The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought between the Delian League, led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta.
Sicily and the Peloponnesian War. The Athenian force consisted of over 100 ships and some 5,000 infantry and light-armored troops. Cavalry was limited to about 30 horses, which proved to be no match for the large and highly trained Syracusan cavalry.
With the death of Cleon and Brasidas, zealous war hawks for both nations, the Peace of Nicias was able to last for some six years. However, it was a time of constant skirmishing in and around the Peloponnese. While the Spartans refrained from action themselves, some of their allies began to talk of revolt.
The Spartans, whose intervention would have been the trigger for a massive war to determine the fate of the empire, called a congress of their allies to discuss the possibility of war with Athens. Sparta's powerful ally Corinth was notably opposed to intervention, and the congress voted against war with Athens.
One of the things that contributed to Athens’ strength was the Delian League, which was a naval alliance headquartered on the island of Delos that began to help insure that the Persian Wars were truly over. As this alliance grew, so did the strength of the Athenian city-state, largely because Athens started to use the League for its own gains.
Over the course of the war, there are three distinct phases – the Archidamian War, which took place from 431-421 BC, the Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, which took place from 420-413 BC, and the Ionian War, which took place from 412-404 BC.
Thucydides said that the Spartans were concerned that the Athenians would switch sides and assist the Helots instead. Eventually, the Helots did surrender. The Athenians set them up in their own colony in the city of Naupactus in the Gulf of Corinth.
Thucydides wrote that the Spartans were, “secretly aggrieved” at this decision because they felt that the Athenians were distancing themselves from them.
Even though Athens and Sparta formed an alliance in order to fight the Persians in the Greco-Persian Wars, the two city-states didn’t remain on such friendly terms. Once they succeeded in preventing Persian conquest, the two city-states did maintain their alliance. However, relations between them became strained because both city-states were ...
When Athens moved the Delian League Treasury from the island of Delos to Athens, this was the last straw for the Spartans, who decided that the Athenians were in violation of the Thirty Years Peace that was between them. Historians agree that the war officially began in 431 BC when Sparta invaded the ancient region of Attica, of which Athens was included.
Sparta Heads the Peloponnesian League. While Athens was busy forming a naval alliance, Sparta, the city-state with the strongest army, created an alliance of its own with several independent city-states in the Peloponnese. The Peloponnesian League that ensued included Thebes, Corinth, and Sparta. During this time, tensions between Sparta ...
The Peloponnesian War marked a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favoring Sparta, and also ushered in a period of regional decline that signaled the end of what is considered the Golden Age of Ancient Greece.
The Peloponnesian War by Nigel Bagnall, published by St Martins Press, 2004.
In 433 B.C. the tension continued to build and Corcyra officially sought Athens’ support by arguing that conflict with Sparta was inevitable and Athens required an alliance with Corcyra to defend itself. The Athenian government debated the suggestion, but its leader Pericles suggested a defensive alliance with Corcya, sending a small number of ships to protect it against Corinthian forces.
It was only a matter of time before the two powerful leagues collided. The Great Peloponnesian War , also called the First Peloponnesian War, was the first major scuffle between them. It became a 15-year conflict between Athens and Sparta ...
The balance in power in Greece was shifted when Athens was absorbed into the Spartan Empire. It continued to exist under a series of tyrants and then a democracy. Athens lost its dominance in the region to Sparta until both were conquered less than a century later and made part of the kingdom of Macedon.
All forces met at the Battle of Sybota, in which Corinth, with no support from Sparta, attacked and then retreated at the sight of Athenian ships. Athens, convinced it was about to enter war with Corinth, strengthened its military hold on its various territories in the region to prepare.
united several Greek city-states in a military alliance under Athens, ostensibly to guard against revenge attacks from the Persian Empire. In reality, the league also granted increased power and prestige to Athens. The Spartans, meanwhile, were part of the Peloponnesian League (550 ...