Peloponnesian War

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The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC)
was an ancient Greek war fought by the
Delian League led by Athens against the
Peloponnesian League led by Sparta.
Historians have traditionally divided the
war into three phases. In the first phase,
the Archidamian War, Sparta launched
repeated invasions of Attica, while
Athens took advantage of its naval
supremacy to raid the coast of the
Peloponnese and attempt to suppress
signs of unrest in its empire. This period
of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with
the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That
treaty, however, was soon undermined by
renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In
415 BC, Athens dispatched a massive
expeditionary force to attack Syracuse,
Sicily; the attack failed disastrously, with
the destruction of the entire force in 413
BC. This ushered in the final phase of the
war, generally referred to either as the
Decelean War, or the Ionian War. In this
phase, Sparta, now receiving support
from the Achaemenid Empire, supported
rebellions in Athens's subject states in
the Aegean Sea and Ionia, undermining
Athens's empire, and, eventually,
depriving the city of naval supremacy.
The destruction of Athens's fleet in the
Battle of Aegospotami effectively ended
the war, and Athens surrendered in the
following year. Corinth and Thebes
demanded that Athens should be
destroyed and all its citizens should be
enslaved, but Sparta refused.
 Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian war alliances at 431 BC.

Orange: Athenian Empire and Allies; Green:
Spartan Confederacy

Date 431 – April 25, 404 BC

Location Mainland Greece, Asia Minor,

Sicily

Result
Peloponnesian League victory
 Thirty Tyrants installed in
Athens
Spartan hegemony

Territorial Dissolution of the Delian League;

changes Spartan hegemony over Athens
and its allies;
Persia regains control over Ionia.

Belligerents

Delian League (led by Peloponnesian League

Athens) (led by Sparta)
Supported by:
 Achaemenid Empire

Commanders and leaders

Pericles (died in 429 Archidamus II

BC) Brasidas †
Cleon † Lysander
Nicias  Alcibiades
Alcibiades  (in exile)
Casualties and losses
Demosthenes 

unknown unknown

The term "Peloponnesian War" was never

used by Thucydides, by far its major
historian: that the term is all but
universally used today is a reflection of
the Athens-centric sympathies of modern
historians. As prominent historian J. B.
Bury remarks, the Peloponnesians would
have considered it the "Attic War".[1]

The Peloponnesian War reshaped the

ancient Greek world. On the level of
international relations, Athens, the
strongest city-state in Greece prior to the
war's beginning, was reduced to a state
of near-complete subjection, while
Sparta became established as the
leading power of Greece. The economic
costs of the war were felt all across
Greece; poverty became widespread in
the Peloponnese, while Athens found
itself completely devastated, and never
regained its pre-war prosperity.[2][3] 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 civil
war a common occurrence in the Greek
world.
Ancient Greek warfare, meanwhile,
originally a limited and formalized form
of conflict, was transformed into an all-
out struggle between city-states,
complete with atrocities on a large scale.
Shattering religious and cultural taboos,
devastating vast swathes of countryside,
and destroying whole cities, the
Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic
end to the fifth century BC and the golden
age of Greece.[4]

The Peloponnesian War was soon

followed by the Corinthian War (394-386
BC), which, although it ended
inconclusively, helped Athens regain a
little of its former greatness.
Prelude

Fragment of the Athenian Tribute List, 425-424 BC.

As the preeminent Athenian historian,

Thucydides, wrote in his influential
History of the Peloponnesian War, "The
growth of the power of Athens, and the
alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon,
made war inevitable."[5] Indeed, the nearly
fifty years of Greek history that preceded
the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War
had been marked by the development of
Athens as a major power in the
Mediterranean world. Its empire began
as a small group of city-states, called the
Delian League—from the island of Delos,
on which they kept their treasury—that
came together to ensure that the Greco-
Persian Wars were truly over. 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,[6]
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.[7]

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 attempted to
prevent the reconstruction of the walls of
Athens (without the walls, Athens would
have been defenseless against a land
attack and subject to Spartan control),
but was rebuffed.[8] According to
Thucydides, although the Spartans took
no action at this time, they "secretly felt
aggrieved".[9] 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.[10] 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.[11]

In 459 BC, Athens took advantage of a

war between its neighbors Megara and
Corinth, both Spartan allies, to conclude
an alliance with Megara, giving the
Athenians a critical foothold on the
Isthmus of Corinth. A fifteen-year
conflict, commonly known as the First
Peloponnesian War, ensued, in which
Athens fought intermittently against
Sparta, Corinth, Aegina, and a number of
other states. For a time during this
conflict, Athens controlled not only
Megara but also Boeotia; at its end,
however, in the face of a massive
Spartan invasion of Attica, the Athenians
ceded the lands they had won on the
Greek mainland, and Athens and Sparta
recognized each other's right to control
their respective alliance systems.[12] The
war was officially ended by the Thirty
Years' Peace, signed in the winter of
446/5 BC.[13]

Breakdown of the peace

 

The Delian League in 431 BC

The Thirty Years' Peace was first tested

in 440 BC, when Athens's powerful ally
Samos rebelled from its alliance with
Athens. The rebels quickly secured the
support of a Persian satrap, and Athens
found itself facing the prospect of revolts
throughout the empire. 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. The Athenians
crushed the revolt, and peace was
maintained.[14]

The more immediate events that led to

war involved Athens and Corinth. After
suffering a defeat at the hands of their
colony of Corcyra, a sea power that was
not allied to either Sparta or Athens,
Corinth began to build an allied naval
force. Alarmed, Corcyra sought an
alliance with Athens, which after debate
and input from both Corcyra and Corinth,
decided to swear a defensive alliance
with Corcyra. At the Battle of Sybota, a
small contingent of Athenian ships
played a critical role in preventing a
Corinthian fleet from capturing Corcyra.
In order to uphold the Thirty Years'
Peace, however, the Athenians were
instructed not to intervene in the battle
unless it was clear that Corinth was
going to press onward to invade Corcyra.
However, the Athenian warships
participated in the battle nevertheless,
and the arrival of additional Athenian
triremes was enough to dissuade the
Corinthians from exploiting their victory,
thus sparing much of the routed
Corcyrean and Athenian fleet.[15]
Following this, Athens instructed
Potidaea in the peninsula of Chalkidiki, a
tributary ally of Athens but a colony of
Corinth, to tear down its walls, send
hostages to Athens, dismiss the
Corinthian magistrates from office, and
refuse the magistrates that the city
would send in the future.[16] The
Corinthians, outraged by these actions,
encouraged Potidaea to revolt and
assured them that they would ally with
them should they revolt from Athens.
During the subsequent Battle of
Potidaea, the Corinthians unofficially
aided Potidaea by sneaking contingents
of men into the besieged city to help
defend it. This was a direct violation of
the Thirty Years' Peace, which had
(among other things) stipulated that the
Delian League and the Peloponnesian
League would respect each other's
autonomy and internal affairs.

Battle of Potidaea (432 BC): Athenians against

Corinthians. Scene of Socrates saving Alcibiades.
18th century engraving.

A further source of provocation was an

Athenian decree, issued in 433/2 BC,
imposing stringent trade sanctions on
Megarian citizens (once more a Spartan
ally after the conclusion of the First
Peloponnesian War). It was alleged that
the Megarians had desecrated the Hiera
Orgas. These sanctions, known as the
Megarian decree, were largely ignored by
Thucydides, but some modern economic
historians have noted that forbidding
Megara to trade with the prosperous
Athenian empire would have been
disastrous for the Megarans, and have
accordingly considered the decree to be
a contributing factor in bringing about
the war.[17] Historians that attribute
responsibility for the war to Athens cite
this event as the main cause for
blame.[18]

At the request of the Corinthians, the

Spartans summoned members of the
Peloponnesian League to Sparta in 432
BC, especially those who had grievances
with Athens to make their complaints to
the Spartan assembly. This debate was
attended by members of the league and
an uninvited delegation from Athens,
which also asked to speak, and became
the scene of a debate between the
Athenians and the Corinthians.
Thucydides reports that the Corinthians
condemned Sparta's inactivity up to that
point, warning the Spartans that if they
continued to remain passive while the
Athenians were energetically active, they
would soon find themselves outflanked
and without allies.[19] The Athenians, in
response, reminded the Spartans of their
record of military success and opposition
to Persia, and warned them of the
dangers of confronting such a powerful
state, ultimately encouraging Sparta to
seek arbitration as provided by the Thirty
Years' Peace.[20] Undeterred, a majority of
the Spartan assembly voted to declare
that the Athenians had broken the peace,
essentially declaring war.[21]

The "Archidamian War"

(431-421 BC)
The walls surrounding Athens

Sparta and its allies, with the exception

of Corinth, were almost exclusively land-
based powers, able to summon large
land armies which were very nearly
unbeatable (thanks to the legendary
Spartan forces). The Athenian Empire,
although based in the peninsula of Attica,
spread out across the islands of the
Aegean Sea; Athens drew its immense
wealth from tribute paid from these
islands. Athens maintained its empire
through naval power. Thus, the two
powers were relatively unable to fight
decisive battles.

The Spartan strategy during the first war,

known as the Archidamian War (431–
421 BC) after Sparta's king Archidamus
II, was to invade the land surrounding
Athens. While this invasion deprived
Athenians of the productive land around
their city, Athens itself was able to
maintain access to the sea, and did not
suffer much. Many of the citizens of
Attica abandoned their farms and moved
inside the Long Walls, which connected
Athens to its port of Piraeus. At the end
of the first year of the war, Pericles gave
his famous Funeral Oration (431 BC).

The Spartans also occupied Attica for

periods of only three weeks at a time; in
the tradition of earlier hoplite warfare the
soldiers were expected to go home to
participate in the harvest. Moreover,
Spartan slaves, known as helots, needed
to be kept under control, and could not
be left unsupervised for long periods of
time. The longest Spartan invasion, in
430 BC, lasted just forty days.
Bust of Pericles.

The Athenian strategy was initially

guided by the strategos, or general,
Pericles, who advised the Athenians to
avoid open battle with the far more
numerous and better trained Spartan
hoplites, relying instead on the fleet. The
Athenian fleet, the most dominant in
Greece, went on the offensive, winning a
victory at Naupactus. In 430 BC an
outbreak of a plague hit Athens. The
plague ravaged the densely packed city,
and in the long run, was a significant
cause of its final defeat. The plague
wiped out over 30,000 citizens, sailors
and soldiers, including Pericles and his
sons. Roughly one-third to two-thirds of
the Athenian population died. Athenian
manpower was correspondingly
drastically reduced and even foreign
mercenaries refused to hire themselves
out to a city riddled with plague. The fear
of plague was so widespread that the
Spartan invasion of Attica was
abandoned, their troops being unwilling
to risk contact with the diseased enemy.
After the death of Pericles, the Athenians
turned somewhat against his
conservative, defensive strategy and to
the more aggressive strategy of bringing
the war to Sparta and its allies. Rising to
particular importance in Athenian
democracy at this time was Cleon, a
leader of the hawkish elements of the
Athenian democracy. Led militarily by a
clever new general Demosthenes (not to
be confused with the later Athenian
orator Demosthenes), the Athenians
managed some successes as they
continued their naval raids on the
Peloponnese. Athens stretched their
military activities into Boeotia and
Aetolia, quelled the Mytilenean revolt and
began fortifying posts around the
Peloponnese. One of these posts was
near Pylos on a tiny island called
Sphacteria, where the course of the first
war turned in Athens's favour. The post
off Pylos struck Sparta where it was
weakest: its dependence on the helots,
who tended the fields while its citizens
trained to become soldiers. The helots
made the Spartan system possible, but
now the post off Pylos began attracting
helot runaways. In addition, the fear of a
general revolt of helots emboldened by
the nearby Athenian presence drove the
Spartans to action. Demosthenes,
however, outmanoeuvred the Spartans in
the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and trapped
a group of Spartan soldiers on
Sphacteria as he waited for them to
surrender. Weeks later, though,
Demosthenes proved unable to finish off
the Spartans. After boasting that he
could put an end to the affair in the
Assembly, the inexperienced Cleon won a
great victory at the Battle of Sphacteria.
The Athenians captured 300 Spartan
hoplites. The hostages gave the
Athenians a bargaining chip.

After these battles, the Spartan general

Brasidas raised an army of allies and
helots and marched the length of Greece
to the Athenian colony of Amphipolis in
Thrace, which controlled several nearby
silver mines; their product supplied much
of the Athenian war fund. Thucydides
was dispatched with a force which
arrived too late to stop Brasidas
capturing Amphipolis; Thucydides was
exiled for this, and, as a result, had the
conversations with both sides of the war
which inspired him to record its history.
Both Brasidas and Cleon were killed in
Athenian efforts to retake Amphipolis
(see Battle of Amphipolis). The Spartans
and Athenians agreed to exchange the
hostages for the towns captured by
Brasidas, and signed a truce.

Peace of Nicias (421 BC)

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. They
were supported in this by Argos, a
powerful state within the Peloponnese
that had remained independent of
Lacedaemon. With the support of the
Athenians, the Argives succeeded in
forging a coalition of democratic states
within the Peloponnese, including the
powerful states of Mantinea and Elis.
Early Spartan attempts to break up the
coalition failed, and the leadership of the
Spartan king Agis was called into
question. Emboldened, the Argives and
their allies, with the support of a small
Athenian force under Alcibiades, moved
to seize the city of Tegea, near Sparta.

The Battle of Mantinea was the largest

land battle fought within Greece during
the Peloponnesian War. The
Lacedaemonians, with their neighbors
the Tegeans, faced the combined armies
of Argos, Athens, Mantinea, and Arcadia.
In the battle, the allied coalition scored
early successes, but failed to capitalize
on them, which allowed the Spartan elite
forces to defeat the forces opposite
them. The result was a complete victory
for the Spartans, which rescued their city
from the brink of strategic defeat. The
democratic alliance was broken up, and
most of its members were
reincorporated into the Peloponnesian
League. With its victory at Mantinea,
Sparta pulled itself back from the brink of
utter defeat, and re-established its
hegemony throughout the Peloponnese.

Sicilian Expedition (415–413

BC)
Destruction of the Athenian army at Syracuse.

In the 17th year of the war, word came to

Athens that one of their distant allies in
Sicily was under attack from Syracuse.
The people of Syracuse were ethnically
Dorian (as were the Spartans), while the
Athenians, and their ally in Sicilia, were
Ionian. The Athenians felt obliged to
assist their ally.
The Athenians did not act solely from
altruism: rallied on by Alcibiades, the
leader of the expedition, they held visions
of conquering all of Sicily. Syracuse, the
principal city of Sicily, was not much
smaller than Athens, and conquering all
of Sicily would have brought Athens an
immense amount of resources. In the
final stages of the preparations for
departure, the hermai (religious statues)
of Athens were mutilated by unknown
persons, and Alcibiades was charged
with religious crimes. Alcibiades
demanded that he be put on trial at once,
so that he might defend himself before
the expedition. The Athenians however
allowed Alcibiades to go on the
expedition without being tried (many
believed in order to better plot against
him). After arriving in Sicily, Alcibiades
was recalled to Athens for trial. Fearing
that he would be unjustly condemned,
Alcibiades defected to Sparta and Nicias
was placed in charge of the mission.
After his defection, Alcibiades claimed to
the Spartans that the Athenians planned
to use Sicily as a springboard for the
conquest of all of Italy and Carthage, and
to use the resources and soldiers from
these new conquests to conquer the
Peloponnese.
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. Upon landing in Sicily,
several cities immediately joined the
Athenian cause. Instead of attacking at
once, Nicias procrastinated and the
campaigning season of 415 BC ended
with Syracuse scarcely damaged. With
winter approaching, the Athenians were
then forced to withdraw into their
quarters, and they spent the winter
gathering allies and preparing to destroy
Syracuse. The delay allowed the
Syracusans to send for help from Sparta,
who sent their general Gylippus to Sicily
with reinforcements. Upon arriving, he
raised up a force from several Sicilian
cities, and went to the relief of Syracuse.
He took command of the Syracusan
troops, and in a series of battles defeated
the Athenian forces, and prevented them
from invading the city.

Nicias then sent word to Athens asking

for reinforcements. Demosthenes was
chosen and led another fleet to Sicily,
joining his forces with those of Nicias.
More battles ensued and again, the
Syracusans and their allies defeated the
Athenians. Demosthenes argued for a
retreat to Athens, but Nicias at first
refused. After additional setbacks, Nicias
seemed to agree to a retreat until a bad
omen, in the form of a lunar eclipse,
delayed any withdrawal. The delay was
costly and forced the Athenians into a
major sea battle in the Great Harbor of
Syracuse. The Athenians were thoroughly
defeated. Nicias and Demosthenes
marched their remaining forces inland in
search of friendly allies. The Syracusan
cavalry rode them down mercilessly,
eventually killing or enslaving all who
were left of the mighty Athenian fleet.

The Second War (413-404

BC)

The key actions of each phase

The Lacedaemonians were not content

with simply sending aid to Sicily; they
also resolved to take the war to the
Athenians. On the advice of Alcibiades,
they fortified Decelea, near Athens, and
prevented the Athenians from making
use of their land year round. The
fortification of Decelea prevented the
shipment of supplies overland to Athens,
and forced all supplies to be brought in
by sea at increased expense. Perhaps
worst of all, the nearby silver mines were
totally disrupted, with as many as 20,000
Athenian slaves freed by the Spartan
hoplites at Decelea. With the treasury
and emergency reserve fund of 1,000
talents dwindling away, the Athenians
were forced to demand even more tribute
from her subject allies, further increasing
tensions and the threat of further
rebellion within the Empire.

The Corinthians, the Spartans, and others

in the Peloponnesian League sent more
reinforcements to Syracuse, in the hopes
of driving off the Athenians; but instead
of withdrawing, the Athenians sent
another hundred ships and another 5,000
troops to Sicily. Under Gylippus, the
Syracusans and their allies were able to
decisively defeat the Athenians on land;
and Gylippus encouraged the Syracusans
to build a navy, which was able to defeat
the Athenian fleet when they attempted
to withdraw. The Athenian army,
attempting to withdraw overland to other,
more friendly Sicilian cities, was divided
and defeated; the entire Athenian fleet
was destroyed, and virtually the entire
Athenian army was sold off into slavery.

Following the defeat of the Athenians in

Sicily, it was widely believed that the end
of the Athenian Empire was at hand.
Their treasury was nearly empty, its
docks were depleted, and many of the
Athenian youth were dead or imprisoned
in a foreign land.

Athens recovers
The triumphal return of Alcibiades to Athens in 407
BC.

Following the destruction of the Sicilian

Expedition, Lacedaemon encouraged the
revolt of Athens's tributary allies, and
indeed, much of Ionia rose in revolt
against Athens. The Syracusans sent
their fleet to the Peloponnesians, and the
Persians decided to support the Spartans
with money and ships. Revolt and faction
threatened in Athens itself.

The Athenians managed to survive for

several reasons. First, their foes were
lacking in initiative. Corinth and Syracuse
were slow to bring their fleets into the
Aegean, and Sparta's other allies were
also slow to furnish troops or ships. The
Ionian states that rebelled expected
protection, and many rejoined the
Athenian side. The Persians were slow to
furnish promised funds and ships,
frustrating battle plans.

At the start of the war, the Athenians had

prudently put aside some money and 100
ships that were to be used only as a last
resort.

These ships were then released, and

served as the core of the Athenians' fleet
throughout the rest of the war. An
oligarchical revolution occurred in
Athens, in which a group of 400 seized
power. A peace with Sparta might have
been possible, but the Athenian fleet,
now based on the island of Samos,
refused to accept the change. In 411 BC
this fleet engaged the Spartans at the
Battle of Syme. The fleet appointed
Alcibiades their leader, and continued the
war in Athens's name. Their opposition
led to the reinstitution of a democratic
government in Athens within two years.
Encounter between Cyrus the Younger (left),
Achaemenid satrap of Asia Minor and son of Darius
II, and Spartan general Lysander (right), in Sardis.
The encounter was related by Xenophon.[22]
Francesco Antonio Grue (1618-1673).

Alcibiades, while condemned as a traitor,

still carried weight in Athens. He
prevented the Athenian fleet from
attacking Athens; instead, he helped
restore democracy by more subtle
pressure. He also persuaded the
Athenian fleet to attack the Spartans at
the battle of Cyzicus in 410. In the battle,
the Athenians obliterated the Spartan
fleet, and succeeded in re-establishing
the financial basis of the Athenian
Empire.

Between 410 and 406, Athens won a

continuous string of victories, and
eventually recovered large portions of its
empire. All of this was due, in no small
part, to Alcibiades.

Achaemenid support for Sparta

(414-404 BC)

From 414 BC, Darius II, ruler of the

Achaemenid Empire had started to
resent increasing Athenian power in the
Aegean and had his satrap Tissaphernes
enter into an alliance with Sparta against
Athens, which in 412 BC led to the
Persian reconquest of the greater part of
Ionia.[1] Tissaphernes also helped fund
the Peloponnesian fleet.[23][24]

Facing the resurgence of Athens, from

408 BC, Darius II decided to continue the
war against Athens and give stronger
support to the Spartans. He sent his son
Cyrus the Younger into Asia Minor as
satrap of Lydia, Phrygia Major and
Cappadocia, and general commander
(Karanos, κἀρανος) of the Persian
troops.[25] There, Cyrus allied with the
Spartan general Lysander. In him, Cyrus
found a man who was willing to help him
become king, just as Lysander himself
hoped to become absolute ruler of
Greece by the aid of the Persian prince.
Thus, Cyrus put all his means at the
disposal of Lysander in the
Peloponnesian War. When Cyrus was
recalled to Susa by his dying father
Darius, he gave Lysander the revenues
from all of his cities of Asia
Minor.[26][27][28]

Cyrus the Younger would later obtain the

support of the Spartans in return, after
having asked them "to show themselves
as good friend to him, as he had been to
them during their war against Athens",
when he led his own expedition to Susa
in 401 BC in order to topple his brother,
Artaxerxes II.[29]

Lysander triumphs, Athens

surrenders

Lysander outside the walls of Athens. 19th century

lithograph.
The Spartan general Lysander has the walls of

Athens demolished in 404 BC, as a result of the

Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War.

The faction hostile to Alcibiades

triumphed in Athens following a minor
Spartan victory by their skillful general
Lysander at the naval battle of Notium in
406 BC. Alcibiades was not re-elected
general by the Athenians and he exiled
himself from the city. He would never
again lead Athenians in battle. Athens
was then victorious at the naval battle of
Arginusae. The Spartan fleet under
Callicratidas lost 70 ships and the
Athenians lost 25 ships. But, due to bad
weather, the Athenians were unable to
rescue their stranded crews or to finish
off the Spartan fleet. Despite their victory,
these failures caused outrage in Athens
and led to a controversial trial. The trial
resulted in the execution of six of
Athens's top naval commanders.
Athens's naval supremacy would now be
challenged without several of its most
able military leaders and a demoralized
navy.
In 404 BC, the Athenian General Alcibiades, exiled in
the Achaemenid Empire province of Hellespontine

Phrygia, was assassinated by Persian soldiers, who

may have been following the orders of Satrap
Pharnabazus II, at the instigation of Sparta's
Lysander.[30][31][32] La mort d'Alcibiade. Philippe
Chéry, 1791. Musée des Beaux-Ar ts, La Rochelle.

Unlike some of his predecessors the new

Spartan general, Lysander, was not a
member of the Spartan royal families and
was also formidable in naval strategy; he
was an artful diplomat, who had even
cultivated good personal relationships
with the Achaemenid prince Cyrus the
Younger, son of Emperor Darius II.
Seizing its opportunity, the Spartan fleet
sailed at once to the Dardanelles, the
source of Athens's grain. Threatened with
starvation, the Athenian fleet had no
choice but to follow. Through cunning
strategy, Lysander totally defeated the
Athenian fleet, in 405 BC, at the Battle of
Aegospotami, destroying 168 ships and
capturing some three or four thousand
Athenian sailors. Only twelve Athenian
ships escaped, and several of these
sailed to Cyprus, carrying the strategos
(general) Conon, who was anxious not to
face the judgment of the Assembly.
Facing starvation and disease from the
prolonged siege, Athens surrendered in
404 BC, and its allies soon surrendered
as well. The democrats at Samos, loyal
to the bitter last, held on slightly longer,
and were allowed to flee with their lives.
The surrender stripped Athens of its
walls, its fleet, and all of its overseas
possessions. Corinth and Thebes
demanded that Athens should be
destroyed and all its citizens should be
enslaved. However, the Spartans
announced their refusal to destroy a city
that had done a good service at a time of
greatest danger to Greece, and took
Athens into their own system. Athens
was "to have the same friends and
enemies" as Sparta.[33]

Aftermath
The overall effect of the war in Greece
proper was to replace the Athenian
Empire with a Spartan empire. After the
battle of Aegospotami, Sparta took over
the Athenian empire and kept all of its
tribute revenues for itself; Sparta's allies,
who had made greater sacrifices for the
war effort than had Sparta, got nothing.[1]

For a short period of time, Athens was

ruled by the "Thirty Tyrants", and
democracy was suspended. This was a
reactionary regime set up by Sparta. In
403 BC, the oligarchs were overthrown
and a democracy was restored by
Thrasybulus.

Although the power of Athens was

broken, it made something of a recovery
as a result of the Corinthian War and
continued to play an active role in Greek
politics. Sparta was later humbled by
Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC,
but the rivalry between Athens and
Sparta was brought to an end a few
decades later when Philip II of Macedon
conquered all of Greece except Sparta,
which was later subjugated by Philip's
son Alexander in 331 BC.[34]
References
1. Bury, J. B.; Meiggs, Russell (1956). A
history of Greece to the death of
Alexander the Great. London:
Macmillan. pp. 397, 540.
2. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 488.
3. Fine, The Ancient Greeks, 528–33.
4. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War,
Introduction xxiii–xxiv.
5. Thucydides, History of the
Peloponnesian War 1.23
6. Fine, The Ancient Greeks, 371
7. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 8
8. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
1.89–93
 9. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
1.92.1
10. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
1.102
11. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
1.103
12. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 16–
18
13. In the Hellenic calendar, years ended
at midsummer; as a result, some
events cannot be dated to a specific
year of the modern calendar.
14. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 23–
24
15. Thucydides, Book I, 49–50
16. Thucydides, History of the
Peloponnesian War 1.56
17. Fine, The Ancient Greeks, 454–56
18. Buckley Aspects of Greek History,
319–22
19. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
1.67–71
20. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
1.73–75
21. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 45.
22. Rollin, Charles (1851). The Ancient
History of the Egyptians,
Carthaginians, Assyrians,
Babylonians, Medes and Persians,
Grecians, and Macedonians . W.
Tegg and Company. p. 110.
23. "The winter following Tissaphernes
put Iasus in a state of defence, and
passing on to Miletus distributed a
month's pay to all the ships as he
had promised at Lacedaemon, at the
rate of an Attic drachma a day for
each man." in Perseus Under
Philologic: Thuc. 8.29.1 .
24. Harrison, Cynthia (2002).
NUMISMATIC PROBLEMS IN THE
ACHAEMENID WEST: THE UNDUE
MODERN INFLUENCE OF
'TISSAPHERNES' . pp. 301–319.
25. The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A
Dictionary of Arts, Sciences,
 Literature and General Information .
University Press. 1910. p. 708.
26. "He then assigned to Lysander all the
tribute which came in from his cities
and belonged to him personally, and
gave him also the balance he had on
hand; and, after reminding Lysander
how good a friend he was both to
the Lacedaemonian state and to him
personally, he set out on the journey
to his father." in Xenophon, Hellenica
2.1.14
27. Xenophon. Tr. H. G. Dakyns.
Anabasis I.I. Project Gutenberg .
28. Plutarch. Ed. by A.H. Clough.
"Lysander," Plutarch's Lives. 1996.
 Project Gutenberg
29. Brownson, Carlson L. (Carleton
Lewis) (1886). Xenophon; .
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard
University Press. pp. I-2–22.
30. Isocrates, Concerning the Team of
Horses, 16.40
31. H.T. Peck, Harpers Dictionary of
Classical Antiquities and W. Smith,
New Classical Dictionary of Greek
and Roman Biography, 39.
32. Plutarch, Alcibiades, 39 .
33. Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.2.20,404/3
34. Roisman, Joseph; Worthington, Ian
(2010-12-13). A Companion to
 Ancient Macedonia . John Wiley &
Sons. p. 201. ISBN 9781405179362.

Further reading
Classical authors

Eight bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre written by

Thucydides the sonne of Olorus. Interpreted with
faith and diligence immediately out of the Gr eeke by
Thomas Hobbes secretary to ye late Earle of
Deuonshire. (Houghton Library)
Deuonshire. (Houghton Library)

Aristophanes, Lysistrata
Diodorus Siculus
Herodotus, Histories sets the table of
events before Peloponnesian War that
deals with Greco-Persian Wars and the
formation of Classical Greece
Plutarch, known primarily for his
Parallel Lives and Moralia
Thucydides, History of the
Peloponnesian War
Xenophon, Hellenica

Modern authors

Bagnall, Nigel. The Peloponnesian War:

Athens, Sparta, And The Struggle For
Greece. New York: Thomas Dunne
Books, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-312-
34215-2).
Cawkwell, George. Thucydides and the
Peloponnesian War. London:
Routledge, 1997 (hardcover, ISBN 0-
415-16430-3; paperback, ISBN 0-415-
16552-0).
Hanson, Victor Davis. A War Like No
Other: How the Athenians and Spartans
Fought the Peloponnesian War. New
York: Random House, 2005 (hardcover,
ISBN 1-4000-6095-8); New York:
Random House, 2006 (paperback,
ISBN 0-8129-6970-7).
Heftner, Herbert. Der oligarchische
Umsturz des Jahres 411 v. Chr. und die
Herrschaft der Vierhundert in Athen:
Quellenkritische und historische
Untersuchungen. Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 2001 (ISBN 3-631-37970-
6).
Hutchinson, Godfrey. Attrition: Aspects
of Command in the Peloponnesian War.
Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Tempus
Publishing, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 1-
86227-323-5).
Kagan, Donald:
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1969 (hardcover, ISBN 0-
8014-0501-7); 1989 (paperback,
ISBN 0-8014-9556-3).
The Archidamian War. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1974
(hardcover, ISBN 0-8014-0889-X);
1990 (paperback, ISBN 0-8014-
9714-0).
The Peace of Nicias and the
Sicilian Expedition. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1981
(hardcover, ISBN 0-8014-1367-2);
1991 (paperback, ISBN 0-8014-
9940-2).
The Fall of the Athenian Empire.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1987 (hardcover, ISBN 0-
 8014-1935-2); 1991 (paperback,
ISBN 0-8014-9984-4).
The Peloponnesian War. New York:
Viking, 2003 (hardcover, ISBN 0-
670-03211-5); New York: Penguin,
2004 (paperback, ISBN 0-14-
200437-5); a one-volume version
of his earlier tetralogy.
Kallet, Lisa. Money and the Corrosion
of Power in Thucydides: The Sicilian
Expedition and its Aftermath. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001
(hardcover, ISBN 0-520-22984-3).
Kirshner, Jonathan. 2018. "Handle Him
with Care: The Importance of Getting
Thucydides Right." Security Studies.
 Krentz, Peter. The Thirty at Athens.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1982 (hardcover, ISBN 0-8014-1450-4).
The Landmark Thucydides: A
Comprehensive Guide to the
Peloponnesian War, edited by Robert B.
Strassler. New York: The Free Press,
1996 (hardcover, ISBN 0-684-82815-4);
1998 (paperback, ISBN 0-684-82790-
5).
Roberts, Jennifer T. The Plague of War:
Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for
Ancient Greece. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017 (hardcover,
ISBN 9780199996643

External links
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Britannica. 21 (11th ed.). 1911.
LibriVox: The History of the
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Audiobooks in the US – 20:57:23
hours, at least 603.7 MB)
Richard Crawley, The History of the
Peloponnesian War (Translation of
Thukydides's books – in Project
Gutenberg )
Peloponnesian war
Peloponnesian war on Lycurgus.org
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