Download The Peloponnesian War. The years that followed Greece`s victory

The Peloponnesian War.
The years that followed Greece's victory over Persia found Athens and
Sparta increasingly at odds with each other. In 446 B.C., leaders of the two
city-states agreed to a peace treaty that was to last for thirty years.
However, the ideas of the two city-states were so different that they were
unable to remain peaceful. The Thirty Years' Truce lasted only fourteen
years.
Athens wanted to spread the idea of democratic government. It rebuilt its
fortifications and increased the size of its navy. The citizens of Sparta and its
allies in the Peloponnesian League (Peloponnesos is the main area south of
mainland Greece) watched the activities of Athens with fear.
In 433 B.C., an argument broke out between the city-states of Corcyra and
Corinth. Athens sent help to Corcyra, while at the same time Corinth asked
Sparta to join its side of the fight.
Sparta did not want to break the treaty, so Sparta asked Athens to suspend
a decree that kept one member of the Peloponnesian League from trading
with Athens. When Athens refused, Sparta sent a warning: "Sparta wants
peace. Peace is still possible if you will give the Greeks their freedom."
Perikles, one of the most influential politicians in the history of Athens,
convinced the Athenians that they were superior because of their navy. In
spite of the treaty, the Athenians voted for war.
When Sparta invaded Athenian territory, Perikles brought the citizens of
Athens from the country into the city where they would be safe behind the
walls. He told his fellow citizens not to expand their territory during wartime,
and he convinced them that as long as they had a navy they could import all
the food they needed.
In 432 B.C., plague broke out in Athens. With so many people crowded into
the small area within the walls, the plague spread quickly. By the time the
plague finally disappeared, Athens had lost more than one third of its
population, including the statesman Perikles.
In 422 B.C., two aggressive generals, the Athenian Kleon and the Spartan
Brasidas, were killed, and their two cities signed another peace treaty. For
six and a half years, neither Athens nor Sparta invaded the other's territory.
but they were not at peace. A young Athenian aristocrat named Alkibiades
became convinced that Athens and Sparta could never be at peace.
Alkibiades wanted to conquer more territory and extend Athens' power to
include land in the western Mediterranean Sea. He persuaded the Athenians
to send an expedition to fight against Syracuse in Sicily.
One hundred thirty-four ships and twenty-seven thousand men set out from
Piraeus, the port city of Athens. Almost the entire population of Athens went
to see them off. This journey was to cover the farthest distance that the
Athenian fleet had ever sailed. The expedition, however, had troubles from
the beginning. Athens could not persuade any other city-states to join its
effort. The people of Syracuse heard the Athenians were coming, and so
they prepared for war. Alkibiades and the other generals participating in the
expedition disagreed on tactics. Just after Alkibiades set sail for Sicily, a
scandal in which he was implicated came to light. The Athenians were
alarmed by the scandal. They reversed their decision to attack Syracuse,
and sent a ship to issue orders for Alkibiades to return to Athens to answer
questions. Alkibiades, however, knew the verdict would go against him, so
he turned traitor and fled to Sparta. Athens had lost one of its best generals.
In Sparta, as persuasive as ever, Alkibiades convinced the Spartans that
they should send infantry to help Syracuse and that they should capture and
fortify a key position near Athens. Meanwhile, the Syracusans prepared to
meet the Athenian fleet. They reinforced the prows of their ships so the
Athenian triremes could not crush them by ramming. They put hides on the
decks so that grappling hooks could not grip and snag their warships.
In this major battle of the Peloponnesian War, two hundred ships crammed
into a narrow harbor. Unable to fight in such an enclosed space, the
Athenian fleet was defeated. Athens had made the mistake of becoming too
ambitious, and lost two hundred ships and fifty-thousand men in two years.
The city-state, however, held out as a major power for nine more years.
Alkibiades eventually was asked to return to Athens. He was forgiven and
was reinstated as commander of the navy. But after a battle in which his
second in command lost many ships, he was relieved of his position, and
went into exile.
The final battle of the Peloponnesian War took place below the castle in
which Alkibiades lived. Alkibiades tried to warn the Athenians that the
Spartans would attack them. Unfortunately, however, he could not persuade
them to listen. The Spartans, in a single battle, ended the power of the
Athenian navy, and war that had begun in 431 B.C. finally ended twentyseven years later, in 404 B.C. The terms of the peace treaty dictated that
Athens give up all but twelve ships. Also, Athens had to tear down its
fortifications and let Sparta control its foreign policy.
Athens lost the Peloponnesian War because it had placed too much
confidence in its navy. Athens never did learn to fight Sparta on land
successfully. Sparta, however, fought Athens on land and learned to fight
Athens at sea.
But Athens did not lose everything. The city lived on. Its cultural and artistic
ideas, as well as its belief in democracy, spread, not only in Greece but also
throughout the rest of the world.
PHOTO: Many surviving reliefs depict the great battles between Athenians
and Spartans in the Peloponnesian War.
PHOTO: The French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) graphically depicted
the evils of the terrible plague that struck Athens during the Peloponnesian
War in this detail.
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by Carolyn Gard
Calliope. Nov/Dec94, Vol. 5 Issue 2, p25. 4p. 3 Black and White
Photographs.