Peloponnesian War Strategy

The Peloponnesian War pitted the Athenians against the Spartans. The Peloponnesians’ were an alliance of city-states controlled by Sparta. These two powerful city-states became locked in a struggle for dominance of the eastern Mediterranean area. The roots of the conflict and in particular this expedition is highly complex. As Thucydides says in his history of the war, the underlying cause was Spartan fear of Athens' expansive power. But, the triggering event was Athens' aggressive behavior towards Corinth, an ally of Sparta.

After the conclusion of the Persian Wars (492-479BC) with Athens being the true victor, and before the Peloponnesian War, a period of prosperity covered Athens, and they needed to devise new ways to protect themselves and expand their wealth, and how this would affect their relations with allies.

The Peloponnesian war was fought between the two city states in ancient Greece, being Athens and Sparta. These two cities had alliances that, between them, included close to every Greek city-state. The Peloponnesian war was inevitable because Athens was too hungry for power, and tried to take total control of Greece. Athens’s growth in military and economic power led to the beginning of a bloody war.

The city state of Syracuse in Sicily was allied with Sparta and when they attacked a tribe called the Leontini, Cleon chose to help fight back. He chose to fight against Syracuse for the reason that he wanted to weaken the Spartans because their grain supply came from Syracuse. The Spartans used Cleon’s over-aggressiveness against him, by setting up a Spartan colony named Heraclea right near Athens. This forced Athens to make a decision of sending its troops to Syracuse and getting attacked in Athens, or not attacking Syracuse altogether. This goes back to environmental determinism again, because generals such as Brasidas of Sparta was able to come up with this plan, because the Spartans had a growing and strong enough colony that they did not need to focus on hunting and gathering and could focus on military matters. Focusing on military matters helped the Spartans again when the Athenians attacked the city state Boetia. This was important for the Athenians, because Boetia was a short distance away from them and did not want to get attacked, as well as they needed morale boost because they were losing the war, however the Spartans outsmarted them. When the Athenians were attacking and the fight seemed to be over, Boetia brought out their two hidden lines of cavalrymen and encircled the Athenians, and then

The battle between Sparta's well-built army and Athens's exemplary navy was like a battle between a bear and a shark. If the bear goes into the water, the shark wins. However, if the shark enters land, the bear will kill it. The Athenian general and military genius Pericles knew this. Therefore, he devised a strategy that was based on the strength of his navy and the Spartan inability to battle him on sea; he devised a strategy of attrition where they would sit at home, and outlast the enemy (Kagan 52). In his mind, if Athens disregarded the Spartan land attacks, and instead survived off sea trade from their allies, the enemy would be unable to cause much damage. He wanted to drain them out psychologically, to get them to surrender from attacking the Athenian Empire (Kagan 52). One of the most important steps in doing this was to connect Athens to its navy city and their port. They did this by building walls that connected them, later known as the Long Walls (Kagan 9). Back then, walls were almost impregnable to attacks, and were one of the best defenses in the ancient world. Therefore, the addition of the Long Walls made both Athens and the port extremely hard to crack; they were ready for any Spartan land attack that would come their way. When the war finally started and the Spartans did come, they found that their attacks were not going to work. Their strategy of totally crushing the Athenian Empire and fighting a battle of annihilation was countered by the

"Just before the Peloponnesian War began, Pericles of Athens and King Archidamus of Sparta provided net assessments of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the two sides. Evaluate their projections."

The army was responsible for maintaining the reputation of Sparta, arguably the most important role it played. Knows as the best warriors of the Peloponnese the Spartans used their strong military tactics in order to conquer neighbouring lands in order to further expand Sparta and gain larger areas of fertile land. Sparta lead the untied Peloponnese army and was greatly feared throughout the Mediterranean due to their title as the greatest army throughout Greece. This title in itself made the thought and task of attacking or declaring war on the spartiates a feared happening, further defending them from attacks dismissed as useless and never carried out by neighbouring states. The army was the main defence of Sparta keeping the citizens safe and

The different geographic location of Athens and Sparta had a great impact on their military strategy and technologies. Athens was close to the sea, therefore it expanded by conquering nearby islands. This necessitated the construction of ships, which was expensive and required a lot of wood material and cheap labor. Both of those were supplied by Athens' allies; wood was purchased with paid tributes and labor came from conquered slaves (Pomeroy, p.22). Sparta was situated far inland on the Laconian plain and had no access to sea. It directed its military expansion towards the neighboring poleis and relied mostly on its standing army. In return, its allies were expected to provide military support to the Spartan army in an effort to appropriate even more land on the Peloponnesian peninsula.

It is remarkable how timeless the Speech of Archidamus is. One could easily imagine the Spartan King were speaking to a modern occupied territory, itching for a revolt. King Archidamus urges the Spartans to head caution when entering war with Athens. He has “seen too many wars” [pg 25, 80] The battles he has witnessed in his lifetime have swayed him of any naive fascination with war. He has learned that violence begets violence, so one should only enter a battle they are prepared to win. Archidamus explains that Athens is stronger in terms of wealth, military might and political power. If the Spartans take the offensive route under these circumstances, they will surely loose both in combat and in terms of public relations. [pg 26, 81] Furthermore, Archidamus explains later that Athens had agreed to mediation, making any fight that Sparta were to start an unlawful preemptive attack. [pg 28, 85] The King assures his people he is not blind to their suffering, he just envisions better ways of ending it. [pg 26, 82] One of these methods would be to create partnerships with other nations who would lend armed forces and capital to the cause. To be done in tandem with confederation would be the accumulation of Sparta’s assets. Archidamus predicts that under these circumstances, Athens could be motivated to surrender. Under the very different circumstances from which he is speaking, the King pushes to avoid war at all costs citing that “complaints can be resolved, whether they are

In 431 B.C., even before the Peloponnesian War, Athens’ strength compared to other Greek polises was evident. Athens had islands, a powerful, a well-trained navy, and one, if not the best, general at the time: Pericles. Pericles says in his speech that, “war is inevitable,” but in fact the war was preventable (72). Even with all of the military strengths and assets that Athenians had afforded to them, they chose to be merciful to the Peloponnesians who were in no shape to go to war. They did not have the experience, money, manpower, or means to participate in a lengthy war and Pericles makes the citizens aware of this (70). Pericles is both modest and humble for choosing to point out these facts which in turn helps the Athenians see the potential

Once Sparta created his own rival league, the Peloponnesian League, feelings of jealousy accumulated towards the people of Athens and those feelings increased with competitive notions for power. Then when Athens attacked an ally of Sparta’s Peloponnesian League, Sparta decided

Sparta invaded Attica in 431 B.C, and easily gained control of the area surrounding Athens. Athens was most known for having a superior navy, while Sparta was known for having a superior army. This caused the war to drag on, because neither side could easily gain total domination of the land and sea. Sparta tended to use a strategy that involved annually invading Athenian territory, and destroying anything that helped the Athenians survive. Farms and other resources were targeted by the Spartans, but the effectiveness of this strategy is questionable. Athens was protected by its "Long Walls" that it had constructed earlier, so it was near impossible for the Spartan army to break through and ravage Athens. Not to mention, these walls ran all the way to the port supplying Athens. There was no way that Sparta could match the Athenian navy, so Athens could receive supplies from outside from their port. It soon became clear that the war would be won not from battle alone, but from time itself.

Ancient Greece consisted of many competing city-states; the most powerful consisted of democratic Athens and authoritarian Sparta. Each power made strategic decisions in different ways. The Athenians set and adjusted the course of the war through open debate and voting while the Spartan oligarchy under a king cast the final decisions. Additionally, each state’s economic nature affected their military character. The agrarian Sparta formed a dominant landpower while the seafaring Athenians cultivated a powerful navy. Further, though a small theater of operations compared to modern standards, time and space affected the course and nature of the war. Wind speed and sea conditions limited throughput along lines of communication. Rigid Hellenic phalanxes encouraged set-piece battles. Annual growing seasons restricted when soldiers were able to fight and how far they could

The Peloponnesian War was the turning point in Athenian hegemony in Ancient Greece. It was fought in 431 B.C. between the Delian League, led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. According to Thucydides, Athens’ imposing hegemonic status and its overwhelming quest for more power made the Peloponnesian War and Athens’s eventual fall from power inevitable. Despite the Athenians having a far more superior navy and being considerably wealthier, they were defeated and made subjects of Sparta. In this paper, I will discuss Thucydides’ and Socrates’ reasons for why

This essay examines the evolution of the Athens strategy from the beginning to the end of The Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 BCE). The Strategy will be evaluated in the context of the relationship of ends, means, and ways by testing the suitability, acceptability, feasibility, and risk.