Second Peloponnesian War Essay

The Peloponnesian War began when Sparta declared war on Athens. Two of the greatest city-states in Greece were Sparta and Athens. “Provide security and protection for their city” was what the Spartans thought their military society. Sparta boys were trained to be disciplined and obedient soldiers. Most men in Athen became farmers or skilled craftsmen.Unlike Sparta, Athenian women had less rights than them. Athens had a powerful navy. Sparta had a strong army. Athens was a leader of a powerful alliance of Greek city-states after the Persian Wars. In 415 BC, both the navy and army of Athens were damaged badly when they were defeated on the island of

The Peloponnesian War between the city-states of Athens and Sparta (and their respective allies) lasted from 431-404 BC. Conflicts between the two cites dated back further, however, with

The First Persian War took place at the Battle of the Marathon near Athens and it was known as one of the infamous battle between the Athenians and the Persians. In 501 B.C.E., a Greek tyrant named Aristogorus provoked the Persian rulers by instigating an uprising in Miletus and Ionia to revolt against the Persian Empire. In order to ward off the Persian Empire’s wrath, Aristogorus reached out to his compatriots on the mainland in Greece of Athens and Sparta. “Sparta refused, but Athens sent twenty ships-enough just to anger the Persians, but not to save Miletus.” Nevertheless, the Athenians conquered the Persian’s capital of Lydian in Sardis in order to steal the golds, but they accidentally ended up burning down the richest capital of Sardis.

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

The victory that sealed the deal for the Greeks was the Battle of Plataea. It took place the following spring after the Persian general Mardonius wintered in Thessaly with the Persian army. Hoplites from Athens and Pelopennesia combined to make the largest army in Greek history. A Spartan king, Pausanias, who routed the Persian army and killed their general, led them.

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.

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.

Throughout the Ancient Greek world, there have been many wars and standoffs. However, there has been only one which changed the course of Greek history forever; the Peloponnesian War. Caused by the growing tension between Athens and Sparta, it came and left, leaving only destruction in its wake. The defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War caused the downfall of Greece, and the end of the Classical Age.

Leonidas was the king of the Spartans during the time of the Persian War. The Spartans were the elite of the elite when it came to military strength. One of the greatest displays of his courage and honor was in his last battle, The Battle of Thermopylae. At the Battle of Thermopylae the Persians were trying to come down into Greece through the mountain pass Thermopylae. The odds were heavily against the Greeks with the Persians numbering in the hundreds of thousands and the Greeks only having a couple thousand Athenians and only 300 Spartan warriors under the command of King Leonidas. The Greeks stopped-up the pass with phalanxes and were slaughtering the Persians. The battle was looking like a major victory for the Greeks until the Persians discovered a back-road on a mountain pass and were about to surround the Greeks. King Leonidas told the remaining Athenian Greeks to flee back to Athens while he and his 300 hundred Spartans held off the Persians. The Spartan army caused massive damage to the Persian army by killing off thousands of them. All the Spartans died in that battle, along with Leonidas, but this weakened the Persians and allowed the

Moreover, in the Battle of Thermopylae, Persian forces led by Xerxes outnumbered the Greeks yet again. However, the militant Spartans took up arms and were able to defeat the large Persian army. Thermopylae allowed the Greek forces to come up with various tactics and strategies in order to defeat Persia. Next, the Battle of Salamis was a naval battle between several Greek city-states and Persia. This battle forms the turning point of the Greco-Persian Wars since it ultimately “saved Greece from being absorbed into the Persian Empire and ensured the emergence of Western civilization as a major force in the world.” The ending of the Battle of Salamis left the Persian army trapped in Greece, which paves the way for the final battle of the war, the Battle of Platea. In the battle, the “Greek army came and defeated the weakened Persians, the Persian Wars were over”. The mark of the ending of the Greco-Persian wars gave way to Athens arising from the ashes as the dominant and central city-state of Greece, which then provides political and cultural advancements during its golden age.

The Peloponnesian war (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens against the Peloponnesian led by Sparta. Thucydides famously claims that the war started “because the Spartans were afraid of further growth of Athenian power, seeing as they did have the greater part of Hellas was under the control of Athens”. The two main protagonists from opposing sides Lysander and Alcibiades had the most influential impact on the end of the war.

The exiting of Sparta from this alliance at the conclusion of the war gave way for Athens to rise as the power which controlled the alliance. This gave Athens control of much of the coast, and allowed them to control and build up great commercial power. This would lead to the creation of the Athenian Empire. Athens would hold power until war breaks out between them and Sparta. Athens would eventually fall to Sparta with the defeat of her navy at

In early fifth century BC Greece, the Greeks consistently suffered from the threat of being conquered by the Persian Empire. Between the years 500-479 BC, the Greeks and the Persians fought two wars. Although the Persian power vastly surpassed the Greeks, the Greeks unexpectedly triumphed. In this Goliath versus David scenario, the Greeks as the underdog, defeated the Persians due to their heroic action, divine support, and Greek unity. The threat of the Persian Empire's expansion into Greece and the imminent possibility that they would lose their freedom and become subservient to the Persians, so horrified the Greeks that they united together and risked their lives in order to preserve the one thing they all shared in common, their

The Persians wanted to conquer the Greeks after the Greeks were allies to Aristogoras. Darius, the king of Persia, started to send agents to determine any potential allies in the Greek city-states. They found Argos and supplied the with men and money to get the job done. They failed as Spartans sliced and diced every soldier, as shown in the movie “300.” Spartans always came out on top due to their aggressive and “perfect” military. Athens had their entire fleet destroyed and were controlled by Sparta from there on

The Peloponnesian War changed Greece and nothing was the same after the war. Athens was never to be as powerful again. As a result of the war, the Athenian Empire was never the same again because of the change in the balance of power in the Greek world. This greatly alarmed Sparta and its allies. The aggressive policies of Athens did not de-escalate the situation whilst the ambitions of the city-state certainly provoked the Spartans. Increasingly, the Spartans became very nervous about the growing naval and commercial power of Athens.