Why Did Athens Raid Peloponnesian War

The Greek victory against Persia was largely due to efforts of mainly Athens but also Sparta as well. Athens was responsible for the major turning points of the Persian invasions, while Sparta was responsible for the deciding battle. Miltiades, with his skilful battle strategies, defeated the Persians during their second invasion at Marathon, which gave Athens a confidence boost on their military. During the third invasion, when the Athenians were evacuated to Salamis, Themistocles had devised a plan to trick the Persians which had resulted in Persian army without a supply line. Sparta?s importance had revealed during their sacrifice at Thermopylae and at Plataea, where they provided the most effective part of the army.

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.

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.

In his ambitions to conquer Sicily and then move on to Italy and the Peloponnesus, he also shows this thirst.12 The Athenians recognized Alcibiades's brilliance and ruthlessness so they elected Nicias as a general to "[temper] his rashness."13 Alcibiades resorted to violence to gain glory, Pericles, on the other hand, attempted to prolong peace and settle matters with diplomacy. He once tried to persuade the cities to send delegates to meet in Athens to discuss restorations of temples destroyed during the war with Persia, but nothing came of his plan because of Spartan opposition.14 He even went so far as to bribe the chief magistrates of Sparta to buy time to prepare for war, which he knew was inevitable.15

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

The Athenian Empire was a more voluntary alliance of city-states that were impressed by the Athenian Navy's prowess in the Persian War and were willing to pay for its protection. Athens used this revenue to further improve its navy, as well as improve its own infrastructure and defenses. Included in these improvements was the construction of large walls around the city and down to the port at Piraeus, home of the Athenian Navy.

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

Athens had a geographic advantage because they were very superior. The Athens lived by the Sea which was an advantage because they had an excellent trading system. Even though the mountains protected Sparta it also caused trading problems, the Spartans had no way to get around the massive mountains to trade with people. Athens was located on the coast and included a harbor. The Athenians had an advantage and a disadvantage for them because they had easy water access but during the time of

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.

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

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

behind their walls and did not directly meet the Spartans while they despoiled Attica, it’s is fair to say that the Spartans had gotten into the minds of the Athenians. This simple strategy of attack risked very little but gained so much. In the second year of the war, Athens was struck by a terrible plague. Going to close to Athens exposed the Spartans to contracting the disease. If that happened it is fair to say that the end of Sparta campaign would have been inevitable.

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

As a result, given the above circumstances, it could be argued that Athens was in a better position when it came to intelligence and information of the DIME analysis because they knew they couldn’t defeat the Spartans ground force so they fortified their city and port with large walls, furthermore, using their large navy to attack the Spartan forces from the sea on multiple