PELOPONNESIAN WAR
BASICS
Fought between Athens and Sparta
Occurred 27 years after the Persian Wars
PRE-WAR ATHENS
 Major power after the defeat of the Persians
 Ruler = Pericles
 Rebuilt Athens
 Helped usher in a golden age
DELIAN LEAGUE
 Athens formed an alliance with other city -states
 Purpose = protect Greece from future invasions
 Athens’ role = provide naval & land forces in the case of an
invasion
 Initial successes:
 Expelled the remaining Persians from Greece
 Helped expand trade
 Result = Athens gained a lot of power & dominated smaller
city -states
 They also spent a lot of the league’s money on themselves
PRE-WAR SPARTA
 Belonged to the already formed Peloponnesian League
 After the Persian Wars, Sparta focused on preparing to attack
a new enemy
 New enemy = Athens
 Why? Athens was growing very powerful & wealthy, which the
Spartans saw as a major threat
WAR BREAKS OUT
 Sparta declares war on Athens in hopes of weakening them
and increasing their own influence throughout Greece
 Athens hopes to weaken Sparta and continue to dominate
Greece
 Athens began to lose supporters from the Delian League & eventually
had to fight alone
WAR STRATEGY
 Sparta = launch a direct attack on Athens
 Athens = barricade everyone inside the city walls and attack
Spartans as they approach
ATTACK
 Sparta launched a full siege & destroyed the surrounding
farms to prevent food from entering Athens
 Sparta allied with their old enemy Persia (King Cyrus II)
 Duration = 2 years
 Athenians began dying from a quickly spreading plague
 Sick and without food, Athenians began asking for peace with Sparta
RESULTS
 Athens surrenders due to the horrible living conditions &
death inside the city
 Sparta wins the war & returns home
POST-WAR ATHENS
 Falls under the rule of bad leaders
 People began losing faith in democracy
 Golden age ends
POST-WAR SPARTA
 Left weak from the countless years of fighting (including the
Persian Wars)
 Lacked cultural, economic & political advancements it needed
to dominate over Greece
POST-WAR GREECE
 Almost all mainland city -states were left destroyed
 Jobless men became mercenaries
 Mercenaries = hired soldiers in foreign armies
 Greeks lost all power to govern themselves
 Taken over by the Macedonians, invaders from the north
 Macedonians will create a new, extremely large empire
What can be learned from
the Peloponnesian War?
What might have been
different if Athens had
won the war?