PELOPONNESIAN WAR BACKGROUND ARTICLES
Read the questions below before you read the following articles. Preview the articles before you
read them more carefully. Take notes to establish the general course of the war in your mind, but
don’t get bogged down with taking more notes than you need. Remember that you will have the
articles available to you as you work on your generalizations.
“The Peloponnesian War” Summary Article from The Ancient World by Thomas Africa
“The Peloponnesian War” from Warfare in the Classical World by John G. Warry
**************History on File Packet******Reader: Timelines and Maps************
1. Compare the claims of Athens and Sparta about their war aims with what you consider their
actual motivation to have been.
2. How was each society changed by the prolonged warfare?
3. What forces encouraged the "war machine" in Athens and Sparta?
4. What forces tended to favor peace?
5. What Athenian values were compromised by the war?
6. How did the war tend to promote class hostility in Greece?
7. Analyze the figure of Alcibiades. What was his appeal? His effect on the war?
What aspects of Athenian culture did he represent?
8. What role did Persia play in the war?
9. What role did the Athenian Empire play in the war?
10. Analyze the importance of each of the following. Consider:
When it happened and what stage of the war that was.
What information Thucydides presents and what his analysis is.
How each event shows the effects and progress of the war.
The Revolt at Mitylene
The Corcyrean Revolution
The Melian Dialogue
The Sicilian Expedition
Can you make a timeline of the Peloponnesian War?
VOCABULARY LIST PELOPONNESIAN WAR SUMMARY ARTICLE
By Thomas Africa
PAGE 150
151
152
hearsay
dubious
semblance
rationalistic
moral order
incurred
retribution
culminated
propaganda
pious
subordination
sphere of influence
infiltration
exploit
oligarchs
immunity
validity
oblique (attack)
domestic position
153
commercial rivalry
embargo
autonomy
ultimatum
envoys
congested
pestilence
demagogic
volatile
154
bellicosity
faction
156
party hack
ward
hegemony
ostracism
moral vertigo
reprieve
157
sacrilege
158
diviners
debacle
159
trierarchs
hoplites
abortive
opportunistic
160
zeugitai
satrapies
triremes
162
ascendency
power vacuum
hubris