The Cause that Led to the Beginning of the Peloponnesian War
Ancient Greece during 4th Century BC was home to the city states of
Sparta and Athens, who during this time were the superpowers of the
region. The Peloponnesian war between these city states and their
respective allies lasted from 431-404 BC, although conflicts between
the two had dated back further. Major fighting in the war occurred
from 431-421 and ended in Athenian victory. However, renewed conflict
raged between 413 and 404 which resulted in Spartan victory.
The Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta evolved from a string
of events which I am going to look at to see if there was a single
cause for this war.
In 435 BC after a dispute over a colony called Epidamnus, which ended
in a naval battle victory for Corcyra, Corcyra declared itself
independent from Corinth.
Corinth responded to this by spending the next two years building a
fleet of 95 triremes to confront the rebelling Corcyra.
In fear Corcyra appealed to Athens for an urgent alliance and after
being swayed by Corcyrain diplomats the Athenians sent military aid.
A battle took place, with Corcyra and Athens fighting against Corinth
and Sparta, who was an ally of Corinth due to it being a source of
income.
Sparta saw the alliance Athens had formed with Corcyra as an act of
aggression against Sparta and her allies, the Peloponnesian league.
Also the Athenian alliance was seen to be a violation of the peace
treaty of 445 BC between Athens and Sparta. However Corcyra argued
against this due to it being a neutral colony and allowed to join
either side.
This alliance and the way it wa...
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... war it is
impossible to conclude that a one specific reason was to blame due to
there being many different factors involved. These include cultural
differences between Sparta and Athens, the growth of Athens Empire and
the disputes over Epidamnus and Potidaea.
However, in my pinion I think that the growth of Athens was on e of
the main underlying causes because its growth was one of Sparta’s
greatest fears and it made the war inevitable. This was also the
final judgement of Thucydides as he said “The Spartans voted that the
treaty had been broken and that war should be declared not so much
because they were influenced by the speeches of their allies as
because they were afraid of the further growth of Athenian power,
seeing, as they did, that already the greater part of Hellas was under
the control of Athens.”
The effects of this go far beyond the imbalance of military power between Athens and her tributaries, however. The Old Oligarch lists four main areas where the existence of the Empire benefits the common people of Athens, thus giving impetus to radicalize democracy and justify the expansion and strengthening of the Empire, and giving is reason to find an ongoing justification for its existence. The first is the building of the disproportionately large Athenian navy. Second is the overall flattening of the Athenian social pyramid, raising the relative status of the lowest classes of society, and exemplified by the way that Athens becomes a magnet for aliens to live and work, and gives unusual freedom and opportunity to slaves. Third is that the allies are compelled to have their court cases tried in Athenian courts, bringing both prestige and financial reward to Athens. Finally, the centralizing effect of these things, and the obvious maritime nature of the Empire, make Athens a trading center, m...
Thucydides sets down the development of the relationship between the power of Athens and Sparta in the Archeology. Athens emerges from the Persian Wars as the undisputed commercial superpower in Greece. Where Sparta is located in the fertile Peloponnesus, and is thus able to sustain itself on agriculture alone, making trade unnecessary and allowing it to maintain its own laws and customs for “more than four hundred years” (I.18.1), Athens’ infertile land forces it to turn to olive oil for revenue, and it consequently develops a flourishing trade economy even before the Darius set his sights on Greece. The Persian invasion itself makes a sea power out of Athens, allowing it to establish a Mediterranean empire, and export its culture and government to the rest of Greece (I.18.2, I.6.3). This serves to unify the scattered Ionian and Doric cities under the umbrella of the Hellenes culturally where the Spartan campaign to remove tyrants unifies it politically by giving Greeks relative freedom and subordinating it uniformly to the law, and the joint coalition against the Persians ultimately secured it militarily (I.
The Minoans are known as the first advanced civilization of all of Europe. This may be a strong reason why the Greece Age remained for such a long time. They created a great civilization on the Island of Crete. The second great civilization of the Greek Bronze Age was the Cycladic society. They created their society on the islands of the Aegean. They were considered a large contributor to the overall success of Bronze Age Greece. However, they were never as significantly important as the Minoan society...
Ancient Greece city-states, Athens and Sparta, were quite different from one another. They both had a different government, education, and female rights, to top it all off they also loathed one another.
Athens harsh treatment towards other weaker states served as an instigator for hatred and resentment. No one state was strong enough to defend themselves against Athens’ pressures, as it had a very fortified navy. As Athens grew stronger, it also grew harsher and unintentionally isolated itself from all other Greek states. I say unintentionally because they did it for their own benefit and because of their power,
When examining the causes for the Peloponnesian War, which was between 431-404 B.C., there are a number of causes that factored into the cause of this war. However, one of the most important causes to this war was largely due to the fact that the Spartans feared the growing power and success of Athens. The Spartans were “particularly alarmed at the growing power of Athens” (Cartwright, “Peloponnesian War”). During the Persian war in 479 BC, Athens grew fiercely strong with power with help of its many allies and continued with their no mercy attacks on Persian territories. When the Persians left Greece, Athens further enraged Sparta when they built large and tall walls around its empire in the event of an attack, which was mostly thought to be from Sparta if it happened.
In Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles commends the ergon of Athenian heroes, which has placed them in the realm of logos, while directing the Athenians to follow these ideals of logos. The maintenance and continued success of Athens' political establishment relies on the prevalence of polis, rationality and discourse over family, emotion and reckless action. However, the indiscriminate turns of fate and fortune, often place logos in opposition with the base, primal nature of ergon. Both Thucydides and Sophocles recognize that when logos conflicts with the unexpected ergon, the preservation of rationality and unanimity among the citizens of the polis depend on the leadership of a single honest leader. In the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides presents Pericles as a man of logos, whom Athens needs to achieve its full potential as an empire and later to rescue her from disaster. Likewise, Sophocles presents Theseus, in Oedipus Colonus, as the perfect successor of Pericles, who returns Athens to its former glory before the end of the war. In these two examples, we see that the dominance of logos over ergon within a polis lies in the ability and logos of the city’s current leader.
As once stated by Edmund Burke, “the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse”. In the year 416 BC, the small island of Milos, with all its inhabitants, was perturbed following an invasion by powerful Athenian forces, proving Burke’s theory to be true. In The History of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian invasion of Milos, as well as the great “Melian Dialogue” is recounted by Athenian general and historian, Thucydides. While the Athenian invasion ultimately turned deadly, historical context is imperative to understanding what provoked such a notable attack. In 416 BC, Athens, operating as an empire, led an invasion on Melos. The Peloponnesian War was fought predominately between the Delian League and the Peloponnesian league, led by
Farris, Dale. "Shutt, Timothy B.: A History of Ancient Sparta." Library Journal 15 May 2009: 45.
Athens was one of the largest Greek city states. (Stockton, 4). It was about one thousand square miles (Stockton, 4). Athens was founded in the 8th century BC (Muller). It was at first ruled by the college of archons. (Muller). After a term of one year, the archons became members of the Council of Elders (Muller). The people had a voice in the popular assembly, the Ekklesia (Muller). However, it did not have real power until 600 BC. By then, it was an established institution of Athens (Muller). It became the central policy making body in the 5th century. There were two main governmental bodies, the Assembly and the Council. (Acropolis). The Assembly was responsible for policy making. (Acropolis) The Council was responsible for administration and implementing the Assembly’s policies. Not everyone could participate in Athenian politics. Slaves, resident aliens, and women were excluded.
The Peloponnesian War and the Decline of Leadership in Athens Thucydides set out to narrate the events of what he believed would be a great war—one requiring great power amassed on both sides and great states to carry out. Greatness, for Thucydides, was measured most fundamentally in capital and military strength, but his history delves into almost every aspect of the war, including, quite prominently, its leaders. In Athens especially, leadership was vital to the war effort because the city’s leaders were chosen by its people and thus, both shaped Athens and reflected its character during their lifetimes. The leaders themselves, however, are vastly different in their abilities and their effects on the city. Thucydides featured both Pericles and Alcibiades prominently in his history, and each had a distinct place in the evolution of Athenian empire and the war it sparked between Athens and Sparta.
Ancient Greek tragedies and the Peloponnesian War were similar in one huge way. They both portrayed “hubris.” Athens was very hubris in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta because they thought they were going to win and sent out most of their army to defeat Sparta.
The Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) was a conflict between the Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta that resulted in the end of the Golden Age of Athens. The events of the war were catalogued by the ancient historian Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides’ writings showed the ancient Greek belief that there is a parallel between the city-state and the character of its citizens; in order for the city-state to be successful, its citizens must be virtuous. Thucydides did not believe that the true cause of the Peloponnesian War were the immediate policies of the Athenian Empire against the city-states in the Peloponnesian League but rather the fundamental differences in the character of the two city-states
The Trojan war is a very controversial topic on if it did happen, or if it didn’t happen. Some archaeologists believe that the Trojan war was more than one battle, in more than one location, some people believe it is all a myth. Because there is no sufficient evidence that the Iliad is true, I think that it happened, but not how it was described in The Iliad. With the finding of the believed to be the city of Troy, to the jewelry of Helen, I still believe that the battle of Troy didn’t happen the way Homer described.
In the year approximately 500 B.C., the Greek civilization came upon a time of peace. Because of the tranquil times, the civilization’s society had more time to focus on writing, math, astronomy, and artistic fields, as well as trade and metallurgy. Out of all the city-states of Greece, two excelled over all the rest, Sparta and Athens. Even though they were the most advanced and strong civilizations, they were bitter enemies. While Athens focused mainly on the people’s democracy and citizen rights, Sparta were ferocious and enslaved its original inhabitants, making them unable to leave