Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Spartans and athens compare and contrast
Spartans and athens compare and contrast
Differences and similarities between athens and spartans
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Spartans and athens compare and contrast
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian war was the war between Athens and Sparta. So let’s set the scene before the war began. It was late 400 BCE when these all began. The city-state of Sparta is located on the Peloponnesian Peninsula. Athens is located in Northern Greece. Both Athens and Sparta were both Greek imperial power during the time. Athens was known to be elegant and had a great love for arts, architecture and literature. Athens had the strongest navy. Athenians were polar opposites of Spartans. Sparta unlike Athens was known to be rugged and had a very strong and powerful military. Spartans were trained to be soldiers starting at the ripe age of seven. The people of ancient Greece looked up to Sparta because Spartans were self-disciplined, courageous, and were physically fit. However, Sparta looked down on Athens, Spartans held the arts in contempt and hated individualism. Despite the two city-states problems they came together to fight Persia. Athens and Sparta both saw Persia as a threat so they defeated the city. Athens won the first Persian War and Sparta won the second one.
…show more content…
Athens began to feel more powerful after the Persian war and started the Delian League. The Delian league was the alliance between Athens and Many Greek City states. With the new sense of power the Delian league gave Athens they went to start a fight with the city of Corinth, ally of Sparta. This act is what caused the Peloponnesian war. After Athens caused conflict with Corinth, the people of Corinth went to their ally Sparta for help. Sparta went to help their ally Corinth by asking Athens to call of the conflict and leave Corinth alone. Athens declined this offer and instead went to war with
In the later cases of Corinth and Megara, it was Athens unwillingness to agree on independence that triggered the Peloponnesian War. In effect, I believe that Athens had helped to end a war, onto to start another whilst in pursuit of her personal desire for imperialism.
In conclusion, these two Greek city-states clearly differ among their governments, economies, and cultures. Given these differences, they would cause Athens and Sparta to have their disagreements from time to time. Although it seems like these cities would never get along, Sparta and Athens did unify together after the Persian
During the Persian War, Sparta and Athens worked together to defeat the Persians. The discipline and strength of Spartan Army helped saved Greece from invasion. Afterwards Sparta and Athens alliances were formed. Athenians had superior naval force and enforced the democratic rule in states allied to Athens. Neighboring allied states depended on the trade provided by Athens navy. In the same time Athens had established themselves as the head of the empire. (Lecture 7 notes). Sparta had superior land army and they destroyed Athens crops in order to have a hold on Athens and force them to surrender. The war lasted 10 years with neither side winning the war. At the end they agreed to a truce. A few years later, Athens tried to conquer Sicily, but the Sicilians defeated Athens. Athens lost much of its army and navy. The Spartans took advantage of this weakness and attacked Athens and cut of their trade routes and food supplies. Spartans won and Sparta became the most powerful city in
...an Empire were a direct result of the governments and laws put in place in these two poleis. From the sacrifice of 300 Spartans to the democratic command at Marathon, the differences between Athens and Sparta were shown even in battle. The united Greek forces finally defeated the Persians after the battle of Thermopylae, greatly thanks to the Athenian battle at Salamis, and the Spartan battle at ____. In a way, Sparta and Athens were opposites, sharing only the slightest of similarities. The Athenians focused on freedom and democracy, and the Spartans focused on war, training, and equality in every aspect in life aside form politics. These principals were hammered into the citizens of each polis, with the citizens from each polis believing his was the superior. Through these principals, the two distinct cultures of Athens and Sparta were created.
After the defeat, busy with defending their lands and putting down a revolution, Sparta sues for peace, which Athens rejects as they “kept grasping at more.”39 If the Athenian objective was to maintain her empire and conduct affairs in her national interest without interference, then Athens should have accepted the Spartan peace offer. Instead, they reject the offer, convinced by their recent success they can get more if they continue the war. The war continuing, Sparta is forced to change course in their strategy and free a number of Helots to join Brasidas for his expedition into Thrace and Chalcidice. As described before, Brasidas decisively defeats Cleon at Amphipolis and takes the strategic initiative away from Athens. This defeat will be a major reason for peace between Athens and Sparta, but a peace not as favorable as one after
The Delian League was an empire that included most of the island and coastal states around the northern and eastern shores of the Aegean Sea. As a result of this, Athens had a strong navy. Athens was also financially prepared for war, owning a large fund they had amassed from the regular tribute paid to them from their empire.
Both Sparta and Athens were Greek city-states. Sparta was a strict military ruled city-state where the people established themselves as a military power early. However Athens was more of a political city-state that was more involved with their economical stature than their military forces. Still changes from the Persian wars would change the powers of the city-state and somewhat unite them.
The roots of the Peloponnesian war can be traced long before 431 BCE, when it officially started. It can be traced back to as early as the Persian Wars, where the Athenians had found their home burned by the hands of the Persians. That disaster left the Athenians with no home and no sanctuary. Even though that was a defeated battle amidst a victorious war, they still had reason to believe that the Persians will come back for more. Apprehensive at the thought of having their city burned yet another time, the Athenians knew they had to do something. Naturally, they chose to get help. Gathering up the neighboring city-states around them, the Athenians formed the Delian League; an alliance working directly to defend the whole of Greece from Persian attacks (Kagan 8). In the beginning, this worked out well; everybody got their say on what went on in the league, and everybody was satisfied. However, the Athenians saw that if they were to take more power, the members of the league would not be strong enough to resist. Therefore, that was exactly what they did; they took more and more power until what was the Delian League became the Athenian Empire (Kagan 8). As they grew even more powerful and wealthy, their neighbors of Sparta and the Peloponnesian League, Sparta's alliance, could not help but notice (Kagan 13). In 431 BCE, lighted b...
The causes of the Peloponnesian War proved to be too great between the tension-filled stubborn Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta. As Thucydides says in Karl Walling’s article, “Never had so many human beings been exiled, or so much human blood been shed” (4). The three phases of the war, which again, are the Archidamian war, the Sicilian Expedition and the Decelean war, show the events that followed the causes of the war, while also showing the forthcoming detrimental effects that eventually consumed both Athens and eventually Sparta effectively reshaping Greece.
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.
... one another until they were no more. From the Persian War to the Peloponnesian the two states had changed a lot of the years. Starting from their greatest alliance yet first moment of subtle rivalry, the Persian War. Although they were indistinctly competing against one another, without each other they could not have dominated. Then there were the two blows to the peace treaty. The first blow being the Athenian assistance in the battle between Corinth and Corycra. The second blow being the idea to burn Corinth’s town down. Although these were remarkable mistakes the Athenians saw nothing wrong with them. Lastly, was the war. In 431 B.C. the Peloponnesian War broke out between the two allies, after all they had been through, their alliance was over. War was bound to happen, although they lived in tranquility for so long, one or the other was destined to break out.
The Persian War was a war between the Greeks and the Persians. Even though the Greeks were still not united they fought to defend each territory that was theirs. The Peloponnesian war was a war among the Greek city states. That is the difference among the two; one was fought against an enemy who attacked the Greece land and the other was fought among the Greeks themselves. The Persian War begun because the Greeks made a military rebellion in Asia Minor which caused the Persians to face more conflicts themselves. This was known as the Ionian Revolt. After the Ionian Revolt, the Persians more than ever wanted to take over Greece Eventually leading to the Persian War. This was the reason why the Persian war began, basically of revenge. The major parties involved in the conflict of this war were the Persians and the Greek city states.
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
Greece is a country united by its name, but divided by its ways. Although Sparta and Athens were both Greek cities, their societies were different. Sparta was focused on having a perfect military, whereas Athenian daily life revolved learning and knowledge. When Spartan boys were being trained for an army, Athenian boys were being trained for life. Both of these societies revolved around different government, education from when kids to teenagers, the responsibilities each individual had to keep their spot, and how women played a role throughout each city state.
Beginning in 492 B.C., a series of wars erupted, appropriately entitled the Persian Wars, which lasted around thirteen years. Because of the constant battles between the Persians, led by Xerxes, and Greece, both civilization started growing weaker and weaker. When the wars ended, the Greeks were successful at defeating the Persians. However, being in a weakened state caused the Greek city- states (mainly Athens against Sparta) to fight amongst themselves in order to have more influence over the rest of the city-states. This type of war was termed the Peloponnesian War and continued from 431B.C. to 404 B.C. (History of Greece:The Golden Age of Greece) and