The most complete information guide about Athens, Greece
HISTORY
OF ATHENS
The
Peloponnesian War
Pericles’ successful building and defence program made
the leader popular. As a result, he was elected general (strategos)
uninterruptedly between 444-443 and 429 BC with the sole exception
of the year 430 BC.
The
Peloponnesian War, 431–404 BC, was a decisive struggle
in ancient Greece between Athens and Sparta. It ruined Athens.
The rivalry between Athens' maritime domain and Sparta's land
empire was of long standing. Athens under Pericles, had become
a bastion of Greek democracy with a foreign policy of regularly
intervening to help local democrats. The Spartans however, favored
oligarchies like their own.
The war began after sharp contests between Athens and Corinth
over Corcyra (now Kerkira) and Potidaea. The first important
action was the initial invasion of Attica by a Spartan army
in 431 BC. Pericles brought the rural population within the
walls and the Athenian fleet began raids, winning victories
off Naupactus (now Navpaktos). Meanwhile a plague (perhaps bubonic)
wiped out probably a quarter of the population of Athens and
Pericles died. Cleon, his successor, won a great victory at
Sphacteria (now Sfaktiria) and refused a Spartan bid for peace.
The
Spartan leader Brasidas brilliantly surprised Athens with a
campaign in North-Eastern Greece, taking Athenian cities, including
Olynthus and Amphipolis. Fighting went on over these even after
an armistice (423 BC) and ended in a decisive Spartan victory
at Amphipolis, in which Brasidas and Cleon were both killed.
The new Athenian leader, Nicias, arranged a peace in 421BC but
his rival Alcibiades persuaded the Athenians to invade powerful
Syracuse. In the greatest expeditionary force a Greek city had
ever assembled, Alcibiades and Nicias both had commands but
before the attack on Syracuse had begun, Alcibiades was recalled
to Athens to face a charge of sacrilege. He fled to Sparta and,
at his advice, the Spartans set up a permanent base at Decelea
in Attica and sent a military expert, Gylippus, to Syracuse.
The incompetent Nicias lost his chance to surprise Syracuse
and after two years his force was wiped out in 413 BC.
Soon Persia was financing a Spartan fleet. Alcibiades sailed
it across the Aegean and there was a general revolt of Athenian
dependencies. In Athens, the Four Hundred - an oligarchic council
- managed
a short-lived coup and Alcibiades, who had quit the Spartans,
received an Athenian command. He destroyed the Spartan fleet
at Cyzicus. The new Spartan admiral, Lysander, built a fleet
with Persian aid and won a naval battle off Notiumand. Alcibiades
was driven from Athens. The Athenians won one more victory at
Arginusae, near Lesbos, in 406 BC and again declined an offer
of peace.
The next year Lysander wiped out the Athenian navy at Aegospotamos
and then besieged Athens which capitulated in 404 BC. Lysander
installed an oligarchic government, the Thirty Tyrants, in Athens
which never regained its former importance. For about 30 years
afterward, Sparta was the main power in Greece.
The war went badly for Athens from the start. The Long Walls,
built to protect the city and its port of Piraeus, saved the
city itself as long as the fleet was paramount but the allies
of Athens fell away and the empire hat Pericles had tried to
build, already had crumbled before his death in 429 BC. The
war dragged on under the leadership of Cleon and continued even
after the collapse of the expedition against Sicily, urged by
Alcibiades. The Peloponnesian War finally ended in 404 BC with
Athens completely humbled, its population cut in half and its
fleet reduced to a dozen ships.
Under the dictates of Sparta, Athens was compelled to tear
down the Long Walls and to accept
the government of an oligarchy, called the Thirty Tyrants.
However, the city recovered rapidly. In 403 BC the Thirty
Tyrants were overthrown by Thrasybulus and by 376 BC Athens
again had a fleet, had rebuilt the Long Walls, had re-created
the Delian League and had won a naval victory over Sparta.
Sparta also lost power as a result of its defeat (371 BC)
by Thebes at Leuctra and, although Athens did not again achieve
hegemony over Greece, it did have a short period of great
prosperity and comfort.