The political and military power of the Athenians, and their role as a cultural powerhouse that went with it, did not go down well with other poleis, which saw their independence threatened. Obviously, the state of affairs within the Delian League exacerbated such fears. Also, the presence and radicalization of democracy put Athens on a collision course with oligarchic and conservative poleis, especially Sparta. The closed society of Sparta, living in self-inflicted isolation and stagnation and expending all its energy on maintaining its military might, was diametrically opposed to Athens, an open society, expansive and selfconfident. Sparta distrusted this dynamic society that had already carved out such a huge empire for itself. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that these two opponents would end up in conflict. What started as an attempt to safeguard their own position, for both Athens and Sparta, turned into a conflict with very strong ideological overtones. Because of coalitions with one or the other party, large parts of the Greek world were drawn into this war.
Now, warfare was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing marked the Greek poleis as much as their aggressive rivalry: every polis wanted to be the best. The most effective way for a polis to gather honor, fame, and profit was to acquire hegemony over others. But at the same time, every polis was bent on maintaining, or regaining, its independence. Such competitiveness led to endemic warfare. This was in itself quite destructive, but the so-called Peloponnesian War between Athens, Sparta, and their allies, which spanned the best part of the last 30 years of the 5th century (431-404 BC), was a break with the past. For the first time, the Greek world saw warfare on such a scale and of such intensity that one can speak of “total war.” Not only did citizen hoplites take part, but also lightly armed troops and cavalry, and not all combatants were citizens: ever more mercenaries were hired. Guerrilla tactics were employed, and this the year round, instead of the ordered battles that took place when the battle season was under way. The fighting became bitter: entire communities were sold into slavery, or slaughtered.
The Spartan land army found it hard to combat Athenian sea power. Led by the clever strategos Pericles, the Athenians opted for a defensive strategy: they pulled back behind defendable walls that linked Athens and its harbor Piraeus, the so-called Long Walls. The rest of Attica was abandoned, and all the population crowded behind the walls, where their food supply was ensured from overseas. The fleet meanwhile carried out raids on the coastal areas of the enemy. An epidemic in 430-429 BC killed many Athenians, among them Pericles, but they managed to hold out. Large-scale offensive actions, however, several on the urging of the Athenian politician Alcibiades, ended in disaster, especially the Sicilian Expedition (415-413 BC). This was an attempt by Athens to interfere in the politics of Sicily, turning against Syracuse, daughter city of Corinth, which in its turn was an ally of Sparta. It all ended in a terrible defeat for Athens, in part because of Spartan involvement. Sparta was prompted by Alcibiades, who had fallen out of favor in Athens and now advised the enemy. After this disastrous adventure, Sparta managed to occupy part of Attica on a permanent basis, and many poleis subject to Athens now revolted against the Athenian hegemony within the Delian League.
In the end, Sparta won the war with the financial support of Persia, which enabled them to build a fleet of their own. Persia made use of the Peloponnesian War to regain a foothold in the Greek world, by a policy of divide and rule. They had an advisor who knew the weak spots of the Greeks: Alcibiades, who had turned traitor again. The deep crisis Athens found itself in can be gauged from the events in 411 BC, when a group of anti-democratic politicians staged a short-lived revolution. The rights of a large part of the citizen population were severely curtailed. Democracy was, however, restored in the following year, because the thetes manning the fleet stood up for their political rights. Meanwhile, Lysander, the commander of the Spartan fleet, with the support of the Persian prince Cyrus II, managed to induce the poleis of Asia Minor to abandon Athens. In 405 BC, he crushed the Athenian fleet in a sea battle near the Hellespont. This cut off the Athenian supply of grain from the Black Sea. When Lysander’s fleet sailed up to Athens the next year, Athens was forced to capitulate. The Delian League was dissolved, the Athenian fleet had to be surrendered, the walls were demolished, and democracy abolished. Athens was ruled by a repressive oligarchic junta, the Thirty. Sparta was now the only one to wield hegemonic power over the Greek poleis, but Persia pulled the strings.
World History
