War · 431 BCE – April 404 BCE
Peloponnesian War
Thucydides blamed the war on the growth of Athenian power and the fear it caused in Sparta. Athens led the Delian League, a sea empire of Aegean cities paying it tribute; Sparta led the Peloponnesian League, the strongest land alliance in Greece.
In the first ten years (the Archidamian War) Sparta ravaged Attica each summer while Athens sheltered behind its Long Walls and raided by sea; a plague killed perhaps a quarter of the crowded city. The Peace of Nicias in 421 BCE did not hold. In 415–413 BCE Athens lost almost its entire expedition against Syracuse in Sicily, and in the final phase Persian money let Sparta build a fleet. After Lysander destroyed the Athenian navy at Aegospotami, a besieged and starving Athens surrendered in April 404 BCE, gave up its walls, fleet and empire, and briefly fell under the Spartan-backed Thirty. Sparta became the leading power in Greece.
- Dates
- 431 BCE – April 404 BCE
- Casualties
- No overall total survives; the plague alone is estimated to have killed 75,000–100,000 people in Athens, and the Sicilian expedition lost nearly all of its roughly 40,000 men, killed or enslaved.
The sides
Athens and the Delian League
- Odrysian Kingdom 431–429 BCE
Sparta and the Peloponnesian League
- Peloponnesian League 431–404 BCE
- Achaemenid Empire 412–404 BCE
Timeline of the Peloponnesian War
- Thebes, Sparta's ally, attacks Athens' ally Plataea
Tension had built for years over Corcyra, Potidaea and Athenian trade sanctions on Megara, and in 432 BCE the Spartan assembly declared that Athens had broken the Thirty Years' Peace. The first blow came on 4 April 431 BCE from Thebes, Sparta's ally, which attacked Plataea, a small Boeotian city allied to Athens. The attack opened a war between the two great Greek alliances that would last, with one uneasy pause, for twenty-seven years.
- Archidamus II leads the first Spartan invasion of Attica
Sparta's plan was to provoke a decisive land battle by burning the farms of Attica. Pericles instead persuaded the Athenians to abandon the countryside, crowd behind the Long Walls joining Athens to its port of Piraeus, and rely on the fleet and imported grain. The Spartans invaded almost every summer but stayed only weeks at a time, while Athenian ships raided the Peloponnesian coast. That first winter Pericles gave his famous Funeral Oration.
- Plague breaks out in overcrowded Athens
With the population of Attica packed inside the walls, an epidemic that probably entered through Piraeus swept the city in 430 BCE and returned in 429 and 427/426. Thucydides, who caught it and survived, described its symptoms; the cause is still debated. Estimates put the dead at 75,000–100,000, about a quarter of the population. Pericles, according to Plutarch, died of it in 429, leaving Athens without its leading statesman.
- Athens' Thracian ally Sitalces invades Macedon
At the start of the war Sitalces, king of the Odrysian Thracians, allied himself with Athens. In 429 BCE he invaded Macedon, ruled by Perdiccas II, with a huge army that included warriors from independent Thracian and Paeonian tribes. Lacking supplies, he soon withdrew. The episode shows the war reaching far beyond the Greek cities, as both sides sought allies among neighbouring kingdoms.
- Athenians force Spartans on Sphacteria to surrender
The Athenian general Demosthenes fortified Pylos on the Messenian coast, a base that attracted runaway helots. When Spartan troops were cut off on the island of Sphacteria and peace talks failed, Cleon and Demosthenes stormed it. Some 292 hoplites, about 120 of them full Spartan citizens, surrendered, shocking the Greek world. Athens threatened to kill the prisoners if Sparta invaded Attica again, and the annual invasions stopped.
- Boeotians defeat the Athenian invasion at Delium
Hoping to knock Boeotia out of the war, Athenian generals planned a two-pronged invasion that went wrong. Hippocrates fortified the temple at Delium, but as his army turned for home the Boeotian commander Pagondas of Thebes attacked. Theban troops drawn up in an unusually deep formation broke the Athenians, who suffered heavy losses; the philosopher Socrates was among those who retreated. The defeat ended Athenian hopes on land in central Greece.
- Spartan general Brasidas captures Amphipolis
Brasidas marched an army of helots and mercenaries the length of Greece to attack Athenian holdings in Thrace. In the winter of 424–423 BCE he took Amphipolis, an Athenian colony on the Strymon river whose region supplied silver to the Athenian war chest, by offering its people generous terms before help could arrive. The Athenian general sent to save it, the historian Thucydides, came too late and was exiled, which gave him time to write his history of the war.
- Battle of Amphipolis: Brasidas and Cleon both killed
When a one-year armistice ran out in 422 BCE, Cleon, the most forceful advocate of war in Athens, sailed to Thrace and retook Torone and Scione before moving on Amphipolis. Fearing an attack before his reinforcements arrived, he began a badly organised retreat, and Brasidas struck the disordered column. About 600 Athenians died, among them Cleon, while Brasidas was mortally wounded. With the leading hawks on both sides dead, peace talks became possible.
- Peace of Nicias ends the first ten years of war
Negotiated by the Spartan king Pleistoanax and the Athenian general Nicias, the treaty was sworn by seventeen representatives from each side and was meant to last fifty years, with both sides handing back most of their conquests and prisoners. Its terms were never fully carried out: Sparta did not return Amphipolis and Athens kept Pylos. Several of Sparta's allies rejected the peace, and fighting by proxy soon resumed in the Peloponnese.
- Sparta defeats Argos, Athens and their allies at Mantinea
Encouraged by Alcibiades, Athens backed a coalition of Argos, Mantinea, Elis and other Peloponnesian states against Sparta. Late in 418 BCE, at Mantinea, the largest land battle of the war, the Spartans under King Agis recovered from early setbacks and won a complete victory over Argos, Athens, Mantinea and their Arcadian allies. The coalition broke up, most of its members rejoined Sparta's alliance, and Spartan dominance of the Peloponnese was restored.
- Athens besieges and destroys neutral Melos
Melos, a Dorian island with ties to Sparta, had stayed neutral. In summer 416 BCE Athens demanded that it submit and pay tribute; Thucydides' Melian Dialogue portrays the Athenian envoys arguing that the strong do what they can and the weak must suffer. The Melians refused. After a siege the city surrendered that winter, and the Athenians killed its men and sold the women and children into slavery.
- The great Athenian expedition sails for Sicily
Answering an appeal from its ally Segesta, and urged on by Alcibiades, Athens sent 134 triremes and thousands of soldiers to Sicily, aiming in practice at powerful Syracuse. On the eve of departure the herms, sacred statues of the god Hermes around the city, were mutilated. Alcibiades, accused of sacrilege, was recalled soon after landing; he fled to Sparta and advised it against Athens. Nicias, who had opposed the venture, was left in command.
- Sparta fortifies Decelea in Attica
On Alcibiades' advice, Sparta reopened the war in mainland Greece by building a permanent fort at Decelea, within sight of Athens. Athenian farms could no longer be worked, overland supplies were cut, and the Laurion silver mines were crippled when, by one account, some 20,000 slaves fled. Athens now depended entirely on imports by sea while also fighting in Sicily.
- Athenian army in Sicily destroyed at the Assinarus river
Reinforced under Demosthenes but defeated around Syracuse, the Athenians delayed their departure after a lunar eclipse on 28 August, and the Syracusans then blockaded and beat their fleet in the Great Harbour. The army, about 40,000 people with camp followers, retreated overland and was cut down; Nicias's column was massacred at the Assinarus river. The 7,000 prisoners were kept in quarries, Nicias and Demosthenes were executed, and many survivors were sold as slaves.
- Persian satraps ally with Sparta as Ionia revolts
After the Sicilian disaster many of Athens' Aegean allies revolted. King Darius II of Persia ordered his satraps in Asia Minor, Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, to recover tribute from the Greek cities, and they made an alliance with Sparta. Persia regained most of Ionia and began paying for a Peloponnesian fleet, though Tissaphernes at first played the two Greek sides against each other.
- Oligarchs of the Four Hundred seize power in Athens
With the treasury nearly empty after Sicily, wealthy Athenians who disliked the democracy, in contact with officers at Samos and with Alcibiades, overthrew it. A council of Four Hundred took power in June 411 BCE and sought peace with Sparta. The fleet at Samos refused to accept the regime and kept fighting in Athens' name; the Four Hundred fell within months and full democracy was restored by 410.
- Alcibiades destroys the Spartan fleet at Cyzicus
Recalled by the fleet at Samos, Alcibiades led a combined Athenian force with Thrasybulus and Theramenes against the Spartan admiral Mindarus, who had taken Cyzicus in the Sea of Marmara with the help of the Persian satrap Pharnabazus. The Athenians routed the Peloponnesian fleet and Mindarus was killed. The victory restored Athenian control of the Hellespont, the route of the city's grain supply, and Sparta offered peace, which Athens rejected.
- Athens wins at Arginusae, then executes six of its generals
After the Spartan Lysander won a small victory at Notium and Alcibiades went into exile, Athens melted down golden statues and enlisted slaves and resident foreigners to man a new fleet and rescue a squadron blockaded at Mytilene. Off the Arginusae islands it defeated the Spartans under Callicratidas. A storm prevented the rescue of crews from 25 disabled ships, and in the uproar that followed the Assembly tried and executed six of the victorious generals.
- Lysander destroys the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami
Funded by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger, Lysander rebuilt the Spartan fleet and sailed to the Hellespont, through which Athens' grain passed. At Aegospotami he caught the Athenian ships beached and their crews ashore foraging. About 168 ships were destroyed and only a handful escaped; some 3,000 Athenian prisoners were killed. Without a fleet Athens could no longer feed itself or hold its empire.
- Starving Athens surrenders to Sparta
Blockaded by land and sea, Athens surrendered. Corinth and Thebes wanted the city destroyed, but Sparta refused. Athens had to pull down its Long Walls and harbour fortifications, give up all but a few ships and its overseas possessions, and follow Sparta in foreign policy. A pro-Spartan oligarchy known as the Thirty ruled until democrats led by Thrasybulus restored democracy in 403 BCE.