Peloponnesian Wars and the Decline of Athens

It was in the aftermath of the war with Persia that a rivalry began to form between Sparta and Athens. Sparta had long been considered the dominant land power among the Greeks. It led the united Greek armies to victory over the Persians. Athens, on the other hand, was gaining a reputation as a great sea power, using its ships to destroy the Persian navy.

In 478 BCE, a voluntary league was created for the common defense of the Greek city-states.
At first Sparta led the league.
It left the League and passed leadership on to the Athenians.
The Athenian-dominated Delian League required its members to contribute ships, men and money.
It built up a navy to liberate some of the captured Greek city-states still under Persian control.
This would ensure that Persia could never invade again.

Most of the city-states in the League preferred to pay additional yearly tribute instead of providing troops and ships.
This worked to Athens’ advantage.
It allowed the Athenians to build up a huge navy financed by the tribute from the League’s members.
Athens then used this navy to ensure that no city-state could revolt and leave the League.
The Athenians used naval blockades and sieges to cut off supplies to any city that revolted, forcing it to surrender.
After a revolt they would make an example of the city-state.
They would slaughter every man and take the women and children as slaves.
In this way Athens began to create an empire for itself.
They slowly added more and more islands and city-states along the coast.

It is unclear whether or not the city-states resented being part of the Delian League.
Athens required the members to pay a yearly tribute and would not let them leave the League.
Athens often intervened politically to set up democratic governments.
This was met with hostility from the ruling elites and aristocratic families in city-states that it conquered.
It often won over the lower classes who gained more power.
Establishing democratic governments was one way Athens reinforced the loyalty of city-states.
It also lessened the chance for revolts.

Peloponnesian War

Causes
A hundred years before the Delian League, Sparta had created an alliance.
This alliance was with its own the city-states of the Peloponnesian peninsula.
The Spartans did not require their allies to pay tribute,
They saw to it that they were governed by oligarchies.
Sparta viewed Athenian growth as a threat to its own power.
They organized its allies and went to war.

Phases
This war  was fought in two phases, starting in 431 BCE.
The first phase of the war lasted ten years, pausing with the Peace of Nicias in 421 BCE.
This peace lasted 7 years until 414 BC.
The second phase began when the war started again.
It ended  with the defeat of Athens in 404 BCE.

First Phase
The Spartans wished to fight a land war, which they were very good at.
They outnumbered the Athenians two to one.
They believed the Athenians could stand up to only for a very short time.
They invaded Attica and began burning crops.
They were going to starve the Athenians into submission.

The Athenians, however, had a harbor and a powerful navy.
Pericles knew that they could hold out against the Spartans for several years.
He also knew that he could take the war right to the doorsteps of Spartan allies.
Athens sailed troops along the coast of Greece.
Pericles died in the second year of the war in a plague that devestated Athens.
The Athenians, nevertheless, kept to the Periclean strategy of prosecuting the war.

Both sides believed that their strategy would wear down the other side and force a surrender. 
After ten years of fighting the situation was no different than it was at the beginning of the war.
Both sides had become worn down.

Peace of Nicias
In 421 BC, Sparta and Athens signed the Peace of Nicias, a fifty year peace.
Irt was named after the Athenian politician and general who was leading Athens at the time.
Everyone was allowed to go home.
The territorial status as it stood at the time of the peace, was allowed to remain in place.
Athens kept its continental territories and allies.
Sparta got to keep all the territories it had acquired.

Athens Attacks Sicily
Nicias, however, had rivals in the democratic assembly.
In 415 BC, Alicibiades in convinced the Athenians to attack the Greek city-states on the island of Sicily.
This would bring them under the glove of the Athenian Empire.
It soon turned into a disaster.
In 413 BC, the entire army was defeated and captured.
A large part of the naval fleet of the Athenians was destroyed in the harbor of Syracuse.
Athenian power since the Persian Wars had rested solely on the power of the navy.
The disastrous Sicilian expedition left Athens almost completely powerless.

Second Phase
The Spartans soon attacked Athens.
They were soon joined by the Persians who were still smarting from the war.
The Athenians hung on for a while.
They enjoyed victories when the war was shifed to the Aegean Sea.
In 405, the rest of their navy was destroyed in a surprise attack.
By the next year the situation was hopeless.

End of an Empire
In 404 BC, the Athenians surrendered totally to the Spartans,.
They tore down the walls of the city.
They were barred them from ever having a navy.
An oligarchic government was installed.
Thirty aristocrats were chosen to rule Athens.
The Age of Athens, the Age of Pericles, the Classical Age, the Athenian Empire, had come to an end.

Bibliography
From Herodotus Book II