Ancient Greece · Part 6 · Wars and empire · C1
The Peloponnesian War and the Athenian Empire
Part 6 of Ancient Greece: after the Persian Wars, Athens turned an alliance of free cities into an empire, and Sparta and its allies went to war to stop it. The war lasted twenty-seven years, and it showed what a democracy could do to others, and to itself. Should have, if only, wish and third and mixed conditionals, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the war Thucydides called a possession for all time: Athens against Sparta.
But Athens was the democracy. Surely it was on the right side?
Listen to what the democracy did, and then decide.
This sounds like a story with a great many regrets in it.
After the Persian Wars, many Greek cities formed an alliance against Persia, the Delian League, led by Athens. Members paid money or provided ships. Little by little, Athens turned the League into an empire: it moved the treasury to Athens, used the money for its own buildings, and crushed members that tried to leave.
Sparta and its allies feared Athenian power. In 431 BCE the Peloponnesian War began. Athens was strong at sea, Sparta on land. The war lasted, with pauses, until 404 BCE, when Athens, starved and defeated, surrendered. The historian Thucydides, an Athenian general who was exiled during the war, wrote its history.
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