Who Was When
Wars

Peloponnesian War

See this year on the world timeline

Sides

Athens and the Delian League

Athens, Delian League cities of the Aegean islands and Greece, and allies such as Corcyra and Plataea, and Delian League cities of Asia Minor

against
Sparta, the Peloponnesian League and their allies

Sparta, Corinth, Thebes and the other Peloponnesian League allies, Syracuse, and Achaemenid Persian Empire (allied with Sparta from 412 BCE; paid for its fleet)

Countries today: Greece, Iran, Italy, and Türkiye

What happened

From 431 to 404 BCE Athens and its Delian League fought Sparta and its Peloponnesian League allies. The war began when Thebes, Sparta's ally, attacked Plataea, an ally of Athens, and King Archidamus II led the Peloponnesian army into Attica. Pericles kept the Athenians behind their walls and used the fleet to raid the Peloponnese, but plague struck the crowded city in 430 BCE and killed him the next year. Athens took Spartan prisoners at Sphacteria in 425 BCE; the Spartan general Brasidas took Amphipolis, and the Peace of Nicias followed in 421 BCE. In 415 BCE Athens sent a great expedition against Syracuse in Sicily, and by 413 BCE it had been destroyed. Persia then paid for a Spartan fleet, which under Lysander captured almost the whole Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 405 BCE. Athens, besieged and starving, surrendered in 404 BCE. No count of the war's dead survives: the ancient historians give figures only for some battles.

Outcome: Athens surrendered in April 404 BCE: it pulled down its Long Walls, gave up its fleet and its overseas possessions, and was ruled for a short time by a Sparta-backed oligarchy, the Thirty.

Key events

Leaders

  • Pericles · Athenian statesman and general, to 429 BCE · Athens and the Delian League
  • Cleon · Athenian politician and general; killed at Amphipolis · Athens and the Delian League
  • Demosthenes · Athenian general at Pylos and Syracuse · Athens and the Delian League
  • Nicias · Athenian general; negotiated the peace of 421 BCE and led the Sicilian expedition · Athens and the Delian League
  • Alcibiades · Athenian general; went over to Sparta in 415 BCE, later commanded Athenian fleets again · Athens and the Delian League
  • Archidamus II · King of Sparta; led the Peloponnesian army into Attica in the first years of the war · Sparta, the Peloponnesian League and their allies
  • Brasidas · Spartan general; took Amphipolis, killed there in 422 BCE · Sparta, the Peloponnesian League and their allies
  • Gylippus · Spartan commander at Syracuse · Sparta, the Peloponnesian League and their allies
  • Agis II · King of Sparta; held the fort at Decelea in Attica · Sparta, the Peloponnesian League and their allies
  • Lysander · Spartan admiral at Aegospotami · Sparta, the Peloponnesian League and their allies

Cultures it ended or changed

Meanwhile, elsewhere in

Sources