Peloponnesian War
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The Peloponnesian War was fought between Athens and Sparta and their allies from 431 to 404 BCE, and it ended the golden age of Athens. Thucydides, who took part and wrote the history, traced the cause to the fear that Athens, growing with its league of tribute-paying allies, inspired in Sparta. The first phase, the Archidamian war, was a Spartan invasion of Attica met by Athenian raids from the sea and by the long walls that connected the city to its port at Piraeus. Plague struck Athens in 430 and killed perhaps a quarter of the population, including the statesman Pericles. Alcibiades persuaded the Athenians to sail for Sicily in 415, and the entire expedition was destroyed at Syracuse. Sparta then built a fleet with Persian money, blockaded Piraeus, and the starving city surrendered in 404; the long walls were demolished to the sound of flutes. The hegemony of Sparta that followed was short and unpopular, and Thebes and Corinth suffered too, so that no Greek state emerged stronger. The war spread Greek settlement and Greek speech across the Mediterranean, and its lesson about imperial overstretch has been cited ever since. Athens lost its empire, its fleet and its confidence in a single winter.