The Peloponnesian War | World History | Khan Academy

As we've already seen, the fifth century BCE starts off with Athens and Sparta and various Greek city-states fighting on the same side against the Persian invaders. But as we saw in the last video, as soon as the Persians are dealt with, tensions start to rise between Athens and Sparta and their various allies. Sparta gets worried that the Athenian Navy is looking maybe a little bit too strong. They were decisively important in the second Persian invasion, and they build this Delian League, whose purpose is to go on the offensive against the Persians.

But more and more so, it was starting to look like an Athenian Empire. You can imagine it's like a game of Risk: the more you take over, the more resources you have, the more that you can build more ships and have more soldiers so that you can take on even more. As Sparta and Athens are starting to become more and more rivals, Sparta is getting insecure about Athens' influence and their resources and their military power.

We even saw it in the last video: you have an earthquake in Sparta, potentially right around the same time that Sparta was planning an invasion of Athens, leaving the Spartans vulnerable. There's a helot uprising. These Spartan slaves... the Athenians send hoplites to apparently help the Spartans, but the Spartans are suspicious of it and they send them back. It culminates with the skirmish you have between Megara and Corinth, which were historically two Spartan allies. But Athens decides to take sides, gets an alliance with Megara, and that's one thing too many for the Spartans. So they declare war and you have what's called the first Peloponnesian War.

But that's not the Peloponnesian War; that's the first time that you start having very open conflict between the Spartans and the Athenians. These conflicts last for about 15 years and end with what's called the Peace of 30 years. But as we will see, this Peace of 30 years lasts only about 15 years, and the whole time tensions continue to arise. The Delian League, or you could call it the Athenian power, the Athenian Empire, I should say, is getting more and more powerful. The Athenian Navy is getting more and more powerful, and once again things culminate.

Now, this is the beginning of the actual Peloponnesian War. The thing that people are referring to when they talk about the Peloponnesian War, in 431 BCE, the king of Sparta is convinced—or is, I guess you could say he is influenced. Even though he himself was somewhat skeptical of the idea, he decides to invade Attica. Attica is something you will hear a lot about; it is this region right over here, this little outcropping of land that Athens is on.

This first phase of the Peloponnesian War is called the Archidamian War, named for the King of Sparta, who somewhat reluctantly gets convinced, gets decided to invade Attica. So that's stage one—the Archidamian War. The Archidamian War's essential ingredients are you have Sparta with its dominant army going and having repeated attacks onto Attica, and the Athenians with their dominant navy going and having raids throughout the Peloponnese and along the Aegean coast.

So here you have the Athenians going. Let me do the Athenians and the Spartans in two different colors, actually. So here you go, let's do the Spartans in this red color attacking Attica with their army, and now let's have the Athenians with this light blue color coming here and attacking various points on the Peloponnese and in the Aegean, further extending their influence.

Now, that first phase ends, and it goes on for quite a bit—it goes on for about 10 years—and ends with the Peace of Nissos or Nas. But, as you will see, that was actually intended to be a 50-year peace, but as you'll see it doesn't last long at all. The skirmishes continue, and in 415 the Athenians say, "Hey, we want to extend our power." Remember, it's like this game of Risk: the more city-states you take over, the more citizens that you're able to tax, the more soldiers you will have, the more wealth you will have, the more ship-building capability you will have.

So the Athenians get this great idea to sail all the way to Syracuse. Just to be clear where Syracuse is: Syracuse is right over here on the coast of Sicily, and this is a long distance in this ancient world. They get this idea to sail all the way to Syracuse to try to take it over and essentially to extend their empire. So this right over here is in 415, this long voyage to take over Syracuse, and it is disastrous. The fleet that tries to go is decimated, and the folks in Syracuse are able to get the assistance of the Spartans. So that Greek fleet is destroyed, and this is often viewed as the second phase of the Peloponnesian War.

So this is the attack at Syracuse—the failed attempt of the Athenians to get Syracuse—and this is a two-year period of time because, once again, this is no joke to send your navy and to try to get at Syracuse. And then that takes us into the third phase, the third phase of the Peloponnesian War. Let me scroll this over a little bit. The third phase is often called the Ionian War.

Ionia is this region that's now in modern-day off the coast of modern-day Turkey. You have many of the city-states that were part of this Athenian Empire; they're starting to revolt. You can imagine that the Spartans are trying to help those revolts because they're trying to get the Athenians wherever they are. This is often also called the Decelean War. Decelea or Decelean—I'm probably not pronouncing it well—is a little village right over here at the top of Attica, and it was a strategic location that went over to the Spartans. That's where the Decelean War gets its name.

But over the course of this third phase, the Spartans get help from the Persians. Remember, this was their enemy. The Spartans and Athenians had unified against the Persians, but some time has passed. We're now 70 or 80 years later, and the Spartans say, "Hey, we want to win this thing decisively." They get the help of the Persians, and finally, in 405 BCE, there is the decisive naval battle at Aegospotami.

I'm sorry to all of you Greeks out there that might be listening; I know my pronunciation is not perfect or close to perfect, but this is a decisive victory for the Spartans. They are able to destroy the Athenian Navy, and that causes—that's the decisive victory. Then in 404—this is 405—in 404, the Athenians surrender, and the famous Peloponnesian War is over. The Spartans are victorious, but it's not a great victory because, as you can imagine, you have towns that have been destroyed, large parts of Greece have been weakened, and it leaves the whole area open to attack from others.

As we will see in the next century, in the 4th Century, we have Philip of Macedon—or M, depending on how you want to pronounce it—who's able to use that vulnerability that happens over the course of the fifth century to attack the city-states of Greece, but he actually is able to unify them.