The war was started by a dispute between Corinth (member of Peloponnesian League) and its colony Corcyra (island of NW coast of mod. Greece) in 435. The Corcyraeans naturally invoked the aid of Athens. For a while it was only a local affair, but things escalated until in 432 the Peloponnesian League declared war on Athens. This war is known as the Peloponnesian War (the book confusingly calls it the "Great Peloponnesian War," a purely modern designation), and is particularly famous because the Greek historian Thucydides wrote about it in the first proper work of history in the Western tradition.

It was an odd two-fold war. On one hand, one has the Peloponnesian League, which was militarily predominant, but lacked a common fund and had no naval force. On the other hand, Athens had a huge maritime empire which could feed it, but not a sufficient army to defeat the League. So lo

In the same year (413), the Spartans took Decelea in Attica, which allowed them to maintian a permanent presence there and to force the closure of mines in Attica. (One has to wonder about the Spartan grasp of strategy if it took them so long to figure this out.) The Athenians were now in desperate shape, but they still managed to rebuild their fleet. (While expensive to maintain, ancient fleets were comparatively easy to rebuild.) In 412 most of the Athenian allies revolted, and even worse, the Spartans got a subsidy from the Persians to build a fleet. This ultimately doomed Athens, but Athens still held out for several years.

In 416 a town in Sicily suggested that the Athenians come to their aid against their enemies. In the assembly, Alcibiades (the brilliant but erratic ward of Pericles) spoke in favor of the suggestion, the general Nicias (who had negotiated the peace with Sparta) against it. The argument in favor was that by subduing Sicily, which had a large number of Greek colonies, the Athenians would get an increase in their forces with which to defeat the Peloponnesians. The Athenians voted for the campaign, put both Alcibiades and Nicias in charge. Bad idea: Nicias eventually was in sole command and proved to be a very indecisive leader. It was never a very sensible idea to put in charge of an operation someone who obviously did not have confidence in it.

The Spartans were unsuited to acting abroad. They got autocratic and high-handed when far from home. They tried to impose their will on others in a much more obnoxious way than the Athenians had. In fact in 378 a new Athenian league was made to oppose the Spartans. In this new league, which officially recognized the Persian empire, measures were taken to ensure against Athenian domination: the allies had their own assembly that met in Athens but in which the Athenians took no part. At the same time, Thebes became the dominant city in Boeotia and quarreled with Sparta. In 371, the Theban leader Epaminondas destroyed the Spartan army at the battle of Leuctra. Spartan domination was at end, and the Messenian helots were freed. The Spartans never again had much influence in Greek affairs. Thebes was unable to establish

Some common words found in the essay are:
Athens Athenians, Aegospotami Athenian, Peloponnesian League, Decelea Attica, Peace Nicias, Spartan Gylippus, Persia Spartans, Alcibiades Nicias, League Spartans, Leuctra Spartan, peloponnesian league, destroyed spartan, spartans fleet, peloponnesian war, athenian defeat, athens athenians, pericles decided, major damage,
Approximate Word count = 1482
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)