50 Fun Facts About Peloponnesian War

Between which years was the Peloponnesian War fought?

The earlier 15-year conflict of 460–445 BC is known as the First Peloponnesian War.

Athens led which alliance in the war?

It took its name from the island of Delos, where the allies originally kept their treasury.

Which foreign power's intervention on Sparta's side in 413 BC tipped the war decisively?

Darius II ordered his satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus to collect overdue tribute and make war on Athens.

The opening phase of the war is named after which Spartan king, who invaded Attica in 431 BC?

Ironically Archidamus had spoken against the war in the Spartan assembly; the hawkish ephor Sthenelaidas won the vote.

Athens suffered a major defeat by Thebes at which battle in 424 BC?

It came a year after the Athenian triumph at Sphacteria.

The treaty of 421 BC that paused the war is known as the Peace of whom?

It lasted six years but was marked by constant skirmishing around the Peloponnese.

Which Sicilian city did Athens try to conquer in the disastrous expedition of 415–413 BC?

Its people were Dorian like the Spartans; the Athenians and their Sicilian ally were Ionian.

Which Spartan commander built a Persian-financed fleet and won the decisive battle of 405 BC?

Unusually he was not from a Spartan royal family, and he cultivated the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger.

The naval battle of 405 BC that broke Athenian power was fought where?

Lysander destroyed 168 ships; only 12 Athenian vessels escaped, some carrying the general Conon to Cyprus.

What was the Spartan-installed oligarchy that ruled Athens after its surrender called?

Thrasybulus overthrew them and restored democracy in 403 BC.

Who wrote the main historical source for the war, the History of the Peloponnesian War?

An Athenian who fought in the early years, he was exiled in 423 BC and wrote from the Peloponnese.

The main historian's account breaks off abruptly in which year, seven years before the end?

Xenophon's Hellenica picks up directly from his final sentence.

Which younger historian continued the main account of the war in his Hellenica?

A mercenary who fought for Sparta and retired there, his account is generally considered favourable to Sparta.

Which Roman-Greek biographer wrote Parallel Lives of four of the war's commanders?

Plutarch's focus was on character and morality, but he preserves details recorded nowhere else.

Which Athenian comic playwright set Peace and Lysistrata during the war?

They are comedic fiction of little historical value, but they reflect civilian life in wartime Athens.

What did the war's main historian call the ~50 years between the Persian Wars and this one?

During it Athens turned an anti-Persian alliance into a tribute-paying empire.

In 465 BC Sparta dismissed an Athenian force sent to help suppress a revolt of whom?

Sparta feared the 4,000 Athenian hoplites might switch sides; the offended Athenians repudiated the alliance.

The First Peloponnesian War ended with which treaty, signed in the winter of 446/5 BC?

It lasted barely fifteen years before the alliances were at war again.

Athens made a defensive alliance with which sea power, a colony at odds with Corinth?

A small Athenian contingent at the Battle of Sybota kept the Corinthian fleet from taking the island.

Athens ordered which Chalkidiki city, a Corinthian colony, to tear down its walls?

Corinth secretly smuggled defenders into the besieged city, breaching the Thirty Years' Peace.

Athenian trade sanctions of 433/2 BC against a Spartan ally are known by what name?

Thucydides largely ignored it, but some economic historians call it a contributing cause of the war.

Which hawkish Spartan ephor's view prevailed over the king in the 432 BC war debate?

The assembly voted that Athens had broken the peace, essentially declaring war.

The war's first attack, on 4 April 431 BC, was a Theban strike on which Athenian outpost?

Plataea had been the site of the great Greek victory over Persia fifty years earlier.

The Long Walls connected Athens to which port?

Citizens of Attica abandoned their farms and crowded inside them during Spartan invasions.

Spartan invasions of Attica normally lasted how long, so soldiers could go home for the harvest?

The longest, in 430 BC, lasted just 40 days; helots at home also had to be kept under control.

In which year did the plague that killed Pericles first strike Athens?

Between a third and two-thirds of the population died, and Spartan troops refused to invade a plague-ridden Attica.

Roughly how many Athenian citizens, sailors and soldiers did the plague wipe out?

Even foreign mercenaries refused to hire themselves out to the stricken city.

Which hawkish Athenian politician boasted he could finish the Sphacteria affair, and did?

Some 300 encircled Spartan hoplites surrendered, shattering Sparta's image of invincibility.

Sphacteria is a tiny island off which Peloponnesian site fortified by Demosthenes?

The post attracted runaway helots, which is what goaded the Spartans into attacking.

The Spartan general Brasidas captured which Athenian colony in Thrace that controlled silver mines?

Thucydides arrived too late to save it and was exiled, which is how he came to write his history.

Which two war hawks, one Spartan and one Athenian, both died in the same battle in Thrace?

Their deaths cleared the way for the Peace of Nicias.

What was the largest land battle fought within Greece during the war?

In 418 BC Sparta crushed the Argive coalition and pulled itself back from the brink of strategic defeat.

Which independent Peloponnesian state led a democratic coalition against Sparta after 421 BC?

Mantinea and Elis joined, backed by a small Athenian force under Alcibiades.

Which neutral island did Athens besiege in 416 BC, then kill its men and enslave the rest?

The Melians had refused an ultimatum to ally with Athens or be destroyed.

Before the Sicilian Expedition sailed, which religious statues in Athens were mutilated?

Alcibiades was charged and, recalled for trial in Sicily, defected to Sparta instead.

Which Spartan general was sent to Sicily and turned the tide of the campaign there?

He also encouraged Syracuse to build a navy, which then defeated the Athenian fleet.

What omen delayed the Athenian withdrawal from Sicily, with fatal consequences?

The delay forced the sea battle in the Great Harbor; the survivors were ridden down by Syracusan cavalry.

About how many horses did the Athenian expedition bring to Sicily?

The force had over 100 ships and some 5,000 infantry but was badly short of cavalry.

On Alcibiades's advice, Sparta fortified which place near Athens in 413 BC?

It cut overland supplies and freed as many as 20,000 Athenian slaves from the silver mines.

How large was the emergency reserve Athens had set aside at the start of the war?

Athens also kept back 100 ships for a last resort; both were spent after Sicily.

In 411 BC an oligarchic group of how many seized power in Athens?

The fleet at Samos refused the change and appointed Alcibiades its leader, restoring democracy within two years.

Alcibiades persuaded the Athenian fleet to obliterate the Spartan fleet at which 410 BC battle?

It re-established the financial basis of the Athenian Empire and began a run of victories to 406 BC.

Which Persian prince put his Asia Minor revenues at the disposal of Sparta's admiral?

He later led his own march on Susa in 401 BC to topple his brother, asking Sparta to return the favour.

After the victory at Arginusae, how many Athenian commanders were executed over unrescued crews?

Bad weather had stopped the rescue; the trial stripped Athens of its ablest leaders before Aegospotami.

The Spartan fleet sailed to the Dardanelles in 405 BC to cut off Athens's supply of what?

Threatened with starvation, the Athenian fleet had no choice but to follow and was destroyed.

How many Athenian ships were destroyed in the decisive naval defeat of 405 BC?

Only 12 Athenian ships escaped.

Athens surrendered on which date in 404 BC?

Corinth and Thebes wanted the city destroyed and its people enslaved; Sparta refused.

Which two Spartan allies demanded that Athens be destroyed and its citizens enslaved?

Sparta declined to destroy a city that had served Greece well against Persia and took it into its own system.

Who overthrew the Spartan-backed oligarchy and restored Athenian democracy in 403 BC?

Athens regained full autonomy a decade later in the Corinthian War.

In which year did the mayors of modern Athens and Sparta sign a symbolic peace treaty?

It came almost 2,400 years after the war ended.