3330–3357 AM · 431 BCE — 404 BCE · world history
The Peloponnesian War
Athens and Sparta fight for twenty-seven years, and Athenian mastery of the sea comes to an end.
The allies of the Persian wars fall out: Athens turns the naval league into an empire and collects tribute from the cities, and Sparta sees the threat. The war runs twenty-seven years with pauses — Attica laid waste, plague in Athens packed behind its walls, the disastrous expedition to Sicily where an entire fleet perishes. Sparta takes Persian money, builds ships of its own, and at last cuts the grain route to Athens; the city surrenders, the Long Walls are pulled down, the league is dissolved. Thucydides, participant and exile, writes it all down as an inquiry into what war does to men and to words.