Peloponnesian War: Encyclopedia II - Peloponnesian War - Causes of the war

Peloponnesian War - Causes of the war

According to Thucydides, the cause of the war was the "fear of the growth of the power of Athens" throughout the middle of the 5th century BC. After a coalition of Greek states thwarted an attempted invasion of the Greek mainland by the Persian empire, several of those states formed the Delian league in 478 BC in order to create and fund a standing navy which could be used against the Persians in areas under their control. Athens, the largest member of the league and the major Greek naval power, took the leadership of the league and appointed financial officers to oversee its treasury, which was located on the island of Delos, the League headquarters. Over the following decades Athens, through its great influence in the League, was able to convert it into an Athenian empire. Though some members of the League embraced Athenian conversion, just as many were bitterly opposed to the governments imposed upon them. Gradually League funds went more directly into Athenian projects, rather than into defending the Aegean and Greece from Persia. Pericles had the League treasury relocated from its home on Delos to Athens, from whence most of the funds were used in vast building projects such as the Parthenon. As the member states of the League gradually lost their independence, it transformed into the Athenian Empire, whose growth Sparta watched with concern. The League, based around the Ionian and Aegean Sea, was by its very nature reliant on ships for trade and to fend off pirates and Persian fleets. As the League developed into the Athenian Empire, member states gradually lost control of their own ships, which they gave to Athens annually as tribute. Consequently, Athens began to accumulate a huge navy. This increase in Athenian military power allowed it to challenge the Lacedaemonians (commonly known as the Spartans), who, as leaders of the Peloponnesian League, had long been the sole major military power in Greece.

The immediate cause of the war comprised several specific Athenian actions that affected Sparta's allies, notably Corinth. The Athenian navy intervened in a dispute between Corinth and Corcyra, preventing Corinth from invading Corcyra at the Battle of Sybota, and placed Potidaea, a Corinthian colony, under siege. The Athenian Empire also levied economic sanctions against Megara, an ally of Sparta. These sanctions, known as the Megarian decree, were largely ignored by Thucydides, but modern economic historians have noted that forbidding Megara to trade with the prosperous Athenian empire would have been disastrous for the Megarans. The decree was likely a greater catalyst for the war than Thucydides and other ancient authors admitted, more so than simple fear of Athens supremacy.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Causes of the war", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki