Who won the Peloponnesian War, Sparta or Athens?
Sparta won the Peloponnesian War, fought from 431 to 404 BC. For a decade the land power and the sea power could not land a decisive blow. Then Athens lost a great expedition in Sicily, Sparta planted a fort in Attica, and Persian money paid for a Spartan fleet. After Lysander captured almost the whole Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 405 BC, a starving Athens surrendered in 404 BC. Neither side won the peace: Thebes broke Spartan power at Leuctra in 371 BC.1
The two greatest cities of ancient Greece could hardly have been more different. Sparta was a militarized land power built around its feared army; Athens a democratic sea power of trade, culture and empire. They joined forces to beat Persia, then turned on each other in a long war that exhausted them both.
Did Sparta and Athens fight together against Persia?
Yes. Sparta and Athens fought on the same side against Persia. When Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 BC, the Greek cities that chose to resist met, exchanged oaths and agreed to end their quarrels with each other. Spartans under King Leonidas held the pass at Thermopylae while the allied fleet, under a Spartan admiral, fought at Artemisium, and together the allies defeated Persia at Salamis in 480 BC and at Plataea in 479 BC.2
So who won between Sparta and Athens? Once Persia was beaten, the partnership fell apart. Sparta won the Peloponnesian War, fought from 431 to 404 BC, when Athens surrendered.3
Sparta vs Athens: the key differences
| Sparta | Athens | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Classical Greece; their rivalry peaks in the 5th century BC | Classical Greece; its golden age is the 5th century BC |
| Government | Two kings, a council of elders and five ephors: a mixed constitution4 | A direct democracy of adult male citizens5 |
| Strength | The finest land army in Greece | The dominant navy and a maritime empire |
| Economy | Farming worked by enslaved helots6 | Silver, trade and tribute from allies7 |
| Women | Trained in athletics; could inherit and own land8 | Expected to stay at home and out of public life9 |
| Culture | Austere and military, built around training for war10 | Tragedy, comedy and great buildings such as the Parthenon11 |
| The great war | Won the Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC12 | Lost the Peloponnesian War |
| Lasting legacy | The enduring image of the warrior state | A birthplace of democracy and Western thought |
- Sparta was a land power with the finest infantry in Greece; Athens a naval power and a democracy.
- Together they led the Greek resistance that defeated Persia in 480 to 479 BC.
- Their rivalry erupted into the Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 BC).
- Sparta finally won, with Persian money and a fleet, but the long war weakened all of Greece.
Sparta vs Athens government: kings and ephors against the assembly
Sparta had a mixed constitution unlike any other in Greece. Two kings reigned at once, one from each of two royal houses; they held priesthoods and led the army in war. Beside them sat the gerousia, a council of twenty-eight elders over the age of sixty, elected for life, which with the two kings made a council of thirty.13
A further check came from the five ephors, ordinary citizens drawn from the whole body of Spartiates, whose office curbed the kings and elders; Aristotle thought it so powerful that it was "equal to a tyranny". The assembly of citizens decided the questions put to it, among them the vote for war with Athens, by shouting rather than by ballot.14
Athens was a direct democracy. Sovereign power lay with the assembly, the ecclesia, open to every adult male citizen; it met on the Pnyx hill and decided questions such as war and peace by a show of hands and a simple majority. Its business was prepared by a Council of Five Hundred chosen by lot, and most officials were also picked by lot. Military commands were elected, above all the ten generals, voted in for one year at a time, and Pericles led Athens as one of those ten, re-elected almost every year.15
Neither system was open to everyone. In Athens, slaves, resident foreigners, women and male citizens under twenty had no vote, and Pericles brought in pay for jurors so that poorer citizens could afford to serve. In Sparta, the full citizens were a small warrior class living on the labor of others.16
Armies and navies: hoplites against triremes
Sparta organized its whole society for war. At seven, boys were taken from their families and raised in state-run companies, the system called the agoge, which drilled obedience, endurance and fighting. As men they ate together in common messes of about fifteen and were forbidden any craft or money-making. The result was a specialized military class of heavy infantry, fighting shoulder to shoulder in the hoplite phalanx.17
This was possible because helots, state-owned serfs, many of them descended from the conquered Messenians, worked the land and handed over its produce. They far outnumbered their masters; at Plataea, Herodotus says, seven helots attended each Spartiate. Fear of revolt shaped Spartan policy. The ephors declared war on the helots each year, so that killing one was not murder, and during the Peloponnesian War some two thousand helots who had been promised their freedom vanished without trace.18
The system had a weakness: it could not replace its citizens. By the battle of Leuctra in 371 BC Sparta had perhaps a thousand Spartiates. Aristotle blamed a land system that left property in few hands, and concluded that the state "did not succeed in enduring a single blow, but perished owing to the smallness of its population".19
Athens fought differently. Before Xerxes invaded, Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to spend a rich strike of silver from the mines of Laurion on a fleet of two hundred triremes, the oared warships that later fought at Salamis (the Athenian Constitution says a hundred). After the Persian Wars, more and more allies in the Delian League paid money instead of sending ships, and Athens used that money to build Athenian ships rowed by Athenians. The rowers were the poorer citizens, and the navy gave them weight in the democracy.20
To protect that power, Athens built the Long Walls, which joined the city to its harbors at Phalerum and Piraeus. Behind them, Pericles argued, Athens could leave the countryside to the enemy, bring its people inside and live from the sea: its real strength, he said, lay in the fleet and in the money of its allies. The walls turned the city, in effect, into an island that could be supplied by sea.21
Women in Sparta and Athens
Spartan girls exercised in public, running, wrestling and throwing the discus and javelin, because the state wanted strong mothers of soldiers. Spartan women had greater legal rights than other Greek women and could inherit land. Aristotle, writing in the fourth century BC, claimed that nearly two-fifths of the country was owned by women, and Plutarch says that by the third century most of Sparta's wealth was in their hands.22
In Athens, women of citizen families had no political rights, and respectable women were expected to stay at home, quiet and unnoticed. In the funeral speech that Thucydides gives Pericles, the greatest glory of a woman is to be "least talked of among the men whether for good or for bad".23
Economy: helot farms against silver and the sea
Sparta's economy rested on helot farming. Citizens were barred from crafts and trade, and each paid a fixed share of food to his mess; a Spartiate who lost his land and could no longer pay dropped out of the citizen body, one reason their numbers fell.24
Athens was rich in cash. It had the silver of Laurion, a harbor at Piraeus that, in Pericles' words, drew "the produce of the world" to the city and, above all, the tribute of the Delian League, whose treasury it moved from Delos to Athens. Pericles drew on league money for his building program, including the Parthenon, and his opponents complained that the allies' war contributions were "gilding and bedizening our city".25
The Peloponnesian War, phase by phase
The two cities led the Greeks to victory over Persia at Salamis and Plataea, but the alliance did not last. Athenian expansion alarmed Sparta, and in 431 BC the Peloponnesian War began. Thucydides gave the real cause in one line: "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable." The immediate quarrels were over Corcyra, Potidaea and Athenian measures against Megara, an ally of Sparta.26
The Archidamian War (431 to 421 BC). King Archidamus II led the Peloponnesians into Attica again and again while the Athenians stayed behind their walls and struck back by sea. A plague broke out in the crowded city in the second year of the war and killed Pericles in 429 BC. In 425 BC the Athenians captured 292 Spartan-led hoplites, about 120 of them full Spartan citizens (Spartiates), on Sphacteria near Pylos; nothing in the war, Thucydides says, surprised the Greeks so much, since no one believed Spartans would give up their arms. The Spartan Brasidas struck back in the north and took Amphipolis, and when both he and the Athenian leader Cleon were killed outside Amphipolis, the two sides made the Peace of Nicias in 421 BC.27
The uneasy peace (421 to 413 BC). The peace never fully held. Sparta did not hand back Amphipolis and Athens kept Pylos. The Athenian Alcibiades built a coalition with Argos, Mantinea and Elis inside the Peloponnese, and in 418 BC King Agis II broke it at Mantinea, which Thucydides called the greatest battle among the Greeks for a very long time.28
The Sicilian Expedition (415 to 413 BC). In 415 BC Athens sent a great armada to conquer Sicily; Thucydides counts 134 triremes and 5,100 hoplites. Alcibiades was recalled to face a religious scandal and fled to Sparta, the Spartan commander Gylippus took charge of the defense of Syracuse, and in 413 BC the whole Athenian force was destroyed; in Thucydides' words, "few out of many returned home".29
The Decelean or Ionian War (413 to 404 BC). Sparta now fortified Decelea in Attica and kept a garrison there all year round, so that Athens lost the use of its land; Thucydides counted the fort among the main causes of the city's ruin. In 412 BC Sparta made a treaty with Persia that left the Greek cities of Asia to the Persian king in return for money for a fleet. Athens fought on and won at Cyzicus in 410 BC, where the Spartan admiral Mindarus was killed, and at Arginusae in 406 BC. After Arginusae a storm stopped the rescue of the crews of wrecked ships, and the Athenians put six of their victorious generals to death.30
The turn came when Cyrus the Younger, a son of the Persian king, arrived in Asia Minor with orders to back Sparta and found a partner in the Spartan admiral Lysander. Cyrus raised the pay of Lysander's rowers from three obols a day to four, which drew sailors away from the Athenian fleet.31
Aegospotami (405 BC). Lysander moved to the Hellespont, the route of Athens' grain ships, and the Athenian fleet of 180 triremes followed him and put in at Aegospotami, across the strait from his base at Lampsacus. On the fifth day Lysander attacked while the crews were scattered ashore and took almost the whole fleet; only the general Conon with eight ships, and the state ship Paralus, escaped.32
The surrender (404 BC). Blockaded by land and sea, Athens starved through the winter. Corinth and Thebes wanted the city destroyed, but Sparta refused to enslave a Greek city that had done great service against Persia. In spring 404 BC the Athenians accepted Sparta's terms: pull down the Long Walls and the walls of Piraeus, give up all but twelve ships, take back their exiles and follow Sparta's lead by land and sea. The walls came down to the music of flute girls, and Lysander set up the oligarchy known as the Thirty.33
The land power and the sea power fought to a standstill, and Greece paid the price.
Why did Sparta win the Peloponnesian War?
Sparta did not win simply by beating Athens at its own game. Thucydides judged that Pericles had rightly gauged Athens' power and that the city lost through its own choices after his death: ambitious projects such as the Sicilian Expedition, quarrels for the leadership at home and, at the end, the money Cyrus supplied to the Peloponnesian fleet. Even after the disaster in Sicily, he notes, Athens held out for years against Sparta, its rebel allies and Persia together.34
Historians still argue over that verdict. Donald Kagan held that Pericles' defensive strategy had already failed by the time he died, because it never hurt Sparta enough to make it seek peace. Either way, the long war had a third winner: Persia, which recovered the Greek cities of Asia Minor.35
Who was better at war, Sparta or Athens?
On land, Sparta. Its hoplites won the great pitched battles of the age, from Plataea to Mantinea, and Pericles' whole strategy rested on never meeting them in the field. At sea, Athens. Until Persian money paid Spartan rowers, Athenian crews won battle after battle, as late as Cyzicus and Arginusae. Sparta won the war because it gained what it lacked, a paid fleet and an able admiral, while Athens lost a great army in Sicily and fought itself at home.36
Victory did not make Sparta a lasting sea power. Kagan doubts it ever built a system able to rule the sea year after year, and in the 390s Persia changed sides: a Persian-paid fleet under the Athenian Conon returned to the Aegean, and Athens rebuilt its Long Walls with Persian money. On land, the shrinking citizen army met its match in 371 BC, when Thebes, fighting in an unusually deep phalanx, defeated Sparta at Leuctra and then freed the helots of Messenia.37
See the moments when the two cities stood together against Persia, from Thermopylae to Salamis, among the greatest battles of ancient Greece, or how a Spartan compares with another warrior class in Spartan vs samurai. Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea are all questions in the Greek battles quiz.
