A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War

by Victor Davis Hanson

Both sides claimed detailed grievances. Sparta’s ally Corinth, the rich Greek city on the Isthmus, felt that Athens earlier had belligerently intervened on the side of the rival island of Corcyra against it in a series of disputes. The small nearby state of Megara chafed under an Athenian trade embargo and asked for Spartan support. The nearby island of Aegina, which loomed on the horizon within easy sight from the Acropolis—Pericles once dubbed it “the eyesore of the Piraeus”—claimed that Athens interfered in its internal affairs and expected Sparta to preserve its sovereignty. Athenians, in turn, alleged that the Peloponnesians had encouraged their own tributary ally, the northern city of Potidaea, to revolt. The Boeotians residing to the immediate north of Athens wished to eliminate the outpost city of Plataea, which had brought the old fear of Athenian imperialism to their doorstep—and on and on.29 Of course, an Athenian embargo against Megara, past Athenian interference in the nearby island of Aegina, rivalry over the allegiance of a powerful Corcyra with “its very large fleet,” and disputed lands on the border of Megara or Boeotia were no small matters.30 But more frequently it was again the perception of grievance, involving matters of fear and honor, that propelled Sparta to act while it could, especially among generations in both Athens and Sparta that “were unfamiliar enough with war to welcome it”31 Athens apparently thought that over the long duration its cultu...