How many spartans died in the peloponnesian war

Fighting between Greek city-states, also known as poleis , or the singular, polis, was a common theme in Ancient Greece. Although they shared a common ancestry, ethnic differences, as well as economic interests, and an obsession with heroes and glory, meant that war was a common and welcomed occurrence in the ancient Greek world.

However, despite being relatively close to one another geographically, Athens and Sparta rarely engaged in direct military conflict during the centuries leading up to the Peloponnesian War. This changed, ironically, after the two sides actually came together to fight as part of a pan-Greek alliance against the Persians. This series of conflicts, known as the Greco-Persian Wars, threatened the very existence of the ancient Greeks.

But the alliance eventually exposed the conflicting interests between Athens and Sparta, and this is one of the main reasons why the two eventually went to war. At the time, the Persians controlled large swaths of territory that spanned from modern-day Iran to Egypt and Turkey. In an effort to continue to expand his empire, the Persian king at the turn of the 5th century BCE, Darius I, convinced a Greek tyrant, Aristagoras, to invade the Greek island Naxos on his behalf.

However, he failed, and fearing retaliation from the Persian king, Aristagoras encouraged the Greeks living throughout Ionia, the region on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey, to rebel against the Persian throne, which they did.

Darius I responded by sending his army and campaigning around the region for ten years to quell the insurrection. Once this chapter of the war was over, Darius I marched into Greece with his army so as to punish those who had offered support to the Ionian Greeks, mainly Athens and Sparta.

However, he was stopped at the Battle of Marathon BCE , and he died before he was able to regroup his army and launch another attack. His successor, Xerxes I, gathered one of the largest armies ever assembled in the ancient world and marched into Greece with the aim of subjugating Athens, Sparta, and the rest of the free Greek city-states.

In response, Athens and Sparta, along with several other powerful city-states, such as Corinth, Argos, and Arcadia, formed an alliance to fight against the invading Persians, and this joint force was eventually able to stop the Persians at the Battle of Salamis BCE and the Battle of Plataea BCE.

Before these decisive battles which ended in Greek victories, the two sides fought the Battle of Thermopylae , which is one of the most famous battles of the ancient era.

These two defeats drove Xerxes and his armies from Greece, but it did not end the war. Disagreements about how to proceed in the fight against Persia broke out, with Athens and Sparta having different opinions about what to do. This conflict played an important role in the eventual outbreak of war between the two Greek cities. However, during this final period of the war, Athens fought without the help of Sparta. The pan-Greek alliance had morphed into another alliance the Delian League, named for the island of Delos where the League had its treasury.

The Spartans, who were historically isolationist and had no imperial ambitions, but who treasured their sovereignty above all else, saw expanding Athenian power as a threat to Spartan independence. As a result, when the Greco-Persian War came to an end in BCE, the stage was set for the conflict which would eventually be known as the Peloponnesian War.

While the main conflict fought between Athens and Sparta is known as The Peloponnesian War, this was not the first time these two city-states fought. Sparta called upon Athens to assist in the putting down a helot rebellion in Spartan territory. Helots were essentially slaves who did most if not all of the manual labor in Sparta. However, when the Athenian army arrived in Sparta, they were sent away for reasons unknown, a move that greatly angered and insulted Athenian leadership.

Once this happened, Athens feared the Spartans would make a move against them, so they began reaching out to other Greek city-states to secure alliances in the event there was an outbreak of fighting.

The Athenians started by striking deals with Thessaly, Argos, and Megara. To escalate things further, Athens began allowing helots who were fleeing Sparta to settle in and around Athens, a move that not only angered Sparta but that destabilized it even more. By BCE, Athens and Sparta were essentially at war, although they rarely fought one another directly. Here are some of the main events to take place during this initial conflict known as the First Peloponnesian War.

At this point in the First Peloponnesian War, it appeared as though Athens was going to deliver a decisive blow, an event that would have dramatically changed the course of history.

But they were forced to stop because the force they had sent to Egypt to fight the Persians who controlled most of Egypt at the time , had been badly defeated, leaving the Athenians vulnerable to a Persian retaliation.

As a result, they were forced to stop their pursuit of the Spartans, a move which helped cool off the conflict between Athens and Sparta for some time. They entered Boeotia and provoked a revolt, which Athens tried, but failed, to squash.

This move meant the Athenian Empire, activating under the guise of the Delian League, no longer had any territory on mainland Greece. Instead, the empire was relegated to the islands throughout the Aegean. After the revolt in Boeotia, several island city-states that had been part of the Delian League decided to rebel, the most significant being Megara.

This distracted Athens from the Spartan threat and Sparta tried to invade Attica during this time. However, they failed, and it had become clear to both sides the war was going nowhere. As the name suggests, it was meant to last thirty years, and it set up a framework for a divided Greece that was led by both Athens and Sparta. More specifically, neither side could go to war with one another if one of the two parties advocated for settling the conflict through arbitration, language that essentially recognized Athens and Sparta as equally powerful in the Greek world.

Accepting these peace terms all but ended the aspiration some Athenian leaders had of making Athens the head of a unified Greece, and it also marked the peak of Athenian imperial power.

However, the differences between Athens and Sparta proved to be too much. Peace lasted much less than thirty years, and soon after the two sides agreed to put down their weapons, The Peloponnesian War broke out and the Greek world was changed forever.

But that the peace came under intense pressure in BCE, just six years after the treaty was signed, helps show just how fragile things were. This near breakdown in cooperation took place when Samos, a powerful ally of Athens at the time, chose to revolt against the Delian League.

The Spartans saw this as a major opportunity to perhaps once and for all put an end to Athenian power in the region, and they called a congress of their allies in the Peloponnesian Alliance to determine if the time had indeed come to resume conflict against the Athenians.

Just seven years later, in BCE, another major event took place that once again put considerable strain on the peace that Athens and Sparta had agreed to maintain. In short, Corcyra, another Greek city-state which was located in northern Greece, picked a fight with Corinth over a colony located in what is now modern-day Albania.

This colony, which had been ruled by a Corcyrean oligarchy since its inception, had become wealthy and was seeking to install a democracy. The wealthy merchants hoping to overthrow the oligarchy appealed to Corinth for help, and they got it. But then the Corcyraeans asked Athens to step in, which they did.

But when they got to the battle, they ended up fighting, which only escalated things further. Then, when Athens decided to punish those who had offered support to Corinth, war started to become even more imminent. Seeing that Athens was still set on expanding its power and influence in Greece, the Corinthians requested that the Spartans call together the various members of the Peloponnesian League to discuss the matter.

The Athenians, however, showed up uninvited to this congress, and a great debate, recorded by Thucydides, took place. At this meeting of the various heads of state in the Greek world, the Corinthians shamed Sparta for standing on the sidelines while Athens continued to try and bring free Greek city-states under its control, and it warned that Sparta would be left without any allies if it continued its inaction.

The Athenians used their time on the floor to warn the Peloponnesian alliance what could happen if war resumed. They reminded everyone of how the Athenians were the principle reason the Greeks managed to stop the great Persian armies of Xerxes, a claim that is debatable at best but essentially just false. However, the Spartans, along with the rest of the Peloponnesian League, agreed the Athenians had already broken the peace and that war was once again necessary.

In Athens, politicians would claim the Spartans had refused to arbitrate, which would have positioned Sparta as the aggressor and made the war more popular. However, most historians agree this was merely propaganda designed to win support for a war Athenian leadership wanted in its quest to expand its power.

At the end of this conference held among the major Greek city-states, it was clear that war between Athens and Sparta was going to happen, and just one year later, in BCE, fighting between the two Greek powers resumed.

The scene was the city of Plataea, famous for the Battle of Plataea in which the Greeks won a decisive victory over the Persians. However, this time, there would be no major battle.

Instead, a sneak attack by the citizens of Plataea would set in motion arguably the greatest war of Greek history. In short, an envoy of Thebans went to Plataea to help a group of elites overthrow the leadership in Plataea.

They were granted access to the city, but once inside, a group of Plataean citizens rose up and killed nearly the entire envoy. This set off a rebellion inside the city of Plataea, and the Thebans, along with their allies the Spartans, sent troops to support those who had been trying to seize power in the first place.

The Athenians supported the government in power, and this meant the Athenians and the Spartans were fighting once again. This event, while somewhat random, help set into motion 27 years of conflict that we now understand as the Peloponnesian War.

Because The Peloponnesian War was such a long conflict, most historians break it up into three parts, with the first being called the Archidamian War. The name comes from the Spartan king at the time, Archidamus II. The Archidamian War did not start without serious disturbances in the Greek balance of power. This initial chapter lasted for ten years, and its events help show just how difficult it was for either side to gain an advantage of the other.

More specifically, the impasse between the two sides was largely the result of Sparta having a strong ground force but weak navy and Athens having a powerful navy but less effective ground force. Other things, such as restrictions on how long Spartan soldiers could be away at war, also contributed to the lack of a decisive result from this initial part of the Peloponnesian war. As mentioned, the Archidamian war officially broke out after the Plataea sneak attack in BCE, and the city remained under siege by the Spartans.

The Athenians committed a small defense force, and it proved to be rather effective, as Spartan soldiers were not able to break through until BCE. When they did, they burned the city to the ground and killed the surviving citizens.

They would use their naval supremacy to attack strategic ports along the Peloponnese while relying on the high city-walls of Athens to keep the Spartans out. However, this strategy left much of Attica, the peninsula on which Athens is located, completely exposed. As a result, Athens opened its city walls to all residents of Attica, which caused the population of Athens to swell considerably during the early stages of the Peloponnesian War. This strategy ended up backfiring slightly as a plague broke out in Athens in BCE that devastated the city.

The plague also claimed the life of Pericles, and this passive, defensive strategy died with him, which opened the door to a wave of Athenian aggression on the Peloponnese. Because the Athenians had left Attica almost entirely undefended, and also because the Spartans knew they had a significant advantage in land battles, the Spartan strategy was to raid the land surrounding Athens so as to cut off the food supply to the city.

Some historians compare Athens to the whale, and Sparta to the elephant. The Island of Sicily was miles to the west of Athens. In BC, Alcibiades, a young Athenian and follower of the philosopher, Socrates, convinced the Athenians to take the war to Sicily, by attacking the city-state of Syracuse.

Syracuse was a colony of Corinth and friendly to the Peloponnesian League. Alcibiades was very convincing, as he was an excellent public speaker. Alcibiades made the point that if Athens should take Syracuse, all of Sicily would fall, and give Athens new riches and power. It would only be a matter of time before Sparta would surrender.

Sicily was miles away from Athens, and it would take several ships in the Athenian navy to attack Syracuse. The night before the expedition set sail, the sacred statues of Hermes were vandalized. Alcibiades and his friends were accused of drinking and then smashing the statues. This was awkward, because Alcibiades was the leader of the expedition. Alcibiades was allowed to set sail with the Athenian fleet, but when the fleet arrived at Thurii, a Greek colony on the southern coast of Italy, a messenger ship from Athens caught up with the fleet.

This small boat was to take Alcibiades back to Athens, as he had been tried and convicted of smashing the statues. Unwilling to return, Alcibiades, along with his pet dog, jumped ship and swam to Thurii. Nicias was now in charge of the attack on Syracuse, even though he had argued against it back in Athens. When the Athenian fleet landed in Sicily, close to Syracuse, the unwilling Nicias dragged his feet.

The Athenians were slow to make the necessary walls to close off Syracuse by land, even though the mighty Athenian Fleet had closed of Syracuse by the sea. Meanwhile, Alcibiades fled to Sparta, where he convinced the Spartans to help the Syracusans.

Sparta sent one boat to Syracuse with a commander by the name of Gylippus. Gylippus raised an army in Sicily and defeated the Athenians. Foolishly, Nicias asked Athens to send reinforcements.

When the new soldiers arrived, the Athenians finally decided the war was lost and to head back home. A rare lunar eclipse prevented the Athenian fleet from leaving the harbor, and during that delay, the Syracusans placed a metal chain across the harbor, trapping the Athenian fleet. The Athenians fled by land, but were hunted down, killed or thrown into pits to starve. Oddly, the Syracusans admired the tragedies of the Athenian playwright, Euripides, and any Athenian prisoner who could give a good performance of lines of Euripides, was released.

Nicias was killed, and the Athenians lost most of their fleet. This was the turning-point of the war. At the advice of Alcibiades, the Spartans built a permanent fort in Attica so they could destroy the Athenian countryside year-round. This also cut off the access to the silver mine, and the Athenians were running out of resources. Alcibiades was flirting with the queen of Sparta while her husband was in Athenian territory, as Alcibiades had suggested, year-round. When the Spartan king found out about this, he returned to Sparta, only to find that Alcibiades had fled again, this time to Persia.

Now living in the Persian Empire, Alcibiades convinced the satrap of Lydia to slow down payments to Sparta, which the Persians had used to help Sparta gain a fleet of warships. Alcibiades was now no friend to Sparta, and he told the Persian satrap that by keeping Athens and Sparta even in power, they would eventually wear each other out, leaving the way clear for the Persians to gain power. Seeing the influence Alcibiades had with Persia, Athens made it clear they wished for him to return and become a general.

Athens was hopeful Alcibiades could convince the Persians to give aid to Athens. The Delian League was beginning to crumble, and Athens needed new allies. Alcibiades eventually returned to Athens to a hero's welcome.

The charges brought up against Alcibiades for smashing the statues were dropped. Alcibiades had great victories at the sea battles of Abydos and Cyzicus, keeping Athens in control of the Hellespont, but in BC, at the Battle of Notium, Alcibiades was defeated by Lysander, a Spartan who was comfortable at sea. This Spartan whale would go on to become famous, while Alcibiades was recalled to Athens.

Rather than face a trial, Alcibiades retired. In BC, the Athenians won the Battle of Arginusea, but the commanders of the fleet did not attempt to rescue sailors from the sea. Back in Athens these commanders were put on trial and sentenced to death. Socrates, the father of philosophy, protested this outcome.

Socrates was no fan of democracy, as he felt it led to mob rule, and poor decision making. Lysander then sailed to Athens and closed off the Port of Piraeus. Gray crossed swords indicate a Spartan victory, Black crossed swords indicate an Athenian victory. Spartans terms were lenient. First, the democracy was replaced by on oligarchy of thirty Athenians, friendly to Sparta. The Delian League was shut down, and Athens was reduced to a limit of ten triremes.

Finally, the Long Walls were taken down. Corinth retreated to rebuild its fleet and plan retaliation. In B. The Athenian government debated the suggestion, but its leader Pericles suggested a defensive alliance with Corcya, sending a small number of ships to protect it against Corinthian forces.

All forces met at the Battle of Sybota, in which Corinth, with no support from Sparta, attacked and then retreated at the sight of Athenian ships. Athens, convinced it was about to enter war with Corinth, strengthened its military hold on its various territories in the region to prepare. A year passed before Sparta took aggressive action. During that time, Sparta sent three delegations to Athens to avoid war, offering proposals that could be viewed as a betrayal of Corinth.

He returned to Athens in B. Pericles, following a political uprising that led to his censure, succumbed to the plague in B. Despite this major setback for the Athenians, the Spartans saw only mixed success in their war efforts, and some major losses in western Greece and at sea.

Meant to last 50 years, it barely survived eight, undermined by conflict and rebellion brought on by various allies. War reignited decisively around B. Sparta sided with Syracuse and defeated the Athenians in a major sea battle. Athens did not crumble as expected, winning a string of naval victories against Sparta, which sought monetary and weapons support from the Persian Empire. Under the Spartan general Lysander, the war raged for another decade. By in B. Lysander decimated the Athenian fleet in battle and then held Athens under siege, forcing it to surrender to Sparta in B.

The Peloponnesian War marked the end of the Golden Age of Greece, a change in styles of warfare, and the fall of Athens, once the strongest city-state in Greece. The balance in power in Greece was shifted when Athens was absorbed into the Spartan Empire.

It continued to exist under a series of tyrants and then a democracy. Athens lost its dominance in the region to Sparta until both were conquered less than a century later and made part of the kingdom of Macedon. Martin, published by Yale University Press,