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In 1996 the mayors of modern Athens and Sparta signed a symbolic treaty ending a war that began in 431 BC. Drawing on Thucydides, Xenophon and Plutarch, this episode follows the clash between Athens, a maritime democracy whose Delian League had become an empire funded by allies’ silver, and Sparta, a militarized oligarchy ruling a far larger population of helots. Thucydides blamed the war on the growth of Athenian power and the fear it caused in Sparta; the Megarian Decree and Corinthian pressure lit the fuse.

Pericles pulled Attica behind the Long Walls to Piraeus, but plague in 430 BC killed up to a third of Athenians and Pericles himself. Cleon took over, and in 425 BC Spartans surrendered at Sphacteria. After the Peace of Nicias in 421 BC, Alcibiades pushed the expedition to Syracuse, then defected to Sparta. A lunar eclipse delayed Nicias’s retreat and the fleet was destroyed. Sparta took Persian gold, Athens executed its victorious generals after Arginusae in 406 BC, and Lysander captured the fleet at Aegospotami. Athens surrendered in 404 BC.

• At Sphacteria, light troops on rough ground forced about 300 Spartan hoplites to surrender.
• Alcibiades was recalled over the mutilation of the Hermae.
• Athenian captives from Sicily were left to die in stone quarries or sold as slaves.
• Lysander seized 168 Athenian ships on the beach while crews foraged.
• The Long Walls were torn down to flute music, and the Thirty Tyrants ruled Athens.