In 431 BC, the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League, two evenly matched powers, lost faith in each other and became implacable foes. Athens and Sparta, then the leading powers, rallied their allies and went to war to establish supremacy within Greece and gain greater control over the eastern Mediterranean. The war, fought on land and sea, lasted until 404 BC. Though there were several brief truces, the number of states involved led later scholars to call it the “ancient world war.”
Based on a remarkable early work of history by the Athenian historian Thucydides, this book chronicles the Peloponnesian War, a conflict that took place nearly 2,500 years ago, and lets us witness the unimaginable military catastrophe that befell Greece.
