The first stage of the war, called Archidamian from Archidamus, the Spartan king, ended in a stalemate in 421 with the Peace of Nicias. Athens had remained firm and had suppressed the dangerous rebellion of Mytilene in 427. Athens was most damaged by the onset in 430 of plague, which removed perhaps a quarter of the Athenian population and caused Pericles' death in 429. Athens gained an advantage in the war in 425 by capturing a Spartan force on the island of Sphacteria, but this victory was canceled the next year when the Spartan Brasidas captured Amphipolis. The deaths in 422 of Cleon and Brasidas, both of whom were prowar, led to a truce the next year. The peace was unstable because, although there were no significant hostilities, neither side fully complied with the terms of the agreement. Plutarch. "Pericles." Pericles the Olympian. http://www.e classics.com/pericles.htm. Clearly, while Sparta was victorious in the war, Athens retained an important place in the ancient world and achieved greatness that lasted far beyond the loss in the Peloponnesian War, while Sparta declined and is remembered largely for that war and not for anything that occurred thereafter. War had an impact on the development of the ancient world, but it cannot be said that the victor is necessarily the one to achieve ascendance. The relationship between these events and Sparta's amazing social and military reorganization is obscure. Some elements of the "new" Sparta seem to be primitive survivals paralleled elsewhere, notably in Crete, while others seem to derive from its need to control its subject population. Sparta's agrarian and stagnant economy also played a role. In any case, Sparta was transformed into a collectivist warrior society. Seven year old boys of the ruling class were removed from their families to be trained for war. They were educated by the state and grew up in barracks, where they learned discipline and austerity. Spartans became the best warrior |
