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Virtue & Power

Timeline

Peloponnesian War Timeline

A chronology of the twenty-seven-year war between Athens and Sparta that broke the classical Greek world, as recorded by Thucydides and continued by Xenophon.

The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) was the long contest between the sea power of Athens and the land power of Sparta that exhausted the Greek world and ended the Athenian golden age.

  1. 431 BCE

    War begins; Sparta invades Attica; Pericles' Funeral Oration.

  2. 430–426 BCE

    The plague at Athens; death of Pericles (429).

  3. 428–427 BCE

    Revolt of Mytilene; the Mytilenean Debate.

  4. 425 BCE

    Athenian success at Pylos; Spartans captured.

  5. 422 BCE

    Battle of Amphipolis; deaths of Brasidas and Cleon.

  6. 421 BCE

    The Peace of Nicias — an unstable truce.

  7. 416 BCE

    The Melian Dialogue; Athens destroys Melos.

  8. 415–413 BCE

    The Sicilian Expedition ends in total catastrophe at Syracuse.

  9. 411 BCE

    Oligarchic coup at Athens (the Four Hundred); Thucydides' narrative breaks off.

  10. 406 BCE

    Athenian naval victory at Arginusae; the generals executed.

  11. 405 BCE

    Lysander destroys the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami.

  12. 404 BCE

    Athens surrenders; the Long Walls demolished; the Thirty Tyrants installed.

Athens defeated itself as much as Sparta defeated it — abandoning Pericles' strategy for the Sicilian gamble — and Sparta won only with Persian gold. The war left no Greek city strong enough to lead.