The Leading Cause Of The Peloponnesian War

Rome and Sparta were both highly militarized societies, but the Spartan state was much more stratified and totalitarian than the Roman state. In Sparta, the state exercised total control over the lives of all classes, while the Romans were more flexible and inclusive.

The Peloponnesian War was a conflict that broke out in 431 B.C. that pitted Athens and Sparta primarily against each other.

The leading cause of the war was the excessive power of Athens and the fear it aroused in Sparta.

In fact, as Thucydides specifies in his analysis of the assumptions of the war, the real motive in the will of the Spartans was to oppose the overwhelming power of Athens, which, since the end of the Persian wars, had embarked on a course of progressive extension of its sphere of dominion over the Greek world, even at the expense of the autonomy and freedom of the other poleis.

Sparta and Athens were the two main powers of Greece, and it was inevitable that their spheres of influence would overlap and cause conflict. Sparta was particularly alarmed by the growing power of Athens, which built an ever-larger fleet of ships thanks to tribute from its allies and dependents. Sparta was also suspicious of the Athenians' plans to rebuild the Long Wall fortifications that protected the port of Piraeus. Moreover, Sparta feared that inaction would prompt the other great Greek power, Corinth, to side with Athens. (Cartwright, 2023b)

The spark that eventually sparked the war was Pericles' provocation against Megara, a thriving trading city allied with