I
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
Reviewed generally, the Peloponnesian war, which involved practically the entire Grecian world and lasted twenty years, was as follows:
Athens, the maritime state, with enterprise, expansive skill and genius, stood the leader of a great confederacy stretching from Zante to Phaselis. The zenith of her power was reached about B.C. 456, but when the war broke out (B.C. 431) she was still mistress of the islands, and the almost unquestioned owner of the world's Sea Power. Whatever else she had lost, Sea Power was unquestionably hers.
Her principal rival was Sparta, the leading military state, unenterprising, slow, and tenacious. With Sparta was Corinth, a maritime state whose commercial greatness had fallen as Athenian SEA POWER rose.
The east of Greece was a species of Athenian lake, on the west coast the Peloponnesian power was the greater.
In the war that followed both sides adhered tolerably faithfully to one general idea—to hold the side already controlled and to seek extension on the
