The great gains and leadership of Athens towards numerous Greek city-states had to be incised by the ‘great war’ with the Peloponnesians; a war that according to one computation started today, the early days of spring in c. 431. The war was active for twenty-seven years, mainly because of the “ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀνθρώπων” length, as Thucydides stated, that concluded to generalization of the conflicts throughout the Mediterranean Greek city-sates.
However, the dramatic clash of the two major forces was mainly generated by the wish of the Athenian polis, as hegemonic state of its Allied forces, from one side, and Sparta as the leader of the Peloponnesian Alliance, from the other.
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The battle of Leukimen (c. 435), where the Corinthian navy was defeated and the ἐπιμαχίαν signed in between Athens and Corfu –we count, also, the second navy battle at Sybota (c. 433)–, were the minor reasons of the Corinth’s grant stand against Athens. Near the ‘official’ start of the war, in autumn 432 B.C.E, the battle outside of the Potidaea’s walls, where the Corinthians phalanx also took a major part, was the final –from the part of Periklean Athens– motive of the Corinthian ‘aggressiveness’ against the Athenian alliance. Thus, Perikles answers with the Megarian degree, which according to Aristophanes was the main cause of the war. It was no much later than the late of the winter c. 432 where the Spartans vote for “τὰς σπονδάς λελύσθαι καὶ πολεμητέα εἶναι, αὐ τοσοῦτον τῶν ξυμμάχων πεισθέντες τοῖς λόγοις ὅσον φοβούμενοι τούς Ἀθηναίους μὴ ἐπὶ μεῖζον δυνηθῶσιν...”. The war was inevitable!
In addition, today in the past, and more precisely in 399 B.C.E, Socrates died according to the laws of Athens in prison by consuming the κώνειον – a mix of the poisonous hemlock. He was accused for, “μισόδημος καὶ τοὺς συνόντας (πείθων) τῆς δημοκρατίας καταγελᾶν...καὶ μέμφεσθαι, φησίν, αὐτὸν τῶν ἐθνῶν τισι τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν...”. His death was considered by his ‘friend’ Plato as the best example of the Athenian’s ethos downfall.
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