Athens' Long Walls prompted distrust and eventual war 2,500 years ago. Nato is the most obvious 'Pericles Wall' of our times Much has been said about Thucydides' trap, but few talk about Pericles' ...

The Peloponnesian War is the name given to the long series of conflicts between Athens and Sparta that lasted from 431 until 404 BC. The reasons for this war are sometimes traced back as far as ...

The map below shows the location of Athens and Sparta. The blue line represents the straight line joining these two place. The distance shown is the straight line or the air travel distance between ...

Unlike Athens to the north, Sparta was famed for its austerity—its “spartan” character—was, and is, proverbial. A state run by an inflexible military regime, whose people existed almost ...

The Melians wanted to stay neutral between Athens and Sparta, and the Athenians could not tolerate that stance. They thought it made them look weak. Thucydides’ account of the conversation ...

In the conflict between Athens and Sparta, the Melians tried in vain to maintain their neutrality. As Thucydides apprises us, the Athenians were rather blunt about the issue: “Right, as the ...

Faced with such an overwhelming force, only a small confederation of city-states, led by Athens and Sparta, determined to resist Xerxes. At most they possessed some thirty thousand men ...

Thucydides’ fifth century B.C. history of the war between Athens and Sparta includes a famous debate over the use of military power known as the Melian Dialogue. Athens lands a fleet at the ...

In 399 BCE, Athens put one of its greatest thinkers, Socrates, on trial. The charges? Corrupting the youth and disrespecting the gods. The punishment? Death by drinking poison. But what if Socrates’ ...

First-hand account by Thucydides of the wars between Athens and Sparta in the 5th century BC, which reshaped the face of ancient Greece. Read by David Horovitch. Abridged by Tom Holland.

The map below shows the location of Sparta and Athens. The blue line represents the straight line joining these two place. The distance shown is the straight line or the air travel distance between ...