The Greeks Fight Each Other

Now Greece was at peace. Instead of putting all their time and energy into fighting the Persians, the Greeks were able to do other things. They became famous for their architecture—the way they designed and built buildings.

Inside the Parthenon were pictures, carved in marble, of different Greek battles. These pictures were called friezes. One of the friezes shows a legendary battle between the Greeks and an army of centaurs. Centaurs were imaginary creatures that were half man and half horse.

The soldiers and centaurs on the friezes look very real. You can see the muscles in the arms of the soldiers, and the expression on the faces of the soldiers. The Greeks tried very hard to make their pictures and statues look like real people. The faces of their statues look like the faces of real men and women. And the folds of their clothing look like they are made from real cloth. It is hard to believe that they are carved from stone.

With the Persians defeated, Athens and Sparta no longer had to fight. The Greeks could have gone on making their beautiful buildings and creating their statues in peace.

But they didn’t. Sparta and Athens were both afraid that the other city would become too powerful. So instead of remaining on friendly terms, Sparta and Athens began to fight with each other again. The war between Sparta and Athens began in 431 BC/BCE. It had a very long name—the Peloponnesian War. And the Peloponnesian War went on for a long time, over 25 years.

At first, Sparta gathered all its armies together and marched towards Athens to invade it. But the Athenians decided that the Spartan soldiers were too strong to fight.

The Athenians waited and waited. Maybe their strategy would have worked—if something terrible hadn’t happened. The plague broke out, inside the city walls.

The plague was a sickness spread by the fleas that lived on rats. But the Athenians didn’t know this. They just knew that people were getting sick and dying all over the city. They couldn’t leave the city, because of the Spartan army camped outside. And inside the city, sickness was everywhere. The greatest Athenian general, a man named Pericles, and many of the strongest young men of Athens died. The Athenians panicked. How could they defeat the Spartans now?

Finally one Athenian decided that he was tired of waiting for the siege to end. His name was Alcibiades, and he wanted to be the king of Athens. He thought to himself, “If I can defeat the Spartans, the Athenians will want to follow me!” So he called out to the Athenians, “Follow me! Let’s get rid of these Spartans once and for all. We’ll attack the Spartan army and defeat it!”

Alcibiades led the Athenians outside the city walls and attacked the Spartan camp. But the men of Athens were sick and weak, and the Spartans defeated them. The survivors straggled back into Athens, angry and embarrassed. “Let’s get rid of Alcibiades!” they shouted. “He led us into defeat!”

But Alcibiades was nowhere to be found. When he saw how angry the Athenians were, he deserted the city and went over to the Spartan camp. “Follow me back into Athens!” he told the Spartan general. “I know a secret passageway into the city. We can sneak in after dark and take over before the Athenians know what has happened to them!”

The Spartans agreed to follow Alcibiades. So late one night, the traitor led the Spartans into his own city. The Spartan army captured Athens and took over. Sparta became the strongest city in Greece.

But most of the Athenian men and many of the Spartan soldiers had died in the long, long Peloponnesian War. Now Greece no longer had the men they needed to keep other invaders away. The Greeks had spent all their energy fighting each other; they had none left to defend themselves.

And soon, invaders would come.

Note to Parent: The Peloponnesian Wars were fought 431–404 BC/BCE, with a brief peace in the middle.