Historical Overview of the Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 BC) IntroductionThe Peloponnesian War is widely known as the second war between the Athenian and Spartan coalitions. Narratives about the war, described that the war took place during a period in which the Greek world was divided into two major alignments each led by Athens or Sparta, with both sides at the height of their power. Two powerful Greek city-states diametrical in the beginning of the war, Athens wielded great political and economic power in the Greek world. Athens was perceived as the "unifying force" in the Greek territories against the Persian invasions. After the end of the Greco-Persian Wars, Athens led the Delian League (See Figure 2) and protected its members with its powerful naval fleet, the largest fleet of the time. Athens was a thriving metropolis and a commercial society with an ethnically homogeneous population, had already democratized its institutions, establishing a sovereign Assembly whose majority formed the government which directly took all vital decisions. In contrast, Sparta was largely an agricultural and more isolated society. Sparta's political system was oligarchic and militant. Sparta's hereditary monarchy of two kings held the right to military leadership. Five ephors elected by the Assembly served as executive agents with broad powers. The Assembly acted only by acclamation, unlike the Athenian Assembly which depended on debate. Sparta possessed great territorial power. His hoplites were the most feared and effective fighters in the Greek world. Because of Sparta's respected territorial power, other Greek city-states also chose to form alliances with Sparta (the Peloponnesian League) to balance Athens' influence. Athens was a bastion of Greek democracy, with a foreign policy of regular interventions to help other democratic allies. . The Spartans, who favored oligarchies like theirs, resented and feared Athens' imperialistic and cultural ascendancy. There was therefore constant contempt and simmering rivalry between the two cities. The First Peloponnesian War The First Peloponnesian War, which began in 460 BC, led Sparta's allies (Megara and Corinth) to drag it into a long campaign against the dominant threat of Athens. In 446 BC, Athens and Sparta signed a "thirty years' peace" in which they both agreed to negotiate disputes and not interfere in each other's allies' affairs. But continuing disputes between the allies of Sparta and Athens inevitably led to the Second Peloponnesian War.