Episode 10 - The Peloponnesian Wars

<p>Episode 10 -  The Peloponnesian Wars</p><p>Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. </p><p>This is Episode 10 -  The Peloponnesian Wars.  </p><p>The Golden Age of Greece, which we focused on last episode, lasted from around 528 BC to 323 BC, and it was a time of great prosperity in Greece.  And that very prosperity brought about some inter-city rivalries, as the city-states of Greece competed for their share, or more than their share, of the riches.  </p><p><br></p><p>When I say rivalry, what I actually mean is some fairly long brutal, bloody, battles.  This wasn’t just a political or economic rivalry, it was armies in the field, destroying each other’s cities and territory.  </p><p><br></p><p>The two main cities in this war, were of course Athens and Sparta.  But the other cities of Greece were basically forced to choose sides.  Fighting took place all over Greece, hence the name of the war:  The Peloponnesian Wars.  The Peloponnese is the name of the lower part of the Greek peninsula - the part that Sparta was on.  Athens is on a different peninsula, the Attic peninsula, located across a narrow isthmus, just to the north-east of the Peloponnese.  The city of Corinth sits right at the isthmus.  Just look it up on a map, for goodness sake.  Anyway, Athens and Sparta are only about 150 miles apart by land, so it’s not that surprising that they were rivals.  </p><p><br></p><p>It’s interesting that during what is considered the Golden Age of Greece, there was this really intense set of battles between the two leading cities.  It’s still the Golden Age, and there’s still great art, philosophy, historical writing and literature being created, but there’s also a lot of fighting.  Part of that is because even though there was fighting, for most of the war, Athens was not really threatened.  The armies were off fighting somewhere else.  I say most of the war, be