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.
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.
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.