Fifteen Eighty Four

In the early summer of 431 BCE, villages and farms in Attica were abandoned as people moved into Athens. They were fleeing the advance of one of the largest armies ever assembled in ancient Greece. At its head marched the Spartans, supported by a formidable array of allies. The Athenians crowded behind the city’s Long Walls to the harbour at Piraeus, turning their own capital into a refuge. In that moment, war ceased to be something fought at the edges of the city and became the very condition of daily life. For the next three decades, the Peloponnesian war defined Athens, and indeed much of Greece. Siege and starvation, naval expeditions and political turmoil, cultural creativity and religious anxiety.

The Athenian Thucydides, one of the greatest historians of all time, sought to turn the suffering of his own age into a work for all ages in his account of the causes, strategies, and politics of this war. So compelling is his account that modern scholarly accounts all follow Thucydides’ interests and structure. But this it to neglect the wider impact of the war revealed by the uniquely rich literary and archaeological evidence surviving from these years.

Our new book, Reassessing the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge University Press, 2025), takes a broader view. It explores not just what generals decided or armies did, but how war reshaped communities: how religious rituals adapted under pressure, how politics sharpened into struggles over democracy and oligarchy, how women and enslaved people experienced violence and displacement, and how Athenians and their allies coped with years of uncertainty.

The evidence for this conflict is richer than for almost any other period of antiquity. Thucydides is only the beginning. Inscriptions record assembly decisions, religious innovations, the names of the fallen. Archaeology reveals unfinished building projects, grave reliefs of families commemorating loss, pottery circulating across the Aegean even in wartime. Comedy and tragedy carried the voices of internal opposition onto the public stage; later writers and visitors left reflections that extend and challenge the Thucydidean account. Taken together, these sources reveal how an extraordinary cross-section of ancient society reacted under pressure.

The Peloponnesian War produced a rolling transformation of Athens and of the Greek world. The naval dominance of Athens gradually eroded, never to be restored; the practice of democracy was reshaped under the pressure of invasion, epidemic and defeat; oligarchic experiments gained new force; and the rhythms of religious life were reconfigured. Cultural forms also shifted: the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes speak to communities under stress; new intellectual worlds opened in the Academy and Lyceum. By the time peace came, Greece was recognisably different from what it had been in 431: war had penetrated every level of society and every sphere of life.

As Thucydides himself noted, war is the most intense revealer of human societies. Under the stress of violence and fear, the values of a community are thrown into stark relief. War lays bare the extremes of human experience: the brutality of oppression and violence, and the brilliance of resilience, creativity, and solidarity. In its variety of horrors and wonders, the Peloponnesian War allows us to see the ancient Greek world at its most exposed. To reassess the Peloponnesian War is to reassess what it means to be human in the face of conflict.