Study of ancient warfare has become increasingly the domain of specialist historians of war. This book sets itself against that, insisting that wars are political, social and cultural events, not simply military events – and that this war, in particular, because we have such rich source material in Athenian literature, epigraphy and archaeology beyond Thucydides, provides an exceptionally good lens through which to examine a society, polity and culture under pressure. In this, this book differs from past studies of the Peloponnesian War which, almost without exception, have essentially rewritten Thucydides. By contrast this book tries to examine the Peloponnesian War not only as a textual event but as an historical event. The book therefore looks at the war as a war, with causes and a course, but also as a manifestation of the entanglement between Greek cities, as a product and shaper of empire, as a political upheaval, as a challenge in political thought, as a reshaping of the way the local and wider world was understood and as a religious crisis.