Introduction

It was three days' walk from the borders of Attica to the crest of the vale of Laconia, from Athens, the city wreathed in violet, to Lacedaemon, clad in mountains and in bronze. The wayfarer from Athens left behind him the pandemonium of lucre, naval empire, and democracy, and entered the hushed streets of Sparta, where by an ancient law no coin might be found, where boys were schooled to silence and men to speak rarely and shortly, in the Laconic way. So close in miles but so contrary in manners, in the time of the Athenian statesman Pericles Athens and Sparta came to fight a great war together, the war we call the Peloponnesian War.

Two features of Sparta are especially important for understanding her relations with the Athens of Pericles. The first is the warlike quality of Spartan society. The toiling of Sparta's helots in the fields of Laconia and Messenia gave Spartans the leisure to devote themselves to hunting, athletics, and martial exercise. And the harsh Spartan upbringing, the whipping contests and starvation, and Spartan military training - no other state in fifth-century Greece trained all her citizen soldiers - left the Spartans supreme on the field of battle. This military dominance enabled the Spartans to forge an alliance of defeated, timid, or hopeful states, the Peloponnesian League (so we call it). Its members were wards against the rising of the helots, and allies against other enemies, especially against proud Argos, Sparta's old foe in the Peloponnese. But together Sparta’s league was as strong as its mistress: Sparta could bully one town or a few, but not all and not the greatest, such as Corinth.