The ancient Greeks were a little bit like you and your brother and sister (or your best friend). They didn’t always get along. One time the Greeks in Athens and the Greeks in Sparta got mad at each other about something that seemed very important at the time. So they went to war. And they didn’t fight just one war. They fought two of them! Can you guess how long these wars lasted? 27 years!

These wars were called the Peloponnesian Wars because they were fought in the part of Greece called the Peloponnesus. It is easier to say if you break it up into two words: Pelopon Nesus.

The Spartans were better at fighting on land, and the Athenians were better at fighting on the sea, because Athens governed many islands which paid “tribute” or taxes, to Athens. But Sparta had to keep stopping to check on their slaves, and Athens had an outbreak of the plague which killed thousands of people, including Pericles, who had been the most important leader of Athens during its Golden Age.

Then a man named Lysander became the new Spartan general. Lysander figured out a way to defeat the Athenian navy and actually won a naval victory against the Athenians. Over 150 Athenian ships were destroyed in this battle, causing Athens to surrender to Sparta.

A man named Thucydides (Thoo-sid-i-dees), who was a general in the Athenian army, wrote a book about the Peloponnesian Wars called The History of the Peloponnesian War. His book is the main reason we know what happened. After Sparta defeated Athens, Greece was never the same. As a result, a man named Alexander was able to conquer Greece. We will talk about him later.