The ancient Greek historian Thucydides called it "a war like no other"—arguably the greatest in the history of the world up to that time. The Peloponnesian War pitted Athens and her allies against a league of city-states headed by Sparta. Thucydides himself was an Athenian general in the fighting, sentenced to exile partway through the 27-year struggle, after losing a key battle to one of Sparta's leading commanders.

Although Thucydides lived to see the end of the war, his history breaks off in its 21st year. Other ancient writers completed the record but without Thucydides's sense of drama and matchless insight—for he is the first historian to seek the true causes of events. His eyewitness account of the war has been a classic for 24 centuries and is still studied for its profound truths about the nature of human strife.

In this course, Professor Kenneth W. Harl draws on this masterpiece as well as other ancient sources to give you a full picture of the Greek world in uneasy peace and then all-out war in the late 5th century B.C.

1.	Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War
2.	The Greek Way of War
3.	Sparta—Perceptions and Prejudices
4.	Sparta and Her Allies
5.	The Athenian Democracy
6.	Athens and the Navy
7.	Victory over Persia, 490–479 B.C.
8.	Athens or Sparta—A Question of Leadership
9.	Cimonian Imperialism
10.	Sparta after the Persian Wars
11.	The First Peloponnesian War
12.	The Thirty Years' Peace
13.	Triumph of the Radical Democracy
14.	From Delian League to Athenian Empire
15.	Economy and Society of Imperial Athens
16.	Athens, School of Greece
17.	Crisis in Corcyra, 435–432 B.C.
18.	Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War
19.	Strategies and Stalemate, 431–429 B.C.
20.	Athenian Victory in Northwest Greece
21.	Imperial Crisis—The Chalcidice and Mytilene
22.	Plague, Fiscal Crisis, and War
23.	Demagogues and Stasis
24.	Pylos, 425 B.C.—A Test of Leadership
25.	New Leaders and New Strategies
26.	The Peace of Nicias
27.	Collapse of the Peace of Nicias
28.	From Mantinea to Sicily, 418–415 B.C.
29.	Sparta, Athens, and the Western Greeks
30.	The Athenian Expedition to Sicily
31.	Alcibiades and Sparta, 414–412 B.C.
32.	Conspiracy and Revolution, 411 B.C.
33.	Alcibiades and Athens, 411–406 B.C.
34.	The Defeat of Athens, 406–404 B.C.
35.	Sparta's Bitter Victory
36.	Lessons of the Peloponnesian War