But the way it began, as a power struggle between ambitious rivals, with each pursuing influence through a complex system of armed alliances, has led some modern historians also to draw comparisons with other conflicts – not least, the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It was, of course, a civil war, stretching from 431 to 404 BC – an epic feud between the two leading city-states of the age that would go on to engulf almost the whole of the ancient Greek world, eventually spreading beyond the borders of modern-day Greece even as far as Sicily, the Dardanelles, and Cyprus.
Fallen Hoplite (c.505 BC) from the east pediment of the Temple of Aphaia, on the Greek island of Aegina now on display in Munich’s Glyptothek museum.
0 kommentar(er)
