MAP 3.3 The Peloponnesian War, 431–404 B.C.E.

For the first ten years, the Peloponnesian War’s battles took place largely in mainland Greece. Sparta, whose armies usually avoided distant campaigns, shocked Athens when its general Brasidas led successful attacks against Athenian forces in northeast Greece. Athens stunned the entire Greek world in the war’s next phase by launching a huge naval expedition against Spartan allies in far-off Sicily. The last ten years of the war saw the action move to the east, on and along the western coast of Anatolia and its islands, on the boundary of the Persian Empire. Feeling threatened, the Persian king helped the Spartans build a navy there to defeat the famous Athenian fleet. Look at the route of Athens’s expedition to Sicily; why do you think the Athenians took this longer voyage, rather than a more direct route?