Peloponnesian War Analysis

The Peloponnesian war was a war of ancient Greece, (431 BC-404 BC) fought between the leading city-state of Athens and Sparta, along with their allies, resulting in the transfer of hegemony from Athenian to Sparta. The fundamental cause of the war was the Spartan fear of Athenian imperialism. These two powers have asymmetrically different military strengths. The Athenians and their allies relied on its Navy, while Sparta and their alliance relied on a strong army. Pericles led the Athenians and Archidamus led Sparta. Plague struck Athens in 429 BC, killing Pericles. Cleon came to power in 428 BC and convinced Athenian to massacre the rebellious Mytilene. Nicias comes to power after Cleon’s death and he was a mastermind behind the Peace of Nicias.
They began new attacks on adversaries, including the 415 BC expedition to Sicily. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to identify and analyze the motivation behind the planning for and execution of the Athenian expedition to Sicily and its ends-ways-means congruence. The paper also assesses how the Athenian leaders evaluated risk and lastly offers the author’s personal reflection on why did the expedition ultimately failed. The Sicilian expedition was the result of Athenian ambition to seek more expansion by advocating an offensive strategy. Athens had already been involved in the Sicilian affair in the earlier war to protect the Ionian against the Dorian cities. The recent expedition was the extension of their initial interest as Selinus quarreled with its neighbor Egesta. Syracuse came to help Selinus and Egesta applied to her old ally, Athens. The Athenians agreed to send a force to Sicily, ostensibly to protect Egesta, but obviously to subduing and controlling the whole Island of Sicily to secure their interests mainly the commercial sea line. The other aim was to strengthen themselves with the resources from the allies for a future attack on the