What is the Egyptian expedition?

A Delian League fleet of 200 triremes was diverted to Egypt to support the revolt of Inaros against Persia. After initial successes the expedition was destroyed in 454 BC; 250 ships and 8,000 men lost.

Athenian forces defeated by Corinthians and Epidaurians.

What is cecryphaleia?

Athenian naval victory off the Argolid.

Athens besieged and reduced Aegina, the historic naval rival in the Saronic Gulf. Aegina was forced into the Delian League and made a tribute-payer.

What is megara and Pegae?

Athens garrisoned Megara and built long walls connecting Megara to its port of Nisaea.

A Spartan army crossed the Corinthian Gulf to Boeotia, intended to support oligarchic factions and threaten Athens by land. The Spartans defeated the Athenians at Tanagra. Cimon, still ostracised, presented himself at the Athenian camp asking to fight; he was refused but his ostracism was later cut short.

The Athenians under Myronides defeated the Boeotians and Locrians. Athens controlled Boeotia and Phocis for the next ten years.

What is athenian command of central Greece?

Athens dominated Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and the western Peloponnese (Achaea). Around 456 to 455 BC the general Tolmides led a naval periplus (circumnavigation) of the Peloponnese, raiding Spartan territory (burning the dockyards at Gytheum), detaching Chalcis in Aetolia and Naupactus (later a base for the Messenian helots), and demonstrating that Athenian sea power could strike anywhere on the Peloponnesian coastline even while Sparta was untouchable on land.

What is the Sacred War interlude?

Sparta marched into Phocis and transferred control of the Delphic oracle from Phocis to the Delphians ("the Spartan phase" of the so-called Sacred War); soon afterwards Athens, under Pericles, reversed the decision and restored Phocian control ("the Athenian phase"). The episode shows the two powers still contesting influence in central Greece even during the truce period, without escalating to open war.

What is the Five Years' Truce?

Negotiated, perhaps by the recalled Cimon, between Athens and Sparta. Hostilities paused but the underlying tensions remained.

NESA Practice (NESA)-style practice: Outline the Thirty Years' Peace of 446 BC and its significance.

A 7-mark "outline" needs the context, the terms, and the significance. **Context.** After the Euboean revolt of 446 BC and the Spartan king Pleistoanax's invasion of Attica (also 446 BC, withdrawn after diplomatic intervention or bribery), Athens and Sparta negotiated a peace. Thucydides (1.115) calls it the Thirty Years' Peace. **The terms.** (1) Each side recognised the other's sphere of influence. Athens kept the Delian League cities; Sparta kept the Peloponnesian League. (2) Argos was allowed to make a separate peace with Sparta. (3) Athens gave up some mainland gains: Megara, Achaea, Troezen. (4) Disputes were to be settled by arbitration. (5) Neutral states could join either side. **Significance.** The peace confirmed the two-bloc system: an Athenian maritime empire and a Peloponnesian land confederacy. It also confirmed Athens's right to suppress allied revolts (the Samian revolt of 440 BC was treated as an internal Athenian matter under the peace). The arbitration clause failed in 432 BC; the Peloponnesian War followed. Markers reward context, the terms, and the strategic consequence.

§-Syllabus dot point

NSWAncient HistorySyllabus dot point

What was the First Peloponnesian War, and how did the Greek world look at the end of the period in 440 BC?

The First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC), the long walls, the Egyptian disaster, the Five Years' Truce (451 BC), the Peace of Callias (around 449 BC), the Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC), and the significance of the period

A focused answer to the HSC Ancient History dot point on the First Peloponnesian War and the significance of the Greek world 500 to 440 BC. Tanagra, Oenophyta, Coronea, the Egyptian disaster, the long walls of Athens, the Five Years' Truce, the Peace of Callias, the Euboean revolt of 446 BC, the Thirty Years' Peace, and the legacy of the period.

Generated by Claude Opus 4.813 min answerUpdated 2026-07-01

Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed

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What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to describe the First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC), the major battles and treaties, the building of the long walls connecting Athens to the Piraeus, the Peace of Callias (around 449 BC) with Persia, the Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC) with Sparta, and the overall significance of the period 500 to 440 BC for the development of the Greek world.

In plain English

Think of Athens and Sparta after the Persian Wars as two allies who won a joint project, then fell out over how to run the office afterwards. When Sparta's leaders sent Athens's help-crew home from a domestic job (crushing the helot revolt at Ithome) without explanation, Athens took it as a public snub, sacked the manager who had championed the Sparta relationship (Cimon), and went looking for new business partners (Argos, Thessaly, Megara). What followed, 460 to 446 BC, was fourteen years of on-and-off skirmishing between the two "firms" and their allies - not one war but a messy string of them - ending in a deal (the Thirty Years' Peace) that basically said "you run the sea business, we'll run the land business, and we won't poach each other's clients." That deal held for fifteen years before it broke down into the real Peloponnesian War.

The answer

The drift to war (461 to 460 BC)

The dismissal at Mount Ithome (462 BC) and Cimon's ostracism (461 BC) ended the Athenian-Spartan alliance against Persia that had won the Persian Wars. Athens immediately:

Allied with Argos (long-standing Spartan rival)
Allied with Thessaly (defected from Persian influence after Plataea)
Received Megara (which had quarrelled with Corinth over a border dispute and switched alliance)

Megara was strategically critical: it controlled the isthmus between Athens and the Peloponnese. Corinth (Sparta's chief ally) was provoked.

The long walls

In the late 460s and early 450s BC the Athenians built the long walls connecting the city to the Piraeus, around 7 km away. Two parallel walls (the North and the Phaleric, later replaced by the Middle or South wall) enclosed the road. The system made Athens, in effect, a fortified island: even a Spartan land invasion of Attica could not force surrender as long as the navy controlled the sea and supplies came in through the Piraeus.

Strategic logic. The long walls embodied Themistocles's vision: Athens as a sea power independent of land control. They made the Pericles strategy of the Peloponnesian War (435 to 421 BC) possible.

Spartan reaction. Spartans regarded the long walls as confirmation of Athenian ambition. They would not be permanently destroyed until 404 BC after Athens's defeat.

The First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC)

A series of campaigns rather than a single war. Thucydides covers them briefly in the Pentecontaetia (1.103 to 115).

The Egyptian expedition (460 to 454 BC): A Delian League fleet of 200 triremes was diverted to Egypt to support the revolt of Inaros against Persia. After initial successes the expedition was destroyed in 454 BC; 250 ships and 8,000 men lost.
Halieis (around 459 BC): Athenian forces defeated by Corinthians and Epidaurians.
Cecryphaleia (around 458 BC): Athenian naval victory off the Argolid.
Aegina (458 to 457 BC): Athens besieged and reduced Aegina, the historic naval rival in the Saronic Gulf. Aegina was forced into the Delian League and made a tribute-payer.
Megara and Pegae (around 458 BC): Athens garrisoned Megara and built long walls connecting Megara to its port of Nisaea.
Tanagra (457 BC): A Spartan army crossed the Corinthian Gulf to Boeotia, intended to support oligarchic factions and threaten Athens by land. The Spartans defeated the Athenians at Tanagra. Cimon, still ostracised, presented himself at the Athenian camp asking to fight; he was refused but his ostracism was later cut short.
Oenophyta (457 BC, 62 days after Tanagra): The Athenians under Myronides defeated the Boeotians and Locrians. Athens controlled Boeotia and Phocis for the next ten years.
Athenian command of central Greece (457 to 447 BC): Athens dominated Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and the western Peloponnese (Achaea). Around 456 to 455 BC the general Tolmides led a naval periplus (circumnavigation) of the Peloponnese, raiding Spartan territory (burning the dockyards at Gytheum), detaching Chalcis in Aetolia and Naupactus (later a base for the Messenian helots), and demonstrating that Athenian sea power could strike anywhere on the Peloponnesian coastline even while Sparta was untouchable on land.
The Sacred War interlude (c. 448 BC): Sparta marched into Phocis and transferred control of the Delphic oracle from Phocis to the Delphians ("the Spartan phase" of the so-called Sacred War); soon afterwards Athens, under Pericles, reversed the decision and restored Phocian control ("the Athenian phase"). The episode shows the two powers still contesting influence in central Greece even during the truce period, without escalating to open war.
The Five Years' Truce (451 BC): Negotiated, perhaps by the recalled Cimon, between Athens and Sparta. Hostilities paused but the underlying tensions remained.
The Peace of Callias (around 449 BC): A negotiated settlement with Persia. The terms: Persian fleets would not enter the Aegean; Persian armies would not approach within a day's ride of the Asia Minor coast; Athens would not send forces into Persian satrapies; the Ionian Greek cities were autonomous. The historicity of the peace is debated (Thucydides does not mention it; Plutarch, Diodorus, and the fourth-century BC orators do). Most modern historians accept a peace settlement of some kind around 449 BC.
Coronea (447 BC): Athenian setback in Boeotia. The exiled Boeotian oligarchs returned and defeated an Athenian force at Coronea. Athens lost control of Boeotia.
The Euboean revolt (446 BC): Major revolt of the Athenian-controlled island. Pericles led a punitive expedition. Hestiaea was depopulated and replaced with Athenian cleruchs; Chalcis was forced to swear a loyalty oath (the Chalcis Decree). Euboea was Athens's largest cleruchic island.
Megara revolts (446 BC): Megara expelled the Athenian garrison and reverted to the Peloponnesian League. The Athenian troops in Pegae and Nisaea were destroyed.
The Spartan invasion (446 BC): The Spartan king Pleistoanax invaded Attica with a Peloponnesian army. He withdrew after diplomatic intervention. Pleistoanax was later prosecuted at Sparta on suspicion of accepting an Athenian bribe (Plutarch, Pericles 22 to 23) and was exiled.

The Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC)

Athens and Sparta negotiated a thirty-year peace in the winter of 446/5 BC. The terms:

Each side recognised the other's sphere: Athens kept the Delian League; Sparta kept the Peloponnesian League. The two systems were juridically separated.
Argos was allowed to make a separate peace with Sparta: Argos chose not to renew its Athenian alliance.
Athens gave up some mainland gains: Megara, Achaea, Troezen, Pegae returned to Peloponnesian influence.
Disputes were to be settled by arbitration: A neutral third party could be invoked.
Neutral states could join either side: Provided they were not already members of the other league.

The peace stabilised the two-bloc system. Athens accepted that it could not hold mainland Greek territory by land; Sparta accepted that Athens dominated the sea and the islands. Both sides treated the empire as Athenian internal business (the Samian revolt of 440 BC was therefore not a casus belli for Sparta, although Sparta debated intervention).

The Samian revolt as the test of the peace (440 to 439 BC)

The Samian revolt of 440 to 439 BC was the first test of the Thirty Years' Peace. Samos was one of the few remaining ship-providing allies. It revolted after Athenian intervention in a Samian dispute with Miletus. Pericles led the suppression in person.

The siege. Eight months. The Samian fleet was defeated at Tragia; the city was reduced. Athens stripped Samos of its walls and fleet, took hostages, and imposed a war indemnity of 1,300 talents.

Sparta's debate. Sparta convened the Peloponnesian League to discuss intervention. Corinth opposed intervention (out of legal scrupulousness about the empire as Athenian internal business). Sparta did not act. The peace held.

The end of the period (440 BC)

By 440 BC the Greek world had been reshaped:

Persia: Withdrew from the Aegean after the Peace of Callias (around 449 BC). Persian ambitions in mainland Greece had ended.
Athens: The dominant maritime power, the leading polis (30,000 to 50,000 adult male citizens), the imperial centre, the cultural capital.
Sparta: The leading land power in the Peloponnese, troubled by the helot question, conservative and cautious.
The empire: Around 200 to 400 tribute-paying allies; 600 talents of annual tribute; the Athenian Tribute Lists; the building program in progress; the radical democracy.
The tensions: The Spartan-Athenian rivalry, the Corinthian commercial interests, the resentments of subject cities. The 446 BC settlement was a pause, not a resolution.

The significance of the period

Military: Greece checked the largest empire of its time. The wars produced the conviction that the polis system could resist any external threat.
Political: democracy: The radical Athenian democracy was the most participatory ancient government. Its institutions (the boule, the Assembly, the popular courts, state pay) became the model and the counter-model of later political thought.
Political: empire: The Delian-Athenian system was the first sustained large-scale Greek political unit. It pioneered tribute administration, federated naval command, and imperial coinage.
Cultural: Classical Greek culture (tragedy, sculpture, philosophy, historiography) emerged in this period. The Parthenon, the Oresteia, Herodotus's Histories, the Pythagorean and Eleatic philosophies, the medical writings of the Hippocratic school all dated to or began in the period.
Ideological: The contrast between Greek freedom and Persian despotism became foundational. The Greek/barbarian distinction shaped later European thought.
Strategic: The two-bloc system (Athens by sea, Sparta by land) defined Greek politics for the next half century. The Peloponnesian War of 431 BC was its consequence.

The sources

Thucydides, Pentecontaetia (1.89 to 117): The major source.
Diodorus Siculus 11 to 12: First-century BC summary, useful for events Thucydides omits.
Plutarch, Pericles, Cimon, and Aristides: Later lives.
Inscriptions: The Athenian Tribute Lists, the Chalcis Decree (446 BC), the Erythrae Decree, the Coinage Decree.
Aristophanes: Comic references in plays from the 420s BC look back on the Periclean Athens.

Historiography

Russell Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (1972): Standard reconstruction.
Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (1969): Treats the Peloponnesian War origins in the Pentecontaetia.
G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972): Defends the empire and traces the war to Spartan fear.
Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia (1979): The Spartan side.
Christian Meier, Athens (1990): Cultural and political synthesis.

How to read a source on this topic

Section IV sources on the First Peloponnesian War and the Thirty Years' Peace typically include extracts from Thucydides 1, the inscribed decrees (Chalcis, Erythrae), or Plutarch. Three reading habits.

First, follow the chronology. The First Peloponnesian War is a series of campaigns over 14 years; reconstruct the order.

First, distinguish Persian and Spartan settlements. The Peace of Callias (around 449 BC) is with Persia; the Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC) is with Sparta. They are different.

Third, read the inscriptions as evidence of imperial reach. The Chalcis Decree (446 BC) shows the loyalty oath; the Tribute Lists show the fiscal extraction; the Coinage Decree shows the commercial integration.

Command words and using a source

Command words: "Outline" wants the sequence of terms/events with dates, briefly; "explain" wants a reasoned cause-and-effect link, not just a list; "assess"/"evaluate" want a weighed judgement with a verdict; "to what extent" REQUIRES you to argue a position (partly/largely/not at all), not just describe both sides.
Using a source (the four moves): (1) Content - what does it actually say, in your own words; (2) reliability - who produced it, how close to the event, any bias (a decree is the victor's/assembly's voice, not the subject city's); (3) usefulness - what specific question can this source answer, and what can it not answer alone; (4) perspective - whose viewpoint is represented and whose is missing (Chalcis's oath tells you nothing about how Chalcidians felt about it).
Weaving in historiography: Do not list historians in a final paragraph. Attach a historian's interpretation to the specific piece of evidence it explains: "Meiggs reads the Chalcis Decree as evidence the League had become an empire in fact as well as name" is a sentence that does work; "Meiggs is a historian who studied the empire" is not.

Model responses

Model 1 - source-analysis response. Question: Using the described source below and your own knowledge, explain what it reveals about Athenian control of Boeotia after 457 BC.

Source: an ExamExplained reconstruction of the type of garrison order that might have accompanied Athenian oversight of a client Boeotian city after Oenophyta (457 BC) - "the friends of Athens in the city are to hold the gates until the men sent from Athens arrive" (illustrative, not a transcription of a real document).

Response: This type of order shows Athenian control of Boeotia after Oenophyta (457 BC) resting on local sympathetic factions ("the friends of Athens") backed by the threat of an Athenian force, rather than on formal annexation or a loyal majority. That dependence on a faction explains why control collapsed so suddenly at Coronea (447 BC): when the exiled oligarchs returned, they had a natural local constituency to rally, and the "friends of Athens" faction could not hold the cities alone. The source's limitation is that, being an illustrative order rather than a transcribed document, it cannot be quoted as direct evidence in an exam - only Thucydides's narrative (1.113) can be cited as authority that a small pro-Athenian faction was displaced by returning exiles at Coronea.

Marker's note: this response uses the source to explain a mechanism (faction-based control), links it to a named, dated outcome (Coronea, 447 BC), and correctly separates the illustrative source from citable ancient authority - the combination examiners reward.

Model 2 - essay paragraph. Question: Assess the importance of the Egyptian disaster (454 BC) for Athenian policy in the First Peloponnesian War.

The Egyptian disaster of 454 BC, in which around 250 ships and 8,000 men were lost supporting Inaros's revolt against Persia, was a turning point rather than a mere setback: it removed the appetite for major offensive operations against Persia, helped explain the transfer of the Delian League treasury from Delos to Athens in the same year (a move historians such as Meiggs link directly to the need to safeguard the fund after the disaster), and left Athens needing a negotiated pause with Sparta, achieved in the Five Years' Truce of 451 BC. The disaster therefore reshaped Athenian strategy from expansion against Persia towards consolidation of the Aegean empire and defence of the mainland gains already made.

Marker's note: the paragraph is rewarded for tying one dated event (454 BC) to two concrete downstream consequences (the treasury transfer, the 451 BC truce) with a named historian's link, rather than simply narrating the defeat.

Exam-style practice questions

Practice questions written in the style of NESA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.

Practice (NESA)20 marksAssess the significance of the period 500 to 440 BC for the development of the Greek world.

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A 25-mark essay needs multiple dimensions, evidence, and a verdict.

Thesis: The period transformed the Greek world: Persian power checked, Athens dominant and imperial, the radical democracy formed, classical culture flowered, Athens-Sparta antagonism produced.
Military: Persia checked at Marathon (490 BC), Salamis (480 BC), Plataea and Mycale (479 BC), Eurymedon (around 466 BC). The Peace of Callias (around 449 BC) confirmed withdrawal.
Political: Athens: The Cleisthenic democracy of 508 BC was deepened by Themistocles, Ephialtes (462 BC), and Pericles. State pay, the citizenship law of 451 BC, and the strategia made the radical democracy.
Political: the empire: Delian League (478 BC) became the Athenian empire by 440 BC. Tribute funded the building program; cleruchies displaced allies; magistrates and courts policed loyalty. Samos (440 BC) was the last major revolt.
Political: Sparta: The Spartan model could not operate abroad (Pausanias). Sparta retreated to the Peloponnese, troubled by the helot revolt of 464 BC.
Cultural: Aeschylus, Sophocles; Anaxagoras, Protagoras; Herodotus; Parthenon and Phidias.
Ideology: Greek freedom versus Persian despotism became foundational. Aeschylus's Persians (472 BC), Herodotus, the Serpent Column.
The road to war: The First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC) established the pattern. The Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC) stabilised relations briefly.
Historiography: Herodotus moral lesson. Thucydides seeds of the Peloponnesian War. Meiggs, Kagan, Cartledge modern.
Conclusion: Persia checked, Athens dominant, democracy deepened, culture transformed. The Peloponnesian War was its consequence.

Practice (NESA)7 marksOutline the Thirty Years' Peace of 446 BC and its significance.

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A 7-mark "outline" needs the context, the terms, and the significance.

Context: After the Euboean revolt of 446 BC and the Spartan king Pleistoanax's invasion of Attica (also 446 BC, withdrawn after diplomatic intervention or bribery), Athens and Sparta negotiated a peace. Thucydides (1.115) calls it the Thirty Years' Peace.
The terms: (1) Each side recognised the other's sphere of influence. Athens kept the Delian League cities; Sparta kept the Peloponnesian League. (2) Argos was allowed to make a separate peace with Sparta. (3) Athens gave up some mainland gains: Megara, Achaea, Troezen. (4) Disputes were to be settled by arbitration. (5) Neutral states could join either side.
Significance: The peace confirmed the two-bloc system: an Athenian maritime empire and a Peloponnesian land confederacy. It also confirmed Athens's right to suppress allied revolts (the Samian revolt of 440 BC was treated as an internal Athenian matter under the peace). The arbitration clause failed in 432 BC; the Peloponnesian War followed.

Markers reward context, the terms, and the strategic consequence.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation3 marksIdentify TWO causes of the breach between Athens and Sparta in 462 to 461 BC.

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Full marks (3) for two of: (1) the dismissal of the Athenian hoplite force from Mount Ithome in 462 BC, seen by Athens as a public insult after it had answered a Spartan call for help against the helot revolt; (2) Megara's defection from the Peloponnesian League to Athens after its border dispute with Corinth, which provoked Corinth (Sparta's chief ally); (3) Ephialtes and the radical party's domestic reforms of 462/1 BC, which coincided with and reinforced the anti-Spartan turn in foreign policy.

Markers reward two DISTINCT, correctly dated causes rather than one cause described twice.

foundation4 marksSource A: an ExamExplained reconstruction of the kind of fragmentary Athenian casualty list set up in the Kerameikos, recording the dead of one tribal contingent "in Cyprus, in Egypt, in Phoenicia, at Halieis, in Aegina, at Megara, in the same year" (illustrative composite, not a transcription of a real inscription). Using Source A and your own knowledge, assess the usefulness of this type of source for a historian studying the First Peloponnesian War.

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Full marks (4) address BOTH content and limitation.

Content/usefulness. The list-format shows Athens fighting on several fronts in a single year (Egypt, the Saronic Gulf, the isthmus), corroborating Thucydides's account (1.104 to 108) of simultaneous campaigns and giving a sense of the human cost behind the narrative.

Limitation. As a bare casualty list it gives no strategic explanation, no chronology beyond "in the same year", and (being fragmentary) an incomplete tally - it must be read alongside a narrative source such as Thucydides to be useful.

Marker's note: full marks name a specific way the source corroborates the narrative AND a specific limitation of the source type, not just "it is reliable/unreliable".

foundation3 marksState the result of the Egyptian expedition of 460 to 454 BC, including one statistic.

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The Delian League fleet sent to support Inaros's revolt against Persia was destroyed in 454 BC after initial successes; ancient tradition (Thucydides 1.109 to 110) puts the loss at around 250 ships and 8,000 men (a figure debated but not overturned by modern historians such as Meiggs). Full marks require the outcome (destruction/disaster) AND the statistic with an approximate date.

core6 marksExplain why the building of the long walls (461 to 457 BC) was strategically significant for Athens.

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Six marks reward explanation, not description.

What they were: Fortified walls linking Athens to the port of Piraeus, around 7 km away, with a northern and a Phaleric wall (later a Middle wall) enclosing the corridor.
Why they mattered: They converted Athens into what Thucydides implies was effectively a fortified island: a Spartan hoplite army invading Attica could ravage farmland but could not force surrender, because the navy kept the corridor to the Piraeus open and grain could be imported by sea.
Strategic consequence: This is the material precondition for Pericles's later strategy in the Peloponnesian War of 431 BC (abandon the countryside, rely on the navy and the walls) - so the walls of the 450s BC directly shape the war of the 430s BC.

Marker's note: top answers link the walls to Themistoclean sea-power strategy AND forward to 431 BC, not just describe the masonry.

core6 marksSource B: an ExamExplained paraphrase of the type of clause found in the Chalcis Decree (446 BC), by which a subject city swore "I will not revolt from the people of Athens ... and I will pay the tribute which I persuade the Athenians to assess" (illustrative reconstruction of the decree's content, not a verbatim translation). Using Source B and your own knowledge, evaluate what this type of decree reveals about the Athenian empire after the Euboean revolt of 446 BC.

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Six marks for evaluation using the source plus context.

What the source shows. A loyalty oath imposed on a defeated ally, binding it to non-revolt and to a tribute assessment framed as "persuaded" but effectively dictated - evidence that by 446 BC the League had become an empire policed by oaths, garrisons and, at Euboea, cleruchies (Hestiaea was depopulated and resettled with Athenian cleruchs).

Limitation/perspective. A decree records the Athenian assembly's terms, not the Chalcidian perspective; it should be read alongside Thucydides's broader claim (1.99) that allies became subjects "against their will".

Marker's note: rewards using the source's specific clause as evidence, then testing it against Thucydides rather than treating the decree as neutral.

core7 marksOutline the terms of the Thirty Years' Peace (446/5 BC) and explain ONE reason it did not last.

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Terms (for the outline half of the mark allocation). (1) Each side recognised the other's sphere: Athens kept the Delian League, Sparta the Peloponnesian League; (2) Athens gave up its mainland gains - Megara, Achaea, Troezen, Pegae; (3) Argos was free to make a separate peace with Sparta; (4) disputes were to go to arbitration; (5) Aegina retained its autonomy within the Athenian sphere; (6) neutral states could join either league.

Why it broke down (446/5 to 431 BC). The arbitration clause was never tested in good faith: when disputes over Corcyra and Potidaea arose in the 430s BC, Sparta went straight to a vote for war (432 BC) rather than invoking arbitration, because the underlying fear of growing Athenian power (Thucydides 1.23, 1.88) made a legal process seem pointless to the Peloponnesian League.

Marker's note: full marks need the terms AND a reasoned link from one specific term (arbitration) to the 431 BC outbreak, tied to Thucydides's stated cause.

exam25 marksTo what extent was the collapse of Athens's land empire between 447 and 446 BC the result of Athenian overreach rather than bad luck?

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A 25-mark essay needs a sustained argument, dated evidence on both sides, named historiography and a verdict.

Thesis: The collapse was primarily the product of Athenian overreach - holding Boeotia, Megara and Euboea by garrison and loyalty oath rather than consent - though the timing owed something to opportunity rather than pure Athenian miscalculation.
Case for overreach: After Oenophyta (457 BC) Athens held Boeotia, Phocis and Locris for a decade through friendly (often oligarchic-suppressing) regimes and garrisons, not federation; when the exiled Boeotian oligarchs returned they found ready local support, and Coronea (447 BC) cost Athens the whole region in a single defeat - a sign the control had been shallow rather than consolidated. Megara's 446 BC revolt (expelling the garrison, massacring the garrison at Megara according to Thucydides 1.114) similarly shows resentment that had been suppressed, not resolved. Euboea's revolt in the same year targeted Athens's largest cleruchic possession - cleruchies were themselves a form of overreach, planting Athenian citizens on seized land.
Case for opportunity/bad luck: The Boeotian exiles' return coincided with Athens's forces being stretched: garrisons still held Megara and Aegina, and the earlier Egyptian disaster (454 BC) had drained League manpower and prestige, encouraging risk-taking by subjects. Pleistoanax's invasion of Attica (446 BC) exploited the moment when Athens was fighting Euboea and Megara simultaneously - a genuine coincidence of crises rather than a single Athenian error.
Weighing the two: The pattern across Boeotia, Megara and Euboea (all rebelling within a single year) suggests structural fragility built by years of Athenian coercion, not one unlucky season; the timing was opportunistic but the underlying vulnerability was self-made.
Historiography: Thucydides (1.114) presents the events as a chain the Athenians "abandoned" rather than lost outright, implying strategic choice. Russell Meiggs (The Athenian Empire, 1972) treats the land empire as always overextended relative to naval strength. Donald Kagan stresses the coincidence of crises as decisive timing. G. E. M. de Ste. Croix is more sympathetic to Athenian rule, attributing revolt to oligarchic exile agitation rather than systemic Athenian misrule.
Model paragraph: "The Boeotian collapse of 447/6 BC exposes the shallowness of Athenian land control: a single defeat at Coronea, inflicted by returning exiles rather than a foreign invader, was enough to end a decade of dominance because that dominance had rested on garrisons and client regimes, not on the consent Athens enjoyed at sea. As Meiggs argues, the land empire was structurally overextended; the events of 446 BC did not create that weakness, they revealed it." Marker's note: this paragraph earns high marks for naming the specific event (Coronea), quoting a historian's interpretation, and using both to support the thesis rather than narrating the battle.
Conclusion: Overreach was the primary cause; the tight coincidence of revolts and the Spartan invasion sharpened the timing but did not manufacture a crisis that Athenian methods of control had not already made likely.

exam25 marksAssess the significance of the First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC) for relations between Athens and Sparta in the lead-up to 431 BC.

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Thesis: The First Peloponnesian War established the pattern of mutual suspicion, the two-bloc geography, and the unresolved legal mechanism (arbitration) that together made the Peloponnesian War of 431 BC probable rather than accidental.
Establishing the two-bloc pattern: The war began from Athens's alliances with Argos and Thessaly and its acquisition of Megara after the 462/1 BC breach with Sparta, and ended with the Thirty Years' Peace formally dividing the Greek world into an Athenian maritime sphere and a Peloponnesian land sphere. This division, not a single battle, was the war's lasting product.
Demonstrating Athenian reach and its limits: Victories at Oenophyta (457 BC) showed Athens could project power onto the mainland; the disaster in Egypt (454 BC, around 250 ships and 8,000 men) and the loss of Boeotia at Coronea (447 BC) showed the limits of that reach. Sparta drew the lesson that Athens was formidable at sea but fragile on land - reinforcing Sparta's later strategy in 431 BC of invading Attica while avoiding the sea.
Failing to resolve the underlying fear: Thucydides's famous judgement (1.23) that "what made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta" is best evidenced by precisely this period: Athens's transformation of the Delian League into an empire (Chalcis Decree 446 BC, Tribute Lists) proceeded throughout and after the war, while the Thirty Years' Peace's arbitration clause gave Sparta a legal channel it never trusted enough to use in 432 BC.
Historiography: Thucydides frames the whole Pentecontaetia (1.89 to 117) as background explaining growing Athenian power. Donald Kagan (The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 1969) argues the First Peloponnesian War hardened Spartan allies' (especially Corinth's) hostility more than it hardened Sparta's own. Russell Meiggs stresses the institutional entrenchment of empire in exactly this period. Paul Cartledge notes Spartan caution (the Pleistoanax affair, the refusal to intervene at Samos in 440 BC) as evidence Sparta was reluctant, not eager, for renewed war.
Model paragraph: "The Thirty Years' Peace did not remove the cause of conflict; it formalised it. By recognising two spheres rather than resolving the underlying imbalance of power, the peace of 446/5 BC left Corinth's commercial grievances against Athens, and Sparta's fear of a further shift in the balance, to fester until Corcyra and Potidaea gave them an outlet in 433 to 432 BC." Marker's note: strong answers connect a named 460s to 440s BC event to a specific mechanism (fear, an unused legal clause, an ally's grievance) that operated in 431 BC, rather than simply listing the campaigns.
Conclusion: The First Peloponnesian War was significant not as a rehearsal in the military sense but as the period in which the structural conditions (bipolarity, imperial entrenchment, unresolved Corinthian resentment) for 431 BC were fixed in place.