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ATHENS' DIFFICULTY, SPARTA'S OPPORTUNITY CAUSATION AND THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

Controversy over the origin of the Peloponnesian War bids to become a fixed part of the inheritance of Ancient Historians and itself almost a "possession for ever", in spite of Thucydides' attempt to settle the matter l. That the developments of the 430s were not of great importance for the causation of the war has recently been argued with unusual cogency, by de Ste. Croix 2. He sees the Spartan decision of 432 to begin hostilities as belonging to a pattern of aggression against Athens which extended over the previous decades 3. On the other hands, Meiggs is not alone among modern scholars in assigning rather more significance, for the outbreak of the war, to the expansion of Athenian power evident in the 430s 4. Kagan writes that "... it was not the underlying causes but the immediate crisis [i.e. of the late 430s] that produced the war" 5, and Sealey, in a work revised in the light of de Ste. Croix's, nevertheless holds that "... the reasons why the Spartans went to war in 431 should be sought, not in an outlook prevalent as early as 440, but in the actions taken by the Spartans in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the war" 6. It is hoped to show here that there is, during the last 60 years of Athenian greatness, a remarkable though seldom-noticed consistency in the foreign policy of Sparta ; that her aggression towards Athens was both more profound and more intelligently applied than has usually been realised. It will be