At the height of the war between Athens and Sparta, a plague accidentally quelled the war
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Whether it is a war or a plague, every occurrence and appearance will inevitably bring indelible losses to human society. In the rolling river of human history, there was such an accident, because under the cruel environment of war, an unexpected plague broke out, which originally made the situation of the war worse, but history unexpectedly made this plague cleverly end the war. Xiaobian also had to sigh, this is also a blessing in disguise!
This war is the famous Peloponnesian War in human history, because Greece finally won the war with Persia at that time, after the end of the Greek-Persian War, the Greek city-states ushered in a brief prosperity, of which Athens became the richest city in Greece at that time. However, in 525 BC, Sparta, located on the Peloponnese Peninsula in southern Greece at the time, coerced the Greek city-states in the region by force and formed a so-called Peloponnesian Alliance.
At that time, Sparta was ruled by the nobility, while Athens was a slave-owning democracy, and the contradictions between the two sides can be said to have a long history, although at first both sides retained a peaceful side on the surface, but secretly they supported each other's opposition forces. In 431 BC, the two sides finally tore the last of their faces, and the Peloponnesian War was officially fought.
At that time, Athens, as the richest city in the Greek city-state, was much higher than Sparta in terms of overall strength, and the obvious gap between the two can be seen from the size of the army used, and the number of Athens used reached 41,000 people, which was much higher than the number of Spartan troops. Moreover, athens undoubtedly has a huge advantage in the degree of advanced weapons and equipment, as well as the subsequent supply of military supplies, and the overall economic strength competition.
But in the course of the real war, these so-called advantages did not have an immediate effect, more often than not, there were heavy casualties on both sides, and the Spartans did not seem to buy it in the face of the powerful Athenian army, they destroyed the Athenians' houses and burned down their houses. The situation of the war was extremely tragic, tens of thousands of families and wives were separated, and the whole society fell into a kind of people's livelihood.
And when the war was at its most intense, God made a big joke here, and a sudden great plague spread from Egypt to Greece, and due to the limitations of medical conditions at that time, coupled with the strife of war, the plague soon spread in the Greek city-states. According to existing written records, the plague at that time took almost 1/4 of the population of Athens, and sparta was not spared from this plague. Suddenly, the laws that had been enacted were completely abandoned, many loose city-states took advantage of the opportunity to break away, and in 429 BC, the supreme ruler of Athens at the time, Pericles, also ended his life due to the epidemic.
Soon, neither side could continue to bear the war because of the plague, and the two sides signed a peace treaty, ending the first Peloponnesian War. Although Athens and Sparta ended the smoke, the conflict between their small city-states did not end because of this, which made the peloponnesian war once again rekindled.