### id263995852 Persia is why Sparta won the Peloponnesian War > if we do regard the Peloponnesian War as a single conflict, it does not reflect well on Sparta's military capabilities that it needed 27 years and a massive injection of foreign financial aid (from Persia) to achieve victory. It is clear that Sparta had no way to bring Athens to its knees except to challenge its rule of the sea, which it simply couldn't afford to do until the king of Persia got annoyed enough with the Athenians to decide to back their enemies. > > the way in which it achieved that final victory was in many ways the most "un-Spartan" thing it could have done. The Spartan army hardly came into it, and only small numbers of Spartan hoplites ever fought Athenians in hand-to-hand combat during this war (with mixed results). Instead, the war was won at sea, where Sparta had no prior reputation whatsoever. Its fleet was wiped out twice over before finally catching the Athenians by surprise. Again, the only way the Spartans could even maintain a fleet (let alone rebuild it several times) was because they were receiving huge sums of money from the Persians. > > In short, while the Spartans eventually succeeded in defeating Athens and dismantling the Athenian empire, it was not at all due to their traditional military strengths, which were proven to be of little to no value in this war. - [View Highlight](https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/q3bowq/sparta_wasnt_that_effective_in_war_were_there_any?__readwiseLocation=0%2F3%2F0%2F4%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F10%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A0%2C0%2F4%2F0%2F4%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F10%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A228#:~:text=Third%2C%20the%20way%20in%20which%2Cno%20value%20in%20this%20war.) - [[hypermilitarized groups in history#id263995852 Persia is why Sparta won the Peloponnesian War|View in Vault]]