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The rise of Athens meant that there were two great powers in the Greek world. These powers both had a network of alliances all over the Greek world and beyond. The Greeks became divided into a Spartan and an Athenian camp.<ref>Cawkwell, p.115</ref> Athens and Sparta had different spheres of influences, as outlined in the ‘Thirty Year Peace’ treaty and theoretically this meant that they both could have lived in peaceful co-existence. Athens controlled the coastal areas of Greece and the Greek islands, while Sparta, a land power could control the Peloponnese. Despite this, Sparta grew increasingly fearful of Athens and its main ally Corinth was actively encouraging it to attack Athens.<ref>Hanson, p. 117</ref> In 440 BCE, Corinth urged the Spartans to wage war on Athens when it was suppressing a revolt on the island of Samos. The Spartan Kings always cautious had decided not to become involved in a war with their former allies. However, the Thirty Years Peace was under increasing strain. In the Spartan assembly, there was growing alarm at the growth of Athenian power.<ref> Kagan, p. 134</ref> As Athens seemed to be growing more powerful there was a growing war-party in Sparta. They argued that the Spartans had to attack Athens before it became too powerful. The fear of Athens increasingly led the Spartans to prepare for war, even though there is no evidence that the Athenians had any designs on Sparta or its allies.<ref>Kagan, p. 213</ref> There were those in Athens who believed that a war should be welcomed. There was a strong ‘imperial’ party in the city who believed that it was entitled to a great empire because of its role in the defeat of the Persians.
The belief that Spartan fear of Athens was the ultimate cause of the war was the view of Thucydides. According to, the great Greek historian, Thucydides the growth of the ‘power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon (Sparta), made war inevitable.<ref>Thucydides, <i>The Peloponnesian War</i> 1.67–71</ref> "He believed that the Peloponnesian War was inevitable, because when a rising power confronted another power, they would inevitably wage a war against each other to further or protect their interests<ref>Thucydides, <i>The Peloponnesian War </i> 1.67–71 </ref>. Some later historians have also argued that war was inevitable between the two greatest Greek powers. It is still widely held that in international relations, the growth of a nation-state or empire will inevitably lead to rivalry and war with an established power.<ref>Kagan, p. 71 </ref>
==Sparta and Athens==
