In the year 431 BC Pericles stood before the popular assembly and urged them to make a momentous decision: 'If we go to war, as I think we must, be determined that we are not going to climb down. For ...
The reaction of the Athenians to the Sicilian defeat was to look for scapegoats. Spartan forces now occupied Attica, and over the next few years more than twenty thousand slaves defected to the enemy ...