Why the Athenians lost to Sparta and what happened in 359 B.C.

Hellenistic= A phase during and after Alexander in the Greek civilization that happened by 300 B.C. when the Greek's culture was the main culture in the world  and had an impact on people that the Greeks had control over.

The Athenians lost the Peloponnesian War becuase of many reasons. One of the main reasons was when Athens was fighting the Persians it asked for the other city states to give money, so Athens could build more tririmes and defend Greece. After the war was over and the Persians had lost Athens kept demanding money from the other city states. The other city states did not like how Athens was treating them like paying subjects, so they turned to Sparta. They wanted Sparta to put Athens back in its place. This was one of the reasons why the Peloponnesian War started. If it had never started Athens would not have lost its period of The Golden Ages. Another factor that made the Athenians lose was their leadership and planning. Pericles, the ruler at the time of the war, had a plan that he thought could not fail. His plan was to build a wall around Athens and keep everyone in. Athens would get food and the supplies it needed by the harbor, Piraeus. The Athenian tririmes would bring them supplies and also fight Sparta on the water. Pericles plan might have worked if a natural disaster did not occur. The natural disaster was a terrible plague that killed 1/3 of the population. The plague was accidently brought over by the ships that were carrying Athenian food and supplies. Another reason Athens lost was because of leadership. when the plague hit Pericles was killed and  the other politicians argued to take power. One of the biggest reasons why Athens lost the war was because its navy was weakened. In 413 BC Athens lost 2/3 of its fleet during a battle against Syracuse. The the Persians helped Sparta build a fleet to fight the Athens. With Sparta's new fleet  they beat the Athenians during the battle of Aegospotami. When Athens had barely any navy left they could not get food too Athens, so they had to surrender because of starvation. These were the reasons why  Athens lost to Sparta.

In 359 B.C. King Philip the second  became the King of Macedonia. He started to strengthen his army so he could take over Greece. He made very careful plans to take over Greece and even had agents  working inside of the Greek city states to make sure the city states didn't join forces against him.



Macedonia is to the East of Italy and to the North of Greece.