What conflict between ancient Athens and Sparta?

Answer 1

"What is the conflict between Good and Evil?" (Not to say Athen is good, Sparta - Evil, I just mean they are two polarities, they just can't seem to get on) Sparta thought Athens was getting too powerful so they decided to show them a thing or two, Athens should have won, if it weren't for the death of their leader Pericles, at the hands of the plague. Sparta won and Athens lost her empire. Sparta did not gain it however, she liberated each state to rule themselves. We call it the Peloponessian War today. The two cities were polar in most cultural respects, but they cooperated in defeating Persia in the Second Persian War. After the war Athens got most of the credit, intensifying the existing rivalry between them. It was primarily a political conflict about which city should be Number One in Greece.

Another View:

The Peloponnesian War 431-404 BCE was fought between Sparta and its allies and Athens and its allies (empire).

Sparta and Athens were allies and respected each other for many years. They cooperated against Persia, Sparta sending a contingent to Athens to help defend against Persia's attack on Athens in 490 BCE, but it arrived too late, after the battle of Marathon had been fought. Cooperation continued, but it came adrift when the Athenian contingent sent to help Sparta put down a rebellion of its serfs in 461 BCE went awry when the Spartans realised that the Athenians were sympathetic to the opposition, and sent the Athenians home.

After the Persian War ended in 449 BCE, Athens opportunistically converted the Delian League of eastern Greek cities it had led against the Persian Empire into an empire of its own, and lived high on the hog with the war funds it continued to extort from those cities, turning the League into an empire of its own - the cities effectively held off an invader only to be taken over by their own leader.

Athens, overconfident with this success and money, kept interfering in other Greek cities not inside its empire, bringing it into conflict with members of the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Athens destroyed the Corinthian fleet, and finally tried to bankrupt Megara, one of these cities. The Peloponnesian cities appealed to Sparta, which demanded that Athens back off. It didn't and the devastating 27-year Peloponnesian War 431-404 BCE ensued.

The irony was that Persia had its revenge on Athens by bankrolling a fleet for the Peloponnesian League which could match the hitherto-dominant Athenian fleet on which its power and empire rode.

Further consequences: The reason for the Persian Wars was that Persia tried to stop western Greek cities interfering in the peace within its empire by bringing the cities outside its empire under control. With Athens the chief troublemaker, the Persians thought 'better a Peloponnesian dominance than an Athenian dominance'. After the Peloponnesian War ended in Athens' defeat and loss of its empire, the Greek cities went on fighting each other in shifting alliances and - another irony - Persia imposed the King's Peace, threatening retaliation if their endless fighting continued to spill over into the Persian Empire, which was the cause of the Persian Wars the previous century in the first place. And while Persia had the advantage over the war-weakened Greek cities, it resumed control of the Greek cities in Asia Minor which it had lost after the Persian War over 60 years earlier.