Neither side had the power to defeat the other outright. The Athenians were dominant at sea but unable to assemble sufficient land power to defeat the Spartan alliance, staying behind their city...
I think it is called the Pelonnesian War because if you look at a map of Ancient Greece, then you will see that When Athens and Sparta were fighting, they sprt of came in the middle and I think that...
It is the first one of which we have a detailed historical account (by the historian Thucydides). It occurred 431-404 BCE.
Of course wars had been going of for thousands of years before that - we...