Peloponnesian War Battle Strategies Lesson Plan

This is a lesson for Peloponnesian War: Battle Strategies.

Specific Objectives:

Students will be able to identify the strategies used by the Athenians and the Spartans to fight the Peloponnesian War. In doing so, they will understand better the impact of the War on Greece.

Materials:

Colored pencils or pens or markers

Worksheet provided

Lesson:

In this lesson, students get to find out how the war played out on the most part during the Peloponnesian War. When covering wars, I usually don’t like to simply lecture about it but let them come up with strategies to win and defend. In this case, a self-explanatory worksheet guides them through so they can come up with strategies for the Athenian side and also the Spartan side. Then you go over the worksheet and you tell them what really happened. Then the students get to remember the war better. It’s a more fun and engaging activity.

Here is a rough “answer key”.

The Athenians were superior at sea while the Spartans had the upper hand in land. The Athenians simply attacked coastal areas and made friends with the helots so they would rebel vs the Spartans. They also entered their walls and shipped grain from other places. The Spartans could not really penetrate the Athenian walls, though they burned down their surrounding crops. This should look like a stalemate. One would think that the Athenians would win since they could ship food from outside. But in the end, the city was crowded there was a plague that even killed Pericles. Sparta won but it was not a decisive victory. In the end, the war just weakened Greece which made it an easy takeover target by the Macedonians and then the Romans. (Next topic should be Alexander the Great).