what caused the peloponnesian war
The Cause of the Peloponnesian War. The immediate cause of the Peloponnesian War was Corinthian opportunism. Thucydides is mistaken in his famous assertion that [w]hat made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.Both powers had demonstrated a reluctance for head-on war over matters peripheral to their respective spheres of influence.f we define the Peloponnesian War as that which began in 432/1 between the Peloponnesian League and the Athenian Empire, and if we accept the preponderance of the evidence available to us, then its etiology is manifest: The cause of the war was Corinthian aggression.