Both are extremely poor analogies. The Athenian Empire was the Athenian Empire - nothing quite like it before or after. And Sparta and its allies were more like the Allies in WWII - if WWII had last nearly thirty years and was started with a preemptive strike by the Soviet Union. Thebes and Sparta were extremely unlikely allies - and later in the war, Athens decided to attack a democratic city-state larger than Athens itself.
A key theme to Hanson's 2005 book on the Peloponnesian War (btw, since Peter likes to be so fucking pedantic about spelling, "Peloponnesian" is spelled with two "n"s) is that the conflict quickly destroyed the social restraints implicit in hoplite warfare (that war should be a honorable contest fought between hoplites on a field and decided in an afternoon), which resulted in guerilla wars and slaughter of civilians. The book even includes a nice list of civilian massacres, that leads him to conclude such killings had become frequent:
"Plataeans killed all Theban hostages (431). Peloponnesians did away with all Athenians found in ships off the Peloponnese (430). Alciddas slaughtered captured Athenians (427). Plataeans and Athenians were eliminated upon surrender of Plataea (427). The Athenians executed 1,000 Mytileneans (427). Corcyraean oligarchs were executed (427). Two thousand helots were rounded up and killed (424). Brasidas butchered all who could not escape at Lecythus (424). Spartans killed citizens of Hysiae. Mended was sacked (423) and Melos destroyed (416). Messanians were killed bys pro-Athenian insurrectionists on Sicily (415). Even schoolboys were massacred at Mycalessus (413). The Athenians were surrounded and butchered at the Assinarus River and the survivors left to die in the quarries of Syracuse (413). Samian democrats murdered oligarchs (412); in turn, Chian oligarchs slaughtered democratic Chians (412). Lysander executed Athenians after Aegospotami (404). In addition, there were another 20,000 Greek soldiers who are recorded in our sources as taken prisoner and sold into slavery. Given these atrocities and the toll of the plague, in the sense of who died and how, the term "Peloponnesian War" appears a misnomer. A far better name might be "The Thirty Years Slaughter".
A War Like No Other (2005), p. 191.
Jeff
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