The War of Hegemony: Power Against Freedom

Abstract The war of hegemony, known in historical sources as the Peloponnesian War represented not only a generalized military conflict of the entire Greek world since Antiquity, but also an entirely new war until then. Its novelty was manifested in the fact that they were not only military confrontations, but also genuine battles between ideologies, between interests, between ideas, between camps, between political systems. The League of Delos controlled by Athena, a veritable thalassocracy, faced the League of Peloponnesus, controlled by Sparta, the ancient state that had the best army in the world at that time. That’s why, the war of hegemony was more than a classic battlefield conflict, it was a war to maintain reputations. Athena represented civil democracy, but also thalassocracy (power of the seas), therefore it had to maintain its status as the great power of the world in that area, even forgetting its status of the polis of democracy, and Sparta, the military democracy that wanted to preserve freedom and all democratic ideals, although its policy was war. The war of hegemony, the ancient world’s first confrontation for influence and status, was the struggle between power and freedom, understood as independence/sovereignty, from which emerged victorious freedom defended by the most prepared army in the world at that time, the army of Sparta. Sparta, having won the war, named it after the Peloponnesian League , the alliance it controlled. The polis of Ares defended with arms the freedom, independence and sovereignty of the Greeks polises, defeating Athena, then a great economic power, demonstrating to the world that the money cannot defend or buy freedom.