ABSTRACT
Athens emerged from the Peloponnesian war defeated and humiliated. She was dependent for her corn supplies on the goodwill of her conqueror, Lysander. The Peloponnesian war had been a particularly harsh ordeal for Athens. The Sicilian disaster had also dealt the Athenians a severe blow. People know how hard it is to make a precise estimate of the population of Attica, for figures are scarce and fragmentary. Attica had been invaded several times during the first part of the war, usually known as the war of Archidamos. The Peloponnesian war gave rise to a grave moral and religious crisis in Athens which was in no small degree responsible for altering the ethical code of the city-state and which explains certain aspects of Athenian life in the fourth century. Thucydides, in his account of the Peloponnesian war, attributed to the plague the origins of the serious moral crisis which affected Athens.
