WI: Sparta Takes Athens

Sparta and Athens were almost always at odds with each other. What if, sometime during Athen's 'Golden Age' (480 BC-404 BC) Sparta goes to war and takes them over?
 
Sparta wouldn't take them over, the city could be captured as it was in OTL IIRC, but the aftermath would be a treaty of some sort most likely.

Sparta was ultra-conservative, the thought of annexing their ancestral enemy probably made them extremely uncomfortable. That sort of tradition of fighting overpowered any reasonable rethinking of their position opposite of Athens.

The way Sparta worked also makes expansion nigh impossible in this way, it just wouldn't play out if for some reason the Spartans decide to forsake their history and conquer their nemesis.

I wouldn't call it ASB for Spartans to take and hold the city, but it's one of those things that strike me as damn near impossible.
 
The reason Athens' Golden Age came to an end was because Sparta DID take Athens. The Long Walls were pulled down, Democracy was banned and the Thirty Tyrants were established as a puppet government to rule as Spartas allies.

Lysander the Spartan Admiral smashed the Athenians at sea over and over again. When they had their naval power cut off and their port blockaded they were done. The people voted to execute their elected Strategoi due to their failure, so in the final battle they had no one to lead them.

The next period of history was the Hegemony of Sparta until the battle of Leuctra saw the rise of Thebes and the Beoetian (I am never sure if I spelt that right) League. Then old King Agesilaus of Sparta ended his reign as an old man futilely standing against Philip of Macedon alone after the Third Sacred War saw the rise of Macedon and the subsequent destruction of Thebes in later wars.

Sparta was not very Imperial. It derived power from its network of alliances. Historians described it as a stream that had many tributaries that eventually grew into a mighty river. When those tributaries stopped the great river dried up and there was little left of Spartas power but a dry river bed.

Sparta was also notoriously awful at besieging anywhere. A group of helots rebelled and took a fortress in Messana, before the Peloponnesian War and the Spartans had to call the Athenians to help them send a team of engineers to root them out. Without Lysanders genius naval tactics and the unending flow of Persian gold to build huge fleets to take down Athens, Sparta could not have done it any time before in OTL. The Spartans invaded Attica every year and burned the crops outside Athens and then left when the Athenians refused to take the bait and send out their army. As long as Athens has access to wheat from the Spartocids in the Bosporus, they cannot be starved.

Perhaps, maybe, if Alcibiades had kept it in his pants and not slept with the queen of Sparta, he may stayed allied with the Spartans and help them get into the city of Athens. It is a maybe though.
 
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tenthring

Banned
The fundamental issue with Greece proper is that they're entire way of life was tied to the city-state. It became increasingly obvious that wider empires where the future, but the Greeks could never find a way to reconcile that with their concept of city-state autonomy. The Athenian empire was notoriously unstable and basically devolved into a bunch of rebellious client states that Athens was constantly putting down.

You need someone (Phillip) or some system (the Romans) that can make the political arrangement of empire work. Otherwise all these victories are temporary.
 
Roman style

An important factor in the fall of Athens, was the great mortality caused by the plague during the siege of Polis for the Spartans.

Anyway in the classical Greek world except the Messenians, not annexing poleis as such,were destroyed or part of its territory was annexed (if they were neighbors), or governments of its Ideology (Democrats or aristocrats) being installed by force of arms.

Are not any Greek poleis, desire or thought to assimilate to the Greeks, who had defeated, integrating them into the Roman style.
Anyway in the classical Greek world except the Messenia, (helots and Perioecic), not annexing poleis as such, were destroyed or part of its territory was annexed (if they were neighbors), or governments of its Ideology (Democrats or aristocrats) being installed by force of arms.

Are not any Greek poleis, desire or thought to assimilate to the Greeks, who had defeated, integrating them into the Roman style.

Be needed to any ruler of Athens, discovered this method (Roman) could apply government and on the vanquished and their allies and vassals.
 
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