O Crescimento do Império Ateniense e o Medo Causado em Esparta: O Efeito “Spill-Over” da Democracia de Atenas

The present paper will confront two perspectives about the causes of the Peloponnesian war. For Thucydides it was the growth of the Athenian power and the fear that trembled Sparta that made the war inevitable. In the other end, Donald Kagan, believes that the war was the result of chance and it could be avoided, because Athens did not want to go to war. For that matter it is important to analyse and confront these two perspectives, with knowledge of the Greek political institutes, as also the dynamic that the Athenian democracy generated, in social, political and economical terms. It produced a “spill-over” effect, connected to the empire maintenance – in a clear dialectic relation: The empire needed the democracy to legitimize itself and, in the other end, democracy needed the empire (and its expansion) to maintain the social, political and material benefits that the empire generated.