In the autumn of 433 BC, two delegations arrived in Athens uninvited, unexpected, and desperate. One came to ask for an alliance. The other came to prevent it.

What the Athenian assembly decided that day would set in motion a war that killed hundreds of thousands, erased cities from the map, and ended the Greek golden age.

But to understand that decision, we first need to understand the world it shattered. A world of proud, independent city-states. A world that had once stood united against the Persian Empire and then turned on itself. A world held together by a fragile treaty, a drawn line across the Greek world.

This is where the Peloponnesian War begins. Not in Athens or Sparta, but in a small, obscure city on the edge of the Ionian Sea that most Greeks couldn't place on a map. A city called Epidamnus.

In this first epi ...