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The Peloponnesian War transformed the democratic institutions of Athens and ignited stasis in many city- states allied to Athens or Sparta. In Athens, no democratic leader emerged to replace Pericles; Athenians had to vote not only on new strategies but also for new leaders. Demagogues such as Cleon, in Thucydides’s opinion, advocated selfish policies that risked the state, but they responded to the demands of war. As orators, they could command majorities in the assembly, while generals concentrated on waging war overseas. This division of political and military authority henceforth complicated the Athenians’ ability to respond to crisis. Further, the suffering of the Athenians meant that they were no longer satisfied with the limited aims of Pericles’s strategy. The leadership and assembly at Athens grew increasingly bellicose and radical. Simultaneously, the war sharpened divisions between oligarchs and democrats in the Greek world. The ugly civil wars that erupted at Corcyra in 427 B.C. revealed the tendency of both oligarchs and democrats to summon Sparta and Athens, respectively, to help settle private quarrels and purge opponents. Henceforth, many Greek cities were so bitterly divided along partisan lines that any war in the future risked revolution at home.
