How did the Peloponnesian War get its name?
From the Peloponnesus, the southern part of Greece which is connected to mainland Greece only by the narrow Isthmus of Corinth. Although, Sparta is located in the Peloponnesus, the fighting was elsewhere. A surviving Athenian general named Thucydides wrote a history of it which is found in libraries today. It is called The Peloponnesian War in modern translations, but the participants may have had other names for it. Sparta controlled the entire Peloponnesus, so that is probably what the Athenians called the war, because they faced the entire Peloponnesus in addition to Sparta.
