Topic > |One of these traits is that, although Athenian citizens and soldiers live a quieter life and are not trained as rigorously as the Spartans in land warfare, the natural courage of the Athenians makes up for this (Thucydides pg. 42). Athens was certainly the dominant naval power in Greece at the time, but the Athenians' devaluation of land warfare led to a stalemate in the first phase of the Peloponnesian War before the Peace of Nicias in which Sparta devastated Athens' countryside and forced its citizens to flee. hole up in the city walls and live in confined spaces, making them vulnerable to the plague. Another characteristic of Athens that can be considered not positive is its democratic institution. Athenian democracy was quite limited in the modern sense as its citizenry included only ethnic Athenian males over the age of 20, but it was notable in the ancient world for the amount of civic participation it allowed for those it considered citizens. The Athenians prided themselves on including people of lower economic status in their citizenship, but this trait may not be as positive as Pericles proclaimed (Thucydides p. 40). In an oligarchic system like Sparta, if the city-state wanted to win a war, it had to