Piraeus was rebuilt to the famous grid plan of architect Hippodamus of Miletus, called the Hippodamian plan, and thus the main agora of the city was named after him in honour. As a result, Piraeus flourished and became a port of high security and great commercial activity, and a city bustling with life.
During the Peloponnesian War, Piraeus suffered the first setback. In the second year of the war the first cases of the Athens plague were recorded in Piraeus. In 404 BC, the Spartan fleet under Lysander blockaded Piraeus and subsequently Athens surrenderred to the Spartans, who put an end to the Delian League and the war itself. Piraeus would follow the fate of Athens and was to bear the brunt of the Spartans' rage, as the city's walls and the Long Walls were torn down, the Athenian fleet surrendered to the winners and some of the triremes burnt, while the neosoikoi were also pulled down. As a result the unfortified and tattered port city was not able to compete with prosperous Rhodes, which controlled commerce. In 403 BC, Munichia was seized by Thrasybulus and the exiles from Phyle, in the battle of Munichia, where the Phyleans defeated the Thirty Tyrants of Athens, but in the following battle of Piraeus the exiles were defeated by Spartan forces.
After the reinstatement of democracy, Conon rebuilt the walls in 393 BC, founded the temple of Aphrodite Euploia and the sanctuary of Zeus Sotiros and Athena, and built the famous Skevothiki of Philon, the ruins of which have been discovered at Zea harbour. The reconstruction of Piraeus went on during the period of Alexander the Great, but this revival of the town was quashed by Roman Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who captured and totally destroyed Piraeus in 86 BC. The destruction was completed in 395 AD by the Goths under Alaric I. Piraeus was led to a long period of decline which lasted for fifteen centuries. During the Byzantine period the harbour of Piraeus was occasionally used for the Byzantine fleet, but
