History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides, Vol. 1-4. Smith, Charles Foster, translator. London and Cambridge, MA: Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1919-1923.

In the course of this same winter, the Olynthians by a sudden attack captured Mecyberna[*](A port town of Olynthus; cf. 5.18.7.) which was garrisoned by the Athenians.

After this, while conferences were continually going on between the Athenians and Lacedaemonians about places belonging to one or the other which they respectively held, the Lacedaemonians, in the hope that, if the Athenians should get back Panactum from the Boeotians, they themselves might recover Pylos, sent envoys to the Boeotians and begged them to deliver up Panactum and the Athenian prisoners to themselves, in order that they might recover Pylos in exchange for these.

But the Boeotians refused to give them up, unless they would make a separate alliance with them just as with the Athenians. Now the Lacedaemonians knew that they would thereby be wronging the Athenians, inasmuch as it was stipulated not to make either peace or war with anyone without mutual consent, yet they wished to obtain Panactum in order to recover Pylos in exchange for it. Besides, the party that was eager to break the treaty was zealous for the connection with the Boeotians. So they concluded the alliance, when the winter was closing and the spring at hand; and the demolition of Panactum was immediately begun. So ended the eleventh year of the war.