History of the Peloponnesian War

And by decreeing the peace, you may make the Lacedaemonians your sure friends, inasmuch as they call you to it and are therein not forced but gratified.

Wherein consider how many commodities are like to ensue. For if we and you go one way, you know the rest of Greece, being inferior to us, will honour us in the highest degree.

Thus spake the Lacedaemonians, thinking that in times past the Athenians had coveted peace and been hindered of it by them, and that being now offered, they would gladly accept of it.

But they, having these men intercepted in the island, thought they might compound at pleasure and aspired to greater matters. To this they were set on for the most part by Cleon, the son of Cleaenetus, a popular man at that time and of greatest sway with the multitude.

He persuaded them to give this answer: That they in the island ought first to deliver up their arms, and come themselves to Athens; and when they should be there, if the Lacedaemonians would make restitution of Nisaea and Pegae and Troezen and Achaia—the which they had not won in war but had received by former treaty when the Athenians, being in distress and at that time in more need of peace than now, [yielded them up into their hands]— then they should have their men again, and peace should be made for as long as they both should think good.

To this answer they replied nothing, but desired that commissioners might be chosen to treat with them, who, by alternate speaking and hearing, might quietly make such an agreement as they could persuade each other unto.

But then Cleon came mightily upon them saying he knew before that they had no honest purpose and that the same was now manifest in that they refused to speak before the people but sought to sit in consultation only with a few, and willed them, if they had aught to say that was real, to speak it before them all.

But the Lacedaemonians finding that, although they had a mind to make peace with them upon this occasion of adversity, yet it would not be fit to speak in it before the multitude, lest speaking and not obtaining they should incur calumny with their confederates; and seeing withal that the Athenians would not grant what they sued for upon reasonable conditions, they went back again without effect.

Upon their return, presently the truce at Pylus was at an end; and the Lacedaemonians, according to agreement, demanded restitution of their galleys. But the Athenians, laying to their charge an assault made upon the fort, contrary to the articles, and other matters of no great importance, refused to render them, standing upon this, that it was said that the accord should be void upon whatsoever the least transgression of the same. But the Lacedaemonians, denying it and protesting this detention of their galleys for an injury, went their ways and betook themselves to the war.