History of the Peloponnesian War

Presently after the battle of Amphipolis and return of Ramphias out of Thessaly, it fell out that neither side did any act of war but were inclined rather to a peace; the Athenians for the blow they had received at Delium, and this other a little after at Amphipolis, and because they had no longer that confident hope in their strength on which they relied when formerly they refused the peace, as having conceived upon their present success that they should have had the upper hand;

also they stood in fear of their own confederates, lest emboldened by these losses of theirs they should more and more revolt; and repented that they made not the peace after their happy success at Pylus, when occasion was offered to have done it honourably;

and the Lacedaemonians on the other side did desire peace because the war had not proceeded as they expected; for they had thought they should in a few years have warred down the power of Athens by wasting their territory; and because they were fallen into that calamity in the island, the like whereof had never happened unto Sparta before; because also their country was continually ravaged by those of Pylus and Cythera, and their Helotes continually fled to the enemy; and because they feared lest those which remained, trusting in them that were run away, should in this estate of theirs raise some innovation, as at other times before they had done.

Withal it happened that the thirty years' peace with the Argives was now upon the point of expiring; and the Argives would not renew it without restitution made them of Cynuria; so that to war against the Argives and the Athenians, both at once, seemed impossible. They suspected also that some of the cities of Peloponnesus would revolt to the Argives, as indeed it came afterwards to pass.

These things considered, it was by both parts thought good to conclude a peace, but especially by the Lacedaemonians for the desire they had to recover their men taken in the island. For the Spartans that were amongst them were both of the prime men of the city and their kinsmen.

And therefore they began to treat presently after they were taken; but the Athenians, by reason of their prosperity, would not lay down the war at that time on equal terms. But after their defeat at Delium, the Lacedaemonians, knowing they would be apter now to accept it, made that truce for a year, during which they were to meet and consult about a longer time.

But when also this other overthrow happened to the Athenians at Amphipolis, and that both Cleon and Brasidas were slain, the which on either side were most opposite to the peace, the one for that he had good success and honour in the war, the other because in quiet times his evil actions would more appear and his calumniations be the less believed, those two that in the two states aspired most to be chief, Pleistoanax, the son of Pausanias, and Nicias, the son of Niceratus, who in military charges had been the most fortunate of his time, did most of all other desire to have the peace go forward. Nicias because he was desirous, having hitherto never been overthrown, to carry his good fortune through and to give both himself and the city rest from their troubles for the present, and for the future to leave a name that in all his time he had never made the commonwealth miscarry; which he thought might be done by standing out of danger and by putting himself as little as he might into the hands of fortune; and to stand out of danger is the benefit of peace. Pleistoanax had the same desire because of the imputation laid upon him about his return from exile by his enemies, that suggested unto the Lacedaemonians upon every loss they received that the same befell them for having, contrary to the law, repealed his banishment.

For they charged him further that he and his brother Aristocles had suborned the prophetess of Delphi to answer the deputies of the Lacedaemonians, when they came thither, most commonly with this: that they should bring back the seed of the semigod, the son of Jupiter, out of a strange country into his own; and that if they did not, they should plough their land with a silver plough;

and so at length to have made the Lacedaemonians, nineteen years after, with such dances and sacrifices as they who were the first founders of Lacedaemon had ordained to be used at the enthroning of their kings, to fetch him home again; who lived in the meantime in exile in the mountain Lycaeum, in a house whereof the one half was part of the temple of Jupiter, for fear of the Lacedaemonians, as being suspected to have taken a bribe to withdraw his army out of Attica.

Being troubled with these imputations and considering with himself, there being no occasion of calamity in time of peace and the Lacedaemonians thereby recovering their men, that he also should cease to be obnoxious to the calumniations of his enemies whereas, in war, such as had charge could not but be quarrelled upon their losses—he was therefore forward to have the peace concluded.

And this winter they fell to treaty, and withal the Lacedaemonians braved them with a preparation already making against the spring, sending to the cities about for that purpose, as if they meant to fortify in Attica, to the end that the Athenians might give them the better ear. When after many meetings and many demands on either side, it was at last agreed that peace should be concluded, each part rendering what they had taken in the war, save that the Athenians should hold Nisaea (for when they [likewise] demanded Plataea and the Thebans answered that it was neither taken by force nor by treason, but rendered voluntarily, the Athenians said that they also had Nisaea in the same manner), the Lacedaemonians calling together their confederates, and all but the Boeotians, Corinthians, Eleians, and Megareans, (for these disliked it) giving their votes for the ending of the war, they concluded the peace, and confirmed it to the Athenians with sacrifice, and swore it, and the Athenians again unto them, upon these articles: