History of the Peloponnesian War

After the peace and league made between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians after the ten years' war, Pleistolas being ephore at Lacedaemon and Alcaeus archon of Athens, though there were peace to those that had accepted it, yet the Corinthians and some cities of Peloponnesus endeavoured to overthrow what was done, and presently arose another stir by the confederates against Lacedaemon.

And the Lacedaemonians also after a while became suspect unto the Athenians for not performing somewhat agreed on in the articles.

And for six years and ten months they abstained from entering into each other's territories with their arms; but the peace being weak, they did each other abroad what harm they could, and in the end were forced to dissolve the peace made after those ten years, and fell again into open war.

This also hath the same Thucydides of Athens written from point to point, by summers and winters, as everything came to pass, until such time as the Lacedaemonians and their confederates had made an end of the Athenian dominion and had taken their long walls and Pieraeus. To which time, from the beginning of the war, it is in all twenty-seven years.

As for the composition between, if any man shall think it not to be accounted with the war, he shall think amiss. For let him look into the actions that passed as they are distinctly set down and he shall find that that deserveth not to be taken for a peace, in which they neither rendered all nor accepted all, according to the articles. Besides, in the Mantinean and Epidaurian wars and in other actions, it was on both sides infringed; moreover, the confederates on the borders of Thrace continued in hostility as before; and the Boeotians had but a truce from one ten days to another.

So that with the first ten years' war, and with this doubtful cessation, and the war that followed after it, a man shall find, counting by the times, that it came to just so many years and some few days, and that those who built upon the prediction of the oracles have this number only to agree.