History of the Peloponnesian 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.

And I remember yet that from the very beginning of this war and so on till the end it was uttered by many that it should be of thrice nine years' continuance.

And for the time thereof I lived in my strength and applied my mind to gain an accurate knowledge of the same. It happened also that I was banished my country for twenty years, after my charge at Amphipolis; whereby being present at the affairs of both, and especially of the Lacedaemonians by reason of my exile, I could at leisure the better learn the truth of all that passed.

The quarrels, therefore, and perturbations of the peace, after those ten years, and that which followed, according as from time to time the war was carried, I will now pursue.

After the concluding of the fifty years' peace and the league which followed, and when those ambassadors which were sent for out of the rest of Peloponnesus to accept the said peace were departed from Lacedaemon, the Corinthians (the rest going all to their own cities), turning first to Argos, entered into treaty with some of the Argive magistrates to this purpose:

that the Lacedaemonians having made a peace and league with the Athenians, their hitherto mortal enemies, tending not to the benefit, but to the enslaving of Peloponnesus, it behoved them to consider of a course for the safety of the same, and to make a decree that any city of the Grecians that would, and were a free city, and admitted the like and equal trials of judgment with theirs, might make a league with the Argives for the one mutually to aid the other; and to assign them a few men, with absolute authority from the state, to treat with; and that it should not be motioned to the people, to the end that, if the multitude would not agree to it, it might be unknown that ever they had made such a motion; affirming that many would come into this confederacy upon hatred to the Lacedaemonians.

And the Corinthians, when they had made this overture, went home.

These men of Argos having heard them and reported their proposition both to the magistrates and to the people, the Argives ordered the same accordingly and elected twelve men with whom it should be lawful for any Grecian to make the league that would, except the Lacedaemonians and Athenians, with neither of which they were to enter into any league without the consent of the Argive people.

And this the Argives did the more willingly admit, as well for that they saw the Lacedaemonians would make war upon them (for the truce between them was now upon expiring), as also because they hoped to have the principality of Peloponnesus. For about this time Lacedaemon had but a bad report and was in contempt for the losses it had received. And the Argives in all points were in good estate, as not having concurred in the Attic war, but rather been at peace with both, and thereby gotten in their revenue.