History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

The same summer also the Dictideans took Thyssus, a town in Mount Athos, and confederate of the Athenians.

This whole summer there was continual commerce between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians; nevertheless they began, both the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, to have each other in suspicion immediately after the peace, in respect of the places not yet mutually surrendered.

For the Lacedaemonians, to whose lot it fell to make restitution first, had not rendered Amphipolis and the other cities, nor had caused the peace to be accepted by the confederates upon Thrace, nor by the Boeotians nor Corinthians, though they had ever professed that in case they refused they would join with the Athenians to bring them to it by force, and had prefixed a time (though not by writing) within the which such as entered not into this peace were to be held as enemies unto both.

The Athenians, therefore, when they saw none of this really performed, suspected that they had no sincere intention, and thereupon refused to render Pylus when they required it; nay, they repented that they had delivered up the prisoners they took in the island; and detained the rest of the towns they then held till the Lacedaemonians should have performed the conditions on their part also.

The Lacedaemonians to this alleged that they had done what they were able to do, for they had delivered the Athenian prisoners that were in their hands and had withdrawn their soldiers from the parts upon Thrace, and whatsoever else was in their own power to perform; but Amphipolis, they said, was not in their power to surrender; that they would endeavour to bring the Boeotians and Corinthians to accept the peace, and to get Panactum restored, and all the Athenian prisoners in Boeotia to be sent home;

and therefore desired them to make restitution of Pylus, or, if not so, at least to draw out of it the Messenians and Helotes, as they for their part had drawn their garrisons out of the towns upon Thrace;

and if they thought good, to keep it with a garrison of Athenians. After divers and long conferences had this summer, they so far prevailed with the Athenians at the last as they drew thence all the Messenians and Helotes and all other Laconian fugitives and placed them in Cranii, a city of Cephallenia.

So for this summer there was peace and free passage from one to another.