History of the Peloponnesian War

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they had done what they were able to do, for they had delivered the Athenian prisoners that were in their hands and had withdrawn their soldiers from the parts upon Thrace, and whatsoever else was in their own power to perform; but Amphipolis, they said, was not in their power to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.

In the beginning of winter (for now there were other ephores in office; not those in whose time the peace was made, but some of them that opposed it), ambassadors being come from the confederates, and the Athenian, Boeotian, and Corinthian ambassadors being [already] there, and having had much conference together but concluded nothing, Cleobulus and 36enares, ephores that most desired the dissolution of the peace, when the rest of the ambassadors were gone home, entered into private conference with the Boeotians and Corinthians, exhorting them to run both the same course; and advised the Boeotians to endeavour first to make a league themselves with the Argives and then to get the Argives together with themselves into a league with the Lacedaemonians, for that they might by this means avoid the necessity of accepting the peace with Athens; for the Lacedaemonians would more regard the friendship and league of the Argives than the enmity and dissolution of the peace with the Athenians; for they knew the Lacedaemonians had ever desired to have Argos their friend upon any reasonable conditions, because they knew that their war without Peloponnesus would thereby be a great deal the easier.