History of the Peloponnesian War

For they apprehended that the Boeotians had been induced both to raze Panactum and also to enter into the Athenian peace by the Lacedaemonians; and that the Athenians were privy to the same, so that now they had no means to make league with the Athenians neither; whereas before they made account that if their truce with the Lacedaemonians continued not, they might upon these differences have joined themselves to the Athenians.

The Argives being therefore at a stand and fearing to have war all at once with the Lacedaemonians, Tegeats, Boeotians, and Athenians, [as] having formerly refused the truce with the Lacedaemonians and imagined to themselves the principality of all Peloponnesus, they sent ambassadors with as much speed as might be, Eustrophus and Aeson, persons as they thought most acceptable unto them, with this cogitation, that by compounding with the Lacedaemonians as well as for their present estate they might, howsoever the world went, they should at least live at quiet.

When these ambassadors were there, they fell to treat of the articles upon which the agreement should be made.

And at first the Argives desired to have the matter referred, either to some private man or to some city, concerning the territory of Cynuria, about which they have always differed, as lying on the borders of them both (it containeth the cities of Thyrea and Anthena, and is possessed by the Lacedaemonians). But afterwards, the Lacedaemonians not suffering mention to be made of that, but that if they would have the truce go on as it did before, they might, the Argive ambassadors got them to yield to this: that for the present an accord should be made for fifty years; but withal, that it should be lawful nevertheless, if one challenged the other thereunto, both for Lacedaemon and Argos to try their titles to this territory by battle, so that there were in neither city a plague nor a war to excuse them (as once before they had done, when, as both sides thought, they had the victory); and that it should not be lawful for one part to follow the chase of the other further than to the bounds either of Lacedaemon or Argos.