History of the Peloponnesian War

Vote therefore, Lacedaemonians, for war, as the honor of Sparta demands, and neither allow the further aggrandizement of Athens, nor betray our allies to ruin, but with the gods let us advance against the aggressors.’

With these words he, as Ephor, himself put the question to the assembly of the Lacedaemonians.

He said that he could not determine which was the loudest acclamation (their mode of decision is by acclamation not by voting); the fact being that he wished to make them declare their opinion openly and thus to increase their ardor for war. Accordingly he said, ‘All Lacedaemonians who are of opinion that the treaty has been broken, and that Athens is guilty, leave your seats and go there,’ pointing out a certain place; ‘all who are of the opposite opinion, there.’

They accordingly stood up and divided; and those who held that the treaty had been broken were in a decided majority.

Summoning the allies, they told them that their opinion was that Athens had been guilty of injustice, but that they wished to convoke all the allies and put it to the vote; in order that they might make war, if they decided to do so, on a common resolution.

Having thus gained their point, the delegates returned home at once; the Athenian envoys a little later, when they had despatched the objects of their mission.

This decision of the assembly judging that the treaty had been broken, was made in the fourteenth year of the thirty years' truce, which was entered into after the affair of Euboea.

The Lacedaemonians voted that the treaty had been broken, and that war must be declared, not so much because they were persuaded by the arguments of the allies, as because they feared the growth of the power of the Athenians, seeing most of Hellas already subject to them.