History of the Peloponnesian War

But you should know that go to war we must; and if we accept it willingly rather than not, we shall find the enemy less disposed to press us hard; and, moreover, that it is from the greatest hazards that the greatest honours also are gained, both by state and by individual.

Our fathers, at any rate, by withstanding the Medes—though they did not begin with such resources [as we have], but had even abandoned what they had—and by counsel, more than by fortune, and by daring, more than by strength, beat off the barbarian, and advanced those resources to their present height. And we must not fall short of them; but must repel our enemies in every way, and endeavour to bequeath our power to our posterity no less [than we received it].

Pericles spoke to this effect; and the Athenians, thinking that he gave them the best advice, voted as he desired them, and answered the Lacedaemonians according to his views, both on the separate points, as he told them, and generally, that they would do nothing on command, but were ready to have their complaints settled by judicial decision, according to the treaty, on a fair and equal footing. So they went back home, and came on no more embassies afterwards.

These were the charges and differences that each side had before the war, beginning from the very time of the affairs at Epidamnus and Corcyra. Nevertheless they continued to have intercourse during them, and to go to each other's country without any herald, though not without suspicion; for what was taking place served to break up the treaty, and was a pretext for war.

The war between the Athenians and Peloponnesians and their respective allies now begins from this period, at which they ceased from further intercourse with each other without a herald, and having once proceeded to hostilities, carried them on continuously; and the history of it is written in order, as the several events happened, by summers and winters.

For the thirty years' truce which was made after the reduction of Euboea lasted fourteen years; but in the fifteenth year, when Chrysis was in the forty-eighth year of her priesthood at Argos, and Aenesias was ephor at Sparta, and Pythodorus had still two months to be archon at Athens; in the sixth month after the battle at Potidaea, and in the beginning of spring, rather more than three hundred men of the Thebans, (led by Pythangelus, son of Phylidas, and Diemporus, son of Onetorides, Boeotarchs,) about the first [*]( Literally first sleep. ) watch entered with their arms into Plataea, a town of Boeotia, which was in alliance with the Athenians.

There were certain men of the Plataeans who called them in, and opened the gates to them, namely, Nauclides and his party, who wished, for the sake of their own power, to put to death those of the citizens who were opposed to them, and to put the city into the hands of the Thebans.