History of the Peloponnesian War

Moreover, the Lacedaemonians, as time went on, became suspected by the Athenians also, through not performing in some respects what had been agreed on, according to the treaty.

And though for six years and ten months they abstained from marching against each other's territory, yet out of it, during the existence of a doubtful suspension of arms, they were doing one another the greatest possible damage. Subsequently, however, they were compelled to break the treaty concluded after the ten years' war, and again proceeded to open hostilities.

And the same Thucydides the Athenian has also written the history of these transactions in order, as they severally happened, by summers and winters, until the Lacedaemonians and their allies put an end to the sovereignty of the Athenians, and took the long walls and Piraeus. To the time of that event there were spent in the war seven and twenty years in all. With regard to the intervening arrangement, if any one shall object to consider it as a state of war, he will not estimate it rightly.