History of the Peloponnesian War

Including, therefore, the first war of ten years, the suspicious cessation of hostilities which followed it, and the subsequent war which succeeded to that, any one will find that the number of years was what I have mentioned, (reckoning by the great divisions of time,) with only a few days' difference; and that such as positively asserted any thing on the strength of oracles, found this the only fact which proved true.

At least I, for my own part, remember that all along, both at the beginning of the war, and till it was brought to a conclusion, it was alleged by many that it was to last thrice nine years.

And I lived on through the whole of it, being of an age to comprehend events, and paying attention, in order to gain accurate knowledge on each point. It was also my lot to be banished my country twenty years after my command at Amphipolis; and thus, by being present at the transactions of either party, and especially of the Peloponnesians, in consequence of my banishment, to gain at my leisure a more perfect acquaintance with each of them.

The difference, then, which arose after the ten years, and the breaking up of the treaty, and the subsequent course of hostilities, I will now relate.

When, then, the fifty years' treaty had been concluded, and the [*](αἱ ξυμμαχίαι.] Poppo remarks, in his note on 48. 1, on this use of the plural noun with reference to a single alliance; but does not offer any explanation of it. Probably it arises from the separate ratification of the alliance by each of the two states so that it may be regarded as a twofold transaction.) alliance afterwards, the embassies from the Peloponnese, which had been summoned for that business, returned from Lacedaemon. Accordingly the rest went home;