History of the Peloponnesian War

This decree of the assembly that the peace was broken was made in the fourteenth year of those thirty years for which a peace had been formerly concluded after the actions past in Euboea.

The Lacedaemonians gave sentence that the peace was broken and that war was to be made, not so much for the words of the confederates as for fear the Athenian greatness should still increase. For they saw that a great part of Greece was fallen already into their hands.

Now the manner how the Athenians came to the administration of those affairs by which they so raised themselves was this.

After that the Medes, overcome by sea and land, were departed, and such of them as had escaped by sea to Mycale were there also utterly overthrown, Leotychides, king of the Lacedaemonians, then commander of the Grecians at Mycale, with their confederates of Peloponnesus went home. But the Athenians with their confederates of Ionia and the Hellespont, as many as were already revolted from the king, stayed behind and besieged Sestus, holden then by the Medes; and when they had lain before it all the winter, they took it abandoned by the barbarians. And after this they set sail from the Hellespont, everyone to his own city.

And the body of the Athenians, as soon as their territory was clear of the barbarians, went home also and fetched thither their wives and children and such goods as they had from the places where they had been put out to keep, and went about the reparation of their city and walls. For there were yet standing some pieces of the circuit of their wall, and likewise a few houses (though the most were down) which the principal of the Persians had reserved for their own lodgings.

The Lacedaemonians, hearing what they went about, sent thither their ambassadors—partly because they would themselves have been glad that neither the Athenians nor any other had had walls, but principally as incited thereto by their confederates who feared not only the greatness of their navy, which they had not before, but also their courage showed against the Persians—and entreated them not to build their walls but rather to join with them in pulling down the walls of what cities soever without Peloponnesus had them yet standing, not discovering their meaning and the jealousy they had of the Athenians but pretending this:

that if the barbarian returned, he might find no fortified city to make the seat of his war, as he did of Thebes, and that Peloponnesus was sufficient for them all whereinto to retire and from whence to withstand the war.