Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote The Peloponnesian War, the long struggle of Athens against Sparta from 431 to 404 BCE, across what is now Greece. This is Book 4. In Book 3 Lesbos had revolted and been crushed, Plataea was erased from the map, and civil war at Corcyra, off western Greece, tore a city apart.

Year seven should have ended it. Demosthenes, an Athenian general, occupies Pylos on the Spartan coast. Spartans land on Sphacteria, the island opposite, and are trapped. Cleon, dared in the assembly, sails and brings back two hundred ninety-two prisoners, including a hundred twenty Spartiates — full Spartan citizens not supposed to surrender. Sparta wants peace. Brasidas, a thinking Spartan, marches north, takes Amphipolis, Athens’s silver-road city in Thrace, and talks cities out of the empire. At Delium in Boeotia the Thebans smash an Athenian army. Athens, high on Cleon, wants more. The war does not end.