CHAPTER VI _Beginning of the Peloponnesian War--First Invasion of Attica--Funeral Oration of Pericles_ The war between the Athenians and Peloponnesians and the allies on either side now really begins.

For now all intercourse except through the medium of heralds ceased, and hostilities were commenced and prosecuted without intermission.

The history follows the chronological order of events by summers and winters.
The thirty years' truce which was entered into after the conquest of Euboea lasted fourteen years.

In the fifteenth, in the forty-eighth year of the priestess-ship of Chrysis at Argos, in the ephorate of Aenesias at Sparta, in the last month but two of the archonship of Pythodorus at Athens, and six months after the battle of Potidaea, just at the beginning of spring, a Theban force a little over three hundred strong, under the command of their Boeotarchs, Pythangelus, son of Phyleides, and Diemporus, son of Onetorides, about the first watch of the night, made an armed entry into Plataea, a town of Boeotia in alliance with Athens.

The gates were opened to them by a Plataean called Naucleides, who, with his party, had invited them in, meaning to put to death the citizens of the opposite party, bring over the city to Thebes, and thus obtain power for themselves.