ten years of Theban supremacy only succeeded in breaking up such union as existed, and Greece was left helpless and divided, to fall under the control of the kings of Macedonia. The war, therefore, has with some justice been called "The Suicide of Hellas."
It may be divided into three periods. First, from B.C. 431 to B.C. 424, in which Athens was, on the whole, eminently successful till the defeat of an Athenian army at Delium, balancing the disaster of the previous year sustained by the Spartans at Sphacteria (B.C. 425), induced the two chief combatants to make a truce for a year. Then followed a kind of interlude, B.C. 423–421, when there was neither open war nor real peace, for in B.C. 422 the war went on in Thrace, though there were no operations in Greece. In B.C. 421 Nicias, who had always been on the side of caution, negotiated a fifty years' peace.
Secondly, B.C. 421–415. During the next six years Athens and Sparta were at peace, but the allies of neither were satisfied. New combinations were made by various states and met by counter-combinations which eventually produced a war between Sparta and Argos, in which Athenian troops took part with Argos, though the peace with Sparta nominally remained. The prominent Athenian statesman in this period is Alcibiades.
Thirdly, B.C. 415–404. This period opens with nominal peace in Greece. The Athenians had the year before suppressed and cruelly punished an attempted revolt in Melos, and her supremacy in the Aegean seemed safe. Her financial position had
