26.
This also hath the same Thucydides of Athens written from point to point, by summers and winters, as everything came to pass, until such time as the Lacedaemonians and their confederates had made an end of the Athenian dominion and had taken their long walls and Pieraeus.
To which time, from the beginning of the war, it is in all twenty-seven years.
[2]
As for the composition between, if any man shall think it not to be accounted with the war, he shall think amiss.
For let him look into the actions that passed as they are distinctly set down and he shall find that that deserveth not to be taken for a peace, in which they neither rendered all nor accepted all, according to the articles.
Besides, in the Mantinean and Epidaurian wars and in other actions, it was on both sides infringed;
moreover, the confederates on the borders of Thrace continued in hostility as before;
and the Boeotians had but a truce from one ten days to another.
[3]
So that with the first ten years' war, and with this doubtful cessation, and the war that followed after it, a man shall find, counting by the times, that it came to just so many years and some few days, and that those who built upon the prediction of the oracles have this number only to agree.
[4]
And I remember yet that from the very beginning of this war and so on till the end it was uttered by many that it should be of thrice nine years' continuance.
[5]
And for the time thereof I lived in my strength and applied my mind to gain an accurate knowledge of the same.
It happened also that I was banished my country for twenty years, after my charge at Amphipolis;
whereby being present at the affairs of both, and especially of the Lacedaemonians by reason of my exile, I could at leisure the better learn the truth of all that passed.
[6]
The quarrels, therefore, and perturbations of the peace, after those ten years, and that which followed, according as from time to time the war was carried, I will now pursue.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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