Sources

• Herodotus on Persian opportunity and threat (6.42-6.49)

  "But at the beginning of spring the other generals were deposed by the king from their offices... Mardonius deposed all the Ionian tyrants and set up democracies in their cities…The Persians crossed the Hellespont on shipboard and marched through Europe, with Eretria and Athens as their goal."
• Herodotus on lack of Greek unity (6.42-6.49)

  "Among the islanders who gave earth and water to Darius were the Aeginetans. The Athenians immediately came down upon them for doing this, for they supposed the Aeginetans to have given the gift out of enmity for Athens, so they might join with the Persians in attacking the Athenians. Gladly laying hold of this pretext, they went to Sparta and there accused the Aeginetans of acting to betray Hellas."
• Herodotus on Athenian navy expansion (7.141)

  "Yet only a wooden wall shall not fall."
• Herodotus on lack of Greek unity (7.219-7.222)

  "The Hellenes then took counsel, but their opinions were divided. Some advised not to leave their post, but others spoke against them. They eventually parted"
• Herodotus on Athenian navy and Corinthian jealousy (8.1-8.3)

  "The Athenians furnished a hundred and twenty-seven ships…the Corinthians furnished forty ships”
• Herodotus on Athenian ambition to dominate, Greek unity (8.1-8.3)

  "There had been talk of entrusting the command at sea to the Athenians. However, when the allies resisted, the Athenians waived their claim, considering the safety of Hellas of prime importance and seeing that if they quarrelled over the leadership, Hellas must perish…Knowing that, they gave ground and waived their claim."
• Herodotus on Athenian hegemony of the Delian League (8.1-8.3)


  "When they had driven the Persian back and the battle was no longer for their territory but for his, they made a pretext of Pausanias' highhandedness and took the command away from the Lacedaemonians"
• Herodotus on lack of Greek unity, but only between medised and non-medised Greek states (8.49-8.50)


  "The army burnt Thespia and Plataea upon learning from the Thebans that they had not medized."
• Herodotus on lack of Greek unity due to distrust (8.56-8.63)


  “If they depart from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for one country. Each will make his way to his own city, and neither Eurybiades nor any other man will be able to keep them from disbanding the army. Hellas will be destroyed by bad planning.”
• Herodotus on Greek knowledge of terrain and good leadership (8.56-8.63)


  “by engaging many ships with our few in the strait, we shall win a great victory, if the war turns out reasonably, for it is to our advantage to fight in a strait and to their advantage to fight in a wide area”
• Herodotus on Athenian Power (8.56-8.63)

  “I think he did so chiefly out of fear that the Athenians might desert them if they set sail for the Isthmus. If the Athenians left, the rest would be no match for the enemy, so he made the choice to remain there and fight.”
• Herodotus on Corinth's Rivalry With Athens (8.94)

  “The Athenians spread this rumor about them, but the Corinthians do not agree at all, and they consider themselves to have been among the foremost in the battle. The rest of Hellas bears them witness.”
• Herodotus on Greek unity, tenacity and resilience (8.143-8.144)


  “as long as the sun holds the course by which he now goes, we will make no agreement with Xerxes. We will fight against him without ceasing, trusting in the aid of the gods and the heroes whom he has disregarded and burnt their houses and their adornments. Come no more to Athenians with such a plea, nor under the semblance of rendering us a service, counsel us to act wickedly. For we do not want those who are our friends and protectors to suffer any harm at Athenian hands.”
• Herodotus on Greek unity due to similarity (8.143-8.144)


  “next the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life, to all of which it would not befit the Athenians to be false.”
• Herodotus on lack of Greek unity due to suspicion (8.143-8.144)

  “We on our part have been sent by the Lacedaemonians to entreat you to do nothing harmful to Hellas and accept no offer from the barbarian.”
• Herodotus on lack of Greek unity due to medised states (8.143-8.144)


  “but if you do as we advise,” said the Thebans, “you will without trouble be master of all their battle plans. Send money to the men who have power in their cities, and thereby you will divide Hellas against itself; after that, with your partisans to aid you, you will easily subdue those who are your adversaries.”
• Herodotus on Weak Persian Motive (9.62-9.64)


  “When, however, Mardonius was killed and his guards, who were the strongest part of the army, had also fallen, then the rest too yielded and gave ground before the men of Lacedaemon”
• Herodotus on poor Persian equipment (9.62-9.64)

  “For what harmed them the most was the fact that they wore no armour over their clothes and fought, as it were, naked against men fully armed”
• Herodotus on Ionian and Peloponnese tension (9.105-9.106)


  “The Athenians disliked the whole plan of removing the Greeks from Ionia, or allowing the Peloponnesians to determine the lot of Athenian colonies”
• Serpent Column on Greek unity

  "To those who fought in the war: Spartans, Athenians, Corinthians..."
• Diodorus on Sparta giving up hegemony (11.46-11.47)


  “And in truth because of his own baseness, Pausanias not only himself received the punishment he deserved but he also brought it about that his countrymen lost the supremacy”

  “In comparison...the fine tact of Aristeides...because of his affability toward his subordinates and his uprightness in general”

  “Aristeides received the supreme command by sea without having to fight for it”
• Diodorus on Sparta giving up hegemony after the formation of the Delian League (11.50)


  “Advise that they leave the Athenians with their leadership since it was not in Sparta’s interest”
• Diodorus on Athenian ambition for empire (11.50)


  “As for the Athenians, at first they expected to have a great war with the Lacedaemonians...for this reason they were building additional triremes, raising a large sum of money, and dealing honourably with their allies; but when they learned of the decision of the Lacedaemonians, they were relieved of their fear of war and set about increasing the power of their city”
• Diodorus on the Peace of Callias (12.4.4-12.4.6)


  ”Artaxerxes…decided that it was to his advantage to conclude a peace with the Greeks”
• Diodorus on Athens becoming an empire (12.38.2)


  ”the funds which had been collected as common undertaking and placed at Delos, amounting to eight thousand talents, they had transferred to Athens and given over to Pericles”
• Herodotus on the Peace of Callias (7.151)

  ”Artoxerxes responded to this that it did indeed hold good and that he believed no city to be a better friend to him than Argos"
• Plutarch on Sparta giving up hegemony (Aristeides 23)


  ”They voluntarily abandoned the leadership and ceased sending out generals for the war, choosing rather to have their citizens discreet and true to their ancestral customs than to have sway over all Hellas”
• Plutarch on the allies' obliviousness to Athens becoming an empire (Cimon 11-12.4)


  ”And so suffered the allies, caught with the bait of their own ease, to stay at home and become tillers of the soil and unwarlike merchants instead of warriors“

  "And so before they knew it, they were tributary subjects instead of allies”
• Thucydides on Spartan suspicion and building of the long walls- could be considered an example of his prophasis (1.89-1.118)


  ”Themistocles secretly sent word to the Athenians to detain them as far as possible without putting them under open constraint, and not to let them go until they themselves had returned.”
• Chalkis Decree on Athenian power over the allies, exacting

  “I will not revolt from the people of Athens by any means or device whatsoever, neither word or in deed, nor will I obey anyone who does revolt, and if anyone revolts I will denounce him to the Athenians. And I will be the best and fairest ally I am able to be and will help defend the Athenian people, in the event of anyone wronging the Athenians, and I will obey the Athenian people”
• Harpokration s.v. Attikois Grammasin on reliability of the Peace of Callias- Thucydides never mentions it


  Quotes the 4th century historian Theopompus, who suggests that the so-called peace of Callias was a 4th century forgery. The point is that only in 403 BC did Athens officially change the alphabet from Attic to Ionic (which has extra letters such as Eta and Omega). So if the peace was written in Ionic, it must have post-dated 403, whereas it was supposed to belong to the middle of the 5th century
• Aristophanes Archanians on the cause of the Megarian Decree (524-539)


  ”Simaetha, harlot, one of Megara’s womankind, was stolen by gilded youths more drunk than otherwise; and so the Megarians, pangs of wrath all reeking hot, paid back the theft and raped of Aspasia’s harlots two.”
• Plutarch on the cause of the Megarian Decree (Pericles 30-31)


  "This decree, at any rate, is the work of Pericles, and aims at a reasonable and human justification of his course. But after the herald who was sent, Anthemocritus, had been put to death through the agency of the Megarians, as it was believd, Charnius proposed a decree against them, to the effect that there be irreconcilable and implacable smith on the part of Athens towards them, and that whosoever of the Megarians should set foot on the soil of Attica be punished with death…but the Megarians denied the murder of Anthemocritus"
• Thucydides' Prophasis and judgement on inevitability of war (1.23)


  “The growth of the power of the Athenians, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacadaemon, made war inevitable. Still, it is well to give the grounds alleged by each side, which led to the dissolution of the treaty and the breaking out of war.”
• Thucydides on Athenian aggression as a cause of the war (1.66-1.69)


  ”After extending the summons to any of their allies and others who might have complaints to make of Athenian aggression, the Lacedaemonians held their ordinary assembly and invited them to speak”
• Thucydides on Allies' obliviousness to the empire (1.75-1.77)


  “That empire we acquired by no violent means but because you were unwilling to prosecute to its conclusion the war against the barbarian, and because the allies attached themselves to us and spontaneously asked us to assume the command” (corroborates Plutarch)
• Thucydides on causes of the war- refers to the atiai and prophasis (1.86-1.88)


  “The Lacedaemonians voted that the treaty had been broken and that war must be declared, not so much because they were persuaded by the arguments of the allies, as because they feared the growth of the power of the Athenians, seeing most of Hellas already subject to them”
• Thucydides on Corinth's role in the cause of the war (1.103)

  ”This was the principle cause of the Corinthians conceiving such a deadly hatred against Athens”
• Thucydides on the most impactful atiai (1.115-1.118)


  ”the affairs of Corcyra and Potidaea, and the events that served as a pretext for the present war" (implies it's more of a Corinthian issue)
• Thucydides on Spartan Ultimatum- most impactful was Megara (1.139-1.140)


  "Gave to her most distinctly that war might be avoided by the revocation of the Megara decree”