"The Athenians saw themselves compelled to give up their possessions in Peloponnesus, especially Achaia, as well as Trœzene and Pagæ, an important position for their communication with the peninsula. Even Nisæa was abandoned. Yet these losses, sensibly as they affected their influence upon the Grecian continent, were counterbalanced by a concession still more significant, the acknowledgment of the Delian League. It was left open to states and cities which were members of neither confederacy to join either at pleasure. These events happened in Ol. 83,3 (B. C. 445)—the revolt of Megara and Eubœa, the invasion of Pleistoanax, the re-conquest of Eubœa, and the conclusion of the treaty, which assumed the form of an armistice for thirty years. Great importance must be attributed to this settlement, as involving an acknowledgment which satisfied both parties and did justice to the great interests at stake on either side. If Athens renounced some of her possessions, the sacrifice was compensated by the fact that Sparta recognized the existence of the naval supremacy of Athens, and the basis on which it rested. We may perhaps assume that the compromise between Pericles and Pleistoanax was the result of the conviction felt by both these leading men that a fundamental dissociation of the Peloponnesian from the Delian league was a matter of necessity. The Spartans wished to be absolutely supreme in the one, and resigned the other to the Athenians." _L. von Ranke, Universal History: The Oldest Historical Group of Nations and the Greeks, chapter 7, section 2._ _ALSO IN: Sir E. B. Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall, book 5, chapter 1._ GREECE: B. C. 445-431. Splendor of Athens and greatness of the Athenian Empire under the rule of Pericles. See ATHENS: B. C. 445-431. GREECE: B. C. 440. Subjugation of revolted Samos by the Athenians. Spartan interference prevented by Corinth. See ATHENS: B. C. 440-437. GREECE: B. C. 435-432. Causes of the Peloponnesian War.