Thucydides truly ascribes this destructive war to the mutual jealousy which then subsisted between the Spartans and Athenians.[65][66] The most stale frivolous pretences were trumped up by the Spartans, and as strongly retorted by the Athenians. Both states made the interests or grievances of their allies, the constant pretext for their mutual altercations, whilst the real cause was that ambitious scheme which each state had formed of reducing all Greece under its respective dominion. But an event which both states seemed to have waited for, quickly blew up the latent sparks of jealousy into the most violent flame.[67] The Thebans privately entered the city of Platæa in the night (a small state at that time allied to Athens) which had been betrayed to them by a treacherous faction, who were enemies to the Athenians. But the honester part of the Platæans recovering from their surprise, and taking notice of the small number of the Thebans, quickly regained possession of their city by the slaughter of most of the invaders. The Platæans immediately applied to the Athenians for assistance; the Thebans to the Spartans.[68] Both states entered eagerly into the quarrel between their respective allies, and engaged as principals in that destructive war which at last involved all Greece in the common calamity. Wherever the fortune of the Spartan prevailed, an oligarchical aristocracy was established, and the friends to a popular government destroyed or banished. Where the Athenians were victors, democracy was settled or restored, and the people glutted their revenge with the blood of the nobility. Alternate revolts, truces violated as soon as made, massacres, proscriptions, and confiscations, were the perpetual consequences, in all the petty republicks, of the alternate good or bad success of those two contending rivals. In a word, all Greece seems to have been seized with an epidemick madness; and the polite, the humane Grecians treated one another, during the whole course of this unnatural war, with a ferocity unknown even to the most savage barbarians. The real cause, assigned by Thucydides, of all these atrocious evils, was, “the lust of domination arising from avarice and ambition:” for the leading men in every state, whether of the democratick or aristocratick party, affected outwardly the greatest concern for the welfare of the republick, which in reality was made the prize for which they all contended.[69] Thus, whilst each endeavoured by every possible method to get the better of his antagonist, the most audacious villanies, and the most flagrant acts of injustice were equally perpetrated by both sides. Whilst the moderate men amongst the citizens, who refused to join with either side, were alike the objects of their resentment or envy, and equally destroyed without mercy by either faction.[70]