First Paragraph

The great Peloponnesian War, undertaken, it was claimed, to bring freedom to the Greeks, began not with a formal declaration of war and a proud and open assault upon the homeland of imperial Athens, but with a stealthy and deceitful raid in peacetime by a powerful state against its much smaller neighbor. There was no brilliant parade led by the magnificent Spartan phalanx, their bright red cloaks gleaming in the Attic sunsoine, at the head of the mighty Peloponnesian army, but a sneak attack by a few hundred Thebans, insinuated into the tiny city of Plataea in the dark of a cloudy night by traitors from within the city. Its onset indicated the kind of war it would be: a fundamental departure from the traditional character of the Greek way of warfare, based on the citizen-soldier fighting as a hoplite, a heavily armed infantryman in a serried block of soldiers, called a phalanx, according to fixed and well-understood rules that had governed Greek combat for more than two and one-half centuries. The only honorable way to fight, it had been believed, was in the open field in the daylight, phalanx against phalanx. The braver and stronger army would naturally prevail, place a trophy of victory on the ground it had won, take possession of the land in dispute, and march home, as would the defeated foe. The typical war, therefore, was decided in a single battle on a single day.

- From The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan