Thucydides allows one to think that Sparta and Athens found themselves at war in spite of themselves. Or more exactly, that each found itself no longer at peace. A majority at Sparta had been hustled into deciding that the treaty of 446–445 had been broken. Some wanted still to delay, but most had been incited to believe that they had been humiliated enough. Some in Athens wanted to come to an understanding, but Pericles had prevailed. He believed that war was unavoidable if the city was to retain its dominion and prosperity and thereby assure its future glory, but that this was not the moment to fight it. Megara could be harassed, there could be raids along the Peloponnesian coast, and Potidaea had to be brought back, but nothing else was immediately feasible. The Peloponnesians should accordingly be allowed to fail, and in Attica they did. They invaded for a second time in 430, returned in 428 and 427, were deterred by an earthquake in 426 and in 425 stayed for just fifteen days before leaving to deal with a threat in the Peloponnese itself. Thucydides does not say as much but his narrative makes it clear: the Spartans could not see how otherwise to take the war to the Athenians and the Athenians could not see how to take the war to the Spartans at all.