owned the leadership of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, that, with whatever territory any one of these began the war, with the same it should close it (Thucydides, v. 31). But σπονδή, oftener in the plural, assumes war, of which the σπονδή is the cessation; a merely temporary cessation, an armistice it may be (Homer, Il. ii. 341). It is true that a συνθήκη may be attached to a σπονδή, terms of alliance consequent on terms of peace; thus σπονδή and συνθήκη occur together in Thucydides, iv.