Athens faces a crisis in 447-446, when oligarchic exiles, headquartered at Orchomenus, lead the cities of Boeotia, under Athenian control since 458, in a revolt, …

…beating a small Athenian army at Boeotian Coronea and …

…reconstituting the Boeotian league in alliance with Sparta.

A revolt follows in Euboea, crucial to Athenian control of the sea and food supplies.

Pericles crosses over to deal with it but only precipitates a third revolt, …

…that of Megara, which had been forced to accept Athenian defensive assistance after 461 BCE.

The strategic importance of Megara is immediately demonstrated by the appearance, for the first time in twelve years, of a Spartan army north of the Isthmus in Attica, under King Pleistoanax, who reaches Eleusis and the Thriasian plain.

Pericles thinks and acts swiftly.

The details will never be fully known, but, possibly by bribery and certainly by negotiation, it is arranged that Athens, in return for Spartan noninterference in Euboea or invasion of Attica, will give up its mainland possessions (Boeotia, the Megarid, and certain Peloponnesian sites) and confine itself to a largely maritime empire.

The Spartan army retires, Euboea is quickly reduced, and the arrangement is ratified by the Thirty Years' Peace (winter 446-445), possibly negotiated by Callias.

For Athens, the essential loss is that of Megara, which means that a Spartan army can appear in Attica at any time.

Percicles' immediate construction of a third Long Wall to improve the defenses of Athens and the port of Piraeus shows that Pericles doubts the stability of the settlement with Sparta and sees the need to develop an alternative basic strategy for Athens.

Henceforth, in effect, Athens can be turned into an island at will.

The argument between Pericles and Thucydides ends the latter's ostracism in 443; he goes into exile for ten years, leaving Pericles unchallenged.

Pindar lives to about eighty years of age, and dies around 443 BCE while attending a festival at Argos.

His ashes are taken back home to Thebes by his musically gifted daughters, Eumetis and Protomache.

He is survived by his Epinicea, triumphal odes written to celebrate athletic victories, in which he often praised the sponsors rather than the contestant.

A religious conservative, Pindar associated each occasion with myth and the gods, and used every event as a basis for religious and moralistic aphorisms and proverbs.