None of the foregoing yet amounts to war with the Peloponnesian League as a whole, but the temperature is as high as it can be, short of this.

Athens, on the advice of Pericles, its most influential leader, refuses to back down.

A congress of Spartan allies, who accuse Athens of aggression and threaten war, is convoked to discuss grievances against Athens, and the decision is taken for war.

All known operations of the Spartan army for the past thirty years have been commanded by members of not the Eurypontid but the other royal house (the Agiads), and there is no further record of Archidamus' activities until 432, when, according to the contemporary Greek historian Thucydides, the king attempts without success to prevent the outbreak of war with Athens.