Long Walls in the context of "Callicrates"

The Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), often called the Peloponnesian War, was fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the ancient Greek world. The war remained undecided until the later intervention of the Persian Empire in support of Sparta. Led by Lysander, the Spartan fleet (built with Persian subsidies) finally defeated Athens, which began a period of Spartan hegemony over Greece.

Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. The first phase (431–421 BC) was named the Ten Years War, or the Archidamian War, after the Spartan king Archidamus II, who invaded Attica several times with the full Hoplite army of the Peloponnesian League, the alliance network dominated by Sparta (then known as Lacedaemon). The Long Walls of Athens rendered this strategy ineffective, while the superior navy of the Delian League (Athens' alliance) raided the Peloponnesian coast to trigger rebellions within Sparta. The precarious Peace of Nicias was signed in 421 BC and lasted until 413 BC. Several proxy battles took place during this period, notably the battle of Mantinea in 418 BC, won by Sparta against an ad-hoc alliance of Elis, Mantinea (both former Spartan allies), Argos, and Athens. The main event was the Sicilian Expedition, between 415 and 413 BC, during which Athens lost almost all its navy in the attempt to capture Syracuse, an ally of Sparta.

The Xenokrateia Relief is a marble votive offering, dated to the end of the fifth-century BCE. It commemorates the foundation of a sanctuary to the river god Kephisos by a woman named Xenokrateia.

The relief, currently on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (NAMA 2756), was found in Neo Phaliro in 1908, in the area inside the Long Walls, which in Antiquity connected the harbor of Piraeus with Athens proper, around the walls’ intersection point with the bed of the Kephisos river. It is dated on stylistic grounds to 410 BCE, and is made of Pentelic marble, while the pillar on which it stands is made of limestone.