History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗

advised them to interchange oaths with all such

cities as should be willing to enter into a defensive league with

the Boeotians. But the members of the Boeotian councils refused

their assent to the proposal, being afraid of offending Lacedaemon

by entering into a league with the deserter Corinth; the Boeotarchs

not having acquainted them with what had passed at Lacedaemon and with

the advice given by Cleobulus and Xenares and the Boeotian partisans

there, namely, that they should become allies of Corinth and Argos

as a preliminary to a junction with Lacedaemon; fancying that, even if

they should say nothing about this, the councils would not vote

against what had been decided and advised by the Boeotarchs. This

difficulty arising, the Corinthians and the envoys from Thrace

departed without anything having been concluded; and the Boeotarchs,

who had previously intended after carrying this to try and effect

the alliance with Argos, now omitted to bring the Argive question

before the councils, or to send to Argos the envoys whom they had

promised; and a general coldness and delay ensued in the matter.

 

In this same winter Mecyberna was assaulted and taken by the

Olynthians, having an Athenian garrison inside it.

 

All this while negotiations had been going on between the

Athenians and Lacedaemonians about the conquests still retained by

each, and Lacedaemon, hoping that if Athens were to get back

Panactum from the Boeotians she might herself recover Pylos, now

sent an embassy to the Boeotians, and begged them to place Panactum

and their Athenian prisoners in her hands, in order that she might

exchange them for Pylos. This the Boeotians refused to do, unless

Lacedaemon made a separate alliance with them as she had done with

Athens. Lacedaemon knew that this would be a breach of faith to

Athens, as it had been agreed that neither of them should make peace

or war without the other; yet wishing to obtain Panactum which she

hoped to exchange for Pylos, and the party who pressed for the

dissolution of the treaty strongly affecting the Boeotian

connection, she at length concluded the alliance just as winter gave

way to spring; and Panactum was instantly razed. And so the eleventh

year of the war ended.

 

In the first days of the summer following, the Argives, seeing

that the promised ambassadors from Boeotia did not arrive, and that

Panactum was being demolished, and that a separate alliance had been

concluded between the Boeotians and Lacedaemonians, began to be afraid

that Argos might be left alone, and all the confederacy go over to

Lacedaemon. They fancied that the Boeotians had been persuaded by

the Lacedaemonians to raze Panactum and to enter into the treaty

with the Athenians, and that Athens was privy to this arrangement, and

even her alliance, therefore, no longer open to them—a resource

which they had always counted upon, by reason of the dissensions

existing, in the event of the noncontinuance of their treaty with

Lacedaemon. In this strait the Argives, afraid that, as the result

of refusing to renew the treaty with Lacedaemon and of aspiring to the

supremacy in Peloponnese, they would have the Lacedaemonians, Tegeans,

Boeotians, and Athenians on their hands all at once, now hastily

sent off Eustrophus and Aeson, who seemed the persons most likely to

be acceptable, as envoys to Lacedaemon, with the view of making as

good a treaty as they could with the Lacedaemonians, upon such terms

as could be got, and being left in peace.

 

Having reached Lacedaemon, their ambassadors proceeded to

negotiate the terms of the proposed treaty. What the Argives first

demanded was that they might be allowed to refer to the arbitration of

some state or private person the question of the Cynurian land, a

piece of frontier territory about which they have always been

disputing, and which contains the towns of Thyrea and Anthene, and

is occupied by the Lacedaemonians. The Lacedaemonians at first said

that they could not allow this point to be discussed, but were ready

to conclude upon the old terms. Eventually, however, the Argive

ambassadors succeeded in obtaining from them this concession: For

the present there was to be a truce for fifty years, but it should

be competent for either party, there being neither plague nor war in

Lacedaemon or Argos, to give a formal challenge and decide the

question of this territory by battle, as on a former occasion, when

both sides claimed the victory; pursuit not being allowed beyond the

frontier of Argos or Lacedaemon. The Lacedaemonians at first thought

this mere folly; but at last, anxious at any cost to have the

friendship of Argos they agreed to the terms demanded, and reduced

them to writing. However, before any of this should become binding,

the ambassadors were to return to Argos and communicate with their

people and, in the event of their approval, to come at the feast of

the Hyacinthia and take the oaths.

 

The envoys returned accordingly. In the meantime, while the Argives

were engaged in these negotiations, the Lacedaemonian ambassadors—

Andromedes, Phaedimus, and Antimenidas—who were to receive

the prisoners from the Boeotians and restore them and Panactum to

the Athenians, found that the Boeotians had themselves razed Panactum,

upon the plea that oaths had been anciently exchanged between their

people and the Athenians, after a dispute on the subject to the effect

that neither should inhabit the place, but that they should graze it

in common. As for the Athenian prisoners of war in the hands of the

Boeotians, these were delivered over to Andromedes and his colleagues,

and by them conveyed to Athens and given back. The envoys at the

same time announced the razing of Panactum, which to them seemed as

good as its restitution, as it would no longer lodge an enemy of

Athens. This announcement was received with great indignation by the

Athenians, who thought that the Lacedaemonians had played them

false, both in the matter of the demolition of Panactum, which ought

to have been restored to them standing, and in having, as they now

heard, made a separate alliance with the Boeotians, in spite of

their previous promise to join Athens in compelling the adhesion of

those who refused to accede to the treaty. The Athenians also

considered the other points in which Lacedaemon had failed in her

compact, and thinking that they had been overreached, gave an angry

answer to the ambassadors and sent them away.

 

The breach between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians having gone thus

far, the party at Athens, also, who wished to cancel the treaty,

immediately put themselves in motion. Foremost amongst these was

Alcibiades, son of Clinias, a man yet young in years for any other

Hellenic city, but distinguished by the splendour of his ancestry.

Alcibiades thought the Argive alliance really preferable, not that

personal pique had not also a great deal to do with his opposition; he

being offended with the Lacedaemonians for having negotiated the

treaty through Nicias and Laches, and having overlooked him on account

of his youth, and also for not having shown him the respect due to the

ancient connection of his family with them as their proxeni, which,

renounced by his grandfather, he had lately himself thought to renew

by his attentions to their prisoners taken in the island. Being

thus, as he thought, slighted on all hands, he had in the first

instance spoken against the treaty, saying that the Lacedaemonians

were not to be trusted, but that they only treated, in order to be

enabled by this means to crush Argos, and afterwards to attack

Athens alone; and now, immediately upon the above occurring, he sent

privately to the Argives, telling them to come as quickly as

possible to Athens, accompanied by the Mantineans and Eleans, with

proposals of alliance; as the moment was propitious and he himself

would do all he could to help them.

 

Upon receiving this message and discovering that the Athenians,

far from being privy to the Boeotian alliance, were involved in a

serious quarrel with the Lacedaemonians, the Argives paid no further

attention to the embassy which they had just sent to Lacedaemon on the

subject of the treaty, and began to incline rather towards the

Athenians, reflecting that, in the event of war, they would thus

have on their side a city that was not only an ancient ally of

Argos, but a sister democracy and very powerful at sea. They

accordingly at once sent ambassadors to Athens to treat for an

alliance, accompanied by others from Elis and Mantinea.

 

At the same time arrived in haste from Lacedaemon an embassy

consisting of persons reputed well disposed towards the

Athenians—Philocharidas, Leon, and Endius—for fear that the

Athenians in their irritation might conclude alliance with the

Argives, and also to ask back Pylos in exchange for Panactum, and in

defence of the alliance with the Boeotians to plead that it had not

been made to hurt the Athenians. Upon the envoys speaking in the

senate upon these points, and stating that they had come with full

powers to settle all others at issue between them, Alcibiades became

afraid that, if they were to repeat these statements to the popular

assembly, they might gain the multitude, and the Argive alliance might

be rejected, and accordingly had recourse to the following

stratagem. He persuaded the Lacedaemonians by a solemn assurance

that if they would say nothing of their full powers in the assembly,

he would give back Pylos to them (himself, the present opponent of its

restitution, engaging to obtain this from the Athenians), and would

settle the other points at issue. His plan was to detach them from

Nicias and to disgrace them before the people, as being without

sincerity in their intentions, or even common consistency in their

language, and so to get the Argives, Eleans, and Mantineans taken into

alliance. This plan proved successful. When the envoys appeared before

the people, and upon the question being put to them, did not say as

they had said in the senate, that they had come with full powers,

the Athenians lost all patience, and carried away by Alcibiades, who

thundered more loudly than ever against the Lacedaemonians, were ready

instantly to introduce the Argives and their companions and to take

them into alliance. An earthquake, however, occurring, before anything

definite had been done, this assembly was adjourned.

 

In the assembly held the next day, Nicias, in spite of the

Lacedaemonians having been deceived themselves, and having allowed him

to be deceived also in not admitting that they had come with full

powers, still maintained that it was best to be friends with the

Lacedaemonians, and, letting the Argive proposals stand over, to

send once more to Lacedaemon and learn her intentions. The adjournment

of the war could only increase their own prestige and injure that of

their rivals; the excellent state of their affairs making it their

interest to preserve this prosperity as long as possible, while

those of Lacedaemon were so desperate that the sooner she could try

her fortune again the better. He succeeded accordingly in persuading

them to send ambassadors, himself being among the number, to invite

the Lacedaemonians, if they were really sincere, to restore Panactum

intact with Amphipolis, and to abandon their alliance with the

Boeotians (unless they consented to accede to the treaty), agreeably

to the stipulation which forbade either to treat without the other.

The ambassadors were also directed to say that the Athenians, had they

wished to play false, might already have made alliance with the

Argives, who were indeed come to Athens for that very purpose, and

went off furnished with instructions as to any other complaints that

the Athenians had to make. Having reached Lacedaemon, they

communicated their instructions, and concluded by telling the

Lacedaemonians that unless they gave up their alliance with the

Boeotians, in the event of their not acceding to the