The Historians' History of the World 03

Between these two towns there were many grounds for discontent. The lot had decided that Sparta should be the first to make the restitutions agreed on at the treaty of 421. For Athens the most valuable of these restitutions was that of Amphipolis and the towns of Chalcidice. Sparta withdrew her garrisons but did not restore the towns; and yet Nicias, deceived by the ephors, led the people to commit the mistake of not keeping the pledges which they had in their possession until Lacedæmon should have put an end to her bad faith. Sparta had negotiated for all her allies; and the most powerful were refusing to observe her engagements. The Bœotians restored Panactum, but kept the Athenian prisoners and only agreed to a truce of ten days. Athens, which had thought to win peace, was, ten days later, again at war with the Bœotians and uninterruptedly with Chalcidice. As regards the latter she had just given a terrible example of her anger. The whole male population of Scione had been put to death as a punishment for its recent revolt, in virtue of a decree of the people which the generals had carried with them.

All this furnished material which Alcibiades might work up into a war. First, he prevented the Athenians from evacuating Pylos. The helots and Messenians were simply withdrawn thence at the instance of Lacedæmon and were transported to Cephallenia. Then, warned by his friends at Argos that Sparta was seeking to draw that city into her alliance, he answered that Athens herself was quite ready to join the Argives. Athens at once concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the Argives, the Mantineans and the Eleans. In the ardour of hatred against Sparta it was agreed that the alliance should last a hundred years; a long period for such spirits (420). We here remark a new and important point; it is that the alliance was concluded on a perfect footing of equality. The command of the allied troops was to belong to the people which should demand aid and on whose territory war should be made.

[420-418 B.C.]

The neutrality of the Argolid and of the centre of the Peloponnesus had hitherto preserved Lacedæmon from a continental invasion. War, after having long hovered on the outskirts of the peninsula, had not ventured, within the last few years, to do more than lay hold of certain points on the coasts to the west, south, and east, which were quite remote from Sparta, at Pylos, Cythera, and Methone. But now the Argives, the Mantineans and the Eleans were about to introduce it into the heart of the Peloponnesus, to bring it in the very face of the helots. Sparta became once more the patient, deliberate city of former days, even to the point of submitting to outrageous insults. On account of the despatch of the helots to Lepreum during the sacred truce, the Eleans had condemned the Lacedæmonians to a fine of two thousand minæ, and on their refusal to pay had excluded them by decree from the Olympic games. A Spartan of distinction, named Lichas, had however a chariot competing in the same race in which Alcibiades had displayed so much magnificence and obtained wreaths. When the judges learnt his name they had him ignominiously driven away with blows. Sparta did not avenge this outrage; she had ceased to believe in herself. At last Alcibiades passed over into the Peloponnesus with a few troops.

At Argos he persuaded the people to seize a port on the Saronic Gulf from the Epidaurians; from thence the Argives might the more easily receive succours from Athens which was in possession of Ægina opposite Epidaurus. But the Lacedæmonians sent this town three hundred hoplites who arrived by sea and repelled all attacks. At this news the Athenians wrote at the base of the column on which the treaty had been engraved, that Sparta had violated the peace, and the war began (419).

It was in vain that Aristophanes produced about this time his comedy entitled the Peace, resuming the theme he had taken up seven years before in the Acharnians. It was to no purpose that he personified War as a giant who crushes the towns in a mortar, using the generals for his pestles, and showed that with the return of Peace, drawn at last from the cavern in which she has been captive for thirteen years, banquets and feasts will recommence, the whole town will be given up to joy, and the armourers only will be in despair; he persuaded no one, not even the judges of the competition, who refused him the first prize.