READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

ATHENS . 478—401 B.C.

CHAPTER IX

SPARTA AND THE PELOPONNESE

I

THE SPARTAN-ATHENIAN ALLIANCE

THE treaty which ended the Archidamian War was never executed in its entirety. In their eagerness to recover Pylos and the citizens lost at Sphacteria, the Spartans had assumed obligations which they could not fulfil, and since it was upon Sparta that the lot fell to make restitution first, Athens was automatically absolved from doing its part. What the Spartans could do without regard to others, they did at once: they released their Athenian prisoners. Then two impossible tasks confronted them, to induce their recalcitrant allies to accept the treaty, and to restore Amphipolis to the Athenians.

At the moment, the officer who had succeeded Brasidas was inside the walls of Amphipolis; and, since he had a Lacedaemonian garrison with him, the home authorities ordered him to put the city into the hands of the Athenians. But Clearidas, for such was his name, disapproved both of the treaty and of the mission entrusted to him and professed to be unable to surrender the place against the wishes of the inhabitants. His hesitation was probably fatal. Some precious weeks were spent in backing and filling, and then Sparta virtually accepted his opinion (which he had returned home to present personally) by giving him per­mission to withdraw his troops from Amphipolis altogether. The evacuation of this key position, and the subsequent recall of all the Lacedaemonian forces in Thrace (summer 421 b.c.) formally disassociated Sparta from direct resistance to the treaty, but thereafter the Spartans lacked physical means of redeeming their pledges in that district.

The restoration of the Athenian Empire in the Thraceward parts—one of the primary objects of Athens in ending the war would perhaps have lain within the moral power of Sparta had it succeeded in holding its alliance together. But the nature of the peace precluded this. The terms of the treaty had indeed been ratified by a majority of the Peloponnesians and their allies; but the opposition comprised Elis, Corinth, Megara, and Boeotia, the most important members of the coalition after Sparta itself, and these states refused point blank to abide by the decision reached.

The real basis of Elean dissent was private—a bitter quarrel with Sparta over Lepreum—and when Mantinea also joined the opposition, it, too, acted for reasons unconnected with the peace; but in the cases of Corinth, Megara, and Boeotia it was the treaty alone that determined their attitude.

After a ten years war, during which its maritime traders had enjoyed only the privileges of pirates, Corinth was asked to accept without compensation a peace which confirmed Athens in the possession of all the objects in dispute. For not only was Corcyra definitely lost to its mother country, but Sollium and Anactorium, Corinthian colonies in Ambracia, were also left with the enemy; so that Athens was better able than before the war to control the passage of merchant ships and naval expeditions to and from the Adriatic and the West. To the Corinthians this seemed a betrayal of Peloponnesian interests—a demonstration that the Peloponnese needed a new leader. With Athens, therefore, they suspended hostilities, but did not even make a truce.

The outcome was even more intolerable for Megara. For its chief harbour, Nisaea, remained in the hands of Athens, which refused to give it up unless Thebes surrendered Plataea. This, however, Thebes would do only under compulsion. The votes of Plataea sealed its preponderance in the Boeotian League. It saw no reason why it should make a concession thus doubly important to secure peace. The Boeotians were not war-weary. To them alone the war had been really profitable. For ten years they had been engaged (under cover of the Peloponnesian armies) in transferring to their own towns the movable property of neighbouring Attica. Unaided they were not strong enough to carry on war with any hope of conquering Athens, but after Delium they believed they could repel an Athenian invasion of Boeotia without the assistance of the Peloponnesians; so they simply made a truce for ten-day periods. In the meanwhile they retained their Athenian prisoners and the frontier post of Pan- actum which they had captured in the course of the war.

The insubordination of these five states gathered significance from the fact that at the very time at which Sparta had failed to live up to its military reputation and their expectations, the treaty lapsed by which thirty years earlier (451 b.c.) Argos had withdrawn from the struggle for the headship of the Peloponnese. The sympathies of Argos were preponderantly with the enemies of the Lacedaemonians; for the Spartan hegemony was an affront to ancient Argive traditions. And in form of government the Argives stood close to Athens. But thus far they had remained neutral in the war because, isolated as they were in the midst of the Spartan confederacy, they were too weak to defend themselves; and, because of the Athenian strategy of non-resistance on land, they saw no possibility of being helped from outside. And had Sparta succeeded in getting rid of Athens in April 421 b.c. without alienating its most powerful confederates, it would not have had to beg a peace from Argos. In the circumstances, however, the prospects that opened out to Argos were so alluring that it declined to bind itself again to neutrality.

What was Sparta to do? It could not break with Athens if for no other reason than because the Athenians still held captive five per cent, of its citizens. The alternative was to bind Athens yet further—a contingency contemplated doubtless on the conclusion of peace. Hence in May 421 b.c. the two states concluded a fifty-years alliance, which pledged each to bring military assistance to the other in the event of an attack by third parties, and forbade either in such a case to make peace without the other. Athens, moreover, undertook to aid Sparta should a Helot uprising occur.

This was a sudden reversal of policy for both, and it put a severe strain on public opinion in each. But a re-orientation was justified as Machtpolitik by the failure of a ten years war to upset the equilibrium between them. The alliance, too, evoked memories of Cimon and of glorious days when they mauled the Persians instead of mauling one another. But what commended it chiefly was the exigency of the moment. By it the Spartans hoped to keep Argos quiet, since they believed that if Athens were on their side, neither would Argos attack them nor the Peloponnese secede to Argos. The immediate gain of the Athenians was security from invasion for Attica should they proceed, as was natural, to restore by force of arms their Empire in Thrace.

The arrangement thus contained a double threat, but only in case Argos and the dissidents proceeded to gain their objects by war. The original treaty, however, had provided for alterations in the covenant at the discretion of Athens and Sparta alone, and in the light of the alliance, this clause, which concealed in an unaccented formula a claim on Sparta’s part to act for its allies as Athens acted for its subjects, was construed to forecast positive measures, jointly taken by the two Hellenic great powers. In Sparta, as well as in Athens, a party existed which favoured a policy of co-operative aggression, and to strengthen its hands as well as to create an atmosphere more favourable to peace, the Athenians now released their Spartan prisoners.

The result was not a lessening of the tension. On the contrary, the Spartans assumed a firmer tone in their dealings with Athens, and pressed for the evacuation of Pylos. Since Athens could not continue instigating a Helot revolt while pledged to aid in its suppression, the demand was not unreasonable; but seeing that Sparta now avowed its inability to restore Amphipolis, and would not set a time limit to the undertaking it gave to treat as its enemies allies who by refusing to accept the peace had remained enemies of Athens, the Athenians yielded only partially in the matter of Pylos: they withdrew to Cephallenia the Messenians and deserting Helots by whom it was garrisoned, but put in their place a detachment of their own troops.

If Sparta did not go far enough to convince the Athenians of its good faith, its gestures were sufficiently menacing to produce an effect on its late associates; but the effect was directly the opposite of that intended. Instead of submitting they simply made haste to secure the only protection visible to them, as well as furtherance of their quarrel with Athens, by the creation of a new coalition based on Argos.

II.

THE ARGIVE COALITION

The capabilities of Argos for Hellenic leadership were now to be tested. The Argives had not shared in the wastage of strength and energy which the long struggle had brought on most of the belligerents; and thus, as Thucydides says, they had reaped harvests from their neutrality. But they possessed weaknesses which more than balanced their prosperity. Their citizen body was divided against itself on the fundamental issue of ulterior relations with Athens and Sparta; and the opposition to war with Sparta was at the same time opposition to the democratic form of government. Moreover, the democratic institutions of Argos, while attracting the Mantineans, repelled the Megarians and the Boeotians. Thus the tendency for democratic states to take their place on one side and aristocratic states on the other ran counter to the project of Argos to form a new coalition on foreign issues wholly, and confused the political situation in Argos itself. It was, there­fore, doubtful whether the constitution of Argos would stand the strain of a prolonged struggle or defeat.

The Argives had thought it incompatible with the liberal character of their domestic institutions to keep their entire citizen population trained and fit for war like the Spartans. Yet they could not close their eyes to the superiority of their neighbour’s army. They had, therefore, adopted the plan used in Great Britain and America today of selecting a fraction of the men available for military service and maintaining them at professional standards of manoeuvring and marching, leaving the rest com­paratively undisciplined and untrained—a dangerous experiment when in the corps of 1000 elite thus constituted were enrolled, for the most part, young men of aristocratic families.

Lest Argos should awaken slumbering animosities by seeming to seek power for itself, Corinth undertook the task of organizing the coalition. Its first step was to have the Argives designate twelve of their citizens as a commission with full power to con­clude an alliance ‘for mutual defence of territories’ with any state that wished, except Sparta and Athens. With both or either of these an alliance was not precluded, but it was to be negotiated only after authorization had been given by the Argive people. This adroit bid for members for a third coalition, to be independent of the other two, was so presented as to enable states to make overtures privately when they did not wish to compromise themselves needlessly. The amplitude of the movement could be kept hid till the moment for disclosure had arrived.

The second move of the Corinthians was to convene in their own city a general conference of states that were ready to come out in the open. Their hope was to secure unanimity on the part of all the communities that had rejected the peace. In this they were foiled; not so much by Sparta’s denunciation of their conduct as sacrilegious, in that, having sworn to abide by the decisions of the Peloponnesian Congress ‘unless there was some hindrance from gods or heroes,’ they had none the less repudiated the treaty; for to this the answer was ready that the real sacrilege was the desertion of the Chalcidians, whom they had all sworn to defend. What mainly foiled them was the unreadiness of the Megarians and the Boeotians.

In consequence, the secession from Sparta took place piece­meal. First Mantinea and Elis, then Corinth and the Chalcidians, joined themselves with Argos, the former being actuated, as we have seen, by hostility to Sparta, the latter by hostility to Athens. There was thus something inherently self-contradictory about the Argive coalition from the very beginning, and ardour on its behalf was at once damped when Tegea refused to have anything to do with it, and Megara and Boeotia, acting in accord now as throughout, continued to temporize. The decision of so important a place as Tegea caused the rest of the Peloponnese to pause, and by preventing the secession from Sparta from becoming a land­slide, it daunted even the Corinthians. Elis, Mantinea, and Argos went on to convert their agreement for mutual defence into an alliance tor common action in waging war and concluding peace; but Corinth refused to commit itself thus far. Yet the movement for a reorganization of the Peloponnese could not be said to have failed so long as the attitude of Boeotia remained undefined. Hence Boeotia became the next battleground.

The spirit of government in Boeotia was aristocratic, and those in authority there looked askance at states which were ordered on democratic principles. Hence the Boeotians had no predisposition to throw in their lot with Argos, and would only do so when they were certain that Sparta would join Athens in compelling them to disgorge the spoils of the Archidamian War. Hence when the Corinthians approached them directly in the summer of 421 b.c., urging them to enter the Argive confederation, they simply bade them wait. Nor did they annul their truce with Athens, as the Corinthians requested, when it proved that Athens was unwilling to extend it to include Corinth also. Obviously their course was to make no move till the plans of Athens and Sparta were farther disclosed.

Do what it might, Sparta could not evade the initiative. What was it to do? The course set by the Peace of Nicias and the alliance with Athens was clear enough: Sparta must join Athens in coercing its former allies. But supposing this course were followed and Sparta and Athens were to crush an Argive-Corinthian-Boeotian confederacy, what then? The gain would be mainly on the side of Athens, since the reduction of Argos would be a small compensation for the re-establishment on a firm basis of Athenian dominion in Central Greece. Clearly the course must be modified; but the Spartans did not know what new direction they should take. The anti-Athenian party, led by Cleobulus and Xenares, wanted to annul the peace altogether; but to violate treaties, even though they had served their purpose, did not come easy to the Spartans. Yet they swerved thus far in this direction that, when the elections occurred, they rejected the ephors who had con­ducted the negotiations with Athens, and among the five who took their places were Cleobulus and Xenares (autumn 421 b.c.).

But they continued none the less to try for a settlement by understanding. In the course of the winter a meeting of the Peloponnesian League, attended by envoys from Athens, Corinth, and Boeotia, was held in Sparta, and even when nothing came of the discussion, it was not the government of Sparta, but Cleobulus and Xenares who set on foot a plot, with the connivance of Corinth, to bring Boeotia into the Argive alliance and then swing the whole block into the Spartan camp. To this scheme two of the highest Argive magistrates lent themselves, and they prevailed upon the Argives to undertake that, in case Boeotia should throw in its lot with them, Argos would leave it to a general conference to decide with whom the coalition should make war and peace—Sparta or another. The Boeotarchs, on being apprised of what lay behind the proposal, decided to open negotiations with Argos. But before going thus far, they thought it wise to insure that the Corinthians, Megarians, Chalcidians and themselves would act in concert in whatever contingency should arise—a step all the more necessary in that the anti-Spartan members of the proposed coalition (Elis, Mantinea, Argos) were thus confederated. A treaty to this effect was accordingly concluded, which the Boeotarchs submitted, as required by law, to the Council of the Boeotians. There, however, they came to grief. What was open and above board was the anti-Spartan policy of Corinth and the Chalcidians: to join them seemed, therefore, to take sides against Sparta, and this the Boeotians were resolved not to do so long as Sparta left them alone. The point d' appui which the project had in the war-party in Sparta and the design that underlay it of winning Argos for the war and repudiating the peaqe with Athens, the Boeotarchs (for obvious reasons) were unable to disclose to the Council. Hence the Council rejected the treaty; whereupon the Boeotarchs let the whole matter drop.

Officially Sparta had no part in all this. It continued pourparlers with the Athenians, which simply revealed that Boeotia was the key to the whole diplomatic problem. It saw no way forward except to get from the Boeotians their Athenian captives and Panactum for surrender to Athens in exchange for Pylos. That they would agree to this without a price was hardly to be expected, even after the illumination the Boeotarchs had recently received on currents of opinion in Sparta. What the Boeotians demanded in return was that Sparta should make with them, as with Athens, a separate alliance. And this condition, for which, in view of its inevitable effect on Spartan Athenian relations, the pro-war ephors fought, the Spartans accepted (March 420 b.c.). As Sparta had given the Athenians a definite undertaking to conclude no alliances except in conjunction with them, it knew that it was breaking faith. Its only possible defence was that, by surrendering Panactum and the captives, and thus complying with the substance of the treaty of Nicias even if not putting their signature to its text, the Boeotians had in fact made peace with Athens. This defence crumpled up when the Boeotians razed Panactum before abandoning it. As was natural, therefore, the Spartan envoys who came to Athens to deliver the prisoners and Panactum got in exchange, not Pylos, but a harsh dismissal.

III.

THE QUADRUPLE ALLIANCE

The fate of the Argive coalition was sealed by the return of Boeotia to the Spartan camp. There was no room in Hellas for a second land power when the first possessed the two strongest armies. Greece was accordingly denied the experience of a tripartite division. And it was Argos itself that took the lead in restoring the dual system. Its first move, made in panic on the false news that the Spartan-Boeotian alliance had been concluded with the knowledge and consent of Athens, was to leave the Mantineans and Eleans in the lurch, and seek a renewal of its treaty of neutrality with the Lacedaemonians, who of course were ready to accommodate them even to the extent of agreeing to settle their long-standing quarrel over Cynuria by a preposterous trial by arms. But when the strained nature of Spartan-Athenian relations became known in Argos, less ignominious counsels prevailed. The Argives yielded to the suggestions of Alcibiades; and, acting in concert with Mantinea and Elis, sent envoys to Athens to negotiate a quadruple alliance. If thus supported, Argos was ready to try conclusions with Sparta.

Sparta had scored heavily by regaining Boeotia. But it had incurred the risk of having the Athenians make a separate alliance also—with its Peloponnesian enemies. Of two evils it had chosen the lesser, certainly the less imminent; for there was still a chance that if Athens were approached in a friendly spirit, when its anger at the demolition of Panactum was less fresh, it might yet leave Sparta’s antagonists unsupported and evacuate Pylos. Hence close at the heels of the Argive ambassadors three Spartans, known for their Athenian sympathies, Philocharidas, Leon, and Endius, arrived in Athens, vested (so they informed the Athenian Council) with plenipotentiary powers to settle all outstanding questions, and authorized to state that the alliance with Boeotia had not been concluded to the detriment of Athens.

Seldom had the Athenians a more momentous decision to make, and never perhaps did they have to make it with so much misdirection. Their accredited leader was still Nicias, and, as it was by his persuasion that the peace and alliance with Sparta had been made, so it behoved him to put the best construction on Sparta’s failure to live up to its engagements. To the man in the street it seemed clear that Sparta should have put its army into action and compelled Corinth, Megara, Boeotia, and the Chalcidians to accept the peace. Nicias had a much juster sense of what was possible for Sparta in the circumstances; and thus far he had convinced a majority of the Athenians that, except under in­tolerable provocation, it was not for them to reopen a war which had ended so ingloriously for Sparta, so advantageously for themselves. His second line of defence, moreover, was unassailable—that the disruption of the Spartan coalition was of quite as much value to Athens as the strict fulfilment of the terms of the treaty. But now that Sparta had found a way of regaining its allies by ceasing to press them for the satisfaction they owed to Athens, his position became difficult. Clearly, Sparta should not be allowed to discontinue the pressure; on this point Nicias was in agreement with his political opponents.

Among these was Hyperbolus, whose political debut has been noted already —now as then a reincarnation of the tenets and methods of Cleon. But Nicias had long since taken the measure of men of his stamp. It was a recent recruit to the ranks of the war-party that now made it formidable. This was Alcibiades, whose coming of age politically was signalized by success in winning a generalship at the spring elections. His father was Cleinias, who had died for his country at Coronea (447 b.c.), and on his mother’s side he was, like Pericles, an Alcmaeonid. Brought up as a ward in the house of this great master, he drew thence, as well as from his own ardent nature, an im­petuous desire to dominate which led him inevitably on to the political stage. He grew to manhood with a generation upon which (for reasons set forth elsewhere) neither the authority of elders nor the conventions of society nor the rational justifications of morality imposed their usual restraints. In the case of his contemporaries the feeling with which their society was suffused, that ‘each individual should live as he pleased,’ was controlled by the practical necessity to respect the rights of others of which the popular tribunals were the constituted guardian. But Alcibiades was permitted to be a law unto himself. Arrestingly handsome, he received from men in Athens the recognition and privileges ordinarily given in other societies to extraordinary beauty in women; and his insolence he draped in such charm of manner that, when he shoved respect for neither gods nor man, age nor authority, guardian nor wife, the outrageousness of the act was often forgotten and on the air of the actor remembered. In these circumstances his very infirmities became fashionable; and his engaging lisp, his rakish method of trailing his robe, his preciosity of speech and insistence on attention till the right phrase came, no less than his wild pranks, were imitated by the gilded youth of the city.

His personality was thus as intriguing in his own day as it has remained ever since, and he cultivated it with a vanity which, thus indulged, became unfortunately a rival of his intelligence for the determination of his conduct. It was not through dullness of vision that he came to grief so often. For his mind was as quick and penetrating as it was free and ranging. The attraction which Socrates had for him—their fate had been curiously linked on the battlefields of Potidaea and Delium—arose not simply from the unequalled practice in discussion to be got in the great teacher’s company, but from the apparent freedom from pre­conceptions with which Socrates approached his problems. As an intellectual game the new dialectic fascinated Alcibiades greatly.

Thus endowed with imagination, insight, eloquence, and personal distinction, he was versatile enough to master at the same time the art of war and the art of the demagogue, so that he was qualified by training as well as by inheritance to become a great force in the public life of Athens; but that it should be an incalculable force was certain. For his petulance, self-will, recklessness, and contempt for dullness and goodness—the joint product of a wilful nature and his youthful career as a people’s pet—could not fail in the long run to speed him on courses of which his better judgment would disapprove and to intensify unnecessarily the passions of political controversy. He had almost all the qualities needed for greatness in a democracy except the supreme one—character; a lack that was not mitigated, as in the case of Themistocles, by devotion to a great cause. Loyalty in others he could inspire, though he did not display it himself; and, while he could on occasion win the support of the populace for a project on which his heart was set, he proved unable to maintain the people’s confidence, as Pericles had done. Nor did he deserve it; for the projects he championed, provided they were in the interests of his own ambition, need not be for the public

His first opportunity to prove himself came after the death of Cleon. Old ties of family, which he had taken pains to renew, bound him to Sparta (his grandfather had been Spartan proxenos in Athens); and had the Spartans used his good offices, instead of those of Nicias, in 421 b.c., the incentive of piqued vanity would have been lacking to the vehemence with which thereafter he strove to annul the peace. Convinced by this one attempt that he could not hope to oust Nicias from the leadership of the conservatives, he threw in his lot with the radicals. He was, moreover, too clear-sighted not to see that the drift of events opposed collaboration with Sparta and favoured an Argive-Athenian alliance. And now that Athens had arrived at the crossroads he determined to use every means in his power to thwart the hope of Sparta of completely isolating Argos and its asso­ciates.

The general point of view he presented was that Sparta meant first to crush Argos and then to attack Athens. This was, of course, to give the lie to Spartan professions; which probably were sincere enough, since it seems clear that Sparta was ready to give Argos peace on the old terms and had had enough of war with Athens. Hence, to win ground for his main contention and at the same time to nullify the good impression certain to be pro­duced if the Athenians found that at last they had to deal with envoys possessed of full powers to make a settlement, Alcibiades staged a convincing demonstration that the Spartans were not to be trusted. By promising the ambassadors his support, for which he pledged his word of honour, he got them to disclaim before the Athenian people the plenipotentiary authority they had claimed while dealing with the Council. The first to denounce the duplicity of it was Alcibiades himself. And so incensed did the Athenians become that they did not stop to consider whether Boeotia had not accepted the peace sufficiently to qualify as their ally also. They imagined that Sparta was simply trying to get Pylos vacated so as to be able to begin another war; and had not an earthquake occurred to postpone a decision to the following day they would at once have concluded with Argos a treaty with an avowedly anti-Spartan intent. As it was, all that Nicias could do at the later meeting (for, though taken aback like the rest by the unintelligible volte-face of the ambassadors, he had kept his head) was to re-statc his general position and have himself dispatched at the head of an embassy to deliver to the Spartans what was virtually an ultimatum; that, besides rebuilding Panactum and restoring Amphipolis, they should renounce their alliance with the Boeotians; otherwise, Athens would make a separate alliance too—with the Argives.

And with this demarche we have virtually come to the end of this involved passage in the diplomatic history of Greece. For in the circumstances Nicias could accomplish nothing in Sparta. The party of Cleobulus and Xenares scored a complete victory. Sparta reaffirmed its signature to the treaties—that was all. Accordingly, in July 420 b.c. Athens concluded with Argos, Elis, and Mantinea an alliance for one hundred years that was defensive in form but offensive by implication. For two of the new allies whom Athens undertook to defend were already at war with Sparta; the Mantineans because Sparta in the summer of 421 b.c. had driven them out of Parrhasia by an overwhelming display of force, and Elis because of Lepreum, in which Sparta planted at this very time—during the holy month (August) of the Olympian games—a military colony of 300 Neodamodes and 700 Helots. This was a distinct provocation, and the retort of Elis—the exclusion of Sparta from the great games—was another. In the grouping and regrouping of the states that had been unloosed from their political moorings by the Peace of Nicias forces too strong for Greek diplomacy thus brought about in fifteen months, as in Europe in 1914, a formidable coincidence of antagonisms. The contacts of adjacent peoples (centred per­versely, as happens so frequently, on controversies over frontier­areas) tended to lead neighbours into hostile combinations: witness Argos-Sparta, Elis-Sparta, Mantinea-Tegea, Athens-Thebes, Argos-Epidaurus. The atmosphere surrounding city-nations was not easily penetrated by the spirit of neighbourliness. But the spirit of party was more pervasive. As in the United States during the critical period of Western expansion, allegiance to party was a unifying force that ignored ordinary frontiers; and its potency in this epoch of readjustment is revealed in the outcome—the consolidation of Athens, Argos, Mantinea, and Elis into a demo­cratic block and the gravitation back to Sparta of aristocratic states like Boeotia, Megara, and Corinth.

But the propensity of like in government to seek like was controlled by a yet superior force: the need to obtain security. This it was that impelled strong states to keep their coalitions well in hand, weaker states to seek a considerate protector. Thus driven, the group of peoples that seceded from the Athenian Empire and the two groups that renounced the leadership of Sparta tested the fitness of Argos to be their common head. But the fact that the first problem contemplated for the new coalition was whether it should side with Athens or Sparta needed only the panic of Argos once the scheme had broken down to prove that there were but two states in Greece strong enough to offer the menace and the protection requisite for a coalition. The ultimate facts of Greek international relations were therewith disclosed in all their nakedness—the army and discipline of Sparta and the fleet and enterprise of Athens. But the Greece of this revelation did not include the West where Syracuse was soon to show that it had sufficient power to stand on its own feet.

IV.

THE WAR OF ALCIBIADES IN THE PELOPONNESE

After the peace Athens continued the blockade of Scione  and, when it finally surrendered, treated it with exemplary rigour, the adult males being put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, and the land given to the Plataeans. Further operations could only concern places for the restoration of which Sparta was responsible. Hence ‘war-worn as they were in every particular,’ the Athenians even endured fresh losses in Thrace without stirring. They had enough to do at home in re­pairing the damages caused by the long struggle. Attica had indeed been free from invasion for three summers, and as early as 422 b.c. the state had begun putting things to rights. The temple service at Eleusis, for example, was made a charge on the agriculture of Attica and the Empire. But more was needed than to propitiate Demeter. There were vineyards to reset, olive trees to replant, houses and outhouses in the devastated regions to rebuild and the neglect of a decade to be redressed, both in town and country.

Thus engaged, and relaxed for the enjoyment of peace, the Athenians were in no mood to resume war with Sparta. The Spartans, too, wanted peace. It was awkward to be encircled by Athens’ new allies, and it did not seem impossible to sweep this barrier aside; but the prospects of reaching results in a war with Athens were more remote than ever. Some embarrassment was caused by the arrival home in the summer of 421 b.c. of the 120 Spartiatae who had failed to die at Sphacteria, and the 700 Helots who had served the state so well under Brasidas. The former seemed more dangerous to the existing regime as citizens fearing punishment than as outcasts on whom the punishment had fallen. Hence the time-honoured penalty for cowardice—loss of civic rights —was imposed upon them—and removed not long afterwards. The reward given to the I Iclots was emancipation and permission to reside where they pleased. They chose Sparta, thus increasing dangerously a class which had its next of kin among the serfs; but the opportunity soon came to settle them and 300 other Neodamodes as a military colony at Lepreum, and it was seized upon as a godsend. The menace from the serfs was ineradicable. Like Napoleon the Spartans were prisoners of their conquests; but they experienced a valued relief when Pylos ceased to be the terminal of ‘underground railways’ for the escape of Helots and the point of departure of expeditions that plundered their estates and seduced their serfs. Thus the peace meant an alleviation of their domestic situation.

Accordingly, for the greater part of a year after the formation of the quadruple alliance, neither Sparta nor Athens did anything further to endanger the peace. But during the interval the Spartans were given a rude reminder that their prestige abroad was not what it had been. Their ally, Boeotia, took off their hands, un­solicited, their colony Heraclea in Trachis, on the ground that, weakened by a defeat it had sustained at the hands of the neigh­bouring tribes, it was in danger of falling into the possession of the Athenians. Alcibiades, too, was industriously employed all this while fomenting the war spirit in Athens. What he wanted was for the Athenians to put their army and navy unreservedly at the disposal of their Peloponnesian allies, and for himself to be given general conduct of operations, that should have as their object to crush Sparta completely. That was a clear-cut policy, and it ap­pealed strongly to the restless spirit of action that was strong among the Athenian youth and to the hatred of the Lacedae­monians and dreams of dominion over all Hellas to which masses of the people were instinctively responsive.

Nicias’ idea, on the contrary, was to insist on the purely defensive character of the new alliance, and avoid a rupture with Sparta by leaving unsatisfied both the territorial claims of Mantinea and Elis and the aspirations of Argos for leadership in the Peloponnese. That, too, was a clear-cut policy; and with it Sparta would no doubt have been content. But for its execution, no less than for the execution of Alcibiades’ alternative, singleness of purpose and tenacity of judgment were required of the Athenian people; for, once the quadruple alliance had been concluded, Argos, Mantinea and Elis would defer to nothing but a certainty that Athens would stand aside if they assumed the offensive. But these were precisely the qualities that the Athenian people lacked at this time. And their indecision came out clearly at the elections of the spring of 419 b.c. when Nicias and Alcibiades were both re-elected to the generalship.

Alcibiades chose to regard this half-success as a confirmation of his policy. And thus far he was justified, in that the Athenians let him act as if their intentions were his. He went to the Peloponnese, and with an armed force made up of local troops and a few Athenian hoplites and archers, proceeded from place to place consolidating and extending the alliance. Patrae in Achaea was won, and he persuaded its inhabitants to bind themselves firmly with Athens by carrying their walls down to the sea. He would have built a fort at Rhium to guard the exit from the Corinthian Gulf had not the Corinthians and Sicyonians come up in force and prevented it. This was to singe the Spartans’ beard and implicate Athens more deeply; but it was his next move, in which the Argives were his voluntary agents, that brought on the crisis.

They picked a quarrel with Epidaurus, a loyal member of the Peloponnesian League, meaning to win it for their alliance, by force if necessary, and thus join hands directly with Athens across Aegina. This stirred the Spartans to action. They moved their whole army to the frontier, but did not cross it. The Carnean month was approaching during which Dorians were required to refrain from military operations. It was at its expiry, therefore, that their allies were ordered to be ready for war. Undeterred by this threat, the Argives, after juggling with their calendar so as to defer the sacred month artificially, overran the open country of the Epidaurians. An eleventh-hour effort to preserve the general peace was made by Athens, undoubtedly at the instigation of Nicias. A conference of envoys ‘from the cities’ was convened at Mantinea. It suspended its deliberations when the Corinthians insisted that it was absurd to be discussing peace while the Argives and Epidaurians were fighting; resumed them when Argos, de­ferring to the wishes of Athens, recalled its army, but broke up without reaching an agreement. Again the Lacedaemonians mobilized their entire army and marched to Caryae. This time Alcibiades crossed the Saronic Gulf with 1000 hoplites, but the Spartans came no farther, and the Athenians returned home. The Argive-Epidaurian struggle remained localized; and eventually the defenders must have given in, had it not been for the landing, unmolested, at Epidaurus during the winter (419—8 b.c.) of a Lacedaemonian garrison. The chagrin was great at Argos, where the Athenians were held to have been remiss in allowing the troops to pass through their territory to the sea; and the Athenians, too, were so angered that, at the request of their ally, they restored the deserters to Pylos, and on the motion of Alcibiades, affixed to their copy of the treaties with Sparta the declaration that ‘the Lacedaemonians had not kept their oaths.’

But when Athens had come thus to the verge of war the people drew back. The rural population saw their homesteads in Attica again burning. Men recalled the lessons of Pericles and Delium —not to risk all by incurring certain losses and possible disaster in a great battle on land. Nicias charged his antagonist with having been wilfully and needlessly provocative. The reaction went so far that Alcibiades failed of election to the generalship for 418 b.c.; so that the conduct of military operations in what proved to be the critical year came into the hands of Nicias and his associates, Laches and Nicostratus. This was to play straight into the hands of the Spartans. After June 418 b.c. Athens could be counted on to limit its participation in a Peloponnesian war to a force proportionate only to the needs of defence, and to refrain from operations elsewhere.

Sparta, accordingly, waited till midsummer notwithstanding that Epidaurus was now in sore straits, and then proceeded to concentrate at Phlius for attacking Argos ‘the finest Hellenic force assembled up to that time.’ The Boeotians, relieved of anxiety for their Attic front, sent 5000 hoplites, 500 horsemen, and 5000 light-armed troops; the Corinthians 2000 hoplites, and Megara, Sicyon, Phlius, and Pellene the pick of their field­armies. King Agis with the Spartans, Tegeates, and the rest of the Arcadians that were on their side won the first, and in many ways the decisive, round of the struggle by superior strategy. Finding the combined armies of Argos, Elis, and Mantinea in position at Methydrium in Arcadia determined on bringing him to battle before he reached the point of concentration, he eluded them by a night march and arrived at Phlius the same day. There he took command of the whole group of armies, now comprising 20,000 hoplites and many light-armed troops, besides cavalry and their auxiliaries. Meanwhile, the Argives and their allies, hurrying to Argos, took up a defensive position on the main road coming from Phlius. Their forces numbered perhaps 10,000 hoplites and they had no cavalry. The strategy of Agis aimed not merely at their defeat but at their annihilation. He divided his army into three corps. One, including the Boeotians, waited until daybreak and then advanced by the direct road through Nemea. A second, half as strong, started during the night and keeping well to the left, descended into the Argive plain by a steep road: while a third, which Agis led himself, like the first about 8000 hoplites strong, to which belonged the Lacedaemonians, made a night march round the right flank and descending into the plain, likewise by a steep road, ravaged Saminthus and proceeded to interpose itself between the Argive army and the city.

Had the movements of these three armies been timed precisely the Argives and their associates must have been overwhelmed. As it was, the Argive generals fell back before the central army came up. They seem to have brushed off the smaller of the two encircling armies. Then they confronted Agis in the plain, and both sides prepared for battle. Did the Argives and their allies possess an opportunity to try conclusions with Agis before the Boeotians arrived ? If so, he might have been assailed in the rear by troops issuing from the city at the same time that he was engaged in front with an army numerically his superior. In these circumstances a defeat would have been disastrous. Should, however, his other two armies come up while the battle was still in progress, the Argives were doomed, especially since the Boeotians had cavalry and they had none, the Athenians upon whom they relied for this arm having not as yet put in an appearance. As it happened, the case was not put to the test of actuality. Two prominent Argives, Thrasyllus and Alciphron, the former one of the five generals, the latter Lacedaemonian proxenos, both undoubtedly members of the aristocratic faction in Argos that wished to overthrow the democracy and substitute a Spartan for the Athenian alliance, came to Agis on their own initiative as the battle was on the point of beginning, and urged him not to engage since the Argives were ready to give satisfaction and make peace.

Without consulting anybody except one of the ephors, Agis took the suggestion and offered the Argives an armistice of four months in which to conclude a treaty. Without getting the assent of the soldiers, or, what was even more important, of their associates, the Argive commanders accepted the proposal; and Agis at once led his great army off and disbanded it. The feeling was general among both Spartans and their allies that he had thrown away a precious opportunity, and this feeling was shared by their military experts as well as by the rank and file. With the Argives the situation was different in that the leaders, by accepting the offer of an armistice, registered seemingly a judgment that their tactical position was bad. But since the soldiers believed that it was extraordinarily good, they ascribed to their generals treasonable motives and would have stoned Thrasyllus to death had he not taken sanctuary. Nor can we be sure, in the light of subsequent happenings, that they were altogether wrong in thinking that their generals were swayed mainly by political con­siderations. Certainly many Argives who were not traitors were canvassing the wisdom of withdrawing from the alliance with Athens. For Athens had proved a broken reed in the crisis. Even the limited assistance, on which alone they had had reason to count, had started too late. Hence when the Athenians arrived with 1000 hoplites and 300 cavalry, under the command of Laches and Nicostratus, the Argive magistrates bade them begone; nor did they give them an audience with the people, notwith­standing that it was for Alcibiades (present as a special diplomatic agent) for whom the privilege was requested, until they were forced to do so by the insistence of the Eleans and Mantineans. And it was as spokesman for all three that Alcibiades drove home the point that the Argives had no right to conclude a separate peace with the Spartans. It may be doubted whether he would have carried the day for all his charm and eloquence, had the Argive people not been convinced that they had been cheated out of a victory by their generals, and that they, too, like the Man­tineans, Eleans, and Athenians, had been victimized by the truce.

The political morale of the coalition had been seriously impaired by the incidents just described; but it had still sufficient coherence for the fatal decision to be reached to assume the offensive in turn. They made Orchomenus the first object of attack, the design being to get possession of the Arcadian hostages whom the Spartans had deposited there. But when Orchomenus capitulated harmony ended. The Eleans urged an utter foolishness—the recovery of Lepreum—and when the Argives and Athenians sided with the Mantineans, who were bent on settling private scores with the Tegeates, the Eleans refused to concur in the decision and weakened the coalition by withdrawing 3000 hop­lites. The confederates can hardly have hoped to capture Tegea by assault. Nor did they need to. They had friends within the city—democrats no doubt—who were prepared to admit them, and it was the news that Tegea was all but lost through treachery that forced the Spartans to abandon recriminations and bestir themselves for its rescue.

For a fortnight they had indulged themselves in the unwonted pleasure of king-baiting. Agis’ military judgment had been censured from the day of the armistice, and the political foundation on which his defence rested had given way completely when Argos went back on its generals. The loss of Orchomenus drove the Spartans to fury. But even so their respect for Agis’ gallantry prevailed. They let him off, but required him thenceforward to take with him on military campaigns a board of ten advisers selected by the people. Though he was erratic as a tactician Agis had undoubted ability in planning strategical movements and executing them with celerity. Never had so complete a muster been dispatched from Sparta at so short notice as the one with which he started for Arcadia. On reaching Orestheum, where he learned perhaps that the confederates were divided, he sent home the older and younger classes, in all one-sixth of his forces. At Tegea, according to instructions previously given, he was joined by reinforcements from Lepreum, Heraea, and Maenalia; and without waiting for the Corinthians, Boeotians, Locrians, and Phocians, whom he had ordered to join him at Mantinea with such speed as they could, he sought out the enemy, meaning to give battle at once.

Finding the narrows between Mytika and Kapnistra un­defended he advanced to the Heracleum, where he pitched a camp and proceeded to ravage the country. The confederates had resolved to decline an engagement in the open with the Eleans absent and reinforcements which were coming from Athens not yet present. Hence Agis ordered his army to attack them in their chosen position, a height (Alesion) with steep and difficult approaches overlooking Mantinea from the east. But when his men came within a stone’s throw of the enemy he countermanded the order and withdrew his troops rapidly. Whether it was a jibe on the part of an old soldier—that he was planning to mend one error by another—or the presence in his mind of a different strategical conception that prompted him to draw off in this abrupt fashion, we may, like Thucydides, refuse to decide. His unmolested retirement caused a clamour in the Argive army that their generals had let him escape a second time; and it was with feelings of contempt for an enemy who seemed now, as at Sphacteria, to possess none of the ancient Spartan virtues that the confederates came down into the plain later on in the day, and on the following morning drew up in battle-order eager to engage the enemy wherever they should happen to find him.

In any event Agis had had a different strategical conception—to entice the confederates to do what they had thus done without further provocation—abandon the heights and furnish an opportunity for battle on level ground. He had set his army to work diverting into the territory of the Mantineans, to their great harm and, presumably, indignation, a stream (Sarandapotamos) about the canalization of which the twin Arcadian cities were always fighting. Then he, too, set out on the morning after, intending to resume his position at the Heracleum, ignorant apparently that the enemy had moved, or had moved so far.

Thus it was that with his army still in column of route he came suddenly upon the confederates already deployed for battle. For a moment the consternation in his ranks was as great as it was unusual; but the discipline of the Spartans soon asserted itself. The movement of the Lacedaemonians from column into line was completed in time despite the initial confusion; and when the other contingents had taken the posts assigned to them and the 400 horsemen had gained the flanks, Agis was ready for battle. The highland brigade, the so-called Sciritae (600 strong), occupied the extreme left as usual. Next came the detachment from Lepreum, 1000 men at the most. The main Lacedaemonian army occupied the centre, with the Tegeates (stiffened by two Lacedaemonian battalions, commanded by Aristocles and Hipponoidas) on the extreme right, and the rest of the Arcadians in between. Thucydides estimates the Lacedaemonians (Spartans and Perioeci together) exclusive of the Sciritae—but whether exclusive or inclusive of the ex-Helots from Lepreum is uncertain —at 3584 men, distributed in seven battalions (lochoi) of 512 combatants. As near as we can judge there were from eight to ten thousand men in the whole army.

Singing their war-songs and keeping step and evenness of front with the aid of music furnished by flute-players stationed at short intervals along the entire line, the Lacedaemonians came on deliberately, each man with his shield on his left arm and seeking the protection of his neighbour’s shield for his exposed side. Since their adversaries likewise and for the same reason edged off towards their right, Agis sought to prevent the Sciritae and ex-Helots from being taken in flank, by having them move out to the left and thus make room next themselves in the line for the two Lacedaemonian battalions, whose services the Tegeates did not require to complete the envelopment of the enemy on their front. Had Aristocles and Hipponoidas moved across promptly, instead of refusing to budge, or had the enemy advanced less impetuously, Agis would thus have used his greater length of line to advantage. But, as it happened, owing to the gap in the line, the Sciritae and the ex-Helots were assailed simultaneously in front and on both sides and driven back to their camp. But their opponents—the Mantineans and their Arcadian allies and the 1000 Argive regulars—had gained a fruitless victory. For in the meanwhile the Lacedaemonians in the centre, with whom were Agis and his bodyguard of 300 picked men, had fallen upon the Argive territorials (‘the older men of the Argives, the so-called five companies, and the Cleonaeans and the Orneates’), who gave way with little or no resistance and carried along with them in precipitate flight the adjoining files of the Athenians. The rest of the Athenians being thus exposed from two directions—for the Tegeates and the Lacedaemonians were enveloping them from the left—were saved from disaster only by the superiority of their cavalry, and by the promptitude with which Agis, letting the Athenians and the Argive territorials go, wheeled about his centre and right, and advanced to the rescue of his left. Out­numbered three to one the Argive regulars and the Mantineans sought safety in flight.

Since the Lacedaemonians made no use of their cavalry and did not think it wise to submit their hoplites to the fatigue and disorder of a long pursuit, the casualties of the vanquished (1100, including the two Athenian generals, Laches and Nicostratus) consisted of the dead alone, and the fugitives quickly reassembled in Mantinea, where they were joined shortly after by the Eleans and 1000 fresh troops from Athens. But they were in no mood to try their luck again. The strength of the Lacedaemonians and the weakness of the Argives were only too apparent already. By a single battle, with a loss of only 300 men, the Spartans re­established completely their military prestige, and twenty-four years were to elapse before any Greeks ventured again to face them in the open field.

V.

THE DISRUPTION OF THE QUADRUPLE ALLIANCE

The campaign in Arcadia came accordingly to an abrupt termination. The Lacedaemonians dismissed their allies, both those on hand and those coming from Corinth and beyond, and returned home to celebrate the Carnea (August), perhaps already overdue. Their opponents could not take time even for recriminations. For on the day before the battle the Epidaurians had attacked Argos in full force, and had killed many of the guards that had been left behind for its protection. The confederates resolved on an united effort to save the Argives from such unpleasantness in the future and to open the direct road to Athens. They accord­ingly inarched on Epidaurus, and, dividing up the work among themselves, proceeded to surround the city by fortifications which would make rescue impossible and surrender inevitable. But the Athenians alone had the skill and the patience to complete the portion assigned to them. The others soon gave up, and, leaving a mixed garrison in the Athenian section, they all withdrew.

The disintegration of the confederacy revealed in this paltry result of so formidable an enterprise was soon shown to have its centre in Argos itself. The friends of Sparta there had once already all but succeeded in withdrawing their state from the quadruple alliance. Now they were to be completely successful. For in the autumn (October 418 b.c.) Agis led the Lacedaemonian levy to Tegea, and from this point dispatched Lichas, Argive proxenos, to Argos, giving the Argives the choice of war or peace. Alcibiades went to Argos and fought hard to keep the Argives in the fighting—but unsuccessfully. The aristocrats, who had already reached a private understanding with Sparta, came out in the open and carried the day against him.

Their programme called next for a reversal of foreign policy. This, too, they effected. Argos repudiated its treaty with Elis, Mantinea, and Athens, and entered into a fifty-years alliance with Sparta. In this the rest of the Peloponnesian states were to share on the basis of freedom and autonomy, and the allies of Argos and the extra-Peloponnesian allies of Sparta on the same terms as Argos and Sparta themselves. Its fundamental condition was a notable concession to Argive pride and ambition—that in case a general expedition of the Peloponnesians and their allies were necessary, not Sparta alone, but Sparta and Argos, deliberating together, should decide what forces each member should contribute.

A corollary to this pact was an agreement on the part of the two principals to declare war on the Athenians if they did not evacuate the Peloponnese, and an undertaking ‘not to conclude peace or wage war with anyone except together’; and a consequence of it was that Athens came to terms with Epidaurus and withdrew its garrison, Mantinea released its dependencies and made a thirty years alliance with Sparta, and Perdiccas of Macedon joined the Sparto-Argives as a first step to deserting Athens—an event of considerable importance to his neighbours, the Chalcidians, whom the Sparto-Argives likewise admitted to their coalition. By the end of the year 418 b.c. the Lacedaemonian victory at Mantinea had yielded this rich crop of political fruits, and at this moment the position of Sparta in Greece seemed stronger than it had been at any time since the formation of the Delian Confederacy.

The opportunity for its triumph had been afforded by the aggressive acts of Alcibiades and Argos. The triumph itself had been assured by the refusal of the Athenians to risk their main army in the Peloponnese. The irreconcilability of this refusal, for which Nicias was primarily responsible, with the provocative conduct of Alcibiades, is traceable to the weakness of government in Athens occasioned by the violence and equality of parties. Clearly the leader of one of the two great parties was a menace to the republic: the question was, which? A majority voted to find the answer by ostracism. But when the votes were counted (spring 417 b.c.) it appeared that the individual designated for exile was neither Nicias nor Alcibiades. On the initiative of the latter the two protagonists had united to ward off the common danger, and each had got his own supporters to vote, not against the other, but against Hyperbolus. The result caused guffaws at the moment, for Hyperbolus had been the foremost in inviting the trial of strength, little dreaming of the issue, and the feeling was widespread that ‘it was not for such as he that the sherd-test had been invented.’ But the occasion was not one for levity. Once the way had been found to circumvent ostracism its usefulness was gone, and with it something archaically wholesome disappeared from the public life of Athens. It had succeeded when political controversy was more sincere and parties less amenable to personal control. So the division of public opinion continued and for the time being Athens was without resource against it. In the ensuing elections both Nicias and Alcibiades received generalships.

The alliance of Athens with Argos, Elis, and Mantinea was not inevitably an error. The mistake was the use to which the Athenians had let it be put. Nor was the game wholly lost; for a chance was soon given them to regain Argos under circumstances which weakened again the loyalty of the Peloponnesians to Sparta. The parties mainly responsible for this were the Argive friends of Sparta, the ultimate goal of whose programme had always been an oligarchic revolution in their own state. And indeed the admission of Argos to partnership with the Spartans in the headship of the Peloponnesians was tolerable to the latter only when partisans subservient to themselves controlled the Argive government. Hence a force of 2000 men, half of them Lacedaemonians and half Argive regulars, whose aristocratic sympathies were notorious, was called out, the Lacedaemonians to set up an oligarchy in Sicyon, the two together to overthrow the democracy in Argos (early spring 417 b.c.).

VI.

SPARTA AGAINST ARGOS

This done, and matters put to rights in Achaea, the Spartans felt secure. But they had overreached themselves. Their activity in setting up oligarchies through whom they could have their own way, created uneasiness in other parts of the Peloponnese. The best check to Spartan arrogance was, after all, the freedom of Argos; so the Corinthians, for example, seem to have thought, all the more so, since it was quiet and autonomy alone to which the Argive populace now aspired. In the movement of revolt which grew in Argos from the day of the coup d'état the Argive democrats did not lack outside sympathy, nor inside provocation. Their political degradation was brought home to them so forcibly by individual acts of outrage that they coalesced in ever greater numbers round a central revolutionary body till, choosing a time when Sparta was preoccupied with religious celebrations (the Gymnopaidiai of July 417 b.c.), they rose up against their masters. The street fighting that ensued was prolonged; and the oligarchs could have been saved had the Spartans started promptly. But they broke away so reluctantly from their festival that when they reached Tegea they were met by fugitives from Argos with word that the struggle was over—that some of the oligarchs were slain, others expelled, the rest cowed, and the demos master of the government. The movement had thus gone so far that it required action by the entire coalition, if any—a point debated at length at a Peloponnesian Congress to which the question was referred. There were advocates of Home Rule for Argos present besides the Argive democrats, and when the decision went against them the Corinthians refused to take part in the joint expedition which was authorized.

The Argives chose autonomy in preference to quiet since they could not have both, and, with Alcibiades as broker, they renewed their alliance with Athens, this time for fifty years only. Their thought was no longer of challenging Sparta’s headship in the peninsula, but simply of preserving their independence. What they had to fear principally was betrayal, but a blockade was not impossible. This could be eliminated by connecting Argos with the sea by long walls—a project which doubtless originated with Alcibiades and certainly received the approval of the Athenians, since by it their task would be lessened and their influence increased. They accordingly sent over carpenters and stone-masons to help the Argives, who turned to, men and women, free and slave, and pushed on with the gigantic work; but before it was finished the Lacedaemonians, after ‘postponements and hesitations’ at length arrived (winter 417—6 b.c.). They were foiled of their hope that the oligarchs who had stayed in Argos would rise in their support. So they dismantled the uncompleted walls, massacred the inhabitants of Hysiae, which they had captured, and departed. The Argives retaliated by a raid into the territory of Phlius, which had given hospitality to most of the oligarchic refugees; and the following spring Alcibiades took off from Argos on Athenian ships 300 men who were thought to be disloyal to the democracy and friendly to Sparta.

During the next two years (summer 416 to summer 414 b.c.) the efforts of Sparta were directed towards restoring the oligarchy in Argos, and the efforts of Athens, though no longer centred exclusively on the Peloponnese, were exerted for the preservation of the democracy. Four times the Lacedaemonians mobilized their forces for an invasion of Argos, and on two of these occasions they and their allies actually entered and ravaged the Argive country (winter 416—5, summer 414 b.c.). Twice the Athenians came by sea and found the Peloponnesians already gone. Thus, as it happened, the Spartans and the Athenians did not cross swords in the Argolid. But not content with seeking out twice more the refugees in their rendezvous at Phlius and with expelling (with Athenian aid) an oligarchic colony which the Lacedaemonians had planted at Orneae in Argive territory (spring 415 b.c.), the Argives retaliated for the second Peloponnesian devastation of their country by invading and plundering the Lacedaemonian land of Thyrea (summer 414 b.c.). And on this occasion the Athenians themselves, prematurely elated because of their successes in Sicily (in the ‘mood of adventurous speculation and sanguihe expectancy, dreaming of some great and wonderful change for the better’ exhibited with good natured banter in the fanciful comedy entitled the Birds' brought out by Aristophanes at the Great Dionysia of the preceding March), sailed with a fleet along the coast of the Peloponnese and put landing parties ashore in Laconia, at Epidaurus Limera and Prasiae—thus giving the Spartans the pretext for which they were waiting for reopening the general war with a clean conscience.

VII.

ATHENS AND ITS EMPIRE

By the summer of 417 b.c. it was abundantly clear that if Athens was to retrieve its position in Thrace it would have to be by its own exertions. Probably the secession of Dium, which first absorbed Thyssus (421 b.c.) and then went over to the Chalcidians, established Nicias’ contention that here, and not in the Peloponnese, was the area in which Athens should conduct military operations. So he launched an expedition at this time which counted on being able, with the help of Perdiccas, the shifty king of Macedon, to master the rebels; but Perdiccas, already secretly in league with Sparta, deserted the Athenians, and the whole enterprise came to grief. Patching up an armistice with the Chalcidians, the Athenians turned on their disloyal ally, blockaded his coast (winter 417—6 b.c.), where too they organized at Methone a sort of second Pylos (winter 416—5 b.c.); and, since the Spartans and the Chalcidians left him in the lurch, they finally constrained him to change sides again. The object to which they next directed their attention was the recovery of Amphipolis; but, though they were assisted both by Perdiccas and by numerous Thracians, they failed in their attack on the city and a blockade had not yet yielded results when bad news from Sicily forced them to suspend operations.

The truth is that neither in the Peloponnese nor in Thrace did the Athenians care to commit themselves seriously. The ideas that became dominant after 421 b.c. were those of the Periclean peace—to make Athens the most splendid and enjoyable place in Hellas for men to live in and to restrict activity abroad to ex­ploiting the gains and opportunities of naval power. There was, accordingly, a revival on a small scale of pre-war building projects, an annual appropriation of ten talents was made for the further embellishment of the Acropolis, and the Periclean programme for accumulating reserves of money in the temples was resumed. A new festival with musical and gymnastic features was established in honour of Hephaestus, and a new cult—that of Asclepius—was introduced with the help of the poet Sophocles. The spirit of the epoch, like that of Nicias himself, was conservative. Protagoras was indicted for impiety, Diagoras outlawed for atheism, and Alcibiades caricatured on the stage as the cele­brant of lewd, outlandish orgies. In piety Alcibiades could not compete with Nicias, for he was as much in advance of the sober thinking of his time as Nicias was behind it. But none knew better than he the uniqueness of the opportunity afforded by the great religious festivals to transform a national into a Pan­hellenic reputation. Nicias had selected Delos as the scene of his most spectacular act of devotion (p. 230). Alcibiades chose Olympia to be the herald of his magnificence. He entered no less than seven four-horse teams in the chariot race of 416 b.c., and surpassed all records by gaining first, second, and third, or possibly fourth, places. Nor did he miss the occasion to impress upon the world the eminence he enjoyed at home. While attending the fete he acted like the lord of Athens, using its silverware for his private banquet and taking gifts from its subjects almost as if he were entitled to tribute; and on his return home he had Euripides compose for him an ode of victory. By his very ambition and energy he magnified for Athens the triumphs of peace. Simultaneously he and his city sowed the seeds of hybris.

The gains of naval power were the Empire, which the treaty of peace (while safeguarding the Chalcidians) left to Athens to dispose of as it saw fit. The tribute, though reassessed in 421 b.c. in a downward direction, was kept high enough to permit the raising of the reserve to something like 3000 talents in six years. The officials of the Athenian courts came and went, bearing condemnations here summons there, organs of a sovereign tribunal with an unlimited range of commercial and criminal jurisdiction and alone competent to dispose of serious political offences. Transmarine traffic continued to be regulated in the interest of the Athenian market, and finally, by a single decree of the people, Athenian weights and measures were prescribed for all the Empire’s business, the minting of silver by the ‘cities’ was forbidden and the silver currency of the metropolis made obligatory even in local transactions. Deeper and deeper the idea penetrated into the sub-consciousness of the Athenians that the sea and all that used it were theirs—subject as well to their authority as to their protection. Had not the Spartans recognized this in 431 b.c. by treating even neutral seafarers as enemies, the Argives in 419 b.c. by claiming that a hostile expedition that went by water had passed through Athenian territory? The most palpable offender against this fantastic extension of the conception of sea-power was Melos—a sturdy little Doric community. It had disregarded the assessment of tribute made against it in 425 b.c., and both before and afterwards had defied Athens, trusting to its inoftensiveness and the assistance of the Peloponnesians. Now (summer 416 b.c.) it paid the penalty for its temerity and the world was informed in unforgettable language that islanders had a master. Athens, Lesbos, and Chios furnished the ships, 38 in all, Athens and its allies the troops, 2700 hoplites, 320 archers, by which the Melians were driven into their city and there surrounded by walls which enabled a garrison to starve them into submission. Again, this time on the motion of Alcibiades, the Athenians decided to make an example of the ‘rebels.’ So they slew all the adult males, sold the women and children into slavery, and re-peopled the island with 500 Athenian colonists. And one of their own citizens pilloried them in words, penned seemingly without passion, which yet, by their pitiless exposure of the soul of a despot nation, have power even today to rouse the conscience of mankind against states that act as if the weak have no rights which the strong need to respect.

Another island remained to tempt Athens to its nemesis.

CHAPTER X