History of The Peloponnesian War - Book V   

there had been a war between the Lepreans and some of the Arcadians;
and the Eleans being called in by the former with the offer of half
their lands, had put an end to the war, and leaving the land in the
hands of its Leprean occupiers had imposed upon them the tribute of
a talent to the Olympian Zeus. Till the Attic war this tribute was
paid by the Lepreans, who then took the war as an excuse for no longer
doing so, and upon the Eleans using force appealed to Lacedaemon.
The case was thus submitted to her arbitrament; but the Eleans,
suspecting the fairness of the tribunal, renounced the reference and
laid waste the Leprean territory. The Lacedaemonians nevertheless
decided that the Lepreans were independent and the Eleans
aggressors, and as the latter did not abide by the arbitration, sent a
garrison of heavy infantry into Lepreum. Upon this the Eleans, holding
that Lacedaemon had received one of their rebel subjects, put
forward the convention providing that each confederate should come out
of the Attic war in possession of what he had when he went into it,
and considering that justice had not been done them went over to the
Argives, and now made the alliance through their ambassadors, who
had been instructed for that purpose. Immediately after them the
Corinthians and the Thracian Chalcidians became allies of Argos.
Meanwhile the Boeotians and Megarians, who acted together, remained
quiet, being left to do as they pleased by Lacedaemon, and thinking
that the Argive democracy would not suit so well with their
aristocratic government as the Lacedaemonian constitution.
About the same time in this summer Athens succeeded in reducing
Scione, put the adult males to death, and, making slaves of the
women and children, gave the land for the Plataeans to live in. She
also brought back the Delians to Delos, moved by her misfortunes in
the field and by the commands of the god at Delphi. Meanwhile the
Phocians and Locrians commenced hostilities. The Corinthians and
Argives, being now in alliance, went to Tegea to bring about its
defection from Lacedaemon, seeing that, if so considerable a state
could be persuaded to join, all Peloponnese would be with them. But
when the Tegeans said that they would do nothing against Lacedaemon,
the hitherto zealous Corinthians relaxed their activity, and began
to fear that none of the rest would now come over. Still they went
to the Boeotians and tried to persuade them to alliance and a common
action generally with Argos and themselves, and also begged them to go
with them to Athens and obtain for them a ten days' truce similar to
that made between the Athenians and Boeotians not long after the fifty
years' treaty, and, in the event of the Athenians refusing, to throw
up the armistice, and not make any truce in future without Corinth.
These were the requests of the Corinthians. The Boeotians stopped them
on the subject of the Argive alliance, but went with them to Athens,
where however they failed to obtain the ten days' truce; the
Athenian answer being that the Corinthians had truce already, as being
allies of Lacedaemon. Nevertheless the Boeotians did not throw up
their ten days' truce, in spite of the prayers and reproaches of the
Corinthians for their breach of faith; and these last had to content
themselves with a de facto armistice with Athens.
The same summer the Lacedaemonians marched into Arcadia with
their whole levy under Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, king of
Lacedaemon, against the Parrhasians, who were subjects of Mantinea,
and a faction of whom had invited their aid. They also meant to
demolish, if possible, the fort of Cypsela which the Mantineans had
built and garrisoned in the Parrhasian territory, to annoy the
district of Sciritis in Laconia. The Lacedaemonians accordingly laid
waste the Parrhasian country, and the Mantineans, placing their town
in the hands of an Argive garrison, addressed themselves to the
defence of their confederacy, but being unable to save Cypsela or
the Parrhasian towns went back to Mantinea. Meanwhile the
Lacedaemonians made the Parrhasians independent, razed the fortress,
and returned home.
The same summer the soldiers from Thrace who had gone out with