About the same time three Lacedaemonians- Ramphias, Autocharidas,
and Epicydidas- led a reinforcement of nine hundred heavy infantry to
the towns in the direction of Thrace, and arriving at Heraclea in
Trachis reformed matters there as seemed good to them. While they
delayed there, this battle took place and so the summer ended.
With the beginning of the winter following, Ramphias and his
companions penetrated as far as Pierium in Thessaly; but as the
Thessalians opposed their further advance, and Brasidas whom they came
to reinforce was dead, they turned back home, thinking that the moment
had gone by, the Athenians being defeated and gone, and themselves not
equal to the execution of Brasidas's designs. The main cause however
of their return was because they knew that when they set out
Lacedaemonian opinion was really in favour of peace.
Indeed it so happened that directly after the battle of Amphipolis
and the retreat of Ramphias from Thessaly, both sides ceased to
prosecute the war and turned their attention to peace. Athens had
suffered severely at Delium, and again shortly afterwards at
Amphipolis, and had no longer that confidence in her strength which
had made her before refuse to treat, in the belief of ultimate victory
which her success at the moment had inspired; besides, she was
afraid of her allies being tempted by her reverses to rebel more
generally, and repented having let go the splendid opportunity for
peace which the affair of Pylos had offered. Lacedaemon, on the
other hand, found the event of the war to falsify her notion that a
few years would suffice for the overthrow of the power of the
Athenians by the devastation of their land. She had suffered on the
island a disaster hitherto unknown at Sparta; she saw her country
plundered from Pylos and Cythera; the Helots were deserting, and she
was in constant apprehension that those who remained in Peloponnese
would rely upon those outside and take advantage of the situation to
renew their old attempts at revolution. Besides this, as chance
would have it, her thirty years' truce with the Argives was upon the
point of expiring; and they refused to renew it unless Cynuria were
restored to them; so that it seemed impossible to fight Argos and
Athens at once. She also suspected some of the cities in Peloponnese
of intending to go over to the endeed was indeed the case.
These considerations made both sides disposed for an
accommodation; the Lacedaemonians being probably the most eager, as
they ardently desired to recover the men taken upon the island, the
Spartans among whom belonged to the first families and were
accordingly related to the governing body in Lacedaemon.
Negotiations had been begun directly after their capture, but the
Athenians in their hour of triumph would not consent to any reasonable
terms; though after their defeat at Delium, Lacedaemon, knowing that
they would be now more inclined to listen, at once concluded the
armistice for a year, during which they were to confer together and
see if a longer period could not be agreed upon.
Now, however, after the Athenian defeat at Amphipolis, and the death
of Cleon and Brasidas, who had been the two principal opponents of
peace on either side- the latter from the success and honour which
war gave him, the former because he thought that, if tranquillity were
restored, his crimes would be more open to detection and his
slanders less credited- the foremost candidates for power in either
city, Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, king of Lacedaemon, and Nicias,
son of Niceratus, the most fortunate general of his time, each desired
peace more ardently than ever. Nicias, while still happy and honoured,
wished to secure his good fortune, to obtain a present release from
trouble for himself and his countrymen, and hand down to posterity a
name as an ever-successful statesman, and thought the way to do this
was to keep out of danger and commit himself as little as possible
to fortune, and that peace alone made this keeping out of danger
possible. Pleistoanax, again, was assailed by his enemies for his
restoration, and regularly held up by them to the prejudice of his
countrymen, upon every reverse that befell them, as though his