should be able to join without reference to the Argive people. Argos
came into the plan the more readily because she saw that war with
Lacedaemon was inevitable, the truce being on the point of expiring;
and also because she hoped to gain the supremacy of Peloponnese. For
at this time Lacedaemon had sunk very low in public estimation
because of her disasters, while the Argives were in a most
flourishing condition, having taken no part in the Attic war, but
having on the contrary profited largely by their neutrality. The
Argives accordingly prepared to receive into alliance any of the
Hellenes that desired it.
The Mantineans and their allies were the first to come over through
fear of the Lacedaemonians. Having taken advantage of the war against
Athens to reduce a large part of Arcadia into subjection, they
thought that Lacedaemon would not leave them undisturbed in their
conquests, now that she had leisure to interfere, and consequently
gladly turned to a powerful city like Argos, the historical enemy of
the Lacedaemonians, and a sister democracy. Upon the defection of
Mantinea, the rest of Peloponnese at once began to agitate the
propriety of following her example, conceiving that the Mantineans
not have changed sides without good reason; besides which they were
angry with Lacedaemon among other reasons for having inserted in the
treaty with Athens that it should be consistent with their oaths for
both parties, Lacedaemonians and Athenians, to add to or take away
from it according to their discretion. It was this clause that was
the real origin of the panic in Peloponnese, by exciting suspicions
of a Lacedaemonian and Athenian combination against their liberties:
any alteration should properly have been made conditional upon the
consent of the whole body of the allies. With these apprehensions
there was a very general desire in each state to place itself in
alliance with Argos.
In the meantime the Lacedaemonians perceiving the agitation going on
in Peloponnese, and that Corinth was the author of it and was
herself about to enter into alliance with the Argives, sent
ambassadors thither in the hope of preventing what was in
contemplation. They accused her of having brought it all about, and
told her that she could not desert Lacedaemon and become the ally of
Argos, without adding violation of her oaths to the crime which she
had already committed in not accepting the treaty with Athens, when it
had been expressly agreed that the decision of the majority of the
allies should be binding, unless the gods or heroes stood in the
way. Corinth in her answer, delivered before those of her allies who
had like her refused to accept the treaty, and whom she had previously
invited to attend, refrained from openly stating the injuries she
complained of, such as the non-recovery of Sollium or Anactorium
from the Athenians, or any other point in which she thought she had
been prejudiced, but took shelter under the pretext that she could not
give up her Thracian allies, to whom her separate individual
security had been given, when they first rebelled with Potidaea, as
well as upon subsequent occasions. She denied, therefore, that she
committed any violation of her oaths to the allies in not entering
into the treaty with Athens; having sworn upon the faith of the gods
to her Thracian friends, she could not honestly give them up. Besides,
the expression was, "unless the gods or heroes stand in the way."
Now here, as it appeared to her, the gods stood in the way. This was
what she said on the subject of her former oaths. As to the Argive
alliance, she would confer with her friends and do whatever was right.
The Lacedaemonian envoys returning home, some Argive ambassadors who
happened to be in Corinth pressed her to conclude the alliance without
further delay, but were told to attend at the next congress to be held
at Corinth.
Immediately afterwards an Elean embassy arrived, and first making an
alliance with Corinth went on from thence to Argos, according to their
instructions, and became allies of the Argives, their country being
just then at enmity with Lacedaemon and Lepreum. Some time back