Brasidas came back, having been brought from thence after the treaty
by Clearidas; and the Lacedaemonians decreed that the Helots who had
fought with Brasidas should be free and allowed to live where they
liked, and not long afterwards settled them with the Neodamodes at
Lepreum, which is situated on the Laconian and Elean border;
Lacedaemon being at this time at enmity with Elis. Those however of
the Spartans who had been taken prisoners on the island and had
surrendered their arms might, it was feared, suppose that they were to
be subjected to some degradation in consequence of their misfortune,
and so make some attempt at revolution, if left in possession of their
franchise. These were therefore at once disfranchised, although some
of them were in office at the time, and thus placed under a disability
to take office, or buy and sell anything. After some time, however,
the franchise was restored to them.
The same summer the Dians took Thyssus, a town on Acte by Athos in
alliance with Athens. During the whole of this summer intercourse
between the Athenians and Peloponnesians continued, although each
party began to suspect the other directly after the treaty, because of
the places specified in it not being restored. Lacedaemon, to whose
lot it had fallen to begin by restoring Amphipolis and the other
towns, had not done so. She had equally failed to get the treaty
accepted by her Thracian allies, or by the Boeotians or the
Corinthians; although she was continually promising to unite with
Athens in compelling their compliance, if it were longer refused.
She also kept fixing a time at which those who still refused to come
in were to be declared enemies to both parties, but took care not to
bind herself by any written agreement. Meanwhile the Athenians, seeing
none of these professions performed in fact, began to suspect the
honesty of her intentions, and consequently not only refused to comply
with her demands for Pylos, but also repented having given up the
prisoners from the island, and kept tight hold of the other places,
until Lacedaemon's part of the treaty should be fulfilled. Lacedaemon,
on the other hand, said she had done what she could, having given up
the Athenian prisoners of war in her possession, evacuated Thrace, and
performed everything else in her power. Amphipolis it was out of her
ability to restore; but she would endeavour to bring the Boeotians and
Corinthians into the treaty, to recover Panactum, and send home all
the Athenian prisoners of war in Boeotia. Meanwhile she required
that Pylos should be restored, or at all events that the Messenians
and Helots should be withdrawn, as her troops had been from Thrace,
and the place garrisoned, if necessary, by the Athenians themselves.
After a number of different conferences held during the summer, she
succeeded in persuading Athens to withdraw from Pylos the Messenians
and the rest of the Helots and deserters from Laconia, who were
accordingly settled by her at Cranii in Cephallenia. Thus during
this summer there was peace and intercourse between the two peoples.
Next winter, however, the ephors under whom the treaty had been made
were no longer in office, and some of their successors were directly
opposed to it. Embassies now arrived from the Lacedaemonian
confederacy, and the Athenians, Boeotians, and Corinthians also
presented themselves at Lacedaemon, and after much discussion and no
agreement between them, separated for their several homes; when
Cleobulus and Xenares, the two ephors who were the most anxious to
break off the treaty, took advantage of this opportunity to
communicate privately with the Boeotians and Corinthians, and,
advising them to act as much as possible together, instructed the
former first to enter into alliance with Argos, and then try and bring
themselves and the Argives into alliance with Lacedaemon. The
Boeotians would so be least likely to be compelled to come into the
Attic treaty; and the Lacedaemonians would prefer gaining the
friendship and alliance of Argos even at the price of the hostility of
Athens and the rupture of the treaty. The Boeotians knew that an
honourable friendship with Argos had been long the desire of
Lacedaemon; for the Lacedaemonians believed that this would