considered the other points in which Lacedaemon had failed in her
compact, and thinking that they had been overreached, gave an angry
answer to the ambassadors and sent them away.
The breach between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians having gone thus
far, the party at Athens, also, who wished to cancel the treaty,
immediately put themselves in motion. Foremost amongst these was
Alcibiades, son of Clinias, a man yet young in years for any other
Hellenic city, but distinguished by the splendour of his ancestry.
Alcibiades thought the Argive alliance really preferable, not that
personal pique had not also a great deal to do with his opposition; he
being offended with the Lacedaemonians for having negotiated the
treaty through Nicias and Laches, and having overlooked him on account
of his youth, and also for not having shown him the respect due to the
ancient connection of his family with them as their proxeni, which,
renounced by his grandfather, he had lately himself thought to renew
by his attentions to their prisoners taken in the island. Being
thus, as he thought, slighted on all hands, he had in the first
instance spoken against the treaty, saying that the Lacedaemonians
were not to be trusted, but that they only treated, in order to be
enabled by this means to crush Argos, and afterwards to attack
Athens alone; and now, immediately upon the above occurring, he sent
privately to the Argives, telling them to come as quickly as
possible to Athens, accompanied by the Mantineans and Eleans, with
proposals of alliance; as the moment was propitious and he himself
would do all he could to help them.
Upon receiving this message and discovering that the Athenians,
far from being privy to the Boeotian alliance, were involved in a
serious quarrel with the Lacedaemonians, the Argives paid no further
attention to the embassy which they had just sent to Lacedaemon on the
subject of the treaty, and began to incline rather towards the
Athenians, reflecting that, in the event of war, they would thus
have on their side a city that was not only an ancient ally of
Argos, but a sister democracy and very powerful at sea. They
accordingly at once sent ambassadors to Athens to treat for an
alliance, accompanied by others from Elis and Mantinea.
At the same time arrived in haste from Lacedaemon an embassy
consisting of persons reputed well disposed towards the
Athenians- Philocharidas, Leon, and Endius- for fear that the
Athenians in their irritation might conclude alliance with the
Argives, and also to ask back Pylos in exchange for Panactum, and in
defence of the alliance with the Boeotians to plead that it had not
been made to hurt the Athenians. Upon the envoys speaking in the
senate upon these points, and stating that they had come with full
powers to settle all others at issue between them, Alcibiades became
afraid that, if they were to repeat these statements to the popular
assembly, they might gain the multitude, and the Argive alliance might
be rejected, and accordingly had recourse to the following
stratagem. He persuaded the Lacedaemonians by a solemn assurance
that if they would say nothing of their full powers in the assembly,
he would give back Pylos to them (himself, the present opponent of its
restitution, engaging to obtain this from the Athenians), and would
settle the other points at issue. His plan was to detach them from
Nicias and to disgrace them before the people, as being without
sincerity in their intentions, or even common consistency in their
language, and so to get the Argives, Eleans, and Mantineans taken into
alliance. This plan proved successful. When the envoys appeared before
the people, and upon the question being put to them, did not say as
they had said in the senate, that they had come with full powers,
the Athenians lost all patience, and carried away by Alcibiades, who
thundered more loudly than ever against the Lacedaemonians, were ready
instantly to introduce the Argives and their companions and to take
them into alliance. An earthquake, however, occurring, before anything
definite had been done, this assembly was adjourned.
In the assembly held the next day, Nicias, in spite of the