potentiary commission. If they would only take his advice in this matter, his opposition should cease, and he would even become the advocate of their cause. The reasoning, in itself plausible, was urged in a manner so plausible, and with such professions and protestations, that the Lacedæmonians implicitly assented to it. Next day they had their audience of the assembled Athenian people. After they had declared the purpose of their mission, Alcibiades put the question to them, 'Whether they came with full 'powers, or with limited?' and they answered, 'that they were limited by instructions.' The members of the council, whom they had assured that their commission was plenipotentiary, were astonished at this reply: Nicias, with whom they had not had the precaution to communicate, was astonished; but presently the ambassadors them. selves were still more astonished, when Alcibiades reproached them as guilty of gross and shameful prevarication, and concluded a harangue, the most virulent against Lacedæmon, and the most soothing and alluring to the Athenian people, with proposing the question for ingaging the Athenian commonwealth in the Argian alliance. His daring and well-conducted treachery would, in the opinion of Thucydides, have had full success in the instant, but for an accident, which alarmed the superstition, at the same time that it excited the natural fears, of the Athenian people. The city was, in the moment, shaken by an earthquake; no mischief followed; but the assembly was immediately adjourned. The delay of a day thus gained, giving time for passion to cool and reflection to take place, was advantageous to the views of Nicias. In the as14 VOL. III. SECT. III. 1.5. c. 46. CHAP. Sembly held on the morrow, urging that the people XVII ought not to decide hastily, and in the midst of Thucyd. uncertainty, concerning a matter of very great importance, he prevailed so far against Alcibiades, that, instead of immediately concluding the alliance with Argos, it was determined first to send an embassy to Lacedæmon, of which Nicias himself was appointed chief. But the measure which Alcibiades could not prevent, he contrived to render ineffectual; or, rather, to convert to the promotion of his own purposes. The embassy to Lacedæmon being voted, instructions for the ambassadors were to be considered; and it was resolved, that the restoration of the fort of Panactum, the immediate delivery of Amphipolis into the power of the Athenian people, and a renuntiation, on the part of Lacedæmon, of the alliance with Boeotia, or, instead of it, the accession of Boeotia to the terms of the late peace, should be preliminary conditions, without assent to which, in their fullest extent, nothing should be concluded. The year of magistracy of the ephor Xenares was yet unexpired, and the party of Xenares still prevailed. The Baotian alliance had been the measure of that party: the requisition of a renuntiation of it was of course ill received; and Nicias and his collegues were obliged to return to Athens without obtaining, either for their commonwealth or for themselves, any one object of their mission. Indignation would not unnaturally arise upon such an occasion among the Athenian people; and art was not wanting, and pains were not spared, to inflame it. The party of Alcibiades thus gained an accession of strength, which gave it a decided superiority in the assembly. The Argian and Eleian ministers were still at Athens, and a league offen 1. 5. c. 47. sive and defensive, for a hundred years, with their SECT. republics, the dependent allies of each contracting power (such nearly is the 'expression of Thucydides3) being included, was proposed and carried: it was agreed that pillars of marble, with the treaty ingraved, should be erected, at the separate expence of each republic, at Athens in the citadel, at Thucyd. Argos in the temple of Apollo in the agora, and at Mantineia in the temple of Jupiter; and that a brazen pillar, with the treaty also ingraved, should be placed, at the common expence of the confederacy, at Olympia. By this extraordinary stroke in politics, Athens, and no longer Lacedæmon, was the leading power even of the Dorian states, and head of the principal confederacy in Peloponnesus itself. SECTION IV. Implication of Interests of the principal Grecian Republics. Continuation of Dispute between Lacedæmon and Elis. Affairs of the Lacedamonian Colony of Heracleia. Alcibiades elected General; Importance of the Office of General of the Athenian Commonwealth; Influence of Alcibiades in Peloponnesus: War of Argos and Epidaurus. Inimical Conduct of Athens toward Lacedæmon. IV. 1. 5. c. 48.. By the several treaties now lately made, the in- SECT. terests of the principal Grecian republics were strangely implicated. Inimical to Sparta as the late Thucyd. transaction of the Athenian commonwealth certainly was, and not less in direct contravention of subsisting ingagements with Athens as the treaty a little before concluded by Lacedæmon with Bootia appears, the alliance between Lacedæmon and Athens nevertheless subsisted. At the same time 5 Συμμάχων ὧν ἄρχουσιν. XVII. CHAP. Corinth, ingaged in confederacy with Argos, Elis, and Mantineia, refused to concur with those states Thucyd. in the Athenian alliance; inclining rather to renew 1. 5. c. 49. its old connection with Lacedæmon, then at open hostility with Elis, and scarcely upon better terms with the other states of the confederacy. Meanwhile the Eleians, conceiving themselves grossly injured by the Lacedæmonians in the affair of Lepreum, and unable to vindicate their claim by arms, had recourse to the authority derived from their sacred character and their presidency over the Olympian festival. Before the Olympian tribunal, composed of their own principal citizens, they accused the Lacedæmonians of prosecuting hostilities after the commencement of the Olympian armistice; and sentence was pronounced, according to the Olympian law, condemning the Lacedæmonian commonwealth in a fine of two thousand mines, between seven and eight thousand pounds sterling; being two mines for every soldier employed. The Lacedæmonian government, more anxious, on account of the late turn in Grecian politics, to clear themselves of offence against the common laws and common religion of Greece, declared that they would submit to the penalty, had they or their officers been guilty of the crime; but they insisted that, when the hostilities complained of were committed, the armistice had not been made known to them by the customary proclamation. In the irregularity and uncertainty of the Grecian year, proclamation only could ascertain to each republic when the armistice was to begin. The Eleians maintained that, according to antient constant custom, it was proclaimed first within their own territory; that then they held themselves immediately bound to abstain from hostilities against others; and rea IV. 109 son, not less than the Olympian law, required that SECT. they should then be exempt from injury by hostility from any member of the Greek nation. The Lacedæmonians still insisted that they ought not to be fined for an involuntary crime. The Eleians maintained that the sentence was just, and could not be reversed or altered; but, if the Lacedæmonians would restore Lepreum, which had been so injuriously and impiously seized, they would not only remit the portion of the fine due to themselves, but also pay for the Lacedæmonians that due to the god. The Lacedæmonian government positively refusing Thucyd. both to restore Lepreum, and to pay the fine, the Eleians declared the whole Lacedæmonian people excluded both from contending in the games at the approaching festival, and from partaking in the sacrifices; not however forbidding their attendance as spectators. 1. 5. c. 50. After It was apprehended that the high spirit of the Lacedæmonian people, long accustomed to give law to Peloponnesus and to Greece, might not acquiesce under this decision, excluding them from the common religious solemnities of the Greek nation. To obviate violence, therefore, the whole youth of 01. 90. Elis attended during the festival in arms; and a July 3. thousand heavy-armed Argians, as many Mantineians, and a body of Athenian horse, came to assist in keeping the peace. Such a measure might alone indicate how hardly the peace of Greece was to be kept. But, with all this precaution, an occurrence at the games excited general apprehension. Leichas, a Lacedæmonian, had a chariot prepared for the race; and not to be disappointed, excluded as he was from entering it in his own name, he obtained permission to enter it in the name of the Baotian people. As a public chariot of Boeotia, it |