History of the Peloponnesian War

Immediately after, there came also an embassy from the Eleans, who concluded an alliance with the Corinthians in the first place, and then proceeded thence to Argos, as they had been previously instructed, and became allies of the Argives. For they were at variance with the Lacedaemonians just then about Lepreum.

For a war having before this arisen between the Lepreans and some of the Arcadians, and the Eleans having been invited to alliance by the Lepreans, on condition of receiving half their territory, and having brought the war to a conclusion, the Eleans imposed on the Lepreans, who were themselves allowed to occupy the territory, the payment of a talent to the Olympian Jupiter.

This they continued to pay till the Attic war broke out; when, on their ceasing to do so on the pretext of the war, the Eleans proceeded to compel them; on which they had recourse to the Lacedaemonians. When the case was thus submitted to the arbitration of the Lacedaemonians, the Eleans, suspecting that they should not have justice, renounced the reference, and laid waste the Leprean territory.

The Lacedaemonians nevertheless decided that the Lepreans were independent, and that the Eleans were acting with injustice; and inasmuch as they had not stood by the arbitration, they sent into Lepreum a garrison of heavy-armed troops.

So the Eleans, considering the Lacedaemonians to be receiving a city which had revolted from them, and alleging the agreement in which it had been declared, that whatever each party had when they entered on the Attic war, that they should also have when they retired from it; since they considered that they had not their due, they went over to the Argives; and thus they too, [*](καθάπερ προείρητο I do not think that this expression can signify, according to Bloomfield's translation of it, which Poppo approves, in the manner aforesaid; i. e. by communicating with the twelve Argive commissioners, ch. 28. Surely, if that had been the writer's meaning, he would have used the perfect tense, not the pluperfect. Haack's interpretation therefore must be the correct one; as had been previously ordered by their countrymen. And in sec. 5, where the same words are repeated with reference to the Eleans, they may either refer to the decree passed by the state at large for its own course of policy; or the whole people may be said to have joined the Argive league, though it was done through the agency of its ambassadors, in accordance with the commands they had received for the purpose.) as they had been previously instructed, concluded the alliance.

Immediately after them the Corinthians and Thrace-ward Chalcidians also entered into alliance with the Argives; but the Boeotians and Megareans, holding each the same language as the other, remained quiet; being [*](περιορώμενοι.] To the interpretation of this word which Arnold adopts from Bishop Thirlwall, Poppo, in his last edition, objects that there was nothing in the terms of the peace to raise such a feeling in the minds of the Boeotians and Megareans. But surely they might share the jealousy and suspicion which, we are told, were excited throughout the whole of the Peloponnese by the clause of the treaty empowering Sparta and Athens to make alterations in it by themselves, without the consent of the allies in general. Chap. 29. 3. At any rate, such a clause seems quite incompatible with the supposition of the Megareans and Boeotians having been treated at this particular time, however they might have been in general, with that extreme respect and attention which Poppo speaks of, and which Göller and other commentators consider to be expressed by περιορώμενοι. The absence of μέν and δέ, which one would certainly have expected, to mark the opposition between the two clauses, may in some measure be supplied by the adversative force which I have given to the καί; that conjunction in Attic writers sometimes passing into the signification of καίτοι. See Jelf, Gr. Gr. 759. 3.—This difficulty would be entirely avoided, and a very. appropriate meaning given to the whole sentence, if περιορώμενοι could be taken in the sense of left to themselves, not interfered with, permitted to do what they pleased. The verb is very frequently used in a manner closely approaching to this, as well as the cognate ones from which it borrows some of its tenses; but in such cases it is usually followed by a participle, infinitive, or adjective, which serves to limit its meaning to some particular case. If, however, it should be thought possible for it to have been here used without such limitation, it would give a very good reason why the states should prefer the Lacedaemonians alliance to that of the restless and meddling Athenians. It would also express an important difference between the case of the Megareans and Boeotians and that of the Eleans, with whose policy towards the Lepreans Sparta is mentioned as having interfered; and that of the Mantineans, who are expressly said to have abandoned their connexion with her, because they expected similar interference Ch. 29. 1, ἐνόμιζον οὐ περιόψεσθαι σθᾶς τους λακεδαιμονίους ἄρχειν, ἐπειδὴ καὶ σχολὴν ἦγον) neglected by the Lacedaemonians, and yet thinking that the democracy of the Argives was less suited to them, with their oligarchical form of government, than the constitution of the Lacedaemonians.