History of the Peloponnesian War

But the Boeotians refused to deliver them up, unless they would make an especial alliance with them, as with the Athenians. Although therefore the Lacedaemonians were aware that they should be acting wrong to the Athenians, since it had been stipulated that they should make neither peace nor war with any but by mutual consent; yet, as they wished to receive Panactum from them, believing that so they should recover Pylus, and as the party which was anxious to break up the treaty earnestly entered into the Boeotian negotiation; they concluded the alliance, when the winter was now closing and the spring at hand; and Panactum was immediately begun to be demolished. And thus ended the eleventh year of this war.

As soon as the spring of the next summer commenced, the Argives, finding that the Boeotian ambassadors, whom they said they would send, did not come, and that Panactum was being demolished, and an especial alliance had been concluded by the Boeotians with the Lacedaemonians, were afraid that they might be left alone, and all the confederacy go over to the Lacedaemonians.

For they supposed that the Boeotians had been persuaded by the Lacedaemonians both to demolish Panactum and to accede to the treaty with the Athenians; and that the Athenians were privy to these measures; so that they themselves had no longer power even to make alliance with the Athenians: whereas they hoped before, in consequence of the existing dissensions, that if their treaty with the Lacedaemonians should not continue, they would, at any rate, be in alliance with the Athenians.

The Argives, then, were involved in these difficulties, and feared they might be engaged in war at once with the Lacedaemonians, Tegeans, Boeotians, and Athenians: and consequently, though they did not before accept the treaty with the Lacedaemonians, but entertained the proud hope that they should enjoy the supremacy over the Peloponnese; they sent as envoys to Lacedaemon, as quickly as they could, Eustrophus and Aeson, who were considered to be the most acceptable persons to them; thinking to live in quiet by making a treaty with the Lacedaemonians, as they best could under present circumstances, [*]( Or, on whatever terms they might be allowed. See Bloomfield's note.) whatever might be the arrangement.

On the arrival of their ambassadors, they made proposals to the Lacedaemonians, as to the terms on which the treaty should be concluded between them.

And at first the Argives claimed that they should have a judicial reference granted them, either to some state or individual, respecting the Cynurian territory; concerning which they have always been debating, as it is border-land: (it contains the towns of Thyrea and Anthene, and is occupied by the Lacedaemonians.) Afterwards, when the Lacedaemonians begged them not to mention that, but said that if they wished to make a treaty as before, they were ready to do so; the Argive ambassadors nevertheless induced the Lacedaemonians to agree to the following conditions: that at the present time they should make a treaty for fifty years; but that on either party giving a challenge, at a time when there was neither plague nor war in Lacedaemon or Argos, they should be at liberty to decide by battle the question of this territory—as on a former occasion, when each side claimed the victory for themselves—but not to pursue the fugitives beyond the frontiers, whether towards Argos or Lacedaemon.

Now the Lacedaemonians at first considered this as mere folly; but afterwards, (for they were anxious on any terms to have Argos for a friend,) they agreed to the conditions they demanded, and made a treaty with them in writing. Before, however, any thing was definitely arranged, the Lacedaemonians desired them to return first to Argos, and show it to their people; and if it pleased them, then to come at the Hyacinthia, to take the oaths. Accordingly they returned.

In the mean time, while the Argives were negotiating these matters, the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, Andromedes, Phaedimus, and Antimenidas, who were to restore Panactum to the Athenians, and to receive the prisoners from the Boeotians, and bring them back home, found Panactum demolished by the Boeotians themselves, on the pretext of there having been exchanged in former times between the Athenians and Boeotians, in consequence of a dispute about it, an oath that neither party should inhabit the place, but that they should graze it in common. The men, however, whom the Boeotians held as prisoners taken from the Athenians, Andromedes and his colleagues received from them, and conveyed to Athens, and restored. They likewise announced to them the demolition of Panactum, thinking that [*]( Or, as Poppo explains it, that that very announcement was equivalent to restoring it. ) so they restored that too; for no enemy to the Athenians would in future inhabit it. On this announcement, the Athenians expressed great indignation;

thinking themselves wronged by the Lacedaemonians, both with regard to the demolition of Panactum, which they ought to have delivered up to them standing, and the intelligence of their having on their own account made treaty with the Boeotians, though they formerly declared that they would join in compelling those who did not accede to the general treaty. They also looked for any other points in which they had departed from their compact, and considered themselves to have been overreached by them; so that they gave an angry reply to the ambassadors, and sent them away.

When the Lacedaemonians, then, were in such a state of variance with the Athenians, those at Athens, again, who wished to do away with the treaty, were immediately urgent against it.

Amongst others who were so was Alcibiades son of Clinias, a man who in age was still at that time a youth, (as he would have been thought in any other state,) but honoured on account of the nobility of his ancestors. He considered that it was really better to side with the Argives; though he also opposed the treaty in the bitterness of wounded pride, because the Lacedaemonians had negotiated it through the agency of Nicias and Laches, having overlooked him on account of his youth, and not having shown him the respect suitable to the old connexion of his family as their proxeni, which, having been renounced by his grandfather, he himself thought to renew by showing attention to the prisoners taken in the island.

Considering himself therefore to be in every way slighted by them, he both spoke against the treaty in the first instance, saying that the Lacedaemonians were not to be depended upon, but were only making a treaty in order that by so doing they might deprive Athens of the Argives. and again come against them when left alone; and at that time, when this difference had arisen, he immediately sent to Argos on his own account, urging them to come as quickly as possible with proposals for alliance, in company with the Mantineans and Eleans, since it was a fine opportunity, and he would co-operate with them to the utmost.