Book 5
The Corinthians then, having suggested these things, returned home.
When those of the Argives who heard their proposals had reported them to the government and the people, the Argives passed the decree, and chose twelve men, with whom any one of the Greeks who wished should conclude an alliance, except the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, neither of whom should have liberty to enter into treaty without the consent of the Argive people.
The Argives acceded the more readily to these proposals, because they saw that they should have the war with the Lacedaemonians, (for their treaty with them was on the point of expiring,) and also because they hoped to gain the supremacy of the Peloponnese. For at that time Lacedaemon was in very bad repute, and was despised in consequence of its misfortunes; while the Argives were in an excellent condition in all respects, as they had taken no part in the war against Athens, but had rather reaped the good fruits of having been in treaty with both sides.
Thus, then, the Argives were admitting into alliance such of the Greeks as wished it.
The Mantineans and their allies were the first to join them, through fear of the Lacedaemonians. For a certain part of Arcadia had been reduced to subjection by the Mantineans, while the war with the Athenians was still going on; and they thought that the Lacedaemonians would not allow their sovereignty over it, since they had now The force of the καί before σχολήν appears to be, leisure, as well as inclination. leisure to interfere; so that they gladly turned to the Argives, considering them to be a powerful state, and one which was always at variance with the Lacedaemonians, and under a democratical government like themselves.
When the Mantineans had revolted, the rest of the Peloponnese also was thrown into commotion, with the idea that they too ought to do the same; as they thought that they had changed sides through knowing more than the rest. At the same time they were angry with the Lacedaemonians, both on other grounds, and because it had been mentioned in the treaty with Athens, that it should be consistent with their oaths to add to it, or take from it, whatever might seem fit to both states, the Lacedaemonians and Athenians.
For it was this clause, above all, that caused the excitement in the Peloponnese, and set them on suspecting that the Lacedaemonians, in concert with the Athenians, might wish to reduce them to slavery: for it was only just, they thought, that the alteration should have been referred to all the allies.
The majority therefore, through fear, were eager to conclude the alliance with the Argives on their own part, respectively, as the Mantineans had done.
When the Lacedaemonians perceived this commotion which had arisen in the Peloponnese, and that the Corinthians were the advisers of it, and were themselves about to enter into treaty with Argos, they sent ambassadors to Corinth, wishing to prevent what was going to happen. They charged them therefore with suggesting the whole business; and said that if they withdrew from them, and became allies of the Argives, they would violate their oaths; and that they were already doing wrong in not accepting the treaty with the Athenians, when it had been declared, that whatever the majority of the allies decreed, should be binding, unless there were some impediment on the part of gods or heroes.
The Corinthians, in the presence of all the allies who, like themselves, had not acceded to the treaty, (for they had themselves previously invited them thither,) spoke in reply to the Lacedaemonians; not indeed directly stating the injuries they had received, namely, that they had not recovered Sollium from the Athenians, nor Anactorium—with any other point on which they considered themselves to be aggrieved; but urging as a pretext their determination not to betray the Thrace-ward Greeks; for they had taken oaths to them, both by themselves, when in the first instance they revolted, in concert with the Potidaeans, and others afterwards.
They were not then, they said, violating their oaths to the allies by refusing to accede to the treaty with the Athenians; for since they had sworn to their Thrace-ward friends, with appeals to the gods, they should not show a proper regard for their oaths, if they betrayed them. Besides, it had been expressly mentioned, unless there were some impediment on the part of gods or heroes;
this, then, they considered an impediment on the part of the gods. Thus much they said on the subject of their former oaths: with regard to the Argive alliance, they would consult with their friends, and do whatever was right.
So the envoys of the Lacedaemonians returned home. But there happened to be in Corinth at that time some ambassadors from the Argives also, who urged the Corinthians to enter at once into their confederacy, and not delay. They, however, told them to come to the next congress which was to be held in their city.
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.
About the same period of this summer, the Athenians, having reduced the Scionaeans to surrender, put the adult males to death; while they sold into slavery the women and children, and gave the territory for the Plataeans to occupy. On the other hand, they brought back the Delians to their country, from scruples arising from their disasters in different battles, and because the god at Delphi had so commanded them.
At this time, too, the Phocians and. Locrians commenced hostilities.
And the Corinthians and Argives, being now in alliance, went to Tegea, to procure its revolt from the Lacedaemonians, seeing that it formed a considerable part of the Peloponnese, and thinking that, if it were added to them, they would command the whole of it.
But when the Tegeans said they would do nothing in opposition to the Lacedaemonians, the Corinthians, though hitherto very hearty in their measures, relaxed in their vehemence, and were afraid that none of the other parties might now come over to them. They went, however, to the Boeotians, and begged them to enter into alliance with themselves and the Argives, and act in all other respects in concert with them.
With reference to the ten days' truces also, which had been made with each other by the Athenians and Boeotians not long after the conclusion of the fifty years' treaty, the Corinthians desired the Boeotians to accompany them to Athens, and obtain the same for them also, on the same footing as the Boeotians; and in case of the Athenians not acceding to this, then to renounce the suspension of arms, and in future to make no truce without being joined by them. On the Corinthians preferring these requests, the Boeotians desired them to desist on the subject of the Argive alliance:
they went with them, however, to Athens, but did not obtain the ten days' truce; as the Athenians answered, that they were already in treaty with the Corinthians, inasmuch as they were allies of the Lacedaemonians.
The Boeotians, then, did not any the more on that account renounce their ten days' truce, though the Corinthians called on them to do so, and expostulated with them on the ground of their having agreed to do it. Between the Corinthians, however, and the Athenians there was a suspension of arms By ἄσπονδος is meant a mere agreement in words, not ratified by the solemnities, of religion. And the Greeks, as we have seen, considered the breach of their word very different from the breach of their oath. See II 5.7. —Arnold. without any actual truce.
The same summer, the Lacedaemonians made an expedition with all their forces, under the command of Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, their king, into the country of the Parrhasians in Arcadia, who were subject to the Mantineans, and who had invited their interference in the spirit of faction: intending also, if they could, to demolish the stronghold at Cypsela, which, being situated in the Parrhasian territory, the Mantineans had fortified and garrisoned with their own troops, for the annoyance of the district of Sciritis in Laconia The Lacedaemonians therefore proceeded to ravage the land of the Parrhasians;
while the Mantineans, having committed their city to the custody of Argive troops, themselves kept guard over their confederates' country. Being unable, however, to save the fort at Cypsela, and the towns in Parrhasia, they retired.
The Lacedaemonians, after making the Parrhasians independent, and demolishing the fortress, returned home.
Moreover, in the course of the same summer, on the arrival of the troops from Thrace who had marched out with Brasidas, and whom Clearidas had brought back after the treaty was made, the Lacedaemonians decreed that the helots who had fought under Brasidas should be free, and live where they pleased; and not long after they settled them, together with the That the Neodamodes were a distinct class from the newly enfranchised helots seems clear from this passage and V. 67. 1: and Müller's supposition is highly probable, (Dorier, vol. ii. p. 45,) that the latter after a time rose to the condition of the former; possibly in the next generation; so that the son of an enfranchised helot became a Neodamode; like the distinct, tion between Libertus and Libertinus. —Arnold. Neodamodes, at Lepreum, which is situated on the borders of Laconia and Elis; for they were now at variance with the Eleans.
But with regard to those of their own body who had been taken in the island, and had surrendered their arms, fearing they might suppose that they would be subjected to some degradation in consequence of their misfortune, and so, if allowed to retain their franchise, might attempt a revolution, they disfranchised them, even while some were holding offices; and with a disfranchisement of such a kind that they could neither take office, nor have power to buy or sell any thing. Subsequently, however, in the course of time, they were again enfranchised.
The same summer also the Dians took Thyssus on the promontory of Athos, a colony of the Athenians.
And during the whole of this summer there was intercourse indeed between the Athenians and Peloponnesians, but both parties suspected each other, from immediately after the conclusion of the treaty, on the ground of their not mutually restoring the places specified. For the Lacedaemonians, to whose lot it fell first to restore Amphipolis and the other towns, had not done so:
nor did they make their Thrace-ward allies accede to the treaty, nor the Boeotians, nor the Corinthians; though they were continually saying that, in conjunction with the Athenians, they would compel those states to do so, if they would not of their own accord. They also pleaded in excuse the fact of the time not being specified, at which those who did not accede to it were to be considered as enemies to both sides.
The Athenians therefore, seeing none of these things really performed, suspected that the Lacedaemonians had no upright intentions; so that on their demanding back Pylus, they refused to restore it, (nay, they even repented of having given them back their prisoners taken in the island,) and kept the other places, waiting till they, on their part, performed for them what had been arranged.
The Lacedaemonians said that they had done what was possible; for that they had restored the Athenian prisoners who were in their hands, and had recalled the troops in Thrace; and whatever else they had in their power. With regard to Amphipolis, they were not, they said, masters of it, so as to give it up; but they would endeavour to bring the Boeotians and Corinthians over to the treaty, and to recover Panactum;
and would restore as many of the Athenians as were prisoners in Boeotia. They required, however, that they should restore Pylus to them; or if not that, should withdraw the Messenians and helots, as they, on their part, had withdrawn their troops from Thrace;
and that the Athenians themselves should garrison it, if they would. So when conferences had been held, many and often, during this summer, they prevailed on the Athenians to withdraw from Pylus the Messenians, and the rest of the helots, and all who had deserted from Laconia; and they settled them at Cranii in Cephallenia.
During this summer, then, there was peace and free intercourse with each other.
But the following winter, (different ephors happening now to be in office, and not those under whom the treaty had been made, and some of them being even opposed to it,) when embassies had come from their confederacy, and the Athenians, Boeotians, and Corinthians were there, and they had held many discussions with one another, and come to no agreement; on their departing homeward, Cleobulus and Xenares—those of the ephors who most wished to break up the treaty—held a private conference with the Boeotians and Corinthians, advising them to pursue as far as possible the same policy; and that the Boeotians, after first entering into alliance with Argos themselves, should then endeavour to bring the Argives together with themselves into alliance with the Lacedaemonians. For in this way the Boeotians were least likely to be forced to accede to the Attic treaty; since the Lacedaemonians would prefer gaining the friendship and alliance of the Argives even πρό.] More literally, in the face of. Poppo adopts Dobree's explanation: Pluris enim facturos Lacedaemonians Argivorum amicitiam et societatem quam Atheniensium inimicitiam ac foederum cum ipsis junctorum violationem: i.e. magis illam cupere quam hanc metuere. For the force of καλῶς, in the next sentence, see Arnold's note. at the risk of the enmity of the Athenians and the dissolution of the treaty. For they knew that the Lacedaemonians were always desirous that Argos should be their friend on fair terms; thinking that so the war out of the Peloponnese would be more easily conducted by them.