a sign betokened preparation for battle. Brasidas was offering sacrifice before sallying forth against the enemy. This ceremony was seen by the scouts of Kleon, who also told him that under the city gates they could see the feet of horses and men ready to issue out for battle. Having satisfied himself that their report was true, Kleon fatally resolved on a retreat to Eion. Wheeling to the left, his army began the southward march, leaving the right or unshielded side exposed to the enemy. 'These men will never withstand our onset,' said Brasidas. 'Look at their quivering spears and nodding heads. Men who are going to fight never march in such a fashion as this. Open the gates at once, that I may rush out on them forthwith.' The sudden onslaught broke the Athenian ranks; but in the pursuit of the Athenian left wing Brasidas fell, mortally wounded. On the right wing the resistance of the Athenians was more firm; but Kleon, we are told, had come without any intention of fighting, and he made up his mind at once to run away. Flight, however, is more easily thought of than executed, and Kleon hurrying away from his men was slain, it is said, by a Myrkinian peltast. Brasidas lived just long enough to know that the Athenians were defeated; and the career of this thoroughly un-Spartan champion of Sparta was closed with a public funeral in the Agora of Amphipolis, where he received yearly henceforth the honours of a deified hero. The buildings raised by Hagnon were thrown down, and Brasidas was venerated as the founder of the city.

Thus were removed the two great hindrances to peace between Athens and Sparta; but Thucydides makes no effort to show that peace at the cost of sacrifices which Kleon was not willing to offer was at this time to be desired for Athens. From first to last, in fact, in his account of the career of Kleon, we have not a trace of that judiciously balanced criticism which marks his sketch of Themistokles; and we are left to discover for ourselves whether and how far in the several stages of his course Kleon was right or wrong. Happily the unswerving honesty which never allows him to suppress facts has shown us that Kleon was throughout more than justified in the policy by which he held that Brasidas must be encountered and put down in Thrace. That he was left to carry out this policy himself, was his misfortune, not his fault; that he was feebly supported at Athens and sent without competent colleagues to

Thrace, redounds not to his own shame but to that of his adversaries.

The negotiations for peace were now resumed in earnest; but it was not without difficulty that, according to the arrangement probably of Nikias, by whose name the peace is known, the contending parties agreed each to give up what they had acquired during the war. By this stipulation the Athenians supposed that they would regain Plataia; but we have seen that the Spartans had provided against this by the subterfuge of a voluntary surrender. They remembered, however, that if this plea gave the Boiotians the right to hold Plataia, they had precisely the same title to retain Nisaia, and they insisted on keeping it accordingly. The treaty for fifty years pledged Sparta to restore Amphipolis, while Athens was bound to leave autonomous all towns in Chalkidikê which had put themselves under the protection of Brasidas, the obligation of paying to Athens the tribute enjoined by the assessment of Aristeides still continuing in force. On their part the Athenians, who were to receive back all prisoners in the hands whether of the Spartans or of their allies, were bound to restore all captives belonging to Sparta or any city in her confederacy, as well as to surrender Pylos and Kythera.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR FROM THE PEACE OF NIKIAS TO THE MASSACRE AT MELOS.

It was now to be seen that though the Spartans might make promises in the name of their allies, they could not insure their fulfilment. The Boiotians (as being constrained to give up Panakton), the Megarians, and the Corinthians, would have nothing to do with the Peace. More particularly the Chalkidians would not give up Amphipolis, and the Spartan general Klearidas declared that he had not the means of compelling them. The Spartans were thus discredited with their allies; and they had a further cause for anxiety in the fact that the thirty years' truce which the Argives had refused to renew except on the cession of Kynouria was drawing to its close; and an alliance of Argos with Athens might restore her to her ancient supre

macy in the Peloponnesos. It was clearly, therefore, the policy of Sparta to separate Athens from Argos; and as this could only be done by binding her to a private alliance with herself, a covenant was proposed and forthwith signed, pledging Athens and Sparta to defend each the other's territories against all invaders. So great was the worth of this alliance in the eyes of Nikias and his followers that they induced the Athenians to surrender the Sphakterian hoplites (421 B.C.); and in this barren exchange Athens received the first fruits of the philo-Lakonian policy of her oligarchic citizens. She was now practically ruled by those who prided themselves on being nobly born and nobly bred; and these statesmen set to work to strip her of one advantage after another, offering her in their stead apples of the Dead Sea. The terms of the peace were not kept on either side, and the period which followed until the open resumption of the

war was at best no more than a time of truce.

In the irritation of the moment the offended allies of Sparta turned to Argos with the language of flattery to which the Argives had long been unaccustomed. The confederacy to which the latter accordingly invited all autonomous Peloponnesian cities was joined in the first instance by Mantineia, then by the Eleians, and lastly by the Corinthians, whose zeal was suddenly damped on learning that Tegea refused to share the new alliance. The politics of the leading Greek states now assumed that complicated form which must result from the conflicting interests of a large number of independent cities seeking each its own supposed welfare alone. Among the tortuous intrigues which mark this truce, we may note the engagement privately made between the Spartans and the Boiotians who without this compact refused to surrender Panakton. (420 B.C.) The Spartans could not rest without regaining Pylos: and as the possession of Panakton was insisted on by the Athenians as an indispensable preliminary, the Spartans ended the eleventh year of the great struggle with a measure which looked like deliberate treachery to the Athenians, to whom they were pledged to make no engagement without their knowledge and consent. The Boiotians, however, were resolved that no Athenian force should occupy the fort, and they spent the winter in levelling it with the ground. Much as they were annoyed at a deed which vastly increased the difficulty of their task, the Spartans still had the assurance to send envoys to

demand from the Athenians the surrender of Pylos on the plea that the surrender of a site was equivalent to the surrender of the fort which had been built upon it. But the Athenians were not in the mood for further fooling; and the envoys were dismissed after a reception which showed the depth of their indignation.

This feeling was sedulously fostered by Alkibiades, the grandson of that Alkibiades who had been one of the most strenuous opponents of the Peisistratidai. To the possession of vast wealth he added a readiness of wit, a fertility of invention, a power of complaisance, which invested his manner, when he wished to please, with an almost irresistible charm. Magnificent in his tastes, and revelling in the elegance of the most refined Athenian luxury, Alkibiades shrunk from no hardship in war, and faced danger with a bravery never called into question, At the siege of Potidaia under Phormion he had been severely wounded; but his life was unfortunately saved by the philosopher Sokrates then serving among the Athenian hoplites. In the battle of Delion he had repaid the obligation by saving the life of Sokrates. With the qualifications which, as he hoped, might commend him to Spartan favour, he combined a spirit of oligarchical exclusiveness which might have satisfied the most rigid disciples of the school of Lykourgos. But in their eyes his youth was an offence (he was now a little over thirty years of age), and Spartans, although they were oligarchs, had respect for oligarchical law. Alkibiades had respect for none. Without a conscience, without a heart, caring for nothing but his own grandeur, as ready to make oligarchs his tools as to cheat and dupe a demos, defying the magistrates, insulting the law, Alkibiades presents an image of violent selfishness and ingrained treachery standing very near the pinnacle of human wickedness. Hating a demos in his heart, he was nevertheless as ready to destroy an oligarchy as he was to uproot a free constitution, and he was therefore justly dreaded by men of all political parties as a man treading in the paths of the old Hellenic despots. Under any circumstances such a man must be dangerous: but Alkibiades had opportunities of committing crime on a vast scale, and he availed himself of them to the uttermost.

To such a man a slight was a deadly offence; and Alkibiades had received a marked slight from the Spartans. His courte

sies to their prisoners had not only called forth no public recognition, but had seemingly been forgotten even by the ransomed men. He therefore discovered that an alliance with Argos would secure to Athens her old preponderance. By his advice, accordingly, envoys from Argos appeared at Athens, in company with others from Mantineia and Elis. At the same time a counter-embassy came from Sparta, and Alkibiades began to fear for his new scheme when the envoys told the senate that they had come with full powers for the immediate settlement of all differences. Such a statement, made before the assembly, might jeopardise his alliance with Argos. It must not, therefore, be made. Warning the ambassadors that their profession of full powers before the assembly might expose them to troublesome demands and importunities, he pledged himself to secure for them the possession of Pylos and to plead their cause before the people if they would claim no further mission than that of envoys charged only to report the wishes of the Athenians. The Spartans fell into the snare. On their introduction to the assembly on the following day, Alkibiades rose and asked them with his most courtly manner with what powers they came. The answer was given according to his prompting, and roused the instant and deep indignation of hearers who could hardly believe their senses. Far from saying a word in their favour, Alkibiades joined vehemently in the outcry, and was proposing that the Argive envoys should at once be admitted when a shock of earthquake caused the adjournment of the assembly.

When the assembly met on the following day, Nikias insisted with greater success that if alliance with Sparta was to the interest of Athens, it was their business, whatever they might think of the conduct of the envoys, to send commissioners to Sparta to ascertain their real intentions. Sent thither himself he could obtain nothing more than the declaration that they were ready to renew the oaths of their covenant with the Athenians. This, Nikias knew, was a superfluous and useless ceremony, and so great was the irritation against him that Alkibiades found no difficulty in effecting with Argos, Mantineia, and Elis, a defensive alliance which distinctly recognised the imperial character of each of those states.

Under the guidance of Alkibiades Athens was now rapidly committing herself to schemes which completely reversed the