Book 5
1 The following summer the one-year truce had run out, though it held until the Pythian games.1 During this armistice the Athenians removed the Delians from Delos. They judged that the Delians, because of some ancient offense, had been impure when they were consecrated, and also that this was what was still lacking in the purification of the island, the one in which, as I have described earlier, they believed they had done rightly by taking up the graves of the dead. The Delians settled at Atramyttium in Asia, which Pharnaces gave them, each going there separately, as he had set out.
2 Cleon, having won the Athenians over, sailed after the armistice for the Thracian region with 1,200 Athenian hoplites and three hundred cavalry, a larger number of allies, and thirty ships. He put in first at Scione, which was still under siege, and took on hoplites from the besieging force there; then he sailed down to the Deaf Harbor, as it was called, in the territory of Torone, not far from the city. From there, learning from deserters that Brasidas was not in Torone and that those inside were no match for him, he advanced on the city with his land army and sent ten ships around to sail into the harbor. He came first to the outer wall that Brasidas had thrown around the city when he wanted to bring the suburb inside; he had torn down part of the old wall and made the whole one city.
3 Pasitelidas, the Lacedaemonian commander, and the garrison that was there came to defend this wall and tried to beat back the Athenian assault. But when they were hard pressed, and at the same time the ships sent around were sailing into the harbor, Pasitelidas was afraid that the ships would get there first and take the city while it was empty, and that he would be caught in the outwork when it fell; he abandoned it and ran for the city. The Athenians were there first: the men from the ships took Torone, and the land army, following close behind, burst in with him through the breach in the old wall. Some of the Peloponnesians and Toronaeans they killed at once, hand to hand; others they took alive, among them Pasitelidas the commander. Brasidas was coming to the relief of Torone, but learned on the road that it had fallen and turned back; he was about forty stades short of getting there in time. Cleon and the Athenians set up two trophies, one by the harbor and the other by the outer wall. They enslaved the women and children of the Toronaeans, and sent the men themselves, with the Peloponnesians and any Chalcidians who were there, about seven hundred in all, to Athens. Later the Peloponnesian part of them came home under the treaty that was made; the rest were recovered by the Olynthians, man exchanged for man. About the same time the Boeotians took Panactum, an Athenian fort on the border, by betrayal. Cleon, after posting a garrison at Torone, put to sea and sailed around Athos toward Amphipolis.
4 About the same time Phaeax son of Erasistratus sailed to Italy and Sicily with two ships, as one of three envoys sent by the Athenians. After the Athenians had left Sicily following the settlement, the Leontines had enrolled many new citizens, and the people had in mind to redistribute the land. The powerful men, learning of this, brought in the Syracusans and drove out the people. The people scattered, each his own way; the powerful men came to terms with the Syracusans, abandoned their own city and left it empty, and went to live at Syracuse as citizens. Later some of them, not satisfied there, left Syracuse again and seized a place called Phocaeae, a quarter of the city of Leontini, and Bricinniae, a stronghold in Leontine territory. Most of the people who had been driven out came to join them there, and they settled in and made war from behind the walls. When the Athenians heard of this they sent Phaeax, to see whether they could persuade their allies there, and the rest of the Sicilian Greeks if possible, to march together against the Syracusans as men who were building up their power, and so save the people of Leontini. Phaeax on his arrival persuaded the Camarinaeans and the Acragantines; but at Gela the business met resistance, and he went on to no others, seeing that he would not persuade them. He withdrew through the country of the Sicels to Catana, visiting Bricinniae on the way and encouraging the men there, and sailed away.
5 On the voyage to Sicily and back, he also negotiated with some of the cities in Italy about friendship with the Athenians. He fell in with the Locrian settlers who had been expelled from Messana. After the agreement among the Sicilian Greeks, the Messanians had fallen into civil strife, and one party had called in the Locrians, who sent out settlers; so for a time Messana belonged to the Locrians. Phaeax met these men on their way home and did them no harm, for the Locrians had reached an understanding with him about coming to terms with the Athenians. They alone of the allies had not made a treaty with the Athenians when the Sicilian Greeks were reconciled, and they would not have done so now if they had not been held down by their war with the Hipponians and the Medmaeans, who were their neighbors and their colonists. Phaeax reached Athens some time later.
6 Cleon, after sailing around from Torone toward Amphipolis, made Eion his base. He attacked Stagirus, a colony of Andros, and failed to take it, but he took Galepsus, the Thasian colony, by storm. He sent envoys to Perdiccas, asking him to come with an army as the alliance required, and others into Thrace to Polles, king of the Odomantians, to bring as many Thracian mercenaries as they could; and he himself waited quietly at Eion. When Brasidas learned of this, he too took up a position facing him, on Cerdylium. This is a place belonging to the Argilians, on high ground across the river not far from Amphipolis, and everything could be seen from it, so that Cleon could not move out with his army without Brasidas seeing him. And Brasidas expected him to do just that: to look down on the small numbers of the enemy and march up against Amphipolis with the army he had. At the same time he prepared his forces, summoning 1,500 Thracian mercenaries and all the Edonians, peltasts and cavalry; and he had a thousand peltasts from Myrcinus and Chalcidice, besides those in Amphipolis. His hoplites, all told, came to about two thousand, and there were three hundred Hellenic cavalry. Of these, Brasidas had about 1,500 with him on Cerdylium; the rest were posted in Amphipolis under Clearidas.
7 Cleon kept quiet for a while, but then he was forced to do what Brasidas expected. His soldiers were chafing at sitting still, and they were reckoning up what ignorance and softness his leadership would bring against what experience and daring, and how unwillingly they had come out with him from home. He noticed their muttering, and, not wanting them to lose heart from sitting in the same place, he took them up and led them out. He used the same method that had succeeded at Pylos and made him think he had some sense. He did not even expect anyone to come out against him for a battle; he said he was going up rather to look over the place, and he was waiting for the larger force, not so as to have a margin of safety if he should be forced to fight, but so as to surround the city on every side and take it by storm. He came and posted his army on a strong hill in front of Amphipolis, and he himself surveyed the marshy reaches of the Strymon and how the city lay toward Thrace. He thought he could leave without a battle whenever he chose: no one could be seen on the wall, no one came out through the gates, and they were all shut. He even thought he had made a mistake in not bringing siege engines up with him, for he could have taken the city, it was so deserted.
8 As soon as Brasidas saw the Athenians on the move, he too came down from Cerdylium and went into Amphipolis. He made no sally and drew up no line against the Athenians, fearing his own forces and thinking them inferior, not in numbers (they were fairly evenly matched) but in quality: of the Athenians, the force that took the field was pure Athenian, and with it were the best of the Lemnians and Imbrians. So he prepared to attack by a stratagem. If he showed the enemy the numbers and the makeshift arms of the men with him, he thought he would be less likely to win than if he attacked without their seeing them first and before they had any well-founded contempt for them. He therefore picked out 150 hoplites for himself, put the rest under Clearidas, and planned to attack suddenly before the Athenians could leave; he did not think he would catch them isolated like this again, if their reinforcements happened to arrive. He called all his soldiers together, and, wanting to encourage them and explain his plan, he spoke as follows.
9 “Men of the Peloponnese, as for the country we come from, how it has always been free because of its courage, and the fact that you are Dorians about to fight Ionians, whom you are used to beating, let it be enough to have said it briefly. But how I mean to make the attack I will explain, so that no one is made fainthearted by our going into danger a few at a time and not all together, as though that were a weakness. I suppose that the enemy came up to the place out of contempt for us, never expecting that anyone would come out against them to fight; and now, out of order and turned to looking at the view, they are careless. Whoever best sees such mistakes in the enemy, and makes his attack to suit his own strength, not openly and in pitched array but as the present moment makes it advantageous, will succeed most often. And those stratagems win the finest name by which a man most deceives his enemy and most helps his friends. So while they are still unprepared and confident, and are thinking more about slipping away than about staying, as far as I can see, while their minds are slack and before their resolve tightens, I will take the men with me and, if I can, get there first and fall on the center of their army at a run. And you, Clearidas, afterward, when you see me already pressing them and, as is likely, frightening them, take your own men and the Amphipolitans and the other allies, open the gates suddenly, charge out, and press on to close with them as fast as you can. That is our best hope of throwing them into panic, for a force that comes on afterward is more terrible to an enemy than the one that is already there and fighting. Be a brave man yourself, as befits you, since you are a Spartiate; and you, allies, follow bravely. Remember that good soldiering is three things, willingness, a sense of shame, and obedience to commanders, and that on this day, if you prove brave men, you will have freedom and the name of allies of the Lacedaemonians; if not, you will be slaves of the Athenians, even if you come off as well as you can, without being sold or put to death, and you will have a harsher slavery than you had before, and you will stand in the way of the liberation of the rest of the Hellenes. Do not be soft, then, seeing how much is at stake; and I will show that I am no better at urging others than at going into action myself.”
10 After this speech Brasidas prepared his own sally, and posted the rest with Clearidas at the gates called the Thracian Gates, to charge out as had been arranged. Brasidas had been seen coming down from Cerdylium, and in the city, which can be seen from outside, he was seen sacrificing near the temple of Athena and making these preparations. Word was brought to Cleon (he had gone forward at that time to look over the ground) that the whole enemy army could be seen in the city, and that under the gates many feet of horses and men could be glimpsed, as if they were about to come out. On hearing this he went up to see; and when he saw, not wanting to fight a battle before his reinforcements came, and thinking he would get away in time, he ordered the signal for retreat to be given, and passed the word to those leaving to move off by the left wing toward Eion, which was the only way it could be done. When he thought this was taking too long, he himself wheeled the right wing, exposing its unshielded side to the enemy, and began to lead the army off. At this point Brasidas, seeing his chance and the Athenian army on the move, said to his own men and the others, “These men will not stand up to us. You can tell by the movement of their spears and their heads; men who do that do not stand up to an attack. Someone open the gates I spoke of, and let us charge out as fast as we can, with confidence.” He went out by the gate toward the palisade, the first gate in the long wall as it then stood, and ran at full speed along the straight road where the trophy now stands as you go along the steepest part of the hill. He fell on the Athenians, who were already frightened by their own disorder and stunned by his daring, struck the center of their army, and routed it. Clearidas, as had been arranged, charged out at the same moment by the Thracian Gates and bore down on them with his force. The result of the unexpected and sudden attack from both sides was that the Athenians were thrown into confusion. Their left wing, the one toward Eion, which had in fact already gone on ahead, at once broke off and fled. As it was already giving way, Brasidas moved along to the right wing and was wounded; when he fell the Athenians did not notice, and those near him picked him up and carried him off. The right wing of the Athenians stood its ground better. Cleon, since he had never meant to stand, fled at once, and was overtaken by a Myrcinian peltast and killed; but his hoplites, rallying together on the hill, beat off Clearidas, though he attacked them two or three times, and did not give way until the Myrcinian and Chalcidian cavalry and the peltasts surrounded them, threw javelins into them, and routed them. So now the whole Athenian army was in flight, struggling off by many roads across the mountains; those who were not killed, either at once hand to hand or by the Chalcidian cavalry and the peltasts, got back to Eion. The men who had taken Brasidas up from the battle and brought him safe into the city carried him in still breathing. He knew that his men were winning, and not long after he died. The rest of the army returned with Clearidas from the pursuit, stripped the dead, and set up a trophy.
11 After this all the allies, following in arms, buried Brasidas at public expense in the city, in front of what is now the agora. From then on the Amphipolitans have fenced in his tomb, they sacrifice to him as a hero, and they have given him honors, games and yearly sacrifices; and they made over the colony to him as its founder, pulling down the buildings of Hagnon and destroying anything that might otherwise have survived as a memorial of his founding.2 They considered that Brasidas had been their savior, and at the same time they were courting the alliance of the Lacedaemonians out of fear of the Athenians; while Hagnon, given their hostility to the Athenians, could not hold the honors with the same advantage to them, or with the same pleasure. They gave the Athenians back their dead. About six hundred of the Athenians died, and seven of their opponents, because the battle was not fought in regular line but arose rather from such an accident and from a panic beforehand. After taking up their dead, the Athenians sailed home, and Clearidas and his men set about putting the affairs of Amphipolis in order.
12 About the same time, at the end of the summer, Rhamphias, Autocharidas, and Epicydidas, Lacedaemonians, were leading a relief force of nine hundred hoplites to the Thracian region. Arriving at Heraclea in Trachis, they set right whatever they thought was amiss there. While they were lingering there this battle took place, and the summer ended.
13 Early in the following winter Rhamphias and his men went as far as Pierium in Thessaly. But the Thessalians tried to stop them, and Brasidas, to whom they were bringing the army, was dead, so they turned back home. They thought there was no longer any occasion for it, since the Athenians had gone away defeated and they themselves were not equal to carrying out any of the plans Brasidas had had in mind. Most of all they went home because they knew that when they set out the Lacedaemonians had been inclined rather toward peace.
14 Right after the battle at Amphipolis and Rhamphias’ withdrawal from Thessaly, it came about that neither side touched the war any further, and both were inclined rather toward peace. The Athenians had been struck down at Delium and again, a short time later, at Amphipolis, and they no longer had the confident hope in their strength that had made them reject a treaty earlier, when they thought their present good fortune would make them come out on top. They also feared that their allies, encouraged by these reverses, would revolt further, and they regretted not having come to terms after Pylos, when the chance was fair. The Lacedaemonians, for their part, found the war turning out against their expectation: they had thought they would destroy the power of the Athenians within a few years if they ravaged their land. Then they had met the disaster on the island, such as had never yet befallen Sparta; their country was being plundered from Pylos and Cythera; the Helots were deserting; and there was always the fear that those who stayed would rely on the ones outside and, in the present situation, rise in revolt, as they had before. It happened, too, that their thirty years’ treaty with the Argives was about to expire, and the Argives refused to make another unless someone gave them back the Cynurian land; so it seemed impossible to fight the Argives and the Athenians at the same time. And they suspected that some of the cities in the Peloponnese would go over to the Argives, as in fact happened.
15 Reckoning all this, both sides thought a settlement had to be made, and the Lacedaemonians not least, out of their desire to recover the men from the island; for the Spartiates among them were men of the first rank and kinsmen of theirs as well. They had begun negotiating at once, right after the men were captured, but the Athenians, while things were going well for them, would not hear of ending the war on equal terms. When the Athenians were defeated at Delium, the Lacedaemonians, knowing that they would now be more willing to accept, immediately concluded the one-year armistice, during which the two sides were to meet and consider a longer settlement.
16 But when the Athenians had also suffered the defeat at Amphipolis, and Cleon and Brasidas were dead, the two men who on either side had most opposed the peace (Brasidas because he was succeeding and winning honor from the war, Cleon because he thought that in quiet times his wrongdoing would be more exposed and his slanders less believed), then the men who were pressing hardest for leadership in each city, Pleistoanax son of Pausanias, king of the Lacedaemonians, and Nicias son of Niceratus, who had done better than anyone of his time in his commands, became far more eager for peace. Nicias wished, while he was still unhurt and held in esteem, to preserve his good fortune; to rest from his labors for the present and to give rest to the citizens; and to leave a name to the future as one who had never brought the city to grief. He thought that this comes from avoiding danger and from trusting oneself as little as possible to fortune, and that peace provides freedom from danger. Pleistoanax was being slandered by his enemies over his restoration, and was always being put forward by them as a matter for religious scruple to the Lacedaemonians whenever they suffered some setback, as though it had come about because his return had broken the law.3 For they charged that he and his brother Aristocles had persuaded the prophetess at Delphi to give this answer to the Lacedaemonian envoys whenever they came, over a long period: “Bring back the seed of the demigod son of Zeus from the foreign land to your own; otherwise you will plow with a silver share.” He had been in exile on Lycaeum because of his withdrawal from Attica long before, on the suspicion of a bribe, and was living in half of his house inside the precinct of Zeus for fear of the Lacedaemonians; and in time, they charged, she had induced the Lacedaemonians to bring him back in the nineteenth year, with the same dances and sacrifices with which they had installed their kings when they first founded Lacedaemon.
17 Vexed by this slander, he thought that in peacetime, when there were no reverses and the Lacedaemonians were getting back their men, he himself would also be beyond the reach of his enemies; whereas while there was war the leading men were always bound to be slandered for its misfortunes. So he was eager for the settlement. Through this winter they went to talks, and toward spring the Lacedaemonians held a threat over the Athenians beforehand, sending word around the cities to prepare as though for a fortified post in Attica, so that the Athenians would be more ready to listen. At the meetings both sides brought forward many claims against each other, and it was agreed that peace should be made on the basis that each would give back what it had taken in war, but that the Athenians should keep Nisaea. (When they asked for Plataea in return, the Thebans said they held the place not by force but because its people had come over to them by agreement and not by betrayal; and the Athenians said the same of Nisaea.) Then the Lacedaemonians summoned their own allies, and all of them voted to end the war except the Boeotians, the Corinthians, the Eleans, and the Megarians, who did not like what was being done. The Lacedaemonians concluded the settlement, made a treaty with the Athenians, and swore to it, and the Athenians swore to the Lacedaemonians, as follows.
18 “The Athenians and the Lacedaemonians and their allies have made a treaty on the following terms, and have sworn to it city by city. Concerning the common sanctuaries: whoever wishes may sacrifice, travel to them, consult the oracles, and attend the festivals according to ancestral custom, by land and by sea, without fear. The sanctuary and temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the Delphians, shall be autonomous, with their own taxation and their own courts, both for their persons and for their territory, according to ancestral custom. The treaty shall be for fifty years between the Athenians and the allies of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians and the allies of the Lacedaemonians, without fraud and without harm, by land and by sea. It shall not be permitted to bear arms with intent to harm, neither for the Lacedaemonians and their allies against the Athenians and their allies, nor for the Athenians and their allies against the Lacedaemonians and their allies, by any art or device whatever. If there is any dispute between them, they shall settle it by law and by oaths, in such manner as they may agree. The Lacedaemonians and their allies shall give back Amphipolis to the Athenians. From all cities that the Lacedaemonians hand over to the Athenians, the inhabitants shall be permitted to depart wherever they wish, taking their own property with them. The cities, paying the tribute fixed in the time of Aristides, shall be autonomous. Once the treaty has been made, it shall not be permitted for the Athenians or their allies to bear arms against them with intent to harm, so long as they pay the tribute. These cities are Argilus, Stagirus, Acanthus, Scolus, Olynthus, and Spartolus. They shall be allies of neither side, neither of the Lacedaemonians nor of the Athenians; but if the Athenians persuade the cities, it shall be permitted for the Athenians to make them their allies, if the cities themselves are willing. The Mecybernaeans, the Sanaeans, and the Singaeans shall inhabit their own cities, as the Olynthians and the Acanthians do. The Lacedaemonians and their allies shall give back Panactum to the Athenians. The Athenians shall give back to the Lacedaemonians Coryphasium, Cythera, Methana, Pteleum, and Atalanta, and all Lacedaemonians who are in public custody at Athens or in public custody anywhere else in the Athenian dominions. They shall release the Peloponnesians besieged in Scione, and all other allies of the Lacedaemonians who are in Scione, and all whom Brasidas sent in, and any of the allies of the Lacedaemonians who is in public custody at Athens or in public custody anywhere else in the Athenian dominions. The Lacedaemonians and their allies shall likewise give back all those of the Athenians and their allies whom they hold. Concerning Scione, Torone, and Sermyle, and any other city that the Athenians hold, the Athenians shall decide as they see fit about them and about the other cities. The Athenians shall swear oaths to the Lacedaemonians and their allies city by city. Each side shall swear the oath that is most binding in its own country, seventeen men from each city. The oath shall be as follows: ‘I will abide by this agreement and this treaty justly and without fraud.’ The Lacedaemonians and their allies shall swear the same oath to the Athenians. Both sides shall renew the oath every year. Pillars shall be set up at Olympia, at Pytho, at the Isthmus, at Athens on the Acropolis, and at Lacedaemon in the Amyclaeum. If either side has forgotten anything, on any matter whatever, it shall be consistent with their oaths for both sides, the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, to make changes by just discussion, in whatever way seems good to them both.
19 “The treaty takes effect, at Lacedaemon, in the ephorate of Pleistolas, on the fourth day from the end of the month Artemisium; at Athens, in the archonship of Alcaeus, on the sixth day from the end of the month Elaphebolion. The following swore and poured the libations. For the Lacedaemonians: Pleistoanax, Agis, Pleistolas, Damagetus, Chionis, Metagenes, Acanthus, Daithus, Ischagoras, Philocharidas, Zeuxidas, Antippus, Tellis, Alcinadas, Empedias, Menas, Laphilus. For the Athenians, the following: Lampon, Isthmionicus, Nicias, Laches, Euthydemus, Procles, Pythodorus, Hagnon, Myrtilus, Thrasycles, Theagenes, Aristocrates, Iolcius, Timocrates, Leon, Lamachus, Demosthenes.”
20 This treaty was made at the end of the winter, as spring began, right after the City Dionysia, exactly ten years and a few days more from the time when the first invasion of Attica took place and this war began.4 Let a reader count by the seasons, and not put more trust in lists of the names of archons, or of others in each place whose office serves to date past events. That is not exact, since an event may have fallen at the beginning of their term, or in the middle, or at any point. But if he counts by summers and winters, as this has been written, each of the two halves making up a year, he will find that ten summers and as many winters went by in this first war.
21 The Lacedaemonians, who had drawn the lot to give back first what they held, at once released the prisoners they had, and sent Ischagoras, Menas, and Philocharidas as envoys to the Thracian region, ordering Clearidas to hand over Amphipolis to the Athenians and the others to accept the treaty as it applied to each of them. They refused, thinking it was not in their interest; and Clearidas did not hand over the city either, to oblige the Chalcidians, saying that he was not able to hand it over against their will. He came himself in haste with envoys from there to Lacedaemon, to defend himself if Ischagoras and his colleagues accused him of disobedience, and also wanting to know whether the agreement could still be altered. When he found that it was already binding, he set out again in haste, the Lacedaemonians sending him back with orders to hand over the place, if possible, and otherwise to bring out all the Peloponnesians who were in it.
22 The allies happened to be present at Lacedaemon themselves, and the Lacedaemonians told those of them who had not accepted the treaty to do so. But they gave the same reason on which they had rejected it at first, and said they would not accept it unless a fairer one was made. When the allies would not listen, the Lacedaemonians sent them away and themselves made an alliance with the Athenians. They thought that in that way the Argives would be least dangerous to them (the Argives had refused to renew the treaty when Ampelidas and Lichas came, thinking the Lacedaemonians were not formidable without the Athenians), and that the rest of the Peloponnese would most likely keep quiet, for it would have gone over to the Athenians if it could. So, with envoys from the Athenians present and after discussion, they came to an agreement, and the following oaths and alliance were made.
23 “The Lacedaemonians and the Athenians shall be allies on the following terms for fifty years. If any enemy invades the territory of the Lacedaemonians and does harm to the Lacedaemonians, the Athenians shall help the Lacedaemonians in whatever way is most effective, to the utmost of their power. If the enemy ravages the land and departs, that city shall be the enemy of the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians and shall suffer harm at the hands of both, and the two cities shall make peace together. This shall be done justly, zealously, and without fraud. If any enemy invades the territory of the Athenians and does harm to the Athenians, the Lacedaemonians shall help the Athenians in whatever way is most effective, to the utmost of their power. If the enemy ravages the land and departs, that city shall be the enemy of the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians and shall suffer harm at the hands of both, and the two cities shall make peace together. This shall be done justly, zealously, and without fraud. If the slave population rises in revolt, the Athenians shall come to the aid of the Lacedaemonians with all their strength, to the utmost of their power. The same persons on each side who swore the other treaty shall swear to this. The oath shall be renewed every year, the Lacedaemonians coming to Athens for the Dionysia and the Athenians going to Lacedaemon for the Hyacinthia. Each side shall set up a pillar, the one at Lacedaemon beside Apollo in the Amyclaeum, the other at Athens on the Acropolis beside Athena. If the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians decide to add anything to the alliance or take anything from it, whatever they decide, it shall be consistent with their oaths for both.
24 “For the Lacedaemonians the following swore the oath: Pleistoanax, Agis, Pleistolas, Damagetus, Chionis, Metagenes, Acanthus, Daithus, Ischagoras, Philocharidas, Zeuxidas, Antippus, Alcinadas, Tellis, Empedias, Menas, Laphilus; for the Athenians, Lampon, Isthmionicus, Laches, Nicias, Euthydemus, Procles, Pythodorus, Hagnon, Myrtilus, Thrasycles, Theagenes, Aristocrates, Iolcius, Timocrates, Leon, Lamachus, Demosthenes.” This alliance was made not long after the treaty, and the Athenians gave back the men from the island to the Lacedaemonians, and the summer of the eleventh year began. Thus has the first war been written, which went on without a break for these ten years.
25 After the treaty and the alliance between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians, which were made after the ten years’ war, when Pleistolas was ephor at Lacedaemon and Alcaeus archon at Athens, there was peace for those who had accepted them. But the Corinthians and some of the cities in the Peloponnese tried to upset what had been done, and at once a new disturbance arose between the allies and Lacedaemon. And as time went on the Lacedaemonians also came under the suspicion of the Athenians, since on some points they did not carry out what had been agreed. For six years and ten months they refrained from invading each other’s territory, but abroad, under an unstable cessation of arms, they did each other all the harm they could. In the end, compelled to break the treaty made after the ten years, they went back into open war.
26 The same Thucydides the Athenian has written these events too, in order, as each happened, by summers and winters, down to the time when the Lacedaemonians and their allies put an end to the empire of the Athenians and took the Long Walls and Piraeus. Up to that point the war lasted twenty-seven years in all. If anyone does not see fit to count the settlement in between as war, he will not judge rightly. Let him look at the facts as they have been set out, and he will find that it does not make sense to call that a peace, in which neither side gave back or received all that they had agreed; and besides, there were breaches on both sides over the Mantinean and Epidaurian war and in other matters; the allies in the Thracian region were as much at war as ever; and the Boeotians kept only a ten-day truce. So, with the first, ten-year war, the suspicious cessation of arms after it, and the war that came out of it afterward, a reader will find, counting by the seasons, just that number of years, and a few days more; and for those who put their faith in oracles, this one thing alone came out firmly true. I myself remember that all along, from the beginning of the war until it ended, it was put about by many that it would last three times nine years. I lived through the whole of it, of an age to understand it and applying my mind so as to know something exactly. It also happened that I was exiled from my own country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis, and that, being with both sides in their affairs, and not least with the Peloponnesians because of my exile, I came to understand something more of them at leisure.5 I will now relate the quarrel after the ten years, the breaking of the treaty, and how the war was fought after that.
27 After the fifty years’ treaty was made, and then the alliance, the embassies from the Peloponnese that had been summoned for these matters left Lacedaemon. The others went home, but the Corinthians turned aside to Argos and first had talks with some of the Argives in authority. Their argument was that since the Lacedaemonians had made a treaty and an alliance with the Athenians, formerly their worst enemies, not for the good of the Peloponnese but to enslave it, the Argives ought to see to it that the Peloponnese was saved. They should pass a decree that any Hellenic city that wished, provided it was autonomous and gave and received justice on fair and equal terms, might make an alliance with the Argives for mutual defense of each other’s territory; and they should appoint a few men with full powers, and not have the discussions held before the people, so that those who failed to persuade the multitude would not be exposed. They said that many would come over out of hatred of the Lacedaemonians. After giving this advice the Corinthians went home.
28 The Argives who had heard them reported the proposals to the magistrates and the people, and the Argives passed the decree and chose twelve men with whom any of the Hellenes who wished might make an alliance, except the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians; neither of these was to be allowed to make a treaty without the Argive people. The Argives accepted the proposal the more readily because they saw that war with the Lacedaemonians was coming (their treaty with them was about to expire), and because they also hoped to lead the Peloponnese. For at this time Lacedaemon stood in very ill repute and was despised because of its disasters, while the Argives were in excellent shape in every way: they had taken no part in the Attic war and had rather reaped the harvest of being at peace with both sides. So the Argives in this way began to receive into the alliance those of the Hellenes who were willing.
29 The Mantineans and their allies were the first to come over to them, out of fear of the Lacedaemonians. While the war with the Athenians was still going on, the Mantineans had subdued part of Arcadia and made it subject to them, and they thought the Lacedaemonians would not let them keep their rule, now that they had leisure. So they turned gladly to the Argives, considering theirs a great city, always at odds with the Lacedaemonians, and a democracy like their own. When the Mantineans revolted, the rest of the Peloponnese also began to murmur that they too must do the same. They thought the Mantineans had changed sides because they knew something more, and at the same time they were angry with the Lacedaemonians, among other reasons because it had been written in the Attic treaty that it would be consistent with their oaths to add or take away whatever both the cities, the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians, might decide. This clause above all upset the Peloponnese and made it suspect that the Lacedaemonians, together with the Athenians, meant to enslave it, since the right thing would have been to make any change subject to all the allies. So most of them, being afraid, were moved to make alliances with the Argives on their own account as well.
30 When the Lacedaemonians saw this murmuring spread through the Peloponnese, and that the Corinthians had been the teachers of it and were about to make a treaty with Argos themselves, they sent envoys to Corinth, wanting to forestall what was coming. They charged the Corinthians with having started the whole business, and said that if they abandoned them and became allies of the Argives, they would be breaking their oaths; they were already in the wrong, too, in not accepting the Athenian treaty, since it had been laid down that whatever the majority of the allies voted should be binding, unless there was some impediment from gods or heroes. The Corinthians, with those of their allies present who had not accepted the treaty either (they had invited them themselves beforehand), answered the Lacedaemonians. They did not openly declare the wrongs they had suffered, that they had not recovered Sollium or Anactorium from the Athenians, or anything else in which they thought they had been shortchanged; instead they made a pretext of not betraying the people in the Thracian region. They had sworn oaths to them privately, they said, when those people first revolted along with the Potidaeans, and others afterward. So they were not breaking the oaths of the alliance by not entering the Athenian treaty; for having sworn by the gods to those people, they would be forsworn if they betrayed them. It had been said, “unless there is some impediment from gods or heroes,” and this, it seemed to them, was a divine impediment. That was what they said about their old oaths. As for the Argive alliance, they would consult their friends and do whatever was right. The Lacedaemonian envoys went home. Argive envoys also happened to be present in Corinth, and they urged the Corinthians to join the alliance without delay; but the Corinthians told them to come to the next meeting held at Corinth.
31 An embassy from the Eleans also came at once and first made an alliance with the Corinthians; then they went on from there to Argos and, as had been laid down, became allies of the Argives. They happened to be at odds with the Lacedaemonians over Lepreum. The Lepreans had once been at war with some of the Arcadians, and had called in the Eleans as allies for half of their land; when the Eleans had ended the war, they left the land to the Lepreans to occupy, assessing them a talent to be paid to Olympian Zeus. They paid it until the Attic war; then, when they stopped paying on the pretext of the war, the Eleans tried to compel them, and they turned to the Lacedaemonians. The case was referred to the Lacedaemonians for judgment; but the Eleans, suspecting they would not get fair treatment, gave up the arbitration and ravaged the Leprean land. The Lacedaemonians nonetheless gave judgment that the Lepreans were autonomous and that the Eleans were in the wrong, and, on the ground that the Eleans had not abided by the arbitration, sent a garrison of hoplites into Lepreum. The Eleans, holding that the Lacedaemonians had taken in a city that had revolted from them, and citing the agreement in which it had been laid down that whatever places each party held when they entered the Attic war, they should hold the same when they came out of it, revolted to the Argives on the ground that they were not being treated fairly; and they too made the alliance as had been laid down. Immediately after them the Corinthians and the Chalcidians of the Thracian region also became allies of the Argives. The Boeotians and the Megarians, saying the same thing, kept quiet. They were being left alone by the Lacedaemonians, and they thought the Argive democracy would suit them, as oligarchies, less well than the Lacedaemonian constitution.
32 About the same time this summer the Athenians took Scione by siege, killed the men of military age, enslaved the women and children, and gave the land to the Plataeans to live on. They brought the Delians back to Delos, taking to heart their defeats in battle and the oracle of the god at Delphi. The Phocians and the Locrians began a war. The Corinthians and the Argives, now allies, went to Tegea to detach it from the Lacedaemonians; they saw that it was a large piece of territory, and they thought that if they gained it they would have the whole Peloponnese. But when the Tegeans said they would do nothing against the Lacedaemonians, the Corinthians, who had been zealous up to this point, slackened in their contentiousness and began to fear that none of the others would come over to them now. All the same they went to the Boeotians and asked them to become allies of themselves and the Argives and to act in common with them in other matters. The Athenians and the Boeotians had a ten-day truce with each other, made not long after the fifty years’ treaty; and the Corinthians asked the Boeotians to go with them to Athens and get one for them too, and, if the Athenians did not agree, to renounce the armistice and in the future make no treaty without them. When the Corinthians asked this, the Boeotians told them to wait about the Argive alliance; but they went to Athens with the Corinthians, and did not obtain the ten-day truce for them. The Athenians replied that the Corinthians had a treaty, if they were allies of the Lacedaemonians. The Boeotians did not on that account renounce the ten-day truce, though the Corinthians demanded it and accused them of having agreed to do so. And the Corinthians had a cessation of arms with the Athenians, but no treaty.
33 The same summer the Lacedaemonians marched out in full force, under the command of Pleistoanax son of Pausanias, king of the Lacedaemonians, against the Parrhasians in Arcadia, who were subjects of the Mantineans; a faction among them had called them in. They also meant to tear down, if they could, the fort at Cypsela, which the Mantineans had built and garrisoned themselves; it lay in Parrhasian territory, facing the Sciritis in Laconia. The Lacedaemonians ravaged the land of the Parrhasians, and the Mantineans, handing over their city to the Argives to guard, garrisoned the allied territory themselves. But they were unable to save either the fort at Cypsela or the cities in Parrhasia, and they withdrew. The Lacedaemonians made the Parrhasians autonomous, pulled down the fort, and went home.
34 The same summer, when the soldiers who had gone out to Thrace with Brasidas had already come back, brought home by Clearidas after the treaty, the Lacedaemonians voted that the Helots who had fought with Brasidas should be free and live wherever they liked. Not long after they settled them, together with the Neodamodes, at Lepreum, which lies between Laconia and Elis, since they were already at odds with the Eleans.6 As for their own men who had been taken on the island and had surrendered their arms, the Lacedaemonians feared that, thinking they would be lowered in status because of their misfortune, they might make some revolutionary move if they kept their full rights; so they disfranchised them, though some of them already held offices. The disfranchisement was such that they could neither hold office nor make any valid purchase or sale. Later, in time, they had their rights restored.
35 The same summer the Dians took Thyssus, on the Acte peninsula of Athos, an ally of the Athenians. All this summer there was intercourse between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, but right after the treaty the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians began to suspect each other over the failure to give back places to each other. The Lacedaemonians, who had drawn the lot to give back first, had not given back Amphipolis and the rest; they did not get their allies in the Thracian region to accept the treaty, nor the Boeotians, nor the Corinthians, but kept saying that they would join the Athenians in compelling them if they would not. They set dates, though not in writing, by which those who did not come in were to be enemies of both sides. So the Athenians, seeing none of this happen in fact, suspected that the Lacedaemonians meant nothing honest. They would not give back Pylos when the Lacedaemonians asked for it; they even regretted having given back the prisoners from the island; and they held on to the other places, waiting until the Lacedaemonians did what had been agreed on their side. The Lacedaemonians said they had done what they could: they had given back the Athenian prisoners they held, they had withdrawn their soldiers from the Thracian region, and anything else that was in their power. Amphipolis, they said, was not in their power to hand over; but they would try to bring the Boeotians and the Corinthians into the treaty, to recover Panactum, and to bring back the Athenians who were prisoners in Boeotia. They insisted, though, that Pylos be given back to them, or failing that, that the Messenians and the Helots at least be withdrawn from it, as they had withdrawn their own men from Thrace, and that the Athenians garrison the place themselves if they wished. After many and frequent discussions that summer, they persuaded the Athenians to withdraw the Messenians from Pylos, along with the rest, both Helots and all who had deserted from Laconia; and the Athenians settled them at Cranii in Cephallenia. So this summer there was quiet, and people went back and forth between the two sides.
36 The following winter (it happened that there were new ephors in office, not those under whom the treaty had been made, and some of them were even opposed to the treaty) embassies came from the alliance, and the Athenians, Boeotians, and Corinthians were present; they said a great deal to one another and agreed on nothing. As they were leaving for home, Cleobulus and Xenares, the ephors who most wanted to break the treaty, held private talks with the Boeotians and the Corinthians. They urged them to take the same view as far as possible, and urged the Boeotians to try first to become allies of the Argives themselves, and then to make the Argives, together with themselves, allies of the Lacedaemonians. In that way the Boeotians would be least likely to be forced into the Attic treaty, since the Lacedaemonians would choose to have the Argives as friends and allies even at the price of the enmity of the Athenians and the breaking of the treaty; for they knew that the Lacedaemonians had always wanted Argos to be friendly to them on good terms. They thought this would make war outside the Peloponnese easier. They asked the Boeotians, however, to hand Panactum over to the Lacedaemonians, so that they might get back Pylos in exchange for it, if they could, and so more easily go to war with the Athenians.
37 The Boeotians and the Corinthians, charged with these messages by Xenares and Cleobulus and their friends among the Lacedaemonians to report to their governments, each went home. Two men of the highest office at Argos watched for them on the road as they were leaving, met them, and began talks: perhaps the Boeotians would become their allies, as the Corinthians, the Eleans, and the Mantineans had. If that went forward, they thought, it would be easy, acting on a common policy, to make war or peace, either with the Lacedaemonians, if they wished, or with anyone else if need be. The Boeotian envoys were pleased to hear it, for by chance the Argives were asking for the very things their friends at Lacedaemon had instructed them to do. When the Argive men saw that they welcomed the proposal, they said they would send envoys to the Boeotians, and left. On their return the Boeotians reported to the Boeotarchs what had been said at Lacedaemon and by the Argives who had met them. The Boeotarchs were pleased and far more eager than before, since it had turned out that on both sides their friends among the Lacedaemonians were asking for the same thing and the Argives were pressing toward the same end. Not long afterward envoys from the Argives arrived with the proposals that had been made, and the Boeotarchs sent them away with praise for what they said and a promise to send envoys to Argos about the alliance.
38 Meanwhile the Boeotarchs, the Corinthians, the Megarians, and the envoys from the Thracian region decided first to swear oaths to one another: that they would indeed come to the help of any of them who needed it, on any occasion, and would neither make war on anyone nor come to terms without a common decision; and that the Boeotians and the Megarians (who were acting together) should then make a treaty with the Argives. But before the oaths were taken, the Boeotarchs communicated these proposals to the four councils of the Boeotians, which hold all authority, and recommended that oaths be sworn with any cities willing to join them in an oath for their mutual benefit. The members of the Boeotian councils did not accept the proposal, fearing they would be acting against the Lacedaemonians if they swore an oath with the Corinthians, who had broken away from them. For the Boeotarchs had not told them what had happened at Lacedaemon: that the ephors Cleobulus and Xenares and their friends were advising them to become allies first of the Argives and the Corinthians and afterward to join the Lacedaemonians. They thought that the council, even if they did not tell it, would vote nothing but what they had decided beforehand and recommended. When the matter met resistance, the Corinthians and the envoys from the Thracian region went away with nothing done. The Boeotarchs, who had previously meant, if they carried this point, to try to make the alliance with the Argives as well, no longer brought the question of the Argives before the councils and did not send to Argos the envoys they had promised; there was a kind of neglect and delay in the whole business.
39 In this same winter the Olynthians made a sudden attack on Mecyberna, which had an Athenian garrison, and took it. After this (talks were going on all the while between the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians about the places each held of the other’s), the Lacedaemonians hoped that if the Athenians got Panactum back from the Boeotians, they themselves would recover Pylos. They went on an embassy to the Boeotians and asked them to hand over to them Panactum and the Athenian prisoners, so that they might recover Pylos in exchange. The Boeotians said they would not give them back unless the Lacedaemonians made a separate alliance with them, as they had with the Athenians. The Lacedaemonians knew that they would be wronging the Athenians, since it had been agreed that neither would make a treaty or war with anyone without the other. But they wanted to get Panactum so as to recover Pylos in exchange for it, and at the same time those who were eager to wreck the treaty were pressing the Boeotian connection; so they made the alliance, at the very end of the winter, toward spring. And Panactum was at once torn down. And so the eleventh year of this war ended.
40 At the very beginning of spring the following summer, the Argives, since the envoys the Boeotians had said they would send did not come, and they learned that Panactum was being torn down and that the Boeotians had made a separate alliance with the Lacedaemonians, were afraid that they would be left isolated and that the whole alliance would go over to the Lacedaemonians. They thought that the Boeotians had been persuaded by the Lacedaemonians both to tear down Panactum and to enter the Athenian treaty, and that the Athenians knew it; so that they could no longer make an alliance even with the Athenians, whereas before they had hoped, because of the quarrels, that if their treaty with the Lacedaemonians did not last, they would at least become allies of the Athenians. At a loss, therefore, and afraid of being at war with the Lacedaemonians, the Tegeans, the Boeotians, and the Athenians all at once, the Argives, who earlier had refused the treaty with the Lacedaemonians and been full of pride, expecting to lead the Peloponnese, now sent envoys to Lacedaemon as fast as they could, Eustrophus and Aeson, who were thought to be the men most acceptable there. They judged that under the circumstances it was best to make a treaty with the Lacedaemonians, on whatever terms they could get, and keep quiet.
41 The envoys arrived and discussed with the Lacedaemonians the terms on which a treaty might be made with them. At first the Argives demanded that the question of the Cynurian land be referred to arbitration, either by some city or by a private person. They are always quarreling over this land, since it is on the border; it contains the cities of Thyrea and Anthene, and the Lacedaemonians occupy it. But the Lacedaemonians would not allow any mention of it, and said that if the Argives wanted to make a treaty as before, they were ready. The Argive envoys nevertheless got the Lacedaemonians to agree to the following: that for the present a treaty should be made for fifty years; but that either side might issue a challenge, provided there was neither plague nor war at Lacedaemon or Argos, and fight it out for this land, as they had once done before, when each side claimed the victory; but that pursuit beyond the boundaries of Argos and Lacedaemon should not be permitted. At first the Lacedaemonians thought this was folly; but then, since they wanted Argos as a friend at all costs, they agreed to what was asked and drew it up in writing. The Lacedaemonians told them, however, before any of it took effect, to go back to Argos first and lay it before the people, and if it was acceptable, to come at the Hyacinthia to swear the oaths. The envoys went back.
42 During the time when the Argives were doing this, the envoys of the Lacedaemonians, Andromenes, Phaedimus, and Antimenidas, who were to receive Panactum and the prisoners from the Boeotians and give them back to the Athenians, found that the Boeotians had torn down Panactum themselves. Their pretext was that long ago, after a dispute over it, the Athenians and the Boeotians had sworn oaths that neither would live in the place but that both would graze it in common. Andromenes and his colleagues took over the Athenian prisoners whom the Boeotians held and brought them to the Athenians and gave them back; and they told them about the demolition of Panactum, considering that this too was giving it back, since no enemy of the Athenians would live in it any longer. When this was said, the Athenians were outraged. They felt they were being wronged by the Lacedaemonians, both by the demolition of Panactum, which ought to have been handed over standing, and because they learned that the Lacedaemonians had made a separate alliance with the Boeotians, though they had said earlier that they would join in compelling those who did not accept the treaty. They also considered the other points in which the Lacedaemonians had fallen short of the agreement, and thought they had been deceived. So they gave the envoys a harsh answer and sent them away.
43 With the Lacedaemonians at odds with the Athenians in this way, those at Athens who in turn wanted to break the treaty at once went to work. Among others there was Alcibiades son of Cleinias, a man still young in years at that time, as he would have been considered in any other city, but honored for the distinction of his ancestors. He thought it really was better to side with the Argives; but beyond that, he opposed the treaty out of pride and a spirit of rivalry, because the Lacedaemonians had negotiated it through Nicias and Laches and had passed him over because of his youth. Nor had they honored the old proxeny once held in his family, the role of official friend and representative of the Lacedaemonians at Athens; his grandfather had renounced it, and he himself had meant to renew it by his attentions to their prisoners from the island.7 Feeling himself slighted on every side, he had spoken against the treaty from the start, saying that the Lacedaemonians were not to be relied on, and that they were making the treaty only so that, having crushed the Argives with its help, they could then march against the Athenians alone. And now, when the quarrel had broken out, he at once sent a private message to Argos, telling them to come as quickly as possible with the Mantineans and the Eleans and invite Athens into alliance, since the moment had come, and he himself would do all he could to help.
44 When the Argives heard the message and realized that the alliance with the Boeotians had not been made with the Athenians’ consent, but that the Athenians had fallen into a serious quarrel with the Lacedaemonians, they paid no more attention to their envoys at Lacedaemon, who happened to be away there about the treaty, and inclined rather toward the Athenians. They thought that a city friendly to them of old, a democracy like their own, and possessing great power at sea, would join them in the war if they went to war. So they at once sent envoys to the Athenians about the alliance; and the Eleans and the Mantineans sent envoys with them. Envoys of the Lacedaemonians also arrived in haste, men thought to be acceptable to the Athenians, Philocharidas, Leon, and Endius. They were afraid that the Athenians in their anger would make the alliance with the Argives; and they came also to ask for Pylos in exchange for Panactum, and to defend the alliance with the Boeotians, on the ground that it had not been made to harm the Athenians.
45 They spoke in the council on these matters, and said that they had come with full powers to settle all the points in dispute. This alarmed Alcibiades, who was afraid that if they said the same things before the people, they would win over the multitude and the Argive alliance would be rejected. So Alcibiades contrived the following against them. He persuaded the Lacedaemonians, giving them his pledge, that if they did not admit before the people that they had come with full powers, he would give Pylos back to them (he would himself persuade the Athenians, as he was now opposing it) and would settle the other points. He did this because he wanted to separate them from Nicias, and so that, by discrediting them before the people as men who had nothing honest in mind and never said the same thing twice, he might make the Argives, the Eleans, and the Mantineans allies. And so it turned out. When the envoys came before the people and, on being asked, said that they had not come with full powers, as they had said in the council, the Athenians would put up with it no longer. Alcibiades denounced the Lacedaemonians far more loudly than before, and the Athenians listened to him and were ready to bring in the Argives and their companions on the spot and make them allies. But an earthquake occurred before anything was ratified, and this assembly was adjourned.
46 In the assembly the next day, Nicias, though the Lacedaemonians themselves had been deceived and he too had been deceived over their not admitting that they had come with full powers, still said that they ought to cultivate the friendship of the Lacedaemonians rather, and, putting off the business with the Argives, send to them again and find out what they intended. He argued that the war should be postponed while their own position was good and that of the Lacedaemonians bad: for the Athenians, whose affairs stood well, it was best to preserve their prosperity as long as possible; for the Lacedaemonians, who were faring badly, it was a godsend to stake everything as soon as possible. He persuaded them to send envoys, of whom he was one, to tell the Lacedaemonians that if they had any honest intentions they should give back Panactum standing, and Amphipolis, and renounce the Boeotian alliance unless the Boeotians entered the treaty, in accordance with the clause that neither would make an agreement with anyone without the other. They told the envoys to say also that the Athenians, if they had wanted to do wrong, would already have made the Argives their allies, since the Argives were in Athens for that very purpose. They gave them instructions on any other complaints they had, and sent Nicias and the other envoys off. When they arrived and delivered their message, ending with the statement that unless the Lacedaemonians renounced the alliance with the Boeotians if they did not enter the treaty, the Athenians would make allies of the Argives and their companions, the Lacedaemonians said they would not renounce the alliance with the Boeotians; the ephor Xenares and those of the same opinion prevailed in this. But at Nicias’ request they renewed the oaths, for he was afraid of going away with nothing accomplished and being attacked, as in fact happened, since he was considered responsible for the treaty with the Lacedaemonians. When he returned and the Athenians heard that nothing had been accomplished at Lacedaemon, they were at once furious; and considering themselves wronged (the Argives and their allies happened to be present), on the motion of Alcibiades they made the following treaty and alliance with them.
47 “The Athenians and the Argives, the Mantineans, and the Eleans have made a treaty with one another for a hundred years, on behalf of themselves and the allies over whom each of them rules, without fraud and without harm, by land and by sea. It shall not be permitted to bear arms with intent to harm, neither for the Argives, the Eleans, the Mantineans, and their allies against the Athenians and the allies over whom the Athenians rule, nor for the Athenians and the allies over whom the Athenians rule against the Argives, the Eleans, the Mantineans, and their allies, by any art or device whatever. On the following terms the Athenians, the Argives, the Mantineans, and the Eleans shall be allies for a hundred years. If enemies invade the territory of the Athenians, the Argives, the Mantineans, and the Eleans shall come to the help of Athens, as the Athenians may call upon them to do, in whatever way is most effective, to the utmost of their power. If the enemy ravages the land and departs, that city shall be the enemy of the Argives, the Mantineans, the Eleans, and the Athenians and shall suffer harm at the hands of all these cities; and it shall not be permitted for any of the cities to end the war against that city unless all of them so decide. The Athenians likewise shall come to the help of Argos, Mantinea, and Elis if enemies invade the territory of the Argives or the Mantineans or the Eleans, as these cities may call upon them to do, in whatever way is most effective, to the utmost of their power. If the enemy ravages the land and departs, that city shall be the enemy of the Athenians, the Argives, the Mantineans, and the Eleans and shall suffer harm at the hands of all these cities; and it shall not be permitted for any of the cities to end the war against that city unless all of them so decide. They shall not allow armed men to pass for purposes of war through their own territory or that of the allies over whom each of them rules, nor by sea, unless all the cities, the Athenians, the Argives, the Mantineans, and the Eleans, have voted to grant the passage. For troops sent to help, the city sending them shall provide rations for thirty days from their arrival in the city that called for help, and likewise on their departure. If the city that sent for the army wishes to use it for a longer time, it shall provide rations at the rate of three Aeginetan obols a day for each hoplite, light-armed soldier, and archer, and one Aeginetan drachma for each horseman. The city that sent for the army shall hold the command when the war is in its own territory; but if all the cities decide to make an expedition in common anywhere, the command shall be shared equally among all the cities. The Athenians shall swear to the treaty on behalf of themselves and their allies; the Argives, the Mantineans, the Eleans, and their allies shall swear city by city. Each shall swear the oath that is most binding in its own country, over full-grown victims. The oath shall be as follows: ‘I will abide by the alliance according to its terms, justly, without harm, and without fraud, and I will not transgress it by any art or device whatever.’ At Athens the council and the magistrates in the city shall swear, and the prytanes shall administer the oath; at Argos, the council, the Eighty, and the artynae, and the Eighty shall administer the oath; at Mantinea, the demiurgi, the council, and the other magistrates, and the theori and the polemarchs shall administer the oath; at Elis, the demiurgi, the holders of office, and the Six Hundred, and the demiurgi and the thesmophylaces shall administer the oath. The oaths shall be renewed, by the Athenians going to Elis, Mantinea, and Argos thirty days before the Olympic games, and by the Argives, the Eleans, and the Mantineans going to Athens ten days before the Great Panathenaea. The agreement concerning the treaty, the oaths, and the alliance shall be inscribed on a stone pillar, by the Athenians on the Acropolis, by the Argives in the agora in the sanctuary of Apollo, by the Mantineans in the sanctuary of Zeus in the agora; and they shall also set up a bronze pillar jointly at Olympia at the present Olympic games. If these cities think it better to add anything to what has been agreed, whatever all the cities decide in common deliberation shall be binding.”
48 So the treaty and the alliance were made, and the treaty between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians was not renounced on that account by either side. The Corinthians, though allies of the Argives, did not enter into it. Even earlier, when an alliance had been made among the Eleans, the Argives, and the Mantineans, to have the same enemies and the same friends, they had not sworn to it; they said the first alliance was enough for them, a defensive one, to help one another, but to join no one in an attack. So the Corinthians stood apart from the allies and began to turn their minds back toward the Lacedaemonians.
49 The Olympic games were held this summer, the ones at which Androsthenes the Arcadian won the pancratium for the first time. The Lacedaemonians were barred from the sanctuary by the Eleans, so that they could neither sacrifice nor compete, because they had not paid the fine that the Eleans had imposed on them under the Olympic law. The Eleans claimed that the Lacedaemonians had attacked them in arms at the fort of Phyrcus and had sent their hoplites into Lepreum during the Olympic truce. The fine was two thousand minas, two minas for each hoplite, as the law provides. The Lacedaemonians sent envoys and argued that the judgment against them was unjust, saying that the truce had not yet been proclaimed at Lacedaemon when they sent the hoplites in. The Eleans said that the armistice was already in force among themselves (they proclaim it first to themselves), and that while they were keeping quiet and expecting nothing, as men do in a truce, the Lacedaemonians had wronged them unawares. The Lacedaemonians replied that the Eleans had no business going on to proclaim the truce at Lacedaemon if they already considered them to be in the wrong; yet they had proclaimed it, as men who did not think so, and after that the Lacedaemonians had borne arms against them nowhere. The Eleans held to the same argument: they would never be persuaded that the Lacedaemonians had done no wrong; but if they were willing to give Lepreum back to them, they would remit their own share of the money and themselves pay on the Lacedaemonians’ behalf the part that was due to the god.
50 When the Lacedaemonians would not listen to this, the Eleans proposed instead that they need not give back Lepreum, if they did not wish to, but that, since they were so eager to have the use of the sanctuary, they should go up to the altar of Olympian Zeus and swear before the Hellenes that they would indeed pay the fine later. When they would not do even this, the Lacedaemonians were excluded from the sanctuary and sacrificed at home, and the rest of the Hellenes attended the festival, except the Lepreans. Still, the Eleans, fearing the Lacedaemonians would sacrifice by force, kept a guard of their young men under arms. The Argives and the Mantineans came to them as well, a thousand of each, and the Athenian cavalry, who waited at Harpina for the festival. Great fear fell on the gathering that the Lacedaemonians would come in arms, especially after Lichas son of Arcesilaus, a Lacedaemonian, was beaten by the umpires on the course. His team had won, but since he was not allowed to compete, the Boeotian state was proclaimed the winner; and he came out onto the course and crowned the charioteer, wanting to show that the chariot was his. So everyone was far more alarmed than before, and it seemed that something was going to happen. The Lacedaemonians, however, kept quiet, and the festival went by for them in this way. After the Olympic games the Argives and their allies went to Corinth to ask the Corinthians to join them. Lacedaemonian envoys happened to be there too, and after much discussion nothing was accomplished in the end; an earthquake occurred, and they all dispersed to their homes. And the summer ended.
51 The following winter the Heracleots in Trachis fought a battle against the Aenianians, the Dolopians, the Malians, and some of the Thessalians. These peoples lived near the city and were hostile to it, for the place had been fortified against no other country than theirs. They had opposed the city from the moment it was founded, doing it all the damage they could, and now they defeated the Heracleots in battle; Xenares son of Cnidis, the Lacedaemonian commander, was killed, and others of the Heracleots also perished. So the winter ended, and with it the twelfth year of this war.
52 At the very beginning of the following summer, the Boeotians took over Heraclea, which had been badly ruined after the battle, and dismissed Agesippidas the Lacedaemonian for governing it badly. They took over the place out of fear that the Athenians would seize it while the Lacedaemonians were distracted by the troubles in the Peloponnese; the Lacedaemonians, however, were angry with them. The same summer Alcibiades son of Cleinias, now a general of the Athenians, with the Argives and their allies working with him, went into the Peloponnese with a few Athenian hoplites and archers. Picking up allies there, he went through the Peloponnese with his army, settling the affairs of the alliance among other things. He persuaded the Patreans to build walls down to the sea, and he himself meant to build another fort at the Achaean Rhium. But the Corinthians, the Sicyonians, and all to whom it would be harmful if it were built came to the rescue and prevented it.
53 The same summer war broke out between the Epidaurians and the Argives. The pretext was the offering to Apollo Pythaeus, which the Epidaurians were bound to send in payment for pasture lands and did not send; the Argives had chief authority over the temple. But even without this charge, Alcibiades and the Argives had decided to bring Epidaurus over, if they could, both to keep Corinth quiet and because the Athenians would have a shorter route for sending help from Aegina than sailing around Scyllaeum. So the Argives prepared to invade Epidaurus on their own, as if to exact payment of the offering.
54 About the same time the Lacedaemonians also marched out in full force under King Agis son of Archidamus to Leuctra, on their own frontier toward Lycaeum. No one knew where they were going, not even the cities from which the contingents had been sent. But when the sacrifices for crossing the frontier did not turn out favorably, they went home themselves and sent word around to the allies to be ready to march after the coming month (it was the month Carneius, a holy month for the Dorians).8 When they had withdrawn, the Argives marched out on the fourth day from the end of the month before Carneius, and, counting that same day as the date for as long as they were out, invaded Epidaurian territory and ravaged it. The Epidaurians called on their allies; some of them pleaded the month as an excuse, while others came as far as the Epidaurian border and stayed quiet there.
55 While the Argives were in Epidaurus, embassies from the cities met at Mantinea at the invitation of the Athenians. In the discussion Euphamidas the Corinthian said that their words did not agree with their deeds: they were sitting together talking about peace, while the Epidaurians and their allies and the Argives stood in arms against each other. They ought first, therefore, to go from both sides and break up the armies, and then talk about peace again. They were persuaded, went off, and got the Argives to withdraw from Epidaurian territory. Afterward they met at the same place again, but even so they could not come to an agreement, and the Argives invaded Epidaurian territory again and ravaged it. The Lacedaemonians also marched out to Caryae, but when the sacrifices for crossing the frontier did not turn out favorably there either, they went back. The Argives, after ravaging about a third of Epidaurian territory, went home. A thousand Athenian hoplites had come to their help, with Alcibiades as general; but learning that the Lacedaemonians had already marched out and gone back, and that they were no longer needed, he went away. So the summer passed.
56 The following winter the Lacedaemonians, without the Athenians’ knowledge, sent a garrison of three hundred men by sea into Epidaurus, with Agesippidas in command. The Argives went to the Athenians and complained that, although it had been written in the treaty that neither side would allow enemies to pass through its own territory, they had let them sail past along the coast; and that unless the Athenians in turn brought the Messenians and the Helots to Pylos to harass the Lacedaemonians, they themselves would consider they had been wronged. On Alcibiades’ persuasion the Athenians inscribed at the foot of the Laconian pillar that the Lacedaemonians had not kept their oaths, and they brought the Helots from Cranii to Pylos to raid the country; otherwise they kept quiet. During this winter, while the Argives and the Epidaurians were at war, no regular battle took place, but there were ambushes and raids, in which some on each side were killed as chance had it. At the end of the winter, toward spring, the Argives came against Epidaurus with ladders, expecting to take it by storm because it was stripped of men by the war; and they went away with nothing done. So the winter ended, and with it the thirteenth year of this war.
57 In the middle of the following summer, since their allies the Epidaurians were in distress, and in the rest of the Peloponnese some places had revolted and others were in a bad way, the Lacedaemonians thought that if they did not act quickly to forestall it, the trouble would spread further. They marched against Argos in full force, themselves and the Helots, under the command of Agis son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. The Tegeans and all the other Arcadians who were allies of the Lacedaemonians marched with them. The allies from the rest of the Peloponnese and from outside it assembled at Phlius: of the Boeotians, five thousand hoplites, as many light-armed troops, five hundred cavalry, and the same number of foot soldiers who ran with the horses; of the Corinthians, two thousand hoplites; the others as each could; and the Phliasians in full force, since the army was in their country.
58 The Argives had learned in advance, first of the Lacedaemonian preparations, and then that they were marching to Phlius to join the others; and at that point they marched out too. The Mantineans came to their help with their own allies, and three thousand Elean hoplites. Advancing, they met the Lacedaemonians at Methydrium in Arcadia. Each side occupied a hill. The Argives prepared to fight the Lacedaemonians while they were isolated; but Agis broke camp in the night, slipped away unnoticed, and marched to Phlius to join the other allies. When the Argives discovered this they set out at dawn, first for Argos and then along the road by Nemea, where they expected the Lacedaemonians and their allies to come down. But Agis did not take the road they expected. He gave orders to the Lacedaemonians, the Arcadians, and the Epidaurians, took another, difficult road, and came down into the plain of Argos. The Corinthians, the Pellenians, and the Phliasians marched by another steep road. The Boeotians, the Megarians, and the Sicyonians had been told to come down by the road from Nemea, where the Argives had taken up their position, so that if the Argives went down into the plain to meet his own force, they could follow on their heels and use their cavalry. Having made these dispositions, he invaded the plain and began ravaging Saminthus and other places.
59 The Argives, realizing this, came to the rescue from Nemea, by now in daylight. They ran into the army of the Phliasians and the Corinthians and killed a few of the Phliasians, but lost not many more of their own to the Corinthians. The Boeotians, the Megarians, and the Sicyonians marched as they had been told along the road toward Nemea, and found the Argives no longer there; the Argives had gone down, and when they saw their own land being ravaged they drew up for battle. The Lacedaemonians drew up against them. The Argives were caught in the middle. On the plain side the Lacedaemonians and those with them cut them off from the city; above them were the Corinthians, the Phliasians, and the Pellenians; and on the side toward Nemea the Boeotians, the Sicyonians, and the Megarians. They had no cavalry with them, for the Athenians, alone of the allies, had not yet arrived. The mass of the Argives and their allies did not think their situation so dangerous; it seemed to them that the battle would be on favorable ground, and that they had cut off the Lacedaemonians in their own territory and close to their city. But two of the Argives, Thrasylus, one of the five generals, and Alciphron, proxenus of the Lacedaemonians, that is, the citizen who looked after Lacedaemonian interests at Argos, went to Agis when the armies were all but closing and talked with him to prevent a battle. The Argives, they said, were ready to give and receive justice on fair and equal terms, if the Lacedaemonians had any complaint against the Argives, and to make a treaty and keep the peace in the future.
60 These Argives said this on their own, without orders from the people; and Agis too accepted their proposals on his own. He did not consult the majority, and he discussed it with only one man among those in authority who were serving with the army, and made a truce for four months, in which they were to carry out what had been said. He led the army off at once, without explaining to any of the other allies. The Lacedaemonians and the allies followed his lead as the law required, but among themselves they blamed Agis severely. They thought that when they had had the chance to engage on favorable ground, with the enemy shut in on every side by cavalry and infantry, they were going away without having done anything worthy of their preparations. For this was certainly the finest Hellenic army that had ever been assembled up to that time. It was seen at its best while it was still together at Nemea: the Lacedaemonians in full force, the Arcadians, the Boeotians, the Corinthians, the Sicyonians, the Pellenians, the Phliasians, and the Megarians, all picked men from each people, who seemed a match not only for the Argive alliance but for another one added to it. So the army withdrew, blaming Agis, and the contingents dispersed to their homes. The Argives, for their part, blamed far more severely those who had made the truce without the people; they too thought that the Lacedaemonians had escaped when they would never have a better chance, since the battle would have been fought close to their own city and with many good allies. On the way back, at the Charadrus, where they try cases arising from a campaign before entering the city, they began to stone Thrasylus. He took refuge at the altar and survived; but they confiscated his property.
61 After this a thousand Athenian hoplites and three hundred cavalry arrived to help, with Laches and Nicostratus in command. The Argives, who for all that were reluctant to break the truce with the Lacedaemonians, told them to go away and would not bring them before the people when they wanted to negotiate, until the Mantineans and the Eleans (who were still there) forced them to by their insistence. The Athenians, with Alcibiades present as envoy, told the Argives and the allies that the truce had not been rightly made in the first place without the other allies, and that now (they had come at the right moment) they must take up the war. Having persuaded the allies by these arguments, they all marched at once against Orchomenus in Arcadia, all except the Argives; and they, though persuaded, stayed behind at first, but later they came too. They all sat down before Orchomenus, besieged it, and made assaults on it. They wanted to win it over for other reasons, and also because hostages from Arcadia had been lodged there by the Lacedaemonians. The Orchomenians, fearing the weakness of their wall and the size of the army, and afraid that they would perish before anyone came to help them, since no one was coming, came to terms: they would be allies, give hostages of their own to the Mantineans, and hand over those the Lacedaemonians had deposited there.
62 After this, now that they held Orchomenus, the allies discussed which of the remaining places they should go against first. The Eleans urged Lepreum, the Mantineans Tegea; and the Argives and the Athenians sided with the Mantineans. The Eleans, angry that they had not voted for Lepreum, went home; the rest of the allies made preparations at Mantinea to go against Tegea. Some of the people inside the city were also ready to hand things over to them.
63 When the Lacedaemonians had come back from Argos after making the four-month truce, they blamed Agis severely for not subduing Argos for them, when the chance had been finer than they themselves thought it had ever been before; it was not easy, they said, to get so many allies of such quality together in one place. And when news came that Orchomenus had been taken as well, they were far more indignant still, and in their anger, contrary to their character, they at once resolved that his house should be razed and that he should be fined a hundred thousand drachmas. He begged them to do none of this; he would wipe out the charges by a good deed when he took the field, or else they could do what they liked with him. They held back the fine and the razing, but they made a law for the occasion such as they had never had before: they chose ten Spartiates as his advisers, without whom he was not to have authority to lead an army out of the city.
64 Meanwhile word came to them from their friends in Tegea that unless they came quickly, Tegea would go over from them to the Argives and their allies; it had all but done so already. At this the Lacedaemonians sent a relief force, themselves and the Helots, in full strength, with a speed they had never shown before. They marched to Orestheum in Maenalia, and told those of the Arcadians who were their allies to assemble and follow close behind them to Tegea. They all went as far as Orestheum together; from there they sent back home a sixth part of their own number, containing the oldest and the youngest, to guard things at home, and with the rest of the army they reached Tegea. Not long afterward their Arcadian allies arrived. They also sent to Corinth, the Boeotians, the Phocians, and the Locrians, telling them to come at once to help at Mantinea. But the notice was short for these, and it was not easy to get through enemy territory, which lay across the way between them, unless they were together and had waited for one another; still, they hurried. The Lacedaemonians took with them the Arcadian allies who were present, invaded Mantinean territory, camped near the temple of Heracles, and ravaged the land.
65 When the Argives and their allies saw them, they took up a strong position, hard to approach, and drew up as if for battle. The Lacedaemonians at once advanced against them. They came within a stone’s throw or a javelin’s cast; then one of the older men, seeing that they were going against a strong position, shouted to Agis that he was minded to cure one evil with another, meaning that his present untimely eagerness was meant to make up for his blameworthy withdrawal from Argos. Whether because of the shout, or because some other thought, or the same one, suddenly struck him as well, Agis led the army back again in haste before they engaged. Reaching Tegean territory, he began turning the water into Mantinean territory. The Mantineans and the Tegeans make war over this water, since it does a great deal of damage to whichever side it flows into. He wanted to bring the men down from the hill to stop the diversion of the water, once they learned of it, and to fight the battle on level ground. He stayed there that day, turning the water. The Argives and their allies were at first astonished at the sudden withdrawal at such short range and did not know what to make of it. Then, when the enemy had withdrawn out of sight and they themselves were keeping still and not following, they once more blamed their own generals: before, the Lacedaemonians had been caught in a fine position near Argos and let go, and now they were running away and no one was pursuing; the enemy were getting off safe at their leisure and they themselves were being betrayed. The generals were thrown into confusion for the moment; later they led them down from the hill, advanced onto the level ground, and camped there, intending to go against the enemy.
66 The next day the Argives and their allies formed up in the order in which they meant to fight if they met the enemy. The Lacedaemonians, coming back from the water toward the temple of Heracles to their old camp, saw the enemy at close range, all already drawn up and advanced from the hill. At this moment the Lacedaemonians were more alarmed than at any other time they could remember. Their preparations had to be made at very short notice, and in haste they at once fell into their own order, King Agis directing each step according to the law. When a king is in command, all orders come from him. He himself tells the polemarchs what is needed; they tell the lochagi; these tell the pentecontaters; these in turn tell the enomotarchs; and these tell the enomoty. Any commands they wish to give pass along the same way and arrive quickly. For nearly the whole army of the Lacedaemonians, except a small part, consists of officers under officers, and responsibility for what is done falls on many.
67 On this occasion the Sciritae formed their left wing; they alone of the Lacedaemonians always hold this position, by themselves.9 Next to them were Brasidas’ soldiers from Thrace, and with them the Neodamodes. Then came the Lacedaemonians themselves, their lochi posted one after another, and next to them the Heraeans of Arcadia, after these the Maenalians, and on the right wing the Tegeans, with a few Lacedaemonians holding the end of the line; their cavalry were on both wings. That was how the Lacedaemonians were drawn up. On the opposing side the Mantineans held the right wing, because the action was taking place in their territory. Next to them were their Arcadian allies, then the thousand picked men of the Argives, whom the city had long been training in warfare at public expense; beside them the rest of the Argives, and after them their allies, the Cleonaeans and the Orneates; then, last of all, the Athenians held the left wing, with their own cavalry beside them.
68 Such was the order and the array of both sides. The army of the Lacedaemonians looked larger. But I could not write down the numbers exactly, either for each contingent on each side or for the whole. The number of the Lacedaemonians was unknown because of the secrecy of their government; and the numbers on the other side were not believed, because of men’s habit of boasting about their own forces. Still, from the following calculation one can examine the number of Lacedaemonians present on that occasion. Seven lochi fought, not counting the Sciritae, who numbered six hundred. In each lochus there were four pentecostyes, and in each pentecostys four enomoties. In the front rank of each enomoty four men fought. In depth they were not all drawn up alike, but as each lochagus wished; on the whole they were formed eight deep. Along the whole line, not counting the Sciritae, the front rank was 448 men.
69 When they were about to engage, the generals of each contingent gave exhortations to their own men, of the following kind. The Mantineans were told that the battle would be for their country, and at the same time for empire or slavery: that they should not be robbed of the one after having tasted it, and should not taste the other again. The Argives were told that it was for their ancient leadership and their once equal share in the Peloponnese; that they should not put up with being deprived of them forever, and that they should punish men who were at once their enemies and their neighbors for many wrongs. The Athenians were told that it was a fine thing to fight alongside many good allies and be second to none, and that if they defeated the Lacedaemonians in the Peloponnese, they would make their empire more secure and greater, and no one would ever invade their land again. That was how the Argives and their allies were exhorted. The Lacedaemonians, man by man and with their war songs, gave each other the encouragement, reminding brave men of what they already knew; for they understood that long practice in deeds saves more than a fine speech of words made at short notice.
70 After this they closed. The Argives and their allies advanced eagerly and in a fury; the Lacedaemonians came on slowly, to the music of many flute players stationed among them, not for any religious reason, but so that they would advance evenly, stepping in time, and their line would not break apart, as large armies tend to do as they go in.
71 While they were still closing, King Agis decided to do the following. All armies do this: in engaging they are pushed out rather toward their right wing, and both sides overlap the enemy’s left with their own right. This is because each man, out of fear, brings his unprotected side as close as he can to the shield of the man posted on his right, and thinks that the tighter the locking of shields, the better the cover. The man in the front at the end of the right wing begins it, always eager to keep his own unprotected side away from the enemy, and the rest follow him out of the same fear. On this occasion the Mantineans overlapped the Sciritae far with their wing, and the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeans overlapped the Athenians still farther, by as much as their army was larger. Agis, afraid that his left would be surrounded and thinking that the Mantineans overlapped it too far, signaled to the Sciritae and the Brasideans to move out from the main body and match their line with the Mantineans; and he ordered the polemarchs Hipponoidas and Aristocles to pass across from the right wing with two lochi and throw them into the gap and fill it. He thought that his own right would still have more than enough, and that the line facing the Mantineans would be made firmer.
72 But since he gave the order in the very moment of the advance and at short notice, it came about that Aristocles and Hipponoidas refused to move across; for this offense they were afterward banished from Sparta, being judged to have played the coward. The enemy closed with them first; and when Agis, since the lochi had not come across, ordered the Sciritae to rejoin the main body, these too were no longer able to close the gap. But it was then above all that the Lacedaemonians, though beaten in every point of skill, showed that by their courage they could prevail all the same. When they came to grips with the enemy, the Mantinean right routed their Sciritae and Brasideans, and the Mantineans with their allies and the thousand picked men of the Argives burst in through the gap that had not been closed, cut down the Lacedaemonians, surrounded them, routed them, drove them back to the wagons, and killed some of the older men posted there. In that part of the field the Lacedaemonians were beaten. But with the rest of their army, and especially in the center, where King Agis was and around him the three hundred known as the Knights, they fell on the older men of the Argives, the units called the Five Lochi, the Cleonaeans, the Orneates, and the Athenians posted beside them, and routed them. Most of these did not even wait to come to blows, but gave way the moment the Lacedaemonians came on; some were even trampled underfoot in their haste to escape being caught.
73 When the army of the Argives and their allies had given way in this part, it was now breaking off on either side. At the same time the right wing of the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeans, with the part that overlapped, was surrounding the Athenians, and danger stood around them on both sides, on one side being encircled, on the other already beaten. They would have suffered more than any part of the army if the cavalry they had with them had not been of service. It happened, too, that Agis, when he saw his left in trouble against the Mantineans and the thousand Argives, ordered the whole army to go to the help of the part that was being beaten. When this was done, the Athenians, as the army passed by and swung away from them, escaped at their leisure, and with them the beaten part of the Argives. The Mantineans, their allies, and the picked men of the Argives no longer had any thought of pressing the enemy, but, seeing their own side defeated and the Lacedaemonians bearing down on them, they turned to flight. More of the Mantineans were killed; of the picked men of the Argives most escaped. The flight and retreat, however, were not hard pressed or long; for the Lacedaemonians fight long and stubbornly until they rout the enemy, but once they have routed him, their pursuits are short and do not go far.
74 Such was the battle, or as close to this as possible: by far the greatest of the Hellenic battles for a very long time, and fought by the most considerable cities.10 The Lacedaemonians grounded their arms before the enemy dead, at once set up a trophy, and stripped the bodies; they took up their own dead and carried them back to Tegea, where they were buried, and gave back the enemy dead under truce. There died, of the Argives, Orneates, and Cleonaeans, seven hundred; of the Mantineans, two hundred; of the Athenians with the Aeginetans, two hundred, and both their generals. On the Lacedaemonian side the allies did not suffer enough for any considerable loss; as for the Lacedaemonians themselves, it was hard to learn the truth, but about three hundred were said to have died.
75 When the battle was about to take place, Pleistoanax, the other king, had also come to the rescue with the older and the younger men. He got as far as Tegea, learned of the victory, and went back. The Lacedaemonians sent and turned back the allies from Corinth and from beyond the Isthmus; they themselves went home, dismissed the allies, and celebrated the festival, since it happened to be the time of the Carneia. By this one action they freed themselves of the charge that the Hellenes were then bringing against them, of softness because of the disaster on the island, and of bad judgment and slowness in general. They had been disgraced by fortune, it was now thought, but in spirit they were still the same men. On the day before this battle, it happened that the Epidaurians invaded Argive territory in full force, thinking it stripped of men, and killed many of the guards who had been left behind when the Argives marched out. After the battle three thousand Elean hoplites came to help the Mantineans, and a thousand Athenians besides those already there; and all these allies marched at once against Epidaurus while the Lacedaemonians were celebrating the Carneia. They divided the work among them and began to wall the city off. The others gave up, but the Athenians at once finished the part assigned to them, the fortification of the headland where the Heraeum is. All of them joined in leaving a garrison in this fort, and then they withdrew, each to his own city. And the summer ended.
76 At the very beginning of the following winter, as soon as they had celebrated the Carneia, the Lacedaemonians marched out, and on reaching Tegea they sent proposals for a settlement ahead to Argos. They had men there who had long been friendly to them and wanted to overthrow the democracy at Argos; and now that the battle had been fought, these men were far better able to persuade the many to come to terms. Their plan was first to make a treaty with the Lacedaemonians, then later an alliance as well, and only then to attack the people. Lichas son of Arcesilaus, proxenus of the Argives at Lacedaemon, arrived from the Lacedaemonians at Argos with two proposals: one setting out the terms if the Argives wished to make war, the other if they wished to keep the peace. After much argument (Alcibiades happened to be there too), the men who were working for the Lacedaemonians, now daring to act in the open, persuaded the Argives to accept the proposal for a settlement. It was as follows.
77 “The assembly of the Lacedaemonians resolves to come to an agreement with the Argives on the following terms:11 The Argives shall give back the children to the Orchomenians and the men to the Maenalians, and shall give back to the Lacedaemonians the men in Mantinea; they shall withdraw from Epidaurus and pull down the fort there. If the Athenians do not withdraw from Epidaurus, they shall be enemies of the Argives and the Lacedaemonians, and of the allies of the Lacedaemonians and the allies of the Argives. If the Lacedaemonians hold any children, they shall give them back to all the cities. Concerning the offering to the god, the Argives, if they wish, shall impose an oath on the Epidaurians; if not, they shall swear it themselves. All the cities in the Peloponnese, both small and great, shall be autonomous according to ancestral custom. If anyone from outside the Peloponnese comes against the land of the Peloponnese with intent to harm, the Peloponnesians shall take counsel together and resist him, in whatever way seems most just to them. All allies of the Lacedaemonians outside the Peloponnese shall stand on the same footing as the Lacedaemonians, and the allies of the Argives shall stand on the same footing as the Argives, keeping their own territory. This agreement shall be shown to the allies, and they shall join in it if they so resolve. If the allies resolve otherwise, they shall send it back home.”
78 The Argives accepted this proposal first, and the Lacedaemonian army withdrew from Tegea and went home. After this, now that there was intercourse between them, the same men not long afterward brought it about that the Argives gave up their alliance with the Mantineans, the Athenians, and the Eleans and made a treaty and an alliance with the Lacedaemonians. The terms were as follows.
79 “The Lacedaemonians and the Argives resolve that there shall be a treaty and an alliance for fifty years on the following terms. They shall give and receive justice on fair and equal terms according to ancestral custom. The other cities in the Peloponnese shall share in the treaty and the alliance as autonomous and independent cities, keeping their own territory, and giving and receiving justice on fair and equal terms according to ancestral custom. All allies of the Lacedaemonians outside the Peloponnese shall stand on the same footing as the Lacedaemonians; and the allies of the Argives shall stand on the same footing as the Argives, keeping their own territory. If a joint expedition is needed anywhere, the Lacedaemonians and the Argives shall take counsel and decide in whatever way is most just for the allies. If any of the cities, either inside or outside the Peloponnese, has a dispute, whether over boundaries or over anything else, it shall be settled by arbitration. If one allied city quarrels with another, they shall go to some city that both cities consider impartial. Private citizens shall have their cases tried according to ancestral custom.”
80 So this treaty and alliance had been made, and each side settled whatever it held of the other’s, whether taken in war or otherwise. Acting in common now, they voted to receive no herald or embassy from the Athenians unless they left the Peloponnese and abandoned their forts, and to make no peace or war with anyone except together. They pursued their aims with vigor, and both sent envoys to the Thracian region and to Perdiccas, and persuaded Perdiccas to swear to join them. He did not, however, break with the Athenians at once, but he meant to, because he saw that the Argives had; he himself was of Argive descent in origin. They also renewed their old oaths with the Chalcidians and swore new ones. The Argives sent envoys to the Athenians too, telling them to abandon the fort at Epidaurus. The Athenians, seeing that their men were few against the more numerous garrison who shared it, sent Demosthenes to bring their own men out. When he arrived he held an athletic contest outside the fort as a pretext, and when the rest of the garrison had gone out he shut the gates. Later the Athenians renewed their treaty with the Epidaurians and themselves gave the fort back.
81 After the Argives had left the alliance, the Mantineans too held out at first, but then, unable to do so without the Argives, they also came to terms with the Lacedaemonians and gave up their rule over the cities. The Lacedaemonians and the Argives, a thousand of each, made an expedition together: the Lacedaemonians first went to Sicyon by themselves and put its affairs more into the hands of the few; and after that the two together overthrew the democracy at Argos too, and an oligarchy friendly to the Lacedaemonians was established. These things happened toward spring, as the winter was ending. And so the fourteenth year of this war ended.
82 The following summer the Dians on Athos revolted from the Athenians to the Chalcidians, and the Lacedaemonians settled affairs in Achaea, which had not before been in a state favorable to them. The people of Argos, gathering their strength little by little and recovering their courage, attacked the few, choosing the very time of the Gymnopaediae at Lacedaemon.12 A battle was fought in the city and the people won; they killed some and drove out others. The Lacedaemonians, as long as their friends were sending for them, did not come for some time; but they put off the Gymnopaediae and came to help. At Tegea they learned that the few had been defeated, and they refused to go any farther, though those who had escaped begged them to, and went back home and celebrated the Gymnopaediae. Later envoys came from those in the city and from the Argives outside; the allies were present, and much was said on both sides. The Lacedaemonians judged that those in the city were in the wrong and decided to march against Argos, but there were delays and postponements. Meanwhile the people of Argos, afraid of the Lacedaemonians, began to court the Athenian alliance again, believing it would be of the greatest benefit to them, and they built long walls down to the sea, so that if they were shut off from the land, they could be helped by bringing in supplies by sea with the help of the Athenians. Some of the cities in the Peloponnese were also privy to the building of the walls. The Argives built in full force, themselves, their women, and their household slaves; and carpenters and masons came to them from Athens. And the summer ended.
83 The following winter, when the Lacedaemonians learned that they were building the walls, they marched against Argos, they and their allies, except the Corinthians. They also had something being arranged for them inside Argos itself. The army was led by Agis son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians. What they thought was already prepared in the city did not go forward; but they took the walls that were being built and pulled them down, took Hysiae, a place in Argive territory, killed all the free men they captured, and withdrew and dispersed to their cities. After this the Argives in turn marched into the territory of Phlius, ravaged it, and went away, because the Phliasians were harboring their exiles; most of these had settled there. The same winter the Athenians also blockaded the Macedonians. They charged Perdiccas with the sworn league he had made with the Argives and the Lacedaemonians, and with having played false to the alliance when they had prepared to lead an army against the Chalcidians in the Thracian region and against Amphipolis under the command of Nicias son of Niceratus; the expedition had been broken up chiefly by his withdrawal.13 So he was an enemy. So this winter ended, and with it the fifteenth year of this war.
84 The following summer Alcibiades sailed to Argos with twenty ships and seized three hundred Argives who were thought still to be suspect and to favor the Lacedaemonians; and the Athenians deposited them in the nearby islands that they ruled. The Athenians also made an expedition against the island of Melos with thirty ships of their own, six Chian, and two Lesbian, and with 1,200 hoplites of their own, three hundred archers, and twenty mounted archers, and about 1,500 hoplites from the allies and the islanders.14 The Melians are colonists of the Lacedaemonians, and they would not submit to the Athenians as the other islanders did. At first they were subject to neither side and kept quiet; then, when the Athenians tried to force them by ravaging their land, they went into open war. So the generals Cleomedes son of Lycomedes and Teisias son of Teisimachus, after encamping in their territory with this force, sent envoys to hold talks first, before doing any harm to the land. The Melians did not bring them before the people, but told them to state their business before the magistrates and the few.
85 The Athenian envoys spoke as follows. “Since our discussion is not to be held before the people, evidently so that the many will not hear from us, all at once and in an unbroken speech, arguments that are attractive and go unrefuted, and so be deceived (we understand that this is the meaning of your bringing us before the few), you who sit here should make it safer still. Do not you either judge it all in one speech; but take us up at once, point by point, wherever something does not seem to be rightly said, and decide on it. And first tell us whether what we propose is acceptable.”
86 The Melian council replied: “The reasonableness of instructing one another at leisure is not to be faulted; but the acts of war, which are already here and not in the future, plainly do not fit with it. We see that you have come to be judges yourselves of what will be said, and that the outcome is likely to be this: if we prevail on the point of justice and for that reason do not yield, it brings us war; if we are persuaded, slavery.”
87 Athenians: Well, then, if you have met to reckon up suspicions about the future, or for anything else than to take counsel for the safety of your city on the basis of present facts and what you see before you, we will stop. If you are here for that, we will speak.
88 Melians: It is natural and pardonable for men in such a position to turn in many directions, in what they say and what they think. This meeting, however, is about our safety; and let the discussion go forward, if you wish, in the way you propose.
89 Athenians: For our part, we will not offer you a long and unconvincing speech with fine words: that we hold our empire by right because we overthrew the Mede, or that we are attacking you now because we have been wronged. And we ask you not to think you will persuade us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians in the war, though you are their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong. Instead, let us aim at what is possible on the basis of what both of us really think, since you know as well as we do that in human reckoning justice is decided only between those under equal necessity, while the possible is what the strong exact and the weak concede.
90 Melians: As we think, at any rate, it is useful (we must speak of the useful, since you have laid it down in this way that we talk of advantage instead of justice) that you not destroy what is a common good: that a man who is in danger should always be able to count on what is fair and just, and even to gain something by persuading others with arguments that fall short of strict proof. And this is no less in your interest, since if you fall you would become an example to others of the heaviest vengeance.
91 Athenians: For our part, even if our empire should come to an end, we are not dismayed at its end. It is not those who rule over others, like the Lacedaemonians, who are terrible to the defeated (and besides, our contest is not with the Lacedaemonians), but subjects who of their own accord attack their former rulers and overpower them. Let that risk be left to us. What we will now show you is that we are here for the benefit of our empire, and that what we are about to say is for the safety of your city; for we want to rule you without trouble, and to have you saved to the advantage of us both.
92 Melians: And how could it turn out as advantageous for us to be slaves as for you to rule?
93 Athenians: Because you would be able to submit before suffering the most terrible things, and we would profit by not destroying you.
94 Melians: So you would not accept our keeping quiet, being friends instead of enemies, and allies of neither side?
95 Athenians: No; your hostility does not harm us as much as your friendship would. In the eyes of our subjects, your friendship would be a proof of our weakness, and your hatred a proof of our power.
96 Melians: Do your subjects regard what is reasonable in such a way that they put in the same class those who have nothing to do with you and those, most of them your own colonists and some of them rebels, whom you have subdued?
97 Athenians: They think that neither lacks a just claim, but that those who stay free do so because of their strength, and that we do not attack them because we are afraid. So, apart from adding to our empire, you would give us security by being subdued, especially if you, islanders and weaker than others, should fail to get the better of the masters of the sea.
98 Melians: And do you not think there is security in the other course? Here again, since you have driven us away from arguments of justice and are trying to persuade us to give in to your interest, we in our turn must tell you what is useful to us and try to persuade you, if it happens that the same thing is useful to you. How will you not make enemies of all who are now allies of neither side, when they look at what is happening here and conclude that some day you will come against them too? And in doing this, what are you doing but strengthening the enemies you already have, and bringing in, against their will, others who never meant to become your enemies?
99 Athenians: We do not think that those are more dangerous to us who live somewhere on the mainland, and who, being free, will be slow to take any precautions against us. We fear rather the islanders who are subject to no one, as you are, and those who are already chafing under the compulsion of our rule. These are the ones most likely to give themselves up to unreason and bring both themselves and us into a danger they can see coming.
100 Melians: Surely, then, if you run so great a risk so as not to lose your empire, and those who are already slaves run it to be rid of it, it would be great baseness and cowardice in us, who are still free, not to try everything before being enslaved.
101 Athenians: No, not if you consider it sensibly. For you the contest is not on equal terms, about courage, so as to avoid incurring disgrace; the question before you is rather about safety, about not standing up against those who are far stronger.
102 Melians: But we know that in war fortune sometimes falls more impartially than the difference in numbers on each side would suggest. And for us, to give in at once is to give up hope, while if we act, there is still a hope of standing upright.
103 Athenians: Hope is a comfort in danger. Those who use it from a position of abundance it may harm, but it does not ruin them. But for those who stake all they have on a single throw (hope is by nature extravagant), it is recognized for what it is only when they have fallen, and once it is known, it leaves them nothing with which to guard against it anymore. Do not wish to suffer this, you who are weak and hang on a single turn of the scale; do not be like the many who, when they could still be saved by human means, turn, once visible hopes have abandoned them in their distress, to invisible ones: to prophecy and oracles and all such things that, along with hopes, bring men to ruin.
104 Melians: We too, you may be sure, think it hard to contend against your power and against fortune, unless it is to be on equal terms. Nevertheless we trust that in fortune from the gods we will not come off worse, because we stand as men who are righteous against men who are not just; and that for what we lack in power, the alliance of the Lacedaemonians will make up. They are bound to help us, if for no other reason, then because of our kinship and for shame. So our confidence is not so altogether unreasonable.
105 Athenians: As for the gods’ goodwill, we do not think that we will fall short of it either. Nothing we claim and nothing we do goes beyond what men believe about the gods or what they want for themselves. For of the gods we believe, and of men we know plainly, that by a necessity of their nature they always rule wherever they have the power. We did not lay down this law, nor were we the first to use it once laid down; we took it over as something that existed, and we will leave it to exist for all time, and we make use of it, knowing that you and anyone else, if you came to have the same power as we have, would do the same. So, as far as the gods are concerned, we have no reason to fear that we will come off worse. As for your opinion about the Lacedaemonians, your belief that they will help you out of shame, we bless your innocence of evil but do not envy your folly. Among themselves, and in the customs of their own country, the Lacedaemonians practice excellence to the highest degree. But as to how they behave toward others, though there is much one could say, one could sum it up most clearly by saying that of all men we know, they most conspicuously consider what is pleasant to be honorable, and what is advantageous to be just. And such a frame of mind does not favor your present unreasonable hope of safety.
106 Melians: But that is the very point on which we now trust them most, their own advantage: that they will not want to betray the Melians, their colonists, and so be distrusted by those of the Hellenes who are friendly to them and be of use to their enemies.
107 Athenians: Then you do not think that advantage goes with safety, while justice and honor are practiced with danger? That is a danger the Lacedaemonians, for the most part, are least willing to face.
108 Melians: But we think that they would be more willing to take on dangers for our sake, and that they would consider them more secure than for others, inasmuch as we lie near the Peloponnese for action, and in sentiment are more to be trusted than others because of our kinship.
109 Athenians: What makes men who are called in to join a fight feel secure is not the goodwill of those who call them in, but a clear superiority in power for action; and the Lacedaemonians look to this even more than the rest. At any rate, because they distrust their own resources, they attack their neighbors only with many allies. So it is not likely that they will cross over to an island while we are masters of the sea.
110 Melians: But they could send others. The Cretan sea is wide, and in it it is harder for those who control it to catch someone than for those who want to slip through to get away safe. And if they failed in this, they might turn against your own land, and against the rest of your allies whom Brasidas did not reach; and your struggle will then be not for a country that is nothing to you, but for your own alliance and territory.
111 Athenians: One of these things might happen; then you too would learn by experience what you are not ignorant of, that the Athenians have never once withdrawn from a siege for fear of anyone else. But it strikes us that, though you said you would take counsel for your safety, you have said nothing in all this discussion that men could rely on in expecting to be saved. Your strongest supports are hopes for the future, and what you actually have is too little to prevail against the forces already ranged against you. You show great unreason in your thinking, unless, after sending us out, you reach some other decision more sensible than this. Surely you will not turn to that sense of shame which, in dangers that are disgraceful and plainly foreseen, destroys men more than anything else. Many, still seeing clearly what they were heading into, have been drawn on by the power of a seductive word, the thing called disgrace; overcome by the word, they have in fact fallen willingly into irreparable disasters, and have brought on themselves a disgrace more disgraceful, because it came with folly, than any that comes by chance. If you take counsel well, you will guard against this, and you will not think it unseemly to give way to the greatest city when it offers you moderate terms: to become allies, keeping your own land and paying tribute; and when you are given a choice between war and safety, not to insist out of contentiousness on the worse. Those who do not give way to their equals, who behave well toward their superiors, and are moderate toward their inferiors, are the most likely to succeed. So think it over when we have withdrawn, and consider again and again that it is your country you are deciding about, your only one, and that on one decision it will stand or fall, as the decision succeeds or fails.
112 The Athenians withdrew from the conference. The Melians, left to themselves, decided on much the same as they had said in reply, and answered as follows. “Our decision, Athenians, is the same as at first. We will not in a short time take away the freedom of a city that has now been inhabited for seven hundred years; we will trust in the fortune from the gods that has preserved it up to now, and in help from men, and from the Lacedaemonians, and try to save ourselves. We invite you to let us be your friends, and enemies to neither side, and to withdraw from our land after making a treaty that seems suitable to both.”
113 That was the Melians’ answer. The Athenians, as they were now breaking off the discussion, said: “Well, you alone, as it seems to us, judging from these decisions, regard the future as clearer than what is before your eyes, and look on what is unseen, because you wish it, as already happening. You have staked the most on the Lacedaemonians, on fortune, and on hopes, and trusted them the most, and you will be most completely ruined.”
114 The Athenian envoys went back to the army. Their generals, since the Melians would not submit at all, at once turned to war, divided the work among the cities, and walled the Melians in all around. Later the Athenians left a guard of their own and allied troops, by land and by sea, and withdrew with the greater part of the army. Those who were left stayed on and besieged the place.
115 About the same time the Argives invaded the territory of Phlius, were ambushed by the Phliasians and their own exiles, and lost about eighty men. The Athenians at Pylos took much plunder from the Lacedaemonians. Even so the Lacedaemonians did not on that account renounce the treaty and make war on them, but they proclaimed that any of their people who wished might plunder the Athenians. The Corinthians went to war with the Athenians over some private disputes of their own; the rest of the Peloponnesians kept quiet. The Melians made a night attack on the part of the Athenian siege wall opposite the agora and took it; they killed men, brought in grain and as many other useful things as they could, and withdrew and stayed quiet. And the Athenians made better provision for the guard from then on. And the summer ended.
116 The following winter the Lacedaemonians were about to march into Argive territory, but when the sacrifices for crossing the frontier did not turn out favorably, they went back. Because of their intended invasion the Argives suspected some of the people in the city; they arrested some, and others escaped. About the same time the Melians again took another part of the Athenian siege wall, where there were not many guards. After this another army came out from Athens, commanded by Philocrates son of Demeas. Now besieged in force, and with some treachery inside as well, the Melians surrendered to the Athenians on their own initiative, on condition that the Athenians should decide their fate. The Athenians killed all the Melians of military age whom they took, and enslaved the women and children. They settled the place themselves, sending out five hundred colonists later.
Notes
1. The Pythian games at Delphi, held in late summer every fourth year; here the summer of 422 BC. The one-year truce had been made in spring 423 (Book 4).
2. Hagnon son of Nicias, an Athenian general, had founded Amphipolis as an Athenian colony in 437/6 BC. Honors as founder (oikistēs) were paid to him as a hero; the Amphipolitans transferred them to Brasidas.
3. Pleistoanax, king of Sparta, had withdrawn from an invasion of Attica in 446 BC and was exiled on a charge of bribery; he was recalled about 427/6 BC.
4. The Peace of Nicias, spring 421 BC. The City (Great) Dionysia was an Athenian festival in the month Elaphebolion (March–April).
5. Thucydides commanded an Athenian squadron in the Thracian region in 424 BC and failed to save Amphipolis from Brasidas (Book 4, chapters 104–107).
6. Neodamodes: Helots who had been freed by the Spartan state, often for military service.
7. A proxenus was a citizen of one city who represented the interests of another city in his own. Alcibiades’ grandfather, also named Alcibiades, had renounced the Spartan proxeny.
8. The Carneia, a festival of Apollo held by Dorian states in late summer, during which campaigning was avoided. The Argives (chapter 54) kept their calendar fixed on one day so that the holy month would not begin.
9. The Sciritae came from the Sciritis, a hill district on the northern border of Laconia; they were Perioeci who served as a special unit.
10. The first battle of Mantinea, summer 418 BC.
11. The texts of this agreement and of the treaty in chapter 79 are given in the Doric dialect of Sparta.
12. The Gymnopaediae, a Spartan festival of dances by naked boys and men, held in midsummer.
13. The Greek word translated “withdrawal” is corrupt in the manuscripts; the sense is uncertain.
14. Summer 416 BC. Melos, in the southern Cyclades, was a Dorian island said to have been settled from Sparta.