private grounds of quarrel, commenced hostilities against the Athenians'. Yet still Sparta and her allies remained in a state of formal peace with Athens: the Athenians resisted all the repeated solicitations of the Argeians to induce them to make a landing on any part of Laconia and commit devastation2. Nor was the licence of free intercourse for individuals as yet suspended. We cannot doubt that the Athenians were invited to the Olympic festival of 416 B.C. (the 91st Olympiad), and sent thither their solemn legation along with those of Sparta and other Dorian Greeks. Now that they had again become allies of Argos, the Athenians probably found out, more fully than they had before known, the intrigue carried on by the former Argeian government with the Macedonian Perdikkas. The effects of these intrigues however had made themselves felt even earlier in the conduct of that prince, who, having as an ally of Athens engaged to cooperate with an Athenian expedition projected under Nikias for the spring or summer of 417 B.C. against the Chalkidians of Thrace and Amphipolis-now withdrew his concurrence, receded from the alliance of Athens, and frustrated the whole scheme of expedition. The Athenians accordingly placed the ports of Mace ' Thucyd. v. 115. 2 Thucyd. vi. 105. Andokidês affirms, that the war was resumed by Athens against Sparta on the persuasion of the Argeians (Orat. de Pac. c. 1, 6, 3, 31. p. 93-105). This assertion is indeed partially true: the alliance with Argos was one of the causes of the resumption of war, but only one among others, some of them more powerful. Thucydidês tells us that the persuasions of Argos, to induce Athens to throw up her alliance with Sparta, were repeated and unavailing. Relations of with PerMacedonia. Athens dikkas of Negligence of Athens donia under naval blockade, proclaiming Perdikkas an enemy'. Nearly five years had elapsed since the defeat of about Am- Kleon, without any fresh attempt to recover Am phipolis: improvi dence of Nikias and the peaceparty: adventurous speculations of Alkibiadês. phipolis: the project just alluded to appears to have been the first. The proceedings of the Athenians with regard to this important town afford ample proof of that want of wisdom on the part of their leading men Nikias and Alkibiadês, and of erroneous tendencies on the part of the body of the citizens, which we shall gradually find conducting their empire to ruin. Among all their possessions out of Attica, there was none so valuable as Amphipolis: the centre of a great commercial and mining region-situated on a large river and lake which the Athenian navy could readily command— and claimed by them with reasonable justice, since it was their original colony, planted by their wisest statesman Periklês. It had been lost only through unpardonable negligence on the part of their generals; and when lost, we should have expected to see the chief energies of Athens directed to the recovery of it; the more so, as if once recovered, it admitted of being made sure and retained as a future possession, Kleon is the only leading man who at once proclaims to his countrymen the important truth that it never can be recovered except by force. He strenuously urges his countrymen to make the requisite military effort, and prevails upon them in part to do so, but the attempt disgracefully fails-partly through his own incompetence as com mander, whether his undertaking of that duty was a matter of choice or of constraint-partly through the strong opposition and antipathy against him from so large a portion of his fellow-citizens, which rendered the military force not hearty in the enterprise. Next, Nikias, Lachês, and Alkibiadês, all concur in making peace and alliance with the Lacedæmonians, under express promise and purpose to procure the restoration of Amphipolis. But after a series of diplomatic proceedings which display as much silly credulity in Nikias as selfish deceit in Alkibiadês, the result becomes evident, as Kleon had insisted, that peace will not restore to them Amphipolis, and that it can only be regained by force. The fatal defect of Nikias is now conspicuously seen; his inertness of character and incapacity of decided or energetic effort. When he discovered that he had been out-manoeuvred by the Lacedæmonian diplomacy, and had fatally misadvised his countrymen into making important cessions on the faith of equivalents to come, we might have expected to find him spurred on by indignant repentance for this mistake, and putting forth his own strongest efforts, as well as those of his country, in order to recover those portions of her empire which the peace had promised, but did not restore. Instead of which he exhibits no effective movement, while Alkibiadês begins to display the defects of his political character, yet more dangerous than those of Nikias-the passion for showy, precarious, boundless, and even perilous novelties. It is only in the year 417 B.C., after the defeat of Mantineia had put an end to the political specula Projected contention of ostracism be tween Nikias and tions of Alkibiadês in the interior of Peloponnesus, that Nikias projects an expedition against Amphipolis; and even then it is projected only contingent upon the aid of Perdikkas, a prince of notorious perfidy. It was not by any half-exertions of force that the place could be regained, as the defeat of Kleon had sufficiently proved. We obtain from these proceedings a fair measure of the foreign politics of Athens, at this time, during what is called the peace of Nikias, preparing us for that melancholy catastrophe which will be developed in the coming chapters--where she is brought near to ruin by the defects of Nikias and Alkibiadês combined: for by singular misfortune, she does not reap the benefit of the good qualities of either. It was in one of the three years between 420-416 B.C., though we do not know in which-that the vote of ostracism took place, arising out of the conAlkibiades. tention between Nikias and Alkibiadês'. The political antipathy between the two having reached a point of great violence, it was proposed that a vote of ostracism should be taken, and this proposition (probably made by the partisans of Nikias, since Proposition supported by Hyperbolus. 1 Dr. Thirwall (History of Greece, vol. iii. ch. xxiv. p. 360) places this vote of ostracism in midwinter or early spring of 415 B.C., immediately before the Sicilian expedition. His grounds for this opinion are derived from the Oration called Andokidês against Alkibiadês, the genuineness of which he seems to accept (see his Appendix II. on that subject, vol. iii. p. 494, seq.). The more frequently I read over this Oration, the more do I feel persuaded that it is a spurious composition of one or two generations after the time to which it professes to refer. My reasons for this opinion have been already stated in previous notes. I cannot think that Dr. Thirlwall's Appendix is successful in removing the objections against the genuineness of the speech. See my preceding vol. vi. ch. xlvii. p. 8, note. Alkibiadês was the person most likely to be reputed dangerous) was adopted by the people. Hyperbolus the lamp-maker, son of Chremês, a speaker of considerable influence in the public assembly, strenuously supported it, hating Nikias not less than Alkibiadês. Hyperbolus is named by Aristophanês as having succeeded Kleon in the mastership of the rostrum in the Pnyx': if this were true, his supposed demagogic pre-eminence would commence about September 422 B.C., the period of the death of Kleon. Long before that time, however, he had been among the chief butts of the comic authors, who ascribe to him the same baseness, dishonesty, impudence, and malignity in accusation, as that which they fasten upon Kleon, though in language which seems to imply an inferior idea of his power. And it may be doubted whether Hyperbolus ever succeeded to the same influence as had been enjoyed by Kleon, when we observe that Thucydidês does not name him in any of the important debates which took place at and after the peace of Nikias. Thucydidês only mentions him once-in 411 B.C., while he was in banishment under sentence of ostracism, and resident at Samos. He terms him, "one Hyperbolus, a person of bad character, who had been ostracised, not from fear of dangerous excess of dignity and power, but through his wickedness and his being felt as a disgrace to the city." This sen 1 Aristophan. Pac. 680. 2 Thucyd. viii. 73. Υπέρβολόν τέ τινα τῶν ̓Αθηναίων, μοχθηρὸν ἄνθρωπον, ώστρακισμένον οὐ διὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἀξιώματος φόβον, ἀλλὰ διὰ πονηρίαν καὶ αἰσχύνην τῆς πόλεως. According to Androtion (Fragm. 48, ed. Didot)—ὠστρακισμένον διὰ φαυλότητα. Compare about Hyperbolus, Plutarch, Nikias, c. 11; Plutarch, Alki VOL, VII. L |