[612] Herodot. ix. 64.
[613] Thucyd. i, 102; iii, 54; iv, 57.
[614] Thucyd. i, 102. τὴν μὲν ὑποψίαν οὐ δηλοῦντες, εἰπόντες δὲ ὅτι οὐδὲν προσδέονται αὐτῶν ἔτι.
Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fast. Hellen. ann. 464-461 B. C.), following Plutarch, recognizes two Lacedæmonian requests to Athens, and two Athenian expeditions to the aid of the Spartans, both under Kimon; the first in 464 B. C., immediately on the happening of the earthquake and consequent revolt,—the second in 461 B. C., after the war had lasted some time.
In my judgment, there is no ground for supposing more than one application made to Athens, and one expedition. The duplication has arisen from Plutarch, who has construed too much as historical reality the comic exaggeration of Aristophanês (Aristoph. Lysistrat. 1138; Plutarch, Kimon, 16). The heroine of the latter, Lysistrata, wishing to make peace between the Lacedæmonians and Athenians, and reminding each of the services which they had received from the other, might permit herself to say to the Lacedæmonians: “Your envoy, Perikleidas, came to Athens, pale with terror, and put himself a suppliant at the altar to entreat our help as a matter of life and death, while Poseidon was still shaking the earth, and the Messenians were pressing you hard: then Kimon with four thousand hoplites went and achieved your complete salvation.” This is all very telling and forcible, as a portion of the Aristophanic play, but there is no historical truth in it except the fact of an application made and an expedition sent in consequence.
We know that the earthquake took place at the time when the siege of Thasos was yet going on, because it was the reason which prevented the Lacedæmonians from aiding the besieged by an invasion of Attica. But Kimon commanded at the siege of Thasos (Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14); accordingly, he could not have gone as commander to Laconia at the time when this first expedition is alleged to have been undertaken.
Next, Thucydidês acknowledges only one expedition: nor, indeed, does Diodorus (xi, 64), though this is of minor consequence. Now mere silence on the part of Thucydidês, in reference to the events of a period which he only professes to survey briefly, is not always a very forcible negative argument. But in this case, his account of the expedition of 461 B. C., with its very important consequences, is such as to exclude the supposition that he knew of any prior expedition, two or three years earlier. Had he known of any such, he could not have written the account which now stands in his text. He dwells especially on the prolongation of the war, and on the incapacity of the Lacedæmonians for attacking walls, as the reasons why they invoked the Athenians as well as their other allies: he implies that their presence in Laconia was a new and threatening incident: moreover, when he tells us how much the Athenians were incensed by their abrupt and mistrustful dismissal, he could not have omitted to notice, as an aggravation of this feeling, that, only two or three years before, they had rescued Lacedæmon from the brink of ruin. Let us add, that the supposition of Sparta, the first military power in Greece, and distinguished for her unintermitting discipline, being reduced all at once to a condition of such utter helplessness as to owe her safety to foreign intervention,—is highly improbable in itself: inadmissible, except on very good evidence.
For the reasons here stated. I reject the first expedition into Laconia mentioned in Plutarch.
[615] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 16.
[616] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 16. Ὁ δ’ Ἴων ἀπομνημονεύει καὶ τὸν λόγον, ᾧ μάλιστα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐκίνησε, παρακαλὼν μήτε τὴν Ἑλλάδα χωλὴν, μήτε τὴν πόλιν ἑτερόζυγα, περιϊδεῖν γεγενημένην.