Neither of the four contracting powers shall grant passage to troops through their own territory, or the territory of allies over whom they may at the time be exercising command, either by land or sea, unless upon joint resolution.[78]
In case auxiliary troops shall be required and sent under this treaty, the city sending shall furnish their maintenance for the space of thirty days, from the day of their entrance upon the territory of the city requiring. Should their services be needed for a longer period, the city requiring shall furnish their maintenance, at the rate of three Æginæan oboli for each hoplite, light-armed or archer, and of one Æginæan drachma or six oboli for each horseman, per day. The city requiring shall possess the command, so long as the service required shall be in her territory. But if any expedition shall be undertaken by joint resolution, then the command shall be shared equally between all.
Such were the substantive conditions of the new alliance. Provision was then made for the oaths,—by whom? where? when? in what words? how often? they were to be taken. Athens was to swear on behalf of herself and her allies; but Argos, Elis, and Mantineia, with their respective allies, were to swear by separate cities. The oaths were to be renewed every four years; by Athens, within thirty days before each Olympic festival, at Argos, Elis, and Mantineia; by these three cities, at Athens, ten days before each festival of the greater Panathenæa. “The words of the treaty of peace and alliance, and the oaths sworn, shall be engraven on stone columns, and put up in the temples of each of the four cities; and also upon a brazen column, to be put up by joint cost at Olympia, for the festival now approaching.”
“The four cities may, by joint consent, make any change they please in the provisions of this treaty, without violating their oaths.”[79]
The conclusion of this new treaty introduced a greater degree of complication into the grouping and association of the Grecian cities than had ever before been known. The ancient Spartan confederacy, and the Athenian empire still subsisted. A peace had been concluded between them, ratified by the formal vote of the majority of the confederates, yet not accepted by several of the minority. Not merely peace, but also special alliance had been concluded between Athens and Sparta; and a special alliance between Sparta and Bœotia. Corinth, member of the Spartan confederacy, was also member of a defensive alliance with Argos, Mantineia, and Elis; which three states had concluded a more intimate alliance, first with each other (without Corinth), and now recently with Athens. Yet both Athens and Sparta still retained the alliance[80] concluded between themselves, without formal rupture on either side, though Athens still complained that the treaty had not been fulfilled. No relations whatever subsisted between Argos and Sparta. Between Athens and Bœotia there was an armistice terminable at ten days’ notice. Lastly, Corinth could not be prevailed upon, in spite of repeated solicitation from the Argeians, to join the new alliance of Athens with Argos: so that no relations subsisted between Corinth and Athens; while the Corinthians began, though faintly, to resume their former tendencies towards Sparta.[81]
The alliance between Athens and Argos, of which particulars have just been given, was concluded not long before the Olympic festival of the 90th Olympiad, or 420 B.C.: the festival being about the beginning of July, the treaty might be in May.[82] That festival was memorable, on more than one ground. It was the first which had been celebrated since the conclusion of the peace, the leading clause of which had been expressly introduced to guarantee to all Greeks free access to the great Pan-Hellenic temples, with liberty of sacrificing, consulting the oracle, and witnessing the matches. For the last eleven years, including two Olympic festivals, Athens herself, and apparently all the numerous allies of Athens, had been excluded from sending their solemn legation, or theôry, and from attending as spectators, at the Olympic games.[83] Now that such exclusion was removed, and that the Eleian heralds (who came to announce the approaching games and proclaim the truce connected with them) again trod the soil of Attica,—the Athenian visit was felt both by themselves and by others as a novelty. Some curiosity was entertained to see what figure the theôry of Athens would make as to show and splendor. Nor were there wanting spiteful rumors, that Athens had been so much impoverished by the war, as to be prevented from appearing with appropriate magnificence at the altar and in the presence of Olympic Zeus.
Alkibiadês took pride in silencing these surmises, as well as in glorifying his own name and person, by a display more imposing than had ever been previously beheld. He had already distinguished himself in the local festivals and liturgies of Athens by an ostentation surpassing Athenian rivals: but he now felt himself standing forward as the champion and leader of Athens before Greece. He had discredited his political rival Nikias, given a new direction to the politics of Athens by the Argeian alliance, and was about to commence a series of intra-Peloponnesian operations against the Lacedæmonians. On all these grounds he determined that his first appearance on the plain of Olympia should impose upon all beholders. The Athenian theôry, of which he was a member, was set out with first-rate splendor, and with the amplest show of golden ewers, censers, etc., for the public sacrifice and procession.[84] But when the chariot-races came on, Alkibiadês himself appeared as competitor at his own cost,—not merely with one well-equipped chariot and four, which the richest Greeks had hitherto counted as an extraordinary personal glory, but with the prodigious number of seven distinct chariots, each with a team of four horses. And so superior was their quality, that one of his chariots gained a first prize, and another a second prize, so that Alkibiadês was twice crowned with sprigs of the sacred olive-tree, and twice proclaimed by the herald. Another of his seven chariots also came in fourth: but no crown or proclamation, it seems, was awarded to any after the second in order. We must recollect that he had competitors from all parts of Greece to contend against, not merely private men, but even despots and governments. Nor was this all. The tent which the Athenian theôrs provided for their countrymen, visitors to the games, was handsomely adorned; but a separate tent, which Alkibiadês himself provided for a public banquet to celebrate his triumph, together with the banquet itself, was set forth on a scale still more stately and expensive. The rich allies of Athens—Ephesus, Chios, and Lesbos—are said to have lent him their aid in enhancing this display. It is highly probable that they would be glad to cultivate his favor, as he had now become one of the first men in Athens, and was in an ascendent course. But we must farther recollect that they, as well as Athens, had been excluded from the Olympic festival, so that their own feelings on first returning might well prompt them to take a genuine interest in this imposing reappearance of the Ionic race at the common sanctuary of Hellas.
Five years afterwards, on an important discussion which will be hereafter described, Alkibiadês maintained publicly before the Athenian assembly that his unparalleled Olympic display had produced an effect upon the Grecian mind highly beneficial to Athens;[85] dissipating the suspicions entertained that she was ruined by the war, and establishing beyond dispute her vast wealth and power. He was doubtless right to a considerable extent; though not sufficient to repel the charge from himself, which it was his purpose to do, both of overweening personal vanity, and of that reckless expenditure which he would be compelled to try and overtake by peculation or violence at the public cost. All the unfavorable impressions suggested to prudent Athenians by his previous life, were aggravated by this stupendous display; much more, of course, the jealousy and hatred of personal competitors. And this feeling was not the less real, though as a political man he was now in the full tide of public favor.
If the festival of the 90th Olympiad was peculiarly distinguished by the reappearance of Athenians and those connected with them, it was marked by a farther novelty yet more striking, the exclusion of the Lacedæmonians. This exclusion was the consequence of the new political interests of the Eleians, combined with their increased consciousness of force arising out of the recent alliance with Argos, Athens, and Mantineia. It has already been mentioned that since the peace with Athens, the Lacedæmonians, acting as arbitrators in the case of Lepreum, which the Eleians claimed as their dependency, had declared it to be autonomous, and had sent a body of troops to defend it. Probably the Eleians had recently renewed their attacks upon the district, since the junction with their new allies; for the Lacedæmonians had detached thither a fresh body of one thousand hoplites immediately prior to the Olympic festival. Out of the mission of this fresh detachment the sentence of exclusion arose. The Eleians were privileged administrators of the festival, regulating the details of the ceremony itself, and formally proclaiming by heralds the commencement of the Olympic truce during which all violation of the Eleian territory by an armed force was a sin against the majesty of Zeus. On the present occasion they affirmed that the Lacedæmonians had sent the one thousand hoplites into Lepreum, and had captured a fort called Phyrkus, both Eleian possessions, after the proclamation of the truce. They accordingly imposed upon Sparta the fine prescribed by the “Olympian law,” of two minæ for each man, two thousand minæ in all; a part to Zeus Olympius, a part to the Eleians themselves. During the interval between the proclamation of the truce and the commencement of the festival, the Lacedæmonians sent to remonstrate against this fine, which they alleged to have been unjustly imposed, inasmuch as the heralds had not yet proclaimed the truce at Sparta when the hoplites reached Lepreum. The Eleians replied that the truce had already at that time been proclaimed among themselves (for they always proclaimed it first at home, before their heralds crossed the borders), so that they were interdicted from all military operations; of which the Lacedæmonian hoplites had taken advantage to commit their last aggressions. To which the Lacedæmonians rejoined, that the behavior of the Eleians themselves contradicted their own allegation, for they had sent the Eleian heralds to Sparta to proclaim the truce after they knew of the sending of the hoplites, thus showing that they did not consider the truce to have been already violated. The Lacedæmonians added, that after the herald reached Sparta, they had taken no farther military measures. How the truth stood in this disputed question, we have no means of deciding. But the Eleians rejected the explanation, though offering, if the Lacedæmonians would restore to them Lepreum, to forego such part of the fine as would accrue to themselves, and to pay out of their own treasury on behalf of the Lacedæmonians the portion which belonged to the god. This new proposition being alike refused, was again modified by the Eleians. They intimated that they would be satisfied if the Lacedæmonians, instead of paying the fine at once, would publicly on the altar at Olympia, in presence of the assembled Greeks, take an oath to pay it at a future date. But the Lacedæmonians would not listen to the proposition either of payment or of promise. Accordingly the Eleians, as judges under the Olympic law, interdicted them from the temple of Olympic Zeus, from the privilege of sacrificing there, and from attendance and competition at the games; that is, from attendance in the form of the sacred legation called theôry, occupying a formal and recognized place at the solemnity.[86]
As all the other Grecian states—with the single exception of Lepreum—were present by their theôries[87] as well as by individual spectators, so the Spartan theôry “shone by its absence” in a manner painfully and insultingly conspicuous. So extreme, indeed, was the affront put upon the Lacedæmonians, connected as they were with Olympia by a tie ancient, peculiar, and never yet broken; so pointed the evidence of that comparative degradation into which they had fallen, through the peace with Athens coming at the back of the Sphakterian disaster,[88] that they were supposed likely to set the exclusion at defiance; and to escort their theôrs into the temple at Olympia for sacrifice, under the protection of an armed force. The Eleians even thought it necessary to put their younger hoplites under arms, and to summon to their aid one thousand hoplites from Mantineia as well as the same number from Argos, for the purpose of repelling this probable attack: while a detachment of Athenian cavalry were stationed at Argos during the festival, to lend assistance in case of need. The alarm prevalent among the spectators of the festival was most serious, and became considerably aggravated by an incident which occurred after the chariot racing. Lichas,[89] a Lacedæmonian of great wealth and consequence, had a chariot running in the lists, which he was obliged to enter, not in his own name, but in the name of the Bœotian federation. The sentence of exclusion hindered him from taking any ostensible part, but it did not hinder him from being present as a spectator; and when he saw his chariot proclaimed victorious under the title of Bœotian, his impatience to make himself known became uncontrollable. He stepped into the midst of the lists, and placed a chaplet on the head of the charioteer, thus advertising himself as the master. This was a flagrant indecorum and known violation of the order of the festival: accordingly, the official attendants with their staffs interfered at once in performance of their duty, chastising and driving him back to his place with blows.[90] Hence arose an increased apprehension of armed Lacedæmonian interference. None such took place, however: the Lacedæmonians, for the first and last time in their history, offered their Olympic sacrifice at home, and the festival passed off without any interruption.[91] The boldness of the Eleians in putting this affront upon the most powerful state in Greece is so astonishing, that we can hardly be mistaken in supposing their proceeding to have been suggested by Alkibiadês and encouraged by the armed aid from the allies. He was at this moment not less ostentatious in humiliating Sparta than in showing off Athens.