Of the depressed influence and estimation of Sparta, a farther proof was soon afforded by the fate of her colony, the Trachinian Herakleia, established near Thermopylæ, in the third year of the war. That colony—though at first comprising a numerous body of settlers, in consequence of the general trust in Lacedæmonian power, and though always under the government of a Lacedæmonian harmost—had never prospered. It had been persecuted from the beginning by the neighboring tribes, and administered with harshness as well as peculation by its governors. The establishment of the town had been regarded from the beginning by the neighbors, especially the Thessalians, as an invasion of their territory; and their hostilities, always vexatious, had, in the winter succeeding the Olympic festival just described, been carried to a greater point of violence than ever. They had defeated the Herakleots in a ruinous battle, and slain Xenarês the Lacedæmonian governor. But though the place was so reduced as to be unable to maintain itself without foreign aid, Sparta was too much embarrassed by Peloponnesian enemies and waverers to be able to succor it; and the Bœotians, observing her inability, became apprehensive that the interference of Athens would be invoked. Accordingly they thought it prudent to occupy Herakleia with a body of Bœotian troops, dismissing the Lacedæmonian governor Hegesippidas for alleged misconduct. Nor could the Lacedæmonians prevent this proceeding, though it occasioned them to make indignant remonstrance.[92]
CHAPTER LVI.
FROM THE FESTIVAL OF OLYMPIAD NINETY DOWN TO THE BATTLE OF MANTINEIA.
Shortly after the remarkable events of the Olympic festival described in my last chapter, the Argeians and their allies sent a fresh embassy to invite the Corinthians to join them. They thought it a promising opportunity, after the affront just put upon Sparta, to prevail upon the Corinthians to desert her: but Spartan envoys were present also, and though the discussions were much protracted, no new resolution was adopted. An earthquake—possibly an earthquake not real, but simulated for convenience—abruptly terminated the congress. The Corinthians—though seemingly distrusting Argos, now that she was united with Athens, and leaning rather towards Sparta—were unwilling to pronounce themselves in favor of one so as to make an enemy of the other.[93]
In spite of this first failure, the new alliance of Athens and Argos manifested its fruits vigorously in the ensuing spring. Under the inspirations of Alkibiadês, Athens was about to attempt the new experiment of seeking to obtain intra-Peloponnesian followers and influence. At the beginning of the war, she had been maritime, defensive, and simply conservative, under the guidance of Periklês. After the events of Sphakteria, she made use of that great advantage to aim at the recovery of Megara and Bœotia, which she had before been compelled to abandon by the thirty years’ truce, at the recommendation of Kleon. In this attempt she employed the eighth year of the war, but with signal ill-success; while Brasidas during that period broke open the gates of her maritime empire, and robbed her of many important dependencies. The grand object of Athens then became, to recover these lost dependencies, especially Amphipolis: Nikias and his partisans sought to effect such recovery by making peace, while Kleon and his supporters insisted that it could never be achieved except by military efforts. The expedition under Kleon against Amphipolis had failed, the peace concluded by Nikias had failed also: Athens had surrendered her capital advantage, without regaining Amphipolis; and if she wished to regain it, there was no alternative except to repeat the attempt which had failed under Kleon. And this perhaps she might have done, as we shall find her projecting to do in the course of about four years forward, if it had not been, first, that the Athenian mind was now probably sick and disheartened about Amphipolis, in consequence of the prodigious disgrace so recently undergone there; next, that Alkibiadês, the new chief adviser or prime minister of Athens—if we may be allowed to use an inaccurate expression, which yet suggests the reality of the case—was prompted by his personal impulses to turn the stream of Athenian ardor into a different channel. Full of antipathy to Sparta, he regarded the interior of Peloponnesus as her most vulnerable point, especially in the present disjointed relations of its component cities. Moreover, his personal thirst for glory was better gratified amidst the centre of Grecian life than by undertaking an expedition into a distant and barbarous region: lastly, he probably recollected with discomfort the hardships and extreme cold, insupportable to all except the iron frame of Sokrates, which he had himself endured at the blockade of Potidæa twelve years before,[94] and which any armament destined to conquer Amphipolis would have to go through again. It was under these impressions that he now began to press his intra-Peloponnesian operations against Lacedæmon, with the view of organizing a counter-alliance under Argos sufficient to keep her in check, and at any rate to nullify her power of carrying invasion beyond the Isthmus. All this was to be done without ostensibly breaking the peace and alliance between Athens and Lacedæmon, which stood in conspicuous letters on pillars erected in both cities.
Coming to Argos at the head of a few Athenian hoplites and bowmen, and reinforced by Peloponnesian allies, Alkibiadês exhibited the spectacle of an Athenian general traversing the interior of the peninsula, and imposing his own arrangements in various quarters, a spectacle at that moment new and striking.[95] He first turned his attention to the Achæan towns in the northwest, where he persuaded the inhabitants of Patræ to ally themselves with Athens, and even to undertake the labor of connecting their town with the sea by means of long walls, so as to place themselves within the protection of Athens from seaward. He farther projected the erection of a fort and the formation of a naval station at the extreme point of Cape Rhium, just at the narrow entrance of the Corinthian gulf; whereby the Athenians, who already possessed the opposite shore by means of Naupaktus, would have become masters of the commerce of the gulf. But the Corinthians and Sikyonians, to whom this would have been a serious mischief, despatched forces enough to prevent the consummation of the scheme, and probably also to hinder the erection of the walls at Patræ.[96] Yet the march of Alkibiadês doubtless strengthened the anti-Laconian interest throughout the Achæan coast.
He then returned to take part with the Argeians in a war against Epidaurus. To acquire possession of this city would much facilitate the communication between Athens and Argos, since it was not only immediately opposite to the island of Ægina now occupied by the Athenians, but also opened to the latter an access by land, dispensing with the labor of circumnavigating Cape Skyllæum, the southeastern point of the Argeian and Epidaurian peninsula, whenever they sent forces to Argos. Moreover, the territory of Epidaurus bordered to the north on that of Corinth, so that the possession of it would be an additional guarantee for the neutrality of the Corinthians. Accordingly it was resolved to attack Epidaurus, for which a pretext was easily found. As presiding and administering state of the temple of Apollo Pythäeus (situated within the walls of Argos), the Argeians enjoyed a sort of religious supremacy over Epidaurus and other neighboring cities, seemingly the remnant of that extensive supremacy, political as well as religious, which in early times had been theirs.[97] The Epidaurians owed to this temple certain sacrifices and other ceremonial obligations, one of which, arising out of some circumstance which we cannot understand, was now due and unperformed: at least so the Argeians alleged. Such default imposed upon them the duty of getting together a military force to attack the Epidaurians and enforce the obligation.
Their invading march, however, was for a time suspended by the news that king Agis with the full force of Lacedæmon and her allies had advanced as far as Leuktra, one of the border towns of Laconia on the northwest, towards Mount Lykæum and the Arcadian Parrhasii. What this movement meant was known only to Agis himself, who did not even explain the purpose to his own soldiers or officers, or allies.[98] But the sacrifice constantly offered before passing the border was found so unfavorable, that he abandoned his march for the present and returned home. The month Karneius, a period of truce as well as religious festival among the Dorian states, being now at hand, he directed the allies to hold themselves prepared for an out-march as soon as that month had expired.
On being informed that Agis had dismissed his troops, the Argeians prepared to execute their invasion of Epidaurus. The day on which they set out was already the twenty-sixth of the month preceding the Karneian month, so that there remained only three days before the commencement of that latter month with its holy truce, binding upon the religious feelings of the Dorian states generally, to which Argos, Sparta, and Epidaurus all belonged. But the Argeians made use of that very peculiarity of the season, which was accounted likely to keep them at home, to facilitate their scheme, by playing a trick with the calendar, and proclaiming one of those arbitrary interferences with the reckoning of time which the Greeks occasionally employed to correct the ever-recurring confusion of their lunar system. Having begun their march on the twenty-sixth of the month before Karneius, the Argeians called each succeeding day still the twenty-sixth, thus disallowing the lapse of time, and pretending that the Karneian month had not yet commenced. This proceeding was farther facilitated by the circumstance, that their allies of Athens, Elis, and Mantineia, not being Dorians, were under no obligation to observe the Karneian truce. Accordingly, the army marched from Argos into the territory of Epidaurus, and spent seemingly a fortnight or three weeks in laying it waste; all this time being really, according to the reckoning of the other Dorian states, part of the Karneian truce, which the Argeians, adopting their own arbitrary computation of time, professed not to be violating. The Epidaurians, unable to meet them single-handed in the field, invoked the aid of their allies: who, however, had already been summoned by Sparta for the succeeding month, and did not choose, any more than the Spartans, to move during the Karneian month itself. Some allies, however, perhaps the Corinthians, came as far as the Epidaurian border, but did not feel themselves strong enough to lend aid by entering the territory alone.[99]
Meanwhile the Athenians had convoked another congress of deputies at Mantineia, for the purpose of discussing propositions of peace: perhaps this may have been a point carried by Nikias at Athens, in spite of Alkibiadês. What other deputies attended we are not told; but Euphamidas, coming as envoy from Corinth, animadverted even at the opening of the debates upon the inconsistency of assembling a peace congress while war was actually raging in the Epidaurian territory. So much were the Athenian deputies struck with this observation, that they departed, persuaded the Argeians to retire from Epidaurus, and then came back to resume negotiations. Still, however, the pretensions of both parties were found irreconcilable, and the congress broke up; upon which the Argeians again returned to renew their devastation in Epidaurus, while the Lacedæmonians, immediately on the expiration of the Karneian month, marched out again, as far as their border town of Karyæ, but were again arrested and forced to return by unfavorable border-sacrifices. Intimation of their out-march, however, was transmitted to Athens; upon which Alkibiadês, at the head of one thousand Athenian hoplites, was sent to join the Argeians. But before he arrived, the Lacedæmonian army had been already disbanded; so that his services were no longer required, and the Argeians carried their ravages over one-third of the territory of Epidaurus before they at length evacuated it.[100]