Meanwhile the conclusion of the alliance with Lacedæmon—about November or December, 418 B.C.—had still farther depressed the popular leaders at Argos. The oligarchical faction, and the chosen regiment of the Thousand, all men of wealth and family, as well as bound together by their common military training, now saw their way clearly to the dissolution of the democracy by force, and to the accomplishment of a revolution. Instigated by such ambitious views, and flattered by the idea of admitted headship jointly with Sparta, they espoused the new policy of the city with extreme vehemence, and began immediately to multiply occasions of collision with Athens. Joint Lacedæmonian and Argeian envoys were despatched to Thrace and Macedonia. With the Chalkidians of Thrace, the revolted subjects of Athens, the old alliance was renewed and even new engagements concluded; while Perdikkas of Macedonia was urged to renounce his covenants with Athens, and join the new confederacy. In that quarter the influence of Argos was considerable; for the Macedonian princes prized very highly their ancient descent from Argos, which constituted them brethren of the Hellenic family. Accordingly, Perdikkas consented to the demand and concluded the new treaty; insisting, however, with his habitual duplicity, that the step should for the moment be kept secret from Athens.[138] In farther pursuance of the new tone of hostility to that city, joint envoys were also sent thither, to require that the Athenians should quit Peloponnesus, and especially that they should evacuate the fort recently erected near Epidaurus. It seems to have been held jointly by Argeians, Mantineians, Eleians, and Athenians; and as the latter were only a minority of the whole, the Athenians in the city judged it prudent to send Dêmosthenês to bring them away. That general not only effected the retreat, but also contrived a stratagem, which gave to it the air almost of an advantage. On his first arrival in the fort, he proclaimed a gymnastic match outside of the gates for the amusement of the whole garrison, contriving to keep back the Athenians within until all the rest had marched out: then hastily shutting the gates, he remained master of the place.[139] Having no intention, however, of keeping it, he made it over presently to the Epidaurians themselves, with whom he renewed the truce to which they had been parties jointly with the Lacedæmonians five years before, two years before the Peace of Nikias.[140]

The mode of proceeding here resorted to by Athens, in respect to the surrender of the fort, seems to have been dictated by a desire to manifest her displeasure against the Argeians. This was exactly what the Argeian leaders and oligarchical party, on their side, most desired; the breach with Athens had become irreparable, and their plans were now matured for violently subverting their own democracy. They concerted with Sparta a joint military expedition, of one thousand hoplites from each city,—the first joint expedition under the new alliance,—against Sikyôn, for the purpose of introducing more thorough-paced oligarchy into the already oligarchical Sikyônian government. It is possible that there may have been some democratical opposition gradually acquiring strength at Sikyôn: but that city seems to have been, as far as we know, always oligarchical in policy, and passively faithful to Sparta. Probably, therefore, the joint enterprise against Sikyôn was nothing more than a pretext to cover the introduction of one thousand Lacedæmonian hoplites into Argos, whither the joint detachment immediately returned, after the business at Sikyôn had been accomplished. Thus reinforced, the oligarchical leaders and the chosen Thousand at Argos put down by force the democratical constitution in that city, slew the democratical leaders, and established themselves in complete possession of the government.[141]

This revolution, accomplished about February, B.C. 417, the result of the victory of Mantineia and the consummation of a train of policy laid by Sparta, raised her ascendency in Peloponnesus to a higher and more undisputed point than it had ever before attained. The towns in Achaia were as yet not sufficiently oligarchical for her purpose, perhaps since the march of Alkibiadês thither, two years before; accordingly, she now remodelled their governments in conformity with her own views. The new rulers of Argos were subservient to her, not merely from oligarchical sympathy, but from need of her aid to keep down internal rising against themselves: so that there was neither enemy, nor even neutral, to counter-work her or to favor Athens, throughout the whole peninsula.

But the Spartan ascendency at Argos was not destined to last. Though there were many cities in Greece, in which oligarchies long maintained themselves unshaken, through adherence to a traditional routine and by being usually in the hands of men accustomed to govern, yet an oligarchy erected by force upon the ruins of a democracy was rarely of long duration. The angry discontent of the people, put down by temporary intimidation, usually revived, and threatened the security of the rulers enough to render them suspicious and probably cruel. Nor was such cruelty their only fault: they found their emancipation from democratical restraints too tempting to be able to control either their lust or their rapacity. With the population of Argos, comparatively coarse and brutal in all ranks, and more like Korkyra than like Athens, such abuse was pretty sure to be speedy as well as flagrant. Especially the chosen regiment of the Thousand—men in the vigor of their age, and proud of their military prowess as well as of their wealthier station—construed the new oligarchical government which they had helped to erect as a period of individual license to themselves. The behavior and fate of their chief, Bryas, illustrates the general demeanor of the troop. After many other outrages against persons of poorer condition, he one day met in the streets a wedding procession, in which the person of the bride captivated his fancy. He caused her to be violently torn from her company, carried her to his house, and possessed himself of her by force. But in the middle of the night, this high-spirited woman revenged herself for the outrage by putting out the eyes of the ravisher while he was fast asleep:[142] a terrible revenge, which the pointed clasp-pins of the feminine attire sometimes enabled women[143] to take upon those who wronged them. Having contrived to make her escape, she found concealment among her friends, as well as protection among the people generally against the indignant efforts of the chosen Thousand to avenge their leader.

From incidents such as this, and from the multitude of petty insults which so flagitious an outrage implies as coexistent, we are not surprised to learn that the Demos of Argos soon recovered their lost courage, and resolved upon an effort to put down their oligarchical oppressors. They waited for the moment when the festival called the Gymnopædiæ was in course of being solemnized at Sparta,—a festival at which the choric performances of men and boys were so interwoven with Spartan religion as well as bodily training, that the Lacedæmonians would make no military movement until they were finished. At this critical moment, the Argeian Demos rose in insurrection, and after a sharp contest gained a victory over the oligarchy, some of whom were slain, while others only saved themselves by flight. Even at the first instant of danger, pressing messages had been sent to Sparta for aid. But the Lacedæmonians at first peremptorily refused to move during the period of their festival: nor was it until messenger after messenger had arrived to set forth the pressing necessity of their friends, that they reluctantly put aside their festival to march towards Argos. They were too late: the precious moment had already passed by. They were met at Tegea by an intimation that their friends were overthrown, and Argos in possession of the victorious people. Nevertheless, various exiles who had escaped still promised them success, urgently entreating them to proceed, but the Lacedæmonians refused to comply, returned to Sparta, and resumed their intermitted festival.[144]

Thus was the oligarchy of Argos overthrown, after a continuance of about four months,[145] from February to June, 417 B.C., and the chosen Thousand-regiment either dissolved or destroyed. The movement excited great sympathy in several Peloponnesian cities,[146] who were becoming jealous of the exorbitant preponderance of Sparta. Nevertheless, the Argeian Demos, though victorious within the city, felt so much distrust of being able to maintain themselves, that they sent envoys to Sparta to plead their cause and to entreat favorable treatment: a proceeding which proves the insurrection to have been spontaneous, not fomented by Athens. But the envoys of the expelled oligarchs were there to confront them, and the Lacedæmonians, after a lengthened discussion, adjudging the Demos to have been guilty of wrong, proclaimed the resolution of sending forces to put them down. Still, the habitual tardiness of Lacedæmonian habits prevented any immediate or separate movement. Their allies were to be summoned, none being very zealous in the cause, and least of all at this moment, when the period of harvest was at hand; so that about three months intervened before any actual force was brought together.

This important interval was turned to account by the Argeian Demos, who, being plainly warned that they were to look on Sparta only as an enemy, immediately renewed their alliance with Athens. Regarding her as their main refuge, they commenced the building of long walls to connect their city with the sea, in order that the road might always be open for supplies and reinforcement from Athens, in case they should be confined to their walls by a superior Spartan force. The whole Argeian population—men and women, free and slave—set about the work with the utmost ardor: while Alkibiadês brought assistance from Athens,[147] especially skilled masons and carpenters, of whom they stood in much need. The step may probably have been suggested by himself, as it was the same which, two years before, he had urged upon the inhabitants of Patræ. But the construction of walls adequate for defence, along the line of four miles and a half between Argos and the sea,[148] required a long time. Moreover, the oligarchical party within the town, as well as the exiles without,—a party defeated but not annihilated,—strenuously urged the Lacedæmonians to put an end to the work, and even promised them a counter-revolutionary movement in the town as soon as they drew near to assist; the same intrigue which had been entered into by the oligarchical party at Athens forty years before, when the walls down to Peiræus were in course of erection.[149] Accordingly about the end of September, 417 B.C., king Agis conducted an army of Lacedæmonians and allies against Argos, drove the population within the city, and destroyed so much of the long walls as had been already raised. But the oligarchical party within were not able to realize their engagements of rising in arms, so that he was obliged to retire after merely ravaging the territory and taking the town of Hysiæ, where he put to death all the freemen who fell into his hands. After his departure, the Argeians retaliated these ravages upon the neighboring territory of Phlius, where the exiles from Argos chiefly resided.[150]

The close neighborhood of such exiles, together with the declared countenance of Sparta, and the continued schemes of the oligarchical party within the walls, kept the Argeian democracy in perpetual uneasiness and alarm throughout the winter, in spite of their recent victory and the suppression of the dangerous regiment of a Thousand. To relieve them in part from embarrassment, Alkibiadês was despatched thither early in the spring with an Athenian armament and twenty triremes. His friends and guests appear to have been now in the ascendency, as leaders of the democratical government; and in concert with them, he selected three hundred marked oligarchical persons, whom he carried away and deposited in various Athenian islands, as hostages for the quiescence of the party, B.C. 416. Another ravaging march was also undertaken by the Argeians into the territory of Phlius, wherein, however, they sustained nothing but loss. And again, about the end of September, the Lacedæmonians gave the word for a second expedition against Argos. But having marched as far as the borders, they found the sacrifices—always offered previous to leaving their own territory—so unfavorable, that they returned back and disbanded their forces. The Argeian oligarchical party, in spite of the hostages recently taken from them, had been on the watch for this Lacedæmonian force, and had projected a rising; or at least were suspected of doing so, to such a degree that some of them were seized and imprisoned by the government, while others made their escape.[151] Later in the same winter, however, the Lacedæmonians became more fortunate with their border sacrifices, entered the Argeian territory in conjunction with their allies (except the Corinthians, who refused to take part), and established the Argeian oligarchical exiles at Orneæ: from which town these latter were again speedily expelled, after the retirement of the Lacedæmonian army, by the Argeian democracy with the aid of an Athenian reinforcement.[152]

To maintain the renewed democratical government of Argos, against enemies both internal and external, was an important policy to Athens, as affording the basis, which might afterwards be extended, of an anti-Laconian party in Peloponnesus. But at the present time the Argeian alliance was a drain and an exhaustion rather than a source of strength to Athens: very different from the splendid hopes which it had presented prior to the battle of Mantineia, hopes of supplanting Sparta in her ascendency within the Isthmus. It is remarkable, that in spite of the complete alienation of feeling between Athens and Sparta,—and continued reciprocal hostilities, in an indirect manner, so long as each was acting as ally of some third party,—nevertheless, neither the one nor the other would formally renounce the sworn alliance, nor obliterate the record inscribed on its stone column. Both parties shrank from proclaiming the real truth, though each half year brought them a step nearer to it in fact. Thus during the course of the present summer (416 B.C.) the Athenian and Messenian garrison at Pylos became more active than ever in their incursions on Laconia, and brought home large booty; upon which the Lacedæmonians, though still not renouncing the alliance, publicly proclaimed their willingness to grant what we may call letters of marque, to any one, for privateering against Athenian commerce. The Corinthians also, on private grounds of quarrel, commenced hostilities against the Athenians.[153] 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 devastation.[154] Nor was the license 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 coöperate 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 Macedonia under naval blockade, proclaiming Perdikkas an enemy.[155]