Such were the plans which Kleobûlus and Xenarês laid with the Corinthian and Bœotian deputies, and which the latter went home prepared to execute. Chance seemed to favor the purpose at once: for on their road home, they were accosted by two Argeians, senators in their own city, who expressed an earnest anxiety to bring about alliance between the Bœotians and Argos. The Bœotian deputies, warmly encouraging this idea, urged the Argeians to send envoys to Thebes as solicitors of the alliance; and communicated to the bœotarchs, on their arrival at home, both the plans laid by the Spartan ephors and the wishes of these Argeians. The bœotarchs also entered heartily into the entire scheme; receiving the Argeian envoys with marked favor, and promising, as soon as they should have obtained the requisite sanction, to send envoys of their own and ask for alliance with Argos.
That sanction was to be obtained from “the Four Senates of the Bœotians;” bodies, of the constitution of which nothing is known. But they were usually found so passive and acquiescent that the bœotarchs, reckoning upon their assent as a matter of course, even without any full exposition of reasons, laid all their plans accordingly.[39] They proposed to these four Senates a resolution in general terms, empowering themselves in the name of the Bœotian federation to exchange oaths of alliance with any Grecian city which might be willing to contract on terms mutually beneficial: their particular object being, as they stated, to form alliance with the Corinthians, Megarians, and Chalkidians of Thrace, for mutual defence, and for war as well as peace with others only by common consent. To this specific object they anticipated no resistance on the part of the Senates, inasmuch as their connection with Corinth had always been intimate, while the position of the four parties named was the same, all being recusants of the recent peace. But the resolution was advisedly couched in the most comprehensive terms, in order that it might authorize them to proceed farther afterwards, and conclude alliance on the part of the Bœotians and Megarians with Argos; that ulterior purpose being however for the present kept back, because alliance with Argos was a novelty which might surprise and alarm the Senates. The manœuvre, skilfully contrived for entrapping these bodies into an approval of measures which they never contemplated, illustrates the manner in which an oligarchical executive could elude the checks devised to control its proceedings. But the bœotarchs, to their astonishment, found themselves defeated at the outset: for the Senates would not even hear of alliance with Corinth, so much did they fear to offend Sparta by any special connection with a city which had revolted from her. Nor did the bœotarchs think it safe to divulge their communications with Kleobûlus and Xenarês, or to acquaint the Senates that the whole plan originated with a powerful party in Sparta herself. Accordingly, under this formal refusal on the part of the Senates, no farther proceedings could be taken. The Corinthian and Chalkidian envoys left Thebes, while the promise of sending Bœotian envoys to Argos remained unexecuted.[40]
But the anti-Athenian ephors at Sparta, though baffled in their schemes for arriving at the Argeian alliance through the agency of the Bœotians, did not the less persist in their views upon Panaktum. That place—a frontier fortress in the mountainous range between Attica and Bœotia, apparently on the Bœotian side of Phylê, and on or near the direct road from Athens to Thebes which led through Phylê[41]—had been an Athenian possession, until six months before the peace, when it had been treacherously betrayed to the Bœotians.[42] A special provision of the treaty between Athens and Sparta, prescribed that it should be restored to Athens; and Lacedæmonian envoys were now sent on an express mission to Bœotia, to request from the Bœotians the delivery of Panaktum as well as of their Athenian captives, in order that by tendering these to Athens she might be induced to surrender Pylos. The Bœotians refused compliance with this request, except on condition that Sparta should enter into special alliance with them as she had done with the Athenians. Now the Spartans stood pledged by their covenant with the latter, either by its terms or by its recognized import, not to enter into any new alliance without their consent. But they were eagerly bent upon getting possession of Panaktum; while the prospect of breach with Athens, far from being a deterring motive, was exactly that which Kleobûlus and Xenarês desired. Under these feelings, the Lacedæmonians consented to and swore the special alliance with Bœotia. But the Bœotians, instead of handing over Panaktum for surrender, as they had promised, immediately razed the fortress to the ground; under pretence of some ancient oaths which had been exchanged between their ancestors and the Athenians, to the effect that the district round it should always remain without resident inhabitants, as a neutral strip of borderland, and under common pasture.
These negotiations, after having been in progress throughout the winter, ended in the accomplishment of the alliance and the destruction of Panaktum at the beginning of spring or about the middle of March. And while the Lacedæmonian ephors thus seemed to be carrying their point on the side of Bœotia, they were agreeably surprised by an unexpected encouragement to their views from another quarter. An embassy arrived at Sparta from Argos, to solicit renewal of the peace just expiring. The Argeians found that they made no progress in the enlargement of their newly-formed confederacy, while their recent disappointment with the Bœotians made them despair of realizing their ambitious projects of Peloponnesian headship. But when they learned that the Lacedæmonians had concluded a separate alliance with the Bœotians, and that Panaktum had been razed, their disappointment was converted into positive alarm for the future. Naturally inferring that this new alliance would not have been concluded except in concert with Athens, they interpreted the whole proceeding as indicating that Sparta had prevailed upon the Bœotians to accept the peace with Athens, the destruction of Panaktum being conceived as a compromise to obviate disputes respecting possession. Under such a persuasion,—noway unreasonable in itself, when the two contracting governments, both oligarchical and both secret, furnished no collateral evidence to explain their real intent,—the Argeians saw themselves excluded from alliance not merely with Bœotia, Sparta, and Tegea, but also with Athens; which latter city they had hitherto regarded as a sure resort in case of hostility with Sparta. Without a moment’s delay, they despatched Eustrophus and Æson, two Argeians much esteemed at Sparta, and perhaps proxeni of that city, to press for a renewal of their expiring truce with the Spartans, and to obtain the best terms they could.
To the Lacedæmonian ephors this application was eminently acceptable, the very event which they had been manœuvring underhand to bring about: and negotiations were opened, in which the Argeian envoys at first proposed that the disputed possession of Thyrea should be referred to arbitration. But they found their demand met by a peremptory negative, the Lacedæmonians refusing to enter upon such a discussion, and insisting upon simple renewal of the peace now at an end. At last the Argeian envoys, eagerly bent upon keeping the question respecting Thyrea open, in some way or other, prevailed upon the Lacedæmonians to assent to the following singular agreement. Peace was concluded between Athens and Sparta for fifty years; but if at any moment within that interval, excluding either periods of epidemic or periods of war, it should suit the views of either party to provoke a combat by chosen champions of equal number for the purpose of determining the right to Thyrea, there was to be full liberty of doing so; the combat to take place within the territory of Thyrea itself, and the victors to be interdicted from pursuing the vanquished beyond the undisputed border of either territory. It will be recollected, that about one hundred and twenty years before this date, there had been a combat of this sort by three hundred champions on each side, in which, after desperate valor on both sides, the victory as well as the disputed right still remained undetermined. The proposition made by the Argeians was a revival of this old practice of judicial combat: nevertheless, such was the alteration which the Greek mind had undergone during the interval, that it now appeared a perfect absurdity, even in the eyes of the Lacedæmonians, the most old-fashioned people in Greece.[43] Yet since they hazarded nothing, practically, by so vague a concession, and were supremely anxious to make their relations smooth with Argos, in contemplation of a breach with Athens, they at last agreed to the condition, drew up the treaty, and placed it in the hands of the envoys to carry back to Argos. Formal acceptance and ratification, by the Argeian public assembly, was necessary to give it validity: should this be granted, the envoys were invited to return to Sparta at the festival of the Hyakinthia, and there go through the solemnity of the oaths.
Amidst such strange crossing of purposes and interests, the Spartan ephors seemed now to have carried all their points; friendship with Argos, breach with Athens, and yet the means—through the possession of Panaktum—of procuring from Athens the cession of Pylos. But they were not yet on firm ground. For when their deputies, Andromedês and two colleagues, arrived in Bœotia for the purpose of going on to Athens and prosecuting the negotiation about Panaktum, at the time when Eustrophus and Æson were carrying on their negotiation at Sparta, they discovered for the first time that the Bœotians, instead of performing their promise to hand over Panaktum, had razed it to the ground. This was a serious blow to their chance of success at Athens: nevertheless, Andromedês proceeded thither, taking with him all the Athenian captives in Bœotia. These he restored at Athens, at the same time announcing the demolition of Panaktum as a fact: Panaktum as well as the prisoners was thus restored, he pretended; for the Athenians would not now find a single enemy in the place: and he claimed the cession of Pylos in exchange.[44]
But he soon found that the final term of Athenian compliance had been reached. It was probably on this occasion that the separate alliance concluded between Sparta and the Bœotians first became discovered at Athens; since not only were the proceedings of these oligarchical governments habitually secret, but there was a peculiar motive for keeping this alliance concealed until the discussion about Panaktum and Pylos had been brought to a close. Both this alliance, and the demolition of Panaktum, excited among the Athenians the strongest marks of disgust and anger; aggravated probably rather than softened by the quibble of Andromedês, that demolition of the fort, being tantamount to restitution, and precluding any farther tenancy by the enemy, was a substantial satisfaction of the treaty; and aggravated still farther by the recollection of all the other unperformed items in the treaty. A whole year had now elapsed, amidst frequent notes and protocols, to employ a modern phrase; yet not one of the conditions favorable to Athens had yet been executed, except the restitution of her captives, seemingly not many in number; while she on her side had made to Sparta the capital cession on which almost everything hinged. A long train of accumulated indignation, brought to a head by this mission of Andromedês, discharged itself in the harshest dismissal and rebuke of himself and his colleagues.[45]
Even Nikias, Lachês, and the other leading men, to whose improvident facility and misjudgment the embarrassment of the moment was owing, were probably not much behind the general public in exclamation against Spartan perfidy, if it were only to divert attention from their own mistake. But there was one of them—Alkibiadês son of Kleinias—who took this opportunity of putting himself at the head of the vehement anti-Laconian sentiment which now agitated the ekklesia, and giving to it a substantive aim.
The present is the first occasion on which we hear of this remarkable man as taking a prominent part in public life. He was now about thirty-one or thirty-two years old, which in Greece was considered an early age for a man to exercise important command. But such was the splendor, wealth, and antiquity of his family, of Æakid lineage through the heroes Eurysakês and Ajax, and such the effect of that lineage upon the democratical public of Athens,[46] that he stepped speedily and easily into a conspicuous station. Belonging also through his mother Deinomachê to the gens of the Alkmæonidæ, he was related to Periklês, who became his guardian when he was left an orphan at about five years old, along with his younger brother Kleinias. It was at that time that their father Kleinias was slain at the battle of Koroneia, having already served with honor in a trireme of his own at the sea-fight of Artemisium against the Persians. A Spartan nurse named Amykla was provided for the young Alkibiadês, and a slave named Zopyrus chosen by his distinguished guardian to watch over him; but even his boyhood was utterly ungovernable, and Athens was full of his freaks and enormities, to the unavailing regret of Periklês and his brother Ariphron.[47] His violent passions, love of enjoyment, ambition of preëminence, and insolence towards others,[48] were manifested at an early age, and never deserted him throughout his life. His finished beauty of person both as boy, youth, and mature man, caused him to be much run after by women,[49] and even by women of generally reserved habits. Moreover, even before the age when such temptations were usually presented, the beauty of his earlier youth, while going through the ordinary gymnastic training, procured for him assiduous caresses, compliments, and solicitations of every sort, from the leading Athenians who frequented the public palæstræ. These men not only endured his petulance, but were even flattered when he would condescend to bestow it upon them. Amidst such universal admiration and indulgence, amidst corrupting influences exercised from so many quarters and from so early an age, combined with great wealth and the highest position, it was not likely that either self-restraint or regard for the welfare of others would ever acquire development in the mind of Alkibiadês. The anecdotes which fill his biography reveal the utter absence of both these constituent elements of morality; and though, in regard to the particular stories, allowance must doubtless be made for scandal and exaggeration, yet the general type of character stands plainly marked and sufficiently established in all.
A dissolute life, and an immoderate love of pleasure in all its forms, is what we might naturally expect from a young man so circumstanced; and it appears that with him these tastes were indulged with an offensive publicity which destroyed the comfort of his wife Hipparetê, daughter of Hipponikus who was slain at the battle of Delium. She had brought him a large dowry of ten talents: when she sought a divorce, as the law of Athens permitted, Alkibiadês violently interposed to prevent her from obtaining the benefit of the law, and brought her back by force to his house even from the presence of the magistrate. It is this violence of selfish passion, and reckless disregard of social obligation towards every one, which forms the peculiar characteristic of Alkibiadês. He strikes the schoolmaster whose house he happens to find unprovided with a copy of Homer; he strikes Taureas,[50] a rival chorêgus, in the public theatre, while the representation is going on; he strikes Hipponikus, who afterwards became his father-in-law, out of a wager of mere wantonness, afterwards appeasing him by an ample apology; he protects the Thasian poet Hêgêmon, against whom an indictment had been formally lodged before the archon, by effacing it with his own hand from the published list in the public edifice, called Metrôon; defying both magistrate and accuser to press the cause on for trial.[51] Nor does it appear that any injured person ever dared to bring Alkibiadês to trial before the dikastery, though we read with amazement the tissue of lawlessness[52] which marked his private life; a combination of insolence and ostentation with occasional mean deceit when it suited his purpose. But amidst the perfect legal, judicial, and constitutional equality, which reigned among the citizens of Athens, there still remained great social inequalities between one man and another, handed down from the times preceding the democracy: inequalities which the democratical institutions limited in their practical mischiefs, but never either effaced or discredited, and which were recognized as modifying elements in the current, unconscious vein of sentiment and criticism, by those whom they injured as well as by those whom they favored. In the speech which Thucydidês[53] ascribes to Alkibiadês before the Athenian public assembly, we find the insolence of wealth and high social position not only admitted as a fact, but vindicated as a just morality; and the history of his life, as well as many other facts in Athenian society, show that if not approved, it was at least tolerated in practice to a serious extent, in spite of the restraints of the democracy.