[420-418 B.C.]
The neutrality of the Argolid and of the centre of the Peloponnesus had hitherto preserved Lacedæmon from a continental invasion. War, after having long hovered on the outskirts of the peninsula, had not ventured, within the last few years, to do more than lay hold of certain points on the coasts to the west, south, and east, which were quite remote from Sparta, at Pylos, Cythera, and Methone. But now the Argives, the Mantineans and the Eleans were about to introduce it into the heart of the Peloponnesus, to bring it in the very face of the helots. Sparta became once more the patient, deliberate city of former days, even to the point of submitting to outrageous insults. On account of the despatch of the helots to Lepreum during the sacred truce, the Eleans had condemned the Lacedæmonians to a fine of two thousand minæ, and on their refusal to pay had excluded them by decree from the Olympic games. A Spartan of distinction, named Lichas, had however a chariot competing in the same race in which Alcibiades had displayed so much magnificence and obtained wreaths. When the judges learnt his name they had him ignominiously driven away with blows. Sparta did not avenge this outrage; she had ceased to believe in herself. At last Alcibiades passed over into the Peloponnesus with a few troops.
At Argos he persuaded the people to seize a port on the Saronic Gulf from the Epidaurians; from thence the Argives might the more easily receive succours from Athens which was in possession of Ægina opposite Epidaurus. But the Lacedæmonians sent this town three hundred hoplites who arrived by sea and repelled all attacks. At this news the Athenians wrote at the base of the column on which the treaty had been engraved, that Sparta had violated the peace, and the war began (419).
It was in vain that Aristophanes produced about this time his comedy entitled the Peace, resuming the theme he had taken up seven years before in the Acharnians. It was to no purpose that he personified War as a giant who crushes the towns in a mortar, using the generals for his pestles, and showed that with the return of Peace, drawn at last from the cavern in which she has been captive for thirteen years, banquets and feasts will recommence, the whole town will be given up to joy, and the armourers only will be in despair; he persuaded no one, not even the judges of the competition, who refused him the first prize.
The Lacedæmonians, under the command of Agis, entered the Argolid with the contingents of Bœotia, Megara, Corinth, Phlius, Pellene, and Tegea. The Argive general, cut off from the town by a clever manœuvre, proposed a truce which Agis accepted. This was not what was desired by the Athenians, who arrived shortly after, to the number of a thousand hoplites and three hundred horsemen; Alcibiades spoke in presence of the people of Argos and prevailed with them: the truce was broken, a march was made on Orchomenos and it was taken. The blame of the rupture fell on Agis. The Spartans, angry at his having given their enemies time to make this conquest, wished first to demolish his house and condemn him to a fine of a hundred thousand drachmæ; his prayers won his pardon; but it was determined that in future the kings of Sparta should be assisted in the war by a council of ten Spartans.
To repair his mistake, Agis went in search of the allies; he encountered them near Mantinea. “The two armies,” says Thucydides, “advanced against each other; the Argives with impetuosity, the Lacedæmonians slowly and, according to their custom, to the sound of a great number of pipes which beat time and kept them in line.” The Lacedæmonian left was driven in, but the right, commanded by the king, retrieved the fight and carried the day (418). This battle, which cost the allies eleven hundred men and the Spartans about three hundred, is regarded by Thucydides as the most important which the Greeks had fought for a long time. It restored the reputation of Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and in Argos the preponderance of the wealthy who suppressed the popular commune, put its leaders to death and made an alliance with Lacedæmon.
[418-416 B.C.]
This treaty broke up the confederation recently agreed on with Athens, Elis, and Mantinea. The last-named town even thought itself sufficiently endangered by the defection of Argos to consent to descend once more to the rank of an ally of the Spartans. A treaty, dictated by the latter, decreed that all the states, great and small, should be free and should keep their national laws with their independence. Sparta desired nothing but divisions and weakness round her. To the policy of concentration advocated by Athens, she opposed the policy of isolation which was to put all Greece at her feet, but would also afterwards place her, with Sparta herself, at the feet of Macedonia and of the Romans (417).
The victory of Agis was that of the oligarchy. At Sicyon, in Achaia, it again raised its head or established itself more firmly. We have just seen how it resumed power in Argos. But in that town, if we are to believe Pausanias, a crime analogous to those which founded the liberties of the people in Rome brought about the fall of the tyrants three months later. Expelled by an insurrection, the chief citizens retired to Sparta, whilst the people appealed to the Athenians, and men, women, and children laboured to join Argos with the sea by means of long walls. Alcibiades hurried thither with masons and carpenters to aid in the work; but the Lacedæmonians, under the guidance of the exiles, dispersed the workers. Argos, exhausted by these cruel discords, did not recover herself; and with her fell that idea of a league of secondary states which might perhaps have spared Greece many misfortunes by imposing peace and a certain caution on the two great states (417).
[416 B.C.]