truce, on the technical ground that, not having been accepted by the Athenians, it was not valid. The allied troops accordingly crossed the mountains into Arcadia and won Orchomenus. The men of Elis then proposed to move against their own particular foes, the people of Lepreon; and being out-voted they deserted their allies and marched home. The army, thus weakened by the loss of 3000 hoplites, was obliged to hasten southward to protect Mantinea, against which the Lacedaemonians under Agis, along with the men of Tegea, had meanwhile come forth.

And now, at length, a great battle was fought. The exact num- Battle of bers are not known, but must have approached 10,000 on each side. Mantinea, Coming round the hill of Scope, the spur of Mount Maenalus, which 418 B.C. (Scope= projects into the plain between Tegea and Mantinea, at the point hill of where the territories of the two cities met, the Lacedaemonians found Mytika.) the enemy drawn up for fight and proved their excellent discipline by a rapid formation in the face of the hostile line. They won the battle; but their success was endangered, and its completeness diminished, by a hitch which occurred at the outset. There was a tendency in all Greek armies, when engaging, to push towards the right, each man fearing for his own exposed right side and trying to edge under the screen of his neighbour's shield. Consequently, an army was always inclined to outflank the left wing of the enemy by its own right. On this occasion, Agis observed that the Mantineans, who were on the right wing of the foe, stretched far beyond his own left wing, and fearing it would be disastrously outflanked and surrounded, gave a signal to the troops of his extreme left to make a lateral movement further towards the left; and at the same time he commanded two captains on his right to move their divisions round to fill up the gap thus created. The first order was executed, but the two captains refused to move. The result was that the extreme left was isolated, and utterly routed, while a band of 1000 chosen Argives dashed through the gap. On the right, however, the Lacedaemonians were completely victorious over the Athenians and other allies. The Athenians would have been surrounded and utterly at the mercy of their foes, if Agis had not recalled his troops to assist his discomfited left wing. Both Laches and Nicostratus fell.

The Lacedaemonians returned home and celebrated the feast of Results of the Carnean Apollo in joy. The victory did much to restore the the battle. prestige of Sparta, which had dwindled since the disaster of Sphacteria. The public opinion of Greece had pronounced Sparta to be stupid and inert; it now began to reconsider its judgment. But the victory had direct political results; it transformed the situation in the Peloponnesus. One of those double changes which usually went together, a change in the constitution and a change in

Argos joins foreign policy, was brought about at Argos.

Sparta.

Ostracism

bolus,

418-7 B. C.

The democracy was replaced by an oligarchy, and the alliance with Athens was abandoned for an alliance with Sparta. Mantinea, Elis, and the Achaean towns also went over to the victor. Athens was again isolated.

It was probably at this juncture that the advanced democrats in of Hyper- Athens made an attempt to remove from their way the influential man who was their chief opponent, Nicias. It had been due to his counsels that Argos had not been more effectively supported; there was probably a good deal of dissatisfaction at Athens; and, when Hyperbolus proposed that a vote of ostracism should be held, he had good grounds to hope that there would be a decision against Nicias, and no apparent reason to fear for himself. He might calculate that most of the supporters of Nicias would vote against the more dangerous Alcibiades. The calculation was so well grounded that it missed its mark; for Alcibiades, seeing the risk which threatened him, deserted Hyperbolus and the democratic party, and allied himself with Nicias. So it came about that Hyperbolus was ruined by his own machination; all the followers of Nicias and Alcibiades wrote his name on their sherds, and he was banished for ten years. His political career had ended. This was the last case of ostracism at Athens; the institution was not abolished, but it became a dead letter. Henceforward it was deemed a sufficient safeguard for the constitution that any man who proposed a measure involving a change in any of the established laws was liable to be prosecuted under the law known as the Graphê Paranomôn, which it was death to transgress.

417 B.C.

421 Б.С.

Conquest of Melos, 416 B.C.

Athenian cleruchs.

The new alliance of the pious and punctilious Nicias, champion of peace, with the profane and unstable Alcibiades, bent on enterprises of war, was more unnatural than that between the high-born noble and the lamp-maker. But Nicias seems to have been to some small extent aroused from his policy of inactivity. We find him undertaking an expedition against Chalcidice, where nothing had been done since the Peace, except the capture of Scione and the execution of all the male inhabitants.

Nicias failed in an attempt on Amphipolis; but in the following year an enterprise in the southern Aegean was attended with success. The island of Melos had hitherto remained outside the sea-lordship of the Athenians, and Athens, under the influence of Alcibiades, now attacked her. The town of Melos was invested in the summer by land and sea, and surrendered at discretion in the following winter. All the men of military age were put to death, the other inhabitants were enslaved, and the island was colonised by Athenians.

The conquest of Melos is remarkable, not for the rigorous treatment of the Melians, which is merely another example of the inhumanity which we have already met in the cases of Plataea,

dides

on the

Mytilene, Scione, but for the unprovoked aggressions of Athens, without any tolerable pretext. By the curious device of constructing a Emphasis colloquy between Athenian envoys and the Melian government, laid by Thucydides has brought the episode into dramatic relief. In this Thucyscene the Athenians assert in frank and shameless words the "law of nature" that the stronger should rule over the weaker. This was a conquest doctrine which it was Hellenic to follow, but unusual to enunciate of Melos. in all its nakedness; and in the negotiations which preceded the blockade no Athenian spokesmen would have uttered the undiplomatic audacities which Thucydides ascribes to them. The historian has artfully used the dialogue to indicate the overbearing spirit of the Athenians, flown with insolence, on the eve of an enterprise which was destined to bring signal retribution and humble their city in the dust. Different as Thucydides and Herodotus were in their minds and methods, they had both the same, characteristically Hellenic, feeling for a situation like this. The check of Athens rounded the theme of the younger, as the check of Persia had rounded the theme of the elder, historian; and, although Nemesis, who moves openly in the pages of Herodotus, is not acknowledged by Thucydides, she seems to have cast a shadow here.

It may

Polias

During the years immediately succeeding the Peace there are some signs that the Athenians turned their attention to matters of religion, which had perhaps been too much neglected during the war. have been in these years that they set about the building of a new Temple of temple for Athena and Erechtheus, concerning which we shall hear Athena again at a later stage. It may have been at this time that Asclepius, (see below, the god of healing, came over with his snake from Epidaurus, and 1. 498). established himself in a sanctuary under the south slope of the The AsAcropolis. And it was probably soon after the Peace that a resolu- clepieum. tion was carried imposing a new tax upon the fruits of the earth for the maintenance of the worship of Eleusis. The farmers of Attica decree were required to pay th of every medimnus of barley andth of (medimnus every medimnus of wheat. The same burden was imposed upon the =1 allies; and the Council was directed to invite "all Hellenic cities whom bushels), it seemed possible to approach on the matter" to send first-fruits likewise.

SECT. 2. THE WESTERN POLICY OF ATHENS

The

Eleusinian

418 B. C.

During the fifth century the eyes of Athenian statesmen often wandered to western Greece beyond the seas. We can surprise some oblique glances, as early as the days of Themistocles; and we have seen how under Pericles a western policy definitely began. An Alliances alliance was formed with the Elymian town of Segesta, and subse- with Segesta, quently treaties of alliance (the stone records are still partly preserved)

C. 454 B. C..