Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/204

176 Mende and Scione, gave Brasidas an opportunity of seizing them, on the pretext that the revolt preceded the truce; and the expedition sent by the Athenians to recover them was therefore in fact, if not in theory, a kind of war against Spartan forces. At the expiration of the truce (B.C. 422) an expedition was sent to recover Amphipolis and Torone, and the war went on in those parts with disastrous results to the Athenians, who were defeated in a battle near Amphipolis, in which both Brasidas and Cleon fell.

The winter was employed in negotiations for peace. One difficulty was, that though both Athens and Sparta, from mutual disappointment at the result of the war, were anxious to make terms, the chief allies of Sparta—Boeotia, Corinth, Elis Megara—were unwilling to join. Another difficulty was, that though one of the terms of the peace was a mutual restitution of conquered states, this restitution was not always possible. Amphipolis refused to be handed back, and the Thebans declined to restore Plataea; consequently, though the Athenians made a separate peace for forty years with Sparta, and handed back the Sphacterian prisoners, they retained Nisaea (the port of Megara) and Pylos.

The interval of professed peace, therefore, did not promise well for a lasting settlement. In fact, intrigues were at once set on foot to establish a new confederacy independent of both Athens and Sparta, of which Argos was to be the head. It was joined by Corinth, Mantinea (in Arcadia), Elis, and the towns of the Chalcidic peninsula. The Boeotians did not join, and shortly afterwards made a separate