Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/341

 GKECIAN CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS. 317 gan to fear that the Athenians might turn against them, and listen to solicitations for espousing the cause of the besieged. Under the influence of such apprehensions, they dismissed the Athenian contingent forthwith, on pretence of having no farther occasion for them ; while all the other allies were retained, and the siege or blockade went on as before.^ ' Thucyd. i, 102. r^v /xev v~oipiav ov drjlovvTeg, elnovTeg 6e otl ov6ev trpoaSeovTat avruv en. Mr, Pynes Clinton (Fast. Hellen. ann. 464-461 e.g.), following Plutarch, recogiiizes two Lacedcemonian requests to Athens, and two Athenian expe- ditions to the aid of the Spartans, both under Kimon ; the first in 464 B.C., immediately on the happening of the earthquake and consequent revolt, — the second in 461 B.C., after the war had lasted some time. In my judgment, there is no ground for supposing more than one appli- cation made to Athens, and one expedition. The duplication has arisen from Plutarch, who has construed too much as historical reality the comic exaggeration of Aristophanes (Aristoph. Lysistrat. 1138; Plutarch, Kimon, &). The heroine of the latter, Lysistrata, wishing to make peace between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians, and reminding each of the services which they had received from the other, might permit herself to say to the Lacedaemonians : " Your envoy, Perikleidas, came to Athens, pale with terror, and put himself a suppliant at the altar to entreat our help as a matter of life and death, while Poseidon was still shaking the earth, and the Messenians were pressing you hard : then Kimon with four thousand hop- lites went and achieved your complete salvation." This is all very telling and forcible, as a portion of the Aristophanic play, but there is no histor- ical truth in it except the fact of an application made and an expedition sent in consequence. "We know that the earthquake took place at the time when the siege of Thasos was yet going on, because it was the reason which prevented the Lacedaemonians from aiding the besieged by an invasion of Attica. But Kimon commanded at the siege of Thasos (Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14) ; ac- cordingly, he could not have gone as commander to Laconia at the time when this first expedition is alleged to have been undertaken. Next, Thucydides acknowledges only one expedition : nor, indeed, does Diodorus (xi, 64), though this is of minor consequence. Xow mere sUenco on the part of Thucydides, in reference to the events of a period which he only professes to survey briefly, is not always a very forcible negative argu- ment. But in this case, his account of the expedition of 4^ B.C., with its very important consequences, is such as to exclude the supposition that he knew of any prior expedition, two or three years earlier. Had he known of any such, he could not have written the account which now stands in his text. He dwells especially on the prolongation of the war, and on the in- capacity of the Lacedaemonians for attacking waUs, as the reasons why