Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/109

 BEGINNING OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. g7 JL the coming war, at Melos and Kamarina. At any time pre- vious to the affair of Korkyra, the topics insisted upon by the Athenian would probably have been profoundly listened to at Sparta. But now the mind of the Spartans was made up. Having cleared the assembly of all " strangers," and even all allies, they proceeded to discuss and determine the question among themselves. Most of their speakers held but one lan- guage, 1 expatiating on the wrongs already done by Athens, and urging the necessity of instant war. There was, however, one voice, and that a commanding voice, raised against this conclusion : the ancient and respected king Archidamus op- posed it. The speech of Archidamus is that of a deliberate Spartan, who, setting aside both hatred to Athens and blind partiality to allies, looks at the question with a view to the interests and honor of Sparta only, not, however, omitting her imperial as well as her separate character. The preceding native speakers, indig- nant against Athens, had probably appealed to Spartan pride, treating it as an intolerable disgrace that almost the entire land- force of Dorian Peloponnesus should be thus bullied by one single Ionic city, and should hesitate to commence a war which one invasion of Attica would probably terminate. As the Cor- inthians had tried to excite the Spartans by well-timed taunts and reproaches, so the subsequent speakers had aimed at the same objects by panegyric upon the well-known valor and disci- pline of the city. To all these arguments Archidamus set him- self to reply. Invoking the experience of the elders his contem- poraries around him, he impressed upon the assembly the grave responsibility, the uncertainties, difficulties, and perils, of the war into which they were hurrying without preparation. 2 He reminded them of the wealth, the population, greater than that < f any other Grecian city, the naval force, the cavalry, the hop- lites, the large foreign dominion of Athens, and then asked by what means they proposed to put her down? 3 Ships, they had 1 Thucyd. i, 79. KM TUV pev nheiovuv kul rd avrb al yvupai iiKEiv re 'Adijvaiovs ^J?;, xal irohepriTEa elvai e* ra^et, 8 Thucyd. i, 80.
 * Thucyd. i, 80. irodf <5e dvipaf, ol yriv re inu(exovat KOI irpdaer' irokiuo*