Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/119

 BEGINNING OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. 97 by those Athenian envoys, who had entered an unavailing pro test against it in the Spartan assembly. No steps were taken by Sparta to carry this determination into effect until after the con- gress of lilies and their pronounced confirmatory vote. Nor did the Spartans even then send any herald, or make any formal declaration. They despatched various propositions to Athens, not at all with a view of trying to obtain satisfaction, or of pro- viding some escape from the probability of war; but with the contrary purpose, of multiplying demands, and enlarging the grounds of quarrel. 1 Meanwhile, the deputies retiring home from the congress to their respective cities, carried with them the general resolution for immediate warlike preparations to be made, with as little delay as possible. 2 The first requisition addressed by the Lacedaemonians to Athens was a political mano?uvre aimed at Perikles, their chief opponent in that city. His mother, Agariste, belonged to the great vjmily of the Alkmjeonids, who were supposed to be under an inexpiable hereditary taint, in consequence of the sacrilege committed by their ancestor Megakles, nearly two centuries be- fore, in the slaughter of the Kylonian suppliants near the altar of the Venerable Goddesses. 3 Ancient as this transaction was, it still had sufficient hold on the mind of the Athenians to serve as the basis of a political manreuvre : about seventy-seven years before, shortly after the expulsion of Hippias from Athens, it had been so employed by the Spartan king Kleomenes, who at that time exacted from the Athenians a clearance of the ancient sacri- lege, to be effected by the banishment of Kleisthenes, the founder of the democracy, and his chief partisans. This demand, addressed by Kleomenes to the Athenians, at the instance of Isagoras, the rival of Kleisthenes, 4 had been then obeyed, and had served well the purposes of those who sent it ; a similar blow was now aimed 1 Thucyd. i, 126. ev rovru de kirpeafievovro T$ XP V V iy>of ToOf I y n't. r] n a T a iro i OV/J.E vo i, 5iru afyiaiv 6rt pey'taT t*iT) f rb irohe/teiv, r)v [if] TI taaicovuai. 2 Thucyd. i, 125. followed, in vol. iii, of this History, ch. x, p. 1 10. 4 See Herodot. v, 70 : compare vi, 131 ; Thucyd. i, 126 j and vol. iv, ch. X.-xi, p. 163 of this Histrry. VOL. vi. 5 7oc.
 * See the account of the Kylonian troubles, and the sacrilege whicn