Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/375

 TEMPER OF ATHENS. 353 friends and relatives of the Sphakterian captives, to send to Athens several missions for peace ; but all proved abortive. 1 We are not told what they offered, but it did not come up to the ex- pectations which the Athenians thought themselves entitled to indulge. We, who now review these facts with a knowledge of the sub- sequent history, see that the Athenians could have concluded a better bargain with the Lacediemonians during the six or eight months succeeding the capture of Sphakteria, than it was ever open to them to make afterwards ; and they had reason to repent that they let slip the opportunity. Perhaps also Perikles, had he been still alive, might have taken the same prudent measure of the future, and might have had ascendency enough over his countrymen to be able to arrest the tide of success at its highest point, before it began to ebb again. But if we put ourselves back into the situation of Athens during the autumn which suc- ceeded the return of Kleon and Demosthenes from Sphakteria, we shall easily enter into the feelings under which the war was continued. The actual possession of the captives now placed Athens in a far better position than she had occupied at a time when they were only blocked up in Sphakteria, and when the Lacedaemonian envoys first arrived to ask for peace. She was now certain of being able to command peace with Sparta on terms at least tolerable, whenever she chose to invite it, she had also a fair certainty of escaping the hardship of invasion. Next, and this was perhaps the most important feature of the case, the apprehension of Lacedaemonian prowess was now greatly lowered, and the prospects of success to Athens consid- ered as prodigiously improved, 2 even in the estimation of im- partial Greeks ; much more in the eyes of the Athenians them- selves. Moreover, the idea of a tide of good fortune, of the favor of the gods, now begun and likely to continue, of future success as a corollary from past, was one which powerfully af- fected Grecian calculations generally. Why not push the present good fortune, and try to regain the most important points lost before and by the thirty years' truce, especially in Megara and 1 Thucyd. iv, 41 : compare Aristophan. Equit. 618 with Schol. 8 Thucyd iv, 79. VOL vi 23oc.