Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/377

 EXPEDITION AGAINST CORINTH. 355 rejected. But after the captives were brought home from Sphak- reria, the influence of Kleon, though positively greater than it had been before, was no longer required to procure the dismissal of Lacedaemonian pacific offers and the continuance of the war : the general temper of Athens was then warlike, and there were very few to contend strenuously for an opposite policy. During the ensuing year, however, the chances of war turned out mostly unfavorable to Athens, so that by the end of that year she had become much more disposed to peace. 1 The truce for one year was then concluded, but even after that truce was expired, Kleon still continued eager, and on good grounds, as will be shown hereafter, for renewing the war in Thrace, at a time when a large proportion of the Athenian public had grown weary of it. He was one of the main causes of that resumption of warlike operations, which ended in the battle of Amphipolis, fatal both to himself and to Brasidas. There were thus two distinct occasions on which the personal influence and sanguine character of Kleon seems to have been of sensible moment in determining the Athe- nian public to war instead of peace. But at the moment which we have now reached, that is, the year immediately following the capture of Sphakteria, the Athenians were all sufficiently warlike without him ; probably Nikias himself as well as the rest. It was one of the earliest proceedings of Nikias, immediately after the inglorious exhibition which he had made in reference to Sphakteria, to conduct an expedition, in conjunction with two colleagues, against the Corinthian territory : he took with him eighty triremes, two thousand Athenian hoplites, two hundred horsemen aboard of some horse transports, and some additional hoplites from Miletus, Andros, and Karystus. 2 Starting from Peirseus in the evening, he arrived a little before daybreak on a beach at the foot of the hill and village of Solygeia, 3 about seven miles from Corinth, and two or three miles south of the isthmus. 1 Thucyd. ir, 117; v, 14. 2 Thucyd. iv, 42. Tov 6' avrov tfepoff fisru. ravra i>$i>f, etc. 3 See the geographical illustrations of this descent in Dr. Arnold's plan and note appended to the second volume of his Thucydides, and in Colonel Leake, Travels in Morea, ch. xxviii. p. 235 ; xxix, p. 309.