Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/453

 PARTIES AT Al HENS. 431 all, the unprecedented humiliation in Sphakteria, were imputed to the displeasure of the gods in consequence of the impious treachery of Pleistoanax. Suffering under such an imputation, this king was most eager to exchange the hazards of war for the secure march of peace, so that he was thus personally interested in opening every door for negotiation with Athens, and in restor- ing himself to credit by regaining the prisoners. 1 After the battle of Delium, 2 the pacific dispositions of Nikias, Laches, and the philo-Laconian party, began to find increasing favor at Athens ; 3 while the unforeseen losses in Thrace, coming thick upon each other, each successive triumph of Brasidas apparently increasing his means of achieving more, tended to convert the discouragement of the Athenians into positive alarm. Negotiations appear to have been in progress throughout great part of the winter : and the continual hope that these might be brought to a close, combined with the impolitic aversion of Nikias and his friends to energetic military action, help to explain the unwonted apathy of Athens, under the pressure of such dis- graces. But so much did her courage flag, towards the close of the winter, that she came to look upon a truce as her only means 4 of preservation against the victorious progress of Brasidas. What the tone of Kleon now was, we are not directly informed : he would probably still continue opposed to the propositions of peace, at least indirectly, by insisting on terms more favorable than could be obtained. On this point, his political counsels would be wrong; but on another point, they would be much sounder and more judicious than those of his rival Nikias : for he would recommend a strenuous prosecution of hostilities by Athe- nian .force against Brasidas in Thrace. At the present moment this was the most urgent political necessity of Athens, whether she entertained or rejected the views of peace : and the policy of Nikias, who cradled up the existing depression of the citizens by 1 Thucyd. v, 17, 18. 2 Thucyd. v, 15. ^a^evruv ff avrtiv kxl T A??/U'a> A.ij ovdsv Kpiv irapacricEvdaaivTO /cat?' ?iav%iav, etc.