Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/121

103 WAR BETWEEN SPARTA AND ARGOS. 103 eal exiles at Orneae : from which town these latter were agait speedily expelled, after the retirement of the Lacedamionian army, by the Argeian democracy with the aid of an Athenian reinforcement. 1 To maintain the renewed democratical government of Argos, against enemies both internal and external, was an important policy to Athens, as affording the basis, which might afterwards be extended, of an anti-Laconian party in Peloponnesus. But at the present time the Argeian alliance was a drain and an exhaustion rather than a source of strength to Athens : very different from the splendid hopes which it had presented prior to the battle of Mantineia, hopes of supplanting Sparta in her ascendency within the Isthmus. It is remarkable, that in spite of the complete alienation of feeling between Athens and Sparta, and contin- ued reciprocal hostilities, in an indirect manner, so long as each was acting as ally of some third party, nevertheless, neither the one nor the other would formally renounce the sworn alliance, nor obliterate the record inscribed on its stone column. Both parties shrank from proclaiming the real truth, though each half year brought them a step nearer to it in fact. Thus during the course of the present summer (416 B.C.) the Athenian and Mes- senian garrison at Pylos became more active than ever in their incursions on Laconia, and brought home large booty; upon which the Lacedaemonians, though still not renouncing the alli- ance, publicly proclaimed their willingness to grant what we may call letters of marque, to any one, for privateering against Athe- nian commerce. The Corinthians also, on private grounds of quarrel, commenced hostilities against the Athenians. 2 Yet still Sparta and her allies remained in a state of formal peace with Athens : the Athenians resisted all the repeated solicitations of the Argeians to induce them to make a landing on any part of Laco.:_ : a and commit devastation. 3 Nor was the license of free 1 Thucyd. vi, 7. * Tlmcyd. v, 115. 3 Thucyd. vi, 105. The author of the loose and inaccurate Oratio de Pace, ascribed to Andokides, affirms that the war was resumed by Athens agaiust Sparta on the persuasion of the Argeians (Orat. de Pac. c. 1, G, 3, 31, pp. 93-105). This assertion is indeed partially true: the alliance with Argos was one of the causes of the resumption of war, but only ond among others, some of them more powerful. Thucydide's tells us that the