Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/66

48 ^ HISTORV OF GKEECE. the veuement acclamation which welcomed these invectives t propose that the Argeian envoys should be called in and the alliance with Argos concluded forthwith. And this would cer- tainly have been done, if a remarkable phenomenon an earth- quake had not occurred to prevent it ; causing the assembly to be adjourned to the next day, pursuant to a religious scruple then recognized as paramount. This remarkable anecdote comes in all its main circumstances from Thucydides. It illustrates forcibly that unprincipled char- acter which will be found to attach to Alkibiades through life, and presents indeed an unblushing combination of impudence and fraud, which we cannot better describe than by saying that it is exactly in the vein of Fielding's Jonathan Wild. In depict- ing Kleon and Hyperbolus, historians vie with each other in strong language to mark the impudence which is said to have been their peculiar characteristic. Now we have no particular facts before us to measure the amount of truth in this, though as a general charge it is sufficiently credible. But we may affirm, with full assurance, that none of the much-decried demagogues of Athens not one of those sellers of leather, lamps, sheep, ropes, pollard, and other commodities, upon whom Aristophanes heaps so many excellent jokes ever surpassed, if they ever equalled, the impudence of this descendant of .^Eakus and Zeus in his manner of overreaching and disgracing the Lacedaemonian envoys. These latter, it must be added, display a carelessness of public faith and consistency, a facility in publicly unsaying what they have just before publicly said, and a treachery towards their own confidential agent, which is truly surprising, and goes far to justify the general charge of habitual duplicity so often alleged against the Lacedaemonian character. 1 The disgraced envoys would doubtless quit Athens immedi- ately : but this opportune earthquake gave Nikias a few hours to recover from his unexpected overthrow. In the assembly of the next day, he still contended that the friendship of Sparta was preferable to that of Argos, and insisted on the prudence of postponing all consummation of engagement with the latter until 'he real intentions of Sparta, now so contradictory and inexplic- Euripid. Andomach. 145-455 ; Herodot. ix, 54.