Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/83

65 ARGK1ANS IN EPIDArRU* 63 his own soldiers or officers, or allies. 1 But the sacrifice constantly offered before passing the border was found so unfavorable, thai he abandoned his march for the present and returned home, The month Karneius, a period of truce as well as religious festi- val among the Dorian states, being now at hand, he directed feho allies to hold themselves prepared for an out-march as soon as that month had expired. On being informed that Agis had dismissed his troops, the Argeians prepared to execute their invasion of Epidaurus. The day on which they set out was already the twenty-sixth of the month preceding the Karneian month, so that there remained only three days before the commencement of that latter month with its holy truce, binding upon the religious feelings of the Dorian states generally, to which Argos, Sparta, and Epidaurus all be- longed. But the Argeians made use of that very peculiarity of the season, which was accounted likely to keep them at home, to facilitate their scheme, by playing a trick with the calendar, and proclaiming one of those arbitrary interferences with the reckon- ing of time which the Greeks occasionally employed to correct the ever-recurring confusion of their lunar system. Having begun their march on the twenty-sixth of the month before Kar- neius, the Argeians called each succeeding day still the twenty- sixth, thus disallowing the lapse of time, and pretending that the Karneian month had not yet commenced. This proceeding was farther facilitated by the circumstance, that their allies of Athens, Elis, and Mantineia, not being Dorians, were under no obligation to observe the Karneian truce. Accordingly, the army marched from Argos into the territory of Epidaurus, and spent seemingly a fortnight or three weeks in laying it waste ; all this time being really, according to the reckoning of the other Dorian states, part of the Karneian truce, which the Argeians. adopting their own arbitrary computation of time, professed not to be violating. The Epidaurians, unable to meet them single-handed in the field, Thucyd. v. 54. -i/det tic oMaf OT^OL arparevovGiv ovdi al iroAeif t'f > This incident shows that Sparta employed the military force 01 her allies without any regard to their feelings, quite as decidedly as Athens : though tnere were some among them too powerful to be thus treated. VOL. VII. 50C-