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69 DEBATES AT MANTINEIA. j W3 are not told ; but Euphamidas, coming as envoy from Corinth, animadverted even at the opening of the debates upon the in- consistency of assembling a peace congress while war was actually raging in the Epidaurian territory. So much were the Athenian deputies struck with this observation, that they departed, per- suaded the Argeians to retire from Epidaurus, and then came back to resume negotiations. Still, however, the pretensions of both parties were found irreconcilable, and the congress broke up ; upon which the Argeians again returned to renew their de- vastations in Epidaurus, while the Lacedaemonians, immediately on the expiration of the KarneSan month, marched out again, as far as their border town of Karyoe, but were again arrested and forced to return by unfavorable border-sacrifices. Intimation of their out-march, however, was transmitted to Athens ; upon which Alkibiades, at the head of one thousand Athenian hoplites, was sent to join the Argeians. But before he arrived, the Lacedse- monian army had been already disbanded ; so that his services were no longer required, and the Argeians carried their ravages over one-third of the territory of Epidaurus before they at length evacuated it. 1 month preceding Karneius : but we only know it as a S/Kirtan month. Its name does not appear among the months of the Dorian cities in Sicily, among whom nevertheless Karneius seems universal. See Franz, Comm. ad Corp. Inscript. Gnec. No. 5475, 5491, 6G40. Part xxxii, p. 640. The tricks played with the calendar at Rome, by political authorities for party purposes, are well known to every one. And even in some states of Greece, the course of the calendar was so uncertain as to serve as a prover- bial expression for inextricable confusion. See Hesychius Ev Ke u T if % fie p a ; 'Erf TUV OVK Evyvuaruv ov6el<; yap oldev iv Kew rig fj ij/Jt-pa, OTI oi'ic iardaiv al 7/^uepcu. C?.A' <!) EKaaroi fieAovaiv ayovai. See also Aristoph. Nubcs, 605. 1 Thucyd. v, 55. not 'A&rvottw avrolf t/Uot t[3o{] i &'tjaav onTilrai KOI 'A3. Kij3iudi]f ffTpartj-ybf, irvdofisvoi rotif AaKedaifioviovg E^eaTparcvcr&aL- nal uf ovufv in. aiiruv idee, amj^ov. This is the reading which Portus, Bloom- field, Didot. and Gollcr, either adopt or recommend ; leaving out the parti- .!*>, Je which stands in the common text after iru-&6fj.svoi. If we do not adopt this reading, we must construe eZeaTpaTevadai, as Dr. Arnold and Poppo construe it. in the sense of " had already completed their expedition and returned home." But no authority is produced for putting such a meaning upon the verb tKaTpaTsixj : and the view of Dr. Arnold, who conceives that this meaning exclusively belongs to the preterite