Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/43

 5IANCEUVRES OF ALKIBIADES. 21 the Peloponnesians. But Alkibiades knew well that he had promised what he had not the least chance of being able to per- form. The satrap had appeared to follow his advice, or had rather followed his own inclination, employing Alkibiades as an instrument and auxiliary, in the endeavor to wear out both parties, and to keep them nearly on an equality until each should ruin the other. But he was no way disposed to identify himself with the cause of Athens, and to break decidedly with the Pelo- ponnesians, especially at a moment when their fleet was both the greater of the two, and in occupation of an island close to his own satrapy. Accordingly Alkibiades, when summoned by the Athenian envoys to perform his engagement, found himself in a dilemma from which he could only escape by one of his charac- teristic manoeuvres. Receiving the envoys himself in conjunction with Tissapher- nes, and speaking on behalf of the latter, he pushed his demands to an extent which he knew that the Athenians would never concede, in order that the rupture might seem to be on their side, and not on his. First, he required the whole of Ionia to be con- ceded to the Great King ; next, all the neighboring islands, with some other items besides. 1 Large as these requisitions were, com- prehending the cession of Lesbos and Samos as well as Chios, and replacing the Persian monarchy in the condition in which it had stood in 496 B.C., before the Ionic revolt, Peisander and his colleagues granted them all : so that Alkibiades was on the point of seeing his deception exposed and frustrated. At last, he be- thought himself of a fresh demand, which touched Athenian pride, as well as Athenian safety, in the tenderest place. He required that the Persian king should be held free to build ships of war in unlimited number, and to keep them sailing along the coast as he might think fit, through all these new portions of territory. After the immense concessions already made, the envoys not only rejected this fresh demand at once, but re- gented it as an insult, which exposed the real drift and purpose 1 Thucyd. viii, 56. 'luviav re yap xuffav ii$iovv di6o(rSai, Kal re eitiKfipevaf; Kal a A 7, a, otf OVK tvavrumpfvav ruv 'Adijvaiav, etc. What this et cetera comprehended, wo cannot divine. The demand WM certainly ample enough without it.