Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/77

 TEMPER OF THE ARMAMENT. 53 held, there is good hope that we may make up the mutual differ- cures between us by amicable settlement ; but if once either of us perish, either we here or you at home, there will be nothing left for the other to make up with." 1 With this reply he dismissed the envoys ; the armament reluc- tantly abandoning their wish of sailing to Athens. Thucydides insists much on the capital service which Alkibiades then ren- dered to his country, by arresting a project which would have had the effect of leaving all Ionia and the Hellespont defenceless against the Peloponnesians. His advice doubtless turned out well in the result ; yet if we contemplate the state of affairs at the moment when he gave it, we shall be inclined to doubt whether prudential calculation was not rather against him, and in favor of the impulse of the armament. For what was to hinder the Four Hundred from patching up a peace with Sparta, and getting a Lacedaemonian garrison into Athens to help them in maintain- ing their dominion ? Even apart from ambition, this was their best chance, if not their only chance, of safety for themselves ; and we shall presently see that they tried to do it ; being pre- vented from succeeding, partly, indeed, by the mutiny which arose against them at Athens, but still more by the stupidity of the Lacedaemonians themselves. Alkibiades could not really imagine that the Four Hundred would obey his mandate delivered to the envoys, and resign their power voluntarily. But if they remained masters of Athens, who could calculate what they would do, after having received this declaration of hostility from Samos, not merely in regard to the foreign enemy, but even in regard to the relatives of the absent soldiers ? Whether we look to the legitimate apprehensions of the soldiers, inevitable while their relatives were thus exposed, and almost unnerving them as to the hearty prosecution of the war abroad, in their utter uncertainty with regard to matters at home, or to the chance of irreparable public calamity, greater even than the loss of Ionia, by the betrayal of Athens to the enemy, we shall be disposed to con- 1 Thuoyd. viii, 86. Kal ra/.Aa IxcXevev uvre^eiv, Kal pijtiiv fadidbvai TO'H roAe/u'oif irpbf pev yup o$uc avrovf ou&ficvrif r//f TroXewf ?roAA;)v i-^TttJn tlvni Kal iyi/3/>a/, el 6s inra!; rb irefiov aM/oi -at 17 rd f v 2ttr, ^ licrti at obit orifi fiiah'XayriocTal -if tri