Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/139

 36,37] ARGIVES NEGOTIATE WITH BOEOTIANS 131 Boeotians would thus escape the necessity of accepting the peace with Athens ; for the Lacedaemonians would prefer the friendship and alliance of Argos to anything which they might lose by the enmity of Athens and the dissolution of the treaty. The two Ephors knew that a satisfactory alliance with Argos was an object which the Lacedaemonians always had at heart, perceiving as they did that it would enable them to carry on the war beyond the Peloponnesus with greater freedom. At the same time they entreated the Boeotians to give up Panactum to the Lacedaemonians, in order that they might exchange it for Pylos, and so be in a better position for renewing the war with Athens. The Boeotians and Corinthians, having received from 37 Xenares and Cleobulus and their The Doeotians agree. other Lacedaemonian friends the Two Aigives make a instructions which they were to convey ^'■""'«'' P'oposal to •^, ■' litem. to their own governments, returned to their respective cities. On their way home two Argives high in office, who had been waiting for them on the road, entered into communications with them, in the hope that the Boeotians, like the Corinthians, Eleans, and Mantin- eans, might join their alliance ; if this could only be accomplished, and they could act together, they might easily, they said, go to war or make peace, either with Lacedaemon or with any other power. The Boeotian envoys were pleased at the proposal, for it so happened that the request of the Argives coincided with the in- structions of their Lacedaemonian friends. Whereupon the Argives, finding that their proposals were acceptable to the Boeotians, promised to send an embassy to them, and so departed. When the Boeotians returned home they told the Boeotarchs what they had heard, both at Lacedaemon and from the Argives who had met them on their way. The Boeotarchs were glad, and their zeal was quickened when they discovered that the request made to them by their friends in Lacedaemon fell in with the