Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/153

 51-54] ALCIBIADES IN PELOPONNESUS I45 would take it if they did not. But, for all that, the Lace- daemonians were oft'ended. During the same summer, Alcibiades, the son of Cleinias, now one of the Athenian generals, Activity of Alcibiades acting in concert with the Argives and in Achaia and other their allies, led into Peloponnesus r^'ts 0/ Peloponnesus. a small Athenian force of hoplites and archers. He collected other troops from the Athenian allies in the Peloponnese, and, marching with his army through the country, organised the affairs of the confederacy. Coming to Patrae, he persuaded the citizens to build walls reaching down to the sea. He was intending also to erect a fort himself on the promontory of Rhium in Achaia. But the Corinthians, Sicyonians, and others to whose interests the fort would have been injurious, came and prevented him. In the same summer there broke out a war between the 53 Epidaurians and the Argives. The j.,^^ ^,^..^^^ ^„ ^ occasion of the war was as follows : — Jlimsy pretext make The Epidaurians were bound to send """• "S"'*'^' H"-' ^Z'- a victim as a tribute for '^ the meadows '^ to the temple of Apollo Pythaeus over which the Argives had chief authority, and they had not done so. But this charge was a mere pretext ; for in any case Alcibiades and the Argives had determined, if possible, to attach Epidaurus to their league, that they might keep the Corin- thians quiet, and enable the Athenians to bring forces to Argos direct from Aegina instead of sailing round the promontory of Scyllaeum. So the Argives prepared to invade Epidauria, as if they wished on their own account to exact payment of the sacrifice. /O About the same time the Lacedaemonians with their 5^ whole force, under the command of king Agis the son or Archidamus, likewise made an expedition. They marched as far as Leuctra, a place on their own frontier in the direction of Mount Lycaeum. No one, not even the cities " Or, reading vapaitoTafi'dJi', 'the water meadows.'