eyes," said they, "on the monuments of your ancestors which you see here, to whom we annually pay all the honours which can be rendered to the manes of the dead. You thought fit to intrust their bodies with us, as we were eyewitnesses of their bravery. And yet you will now give up their ashes to their murderers, in abandoning us to the Thebans, who fought against them at the battle of Platea. Will you enslave a province where Greece recovered its liberty? Will you destroy the temples of those gods to whom you owed the victory? On this occasion, we may venture to say, our interest is inseparable from your glory, and you cannot deliver up your ancient friends and benefactors to the unjust hatred of the Thebans, without eternal infamy to yourselves." One would imagine, that these arguments would have had a proper effect upon the Lacedæmonians; but they were biassed by the answer which the Thebans made, and which was expressed in the most haughty and bitter terms; and besides they had brought their instructions from Lacedæmon. They stood, therefore, to their first question, Whether the Plateans had done them any service in this war? and making them pass one after another, as they severally answered No, each was immediately butchered, and not one escaped. About two hundred were killed in this manner; and twenty-five Athenians, who were among them, met with the same unhappy fate. Their wives, who had been taken prisoners, were made slaves. The Thebans afterwards peopled their city with exiles from Megara and Thebes, but the next year they demolished it entirely. It was in this manner the Lacedæmonians, in hopes of reaping great advantages from the Thebans, sacrificed the Plateans to their fury, ninety-three years after their first alliance with the Athenians.

The Lacedæmonians, however, were not so elated with this success, as to make them unwilling to agree to a peace,

provided it could be obtained upon honourable terms; and several overtures for this purpose were made by their ambassadors, but without effect; for Cleon, who now guided the councils of the Athenians, boasted, that he would take all the Spartans in the island of Sphacteria within twenty days. He accordingly sailed thither in company with Demosthenes, the Athenian admiral (whose courage and conduct his eloquent descendant, of the same name, afterwards celebrated); and, having landed their troops, they attacked the enemy with great vigour, drove them from post to post, and gaining ground perpetually, at last forced them to the extremity of the island. The Lacedæmonians had stormed a fort that was thought inaccessible. There they drew up in order of battle, and facing about to that side where alone they imagined they could be attacked, they defended themselves like so many lions. But a body of troops having clambered over some steep rocks, and come upon their rear, they were soon obliged to surrender at discretion. They were carried to Athens, where they were told they should be allowed to remain in safety till a peace was concluded, provided the Lacedæmonians did not invade the Athenian territories; for in that case, they were informed they should all be put to death. This tended greatly to pave the way for a general pacification; as the Lacedæmonians were extremely desirous of procuring the release of these men, who were some of the chief of the city. The war, however, continued for two or three years longer, though without being productive of any remarkable event. The Athenians, indeed, took the island of Cythera; but, in their turn, were defeated by the Lacedæmonians at Dellion. At last both nations began to be weary of a contest, that put them to so great an expence, without procuring them any solid advantage. A truce for a year was therefore concluded be→→ tween them, which afterwards terminated in a more lasting

Ε

reconciliation. This happy event was considerably facilitated by the death of the two generals that commanded their armies, and who had hitherto opposed a peace, though from very different motives. Brasidas, the Lacedæmonian, was killed in a sally, which he was conducting when besieged in Amphipolis; and Cleon, the Athenian, despising an enemy, to whom he knew himself superior, was set upon unawares, and flying for safety, was killed by a soldier who happened to meet him. Brasidas was possessed of courage and conduct, of moderation and integrity; and his opposition to a peace seems to have proceeded merely from a true Spartan zeal for the honour of his country. Courage, indeed, seems to have been hereditary in his family, as it no doubt was in the whole Spartan nation: for when his mother received the news of his death, she asked the persons who brought her the intelligence, whether he died honourably; and when they began to launch out into encomiums on his gallantry and heroism, and to prefer him to all the generals of his time; "Yes," said she, my son was a brave man, but Sparta has still many citizens braver than he."

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He was

Cleon was a man of a very different character. rash, arrogant, obstinate, and contentious: and though he succeeded in his expedition to Sphacteria, he was by no means fitted for war. He only made use of it as a cloak for his ill practices, and because he could not carry on his other views without it. He had, indeed, a readiness of wit, with a kind of low drollery, that took with the populace, though with better judges it only passed for impudence and buffoonery. But what he chiefly depended upon was his eloquence; yet even this was of the noisy and boisterous kind, and consisted more of the vehemence of his utterance, and the violence of his action and gesture, than in the elegance of his style, or the strength of his reasoning.

Matters being now brought into this happy train, a peace

was concluded in the tenth year of the war, between the two states and their confederates, for fifty years. The chief articles of it were, that the forts should be evacuated, and the towns and prisoners restored on both sides. This was called the Nician peace, because Nicias, who was just the reverse of his rival, Cleon, was the chief instrument in effecting it. Besides the tender concern he always entertained for his country, he had more particular ends in view in bringing it about. He wished by this means to secure his reputation. For though he had succeeded in most of the expeditions in which he had been engaged, he well knew how much he owed to his good fortune and his cautious management, and he did not chuse to risk the fame he had already acquired, by any attempts to procure more.

CHAPTER IX.

FROM THE PEACE OF NICIAS TO THE END OF THE

PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

TREATIES of peace, however solemn or sincere, are but feeble barriers against the interests, the inclinations, or the prejudices of rival states, or even against the ambitious views of those that have the chief direction of their councils. This was fatally experienced in the war, that, notwithstanding their late agreement, soon after broke out between the Athenians and Spartans, not to promote the welfare, or advance the power of either people, but merely to gratify the pride and vanity of Alcibiades, who was now become the most popular man in Athens. Many things contributed to make him so. He was as remarkable for the beauty of his person, as the endowments of his mind. He was descended

from one of the greatest families in Athens; he was the richest man in the place; and his style and manner of living was equal to his income. Add to this, that though he was frequently drawn into irregularities by the pernicious advice of flatterers, with whom he was naturally surrounded, and the violence of his own passions, which were ever in the extreme, yet he was as often recalled from these vicious courses, and brought back into the paths of virtue, by the salutary counsels of Socrates, for whose character he had conceived the highest regard, and to whose lessons he always gave the greatest attention.

Nor was the philosopher less fond of him, than he was of the philosopher. For perceiving in him, amidst all his irregularities, the seeds of many great and amiable qualities, he was extremely desirous of cultivating these, and bringing them to maturity, that so, when he grew up, instead of being a curse and disgrace, he might prove an honour and a blessing to his country. And so fully was he convinced of the ascendency he had acquired over the mind of this young man, that whenever he heard he was indulging himself in any low or vicious pleasures, he would pursue him as a master does a fugitive slave, and severely reprimand him for his folly; and the other would listen to him with all the submission of a dutiful son to the best of fathers. Hence proceeded the inequality of his conduct, which was sometimes agreeable to the most rigid rules of morality, and at others was marked with all the extravagance of the wildest passions.

His ruling passion, indeed, seems to have been the love of power, and a desire of superiority; and of this he is said to have given several striking instances, even while a boy. One day being rather over-matched in wrestling, and fearing to be thrown down, he got the hand of his antagonist in his mouth, and bit it with all his force; upon which the