at concludes it, as it depends on your decision,
will by their gratitude be laid to your door. By such a decision you
can become firm friends with the Lacedaemonians at their own invitation,
which you do not force from them, but oblige them by accepting. And from
this friendship consider the advantages that are likely to follow: when
Attica and Sparta are at one, the rest of Hellas, be sure, will remain
in respectful inferiority before its heads."

Such were the words of the Lacedaemonians, their idea being that the
Athenians, already desirous of a truce and only kept back by their
opposition, would joyfully accept a peace freely offered, and give back
the men. The Athenians, however, having the men on the island, thought
that the treaty would be ready for them whenever they chose to make it,
and grasped at something further. Foremost to encourage them in this
policy was Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, a popular leader of the time
and very powerful with the multitude, who persuaded them to answer as
follows: First, the men in the island must surrender themselves and
their arms and be brought to Athens. Next, the Lacedaemonians must
restore Nisaea, Pegae, Troezen, and Achaia, all places acquired not by
arms, but by the previous convention, under which they had been ceded by
Athens herself at a moment of disaster, when a truce was more necessary
to her than at present. This done they might take back their men, and
make a truce for as long as both parties might agree.

To this answer the envoys made no reply, but asked that commissioners
might be chosen with whom they might confer on each point, and quietly
talk the matter over and try to come to some agreement. Hereupon Cleon
violently assailed them, saying that he knew from the first that they
had no right intentions, and that it was clear enough now by their
refusing to speak before the people, and wanting to confer in secret
with a committee of two or three. No, if they meant anything honest let
them say it out before all. The Lacedaemonians, however, seeing that
whatever concessions they might be prepared to make in their misfortune,
it was impossible for them to speak before the multitude and lose credit
with their allies for a negotiation which might after all miscarry, and
on the other hand, that the Athenians would never grant what they
asked upon moderate terms, returned from Athens without having effected
anything.

Their arrival at once put an end to the armistice