hem for Pylos.
This the Boeotians refused to do, unless Lacedaemon made a separate
alliance with them as she had done with Athens. Lacedaemon knew that
this would be a breach of faith to Athens, as it had been agreed that
neither of them should make peace or war without the other; yet wishing
to obtain Panactum which she hoped to exchange for Pylos, and the party
who pressed for the dissolution of the treaty strongly affecting the
Boeotian connection, she at length concluded the alliance just as
winter gave way to spring; and Panactum was instantly razed. And so the
eleventh year of the war ended.

In the first days of the summer following, the Argives, seeing that the
promised ambassadors from Boeotia did not arrive, and that Panactum
was being demolished, and that a separate alliance had been concluded
between the Boeotians and Lacedaemonians, began to be afraid that Argos
might be left alone, and all the confederacy go over to Lacedaemon. They
fancied that the Boeotians had been persuaded by the Lacedaemonians to
raze Panactum and to enter into the treaty with the Athenians, and that
Athens was privy to this arrangement, and even her alliance, therefore,
no longer open to them--a resource which they had always counted
upon, by reason of the dissensions existing, in the event of the
noncontinuance of their treaty with Lacedaemon. In this strait the
Argives, afraid that, as the result of refusing to renew the treaty with
Lacedaemon and of aspiring to the supremacy in Peloponnese, they would
have the Lacedaemonians, Tegeans, Boeotians, and Athenians on their
hands all at once, now hastily sent off Eustrophus and Aeson, who seemed
the persons most likely to be acceptable, as envoys to Lacedaemon,
with the view of making as good a treaty as they could with the
Lacedaemonians, upon such terms as could be got, and being left in
peace.

Having reached Lacedaemon, their ambassadors proceeded to negotiate the
terms of the proposed treaty. What the Argives first demanded was that
they might be allowed to refer to the arbitration of some state or
private person the question of the Cynurian land, a piece of frontier
territory about which they have always been disputing, and which
contains the towns of Thyrea and Anthene, and is occupied by the
Lacedaemonians. The Lacedaemonians at first said that they could not
allow this point to be discussed, but were ready to conclude upon the
old terms. Eventually, however, the Argive ambas