sadors succeeded in
obtaining from them this concession: For the present there was to be
a truce for fifty years, but it should be competent for either party,
there being neither plague nor war in Lacedaemon or Argos, to give a
formal challenge and decide the question of this territory by battle, as
on a former occasion, when both sides claimed the victory; pursuit
not being allowed beyond the frontier of Argos or Lacedaemon. The
Lacedaemonians at first thought this mere folly; but at last, anxious
at any cost to have the friendship of Argos they agreed to the terms
demanded, and reduced them to writing. However, before any of this
should become binding, the ambassadors were to return to Argos and
communicate with their people and, in the event of their approval, to
come at the feast of the Hyacinthia and take the oaths.

The envoys returned accordingly. In the meantime, while the
Argives were engaged in these negotiations, the Lacedaemonian
ambassadors--Andromedes, Phaedimus, and Antimenidas--who were to receive
the prisoners from the Boeotians and restore them and Panactum to the
Athenians, found that the Boeotians had themselves razed Panactum, upon
the plea that oaths had been anciently exchanged between their people
and the Athenians, after a dispute on the subject to the effect that
neither should inhabit the place, but that they should graze it in
common. As for the Athenian prisoners of war in the hands of the
Boeotians, these were delivered over to Andromedes and his colleagues,
and by them conveyed to Athens and given back. The envoys at the same
time announced the razing of Panactum, which to them seemed as good as
its restitution, as it would no longer lodge an enemy of Athens. This
announcement was received with great indignation by the Athenians,
who thought that the Lacedaemonians had played them false, both in the
matter of the demolition of Panactum, which ought to have been restored
to them standing, and in having, as they now heard, made a separate
alliance with the Boeotians, in spite of their previous promise to join
Athens in compelling the adhesion of those who refused to accede to
the treaty. The Athenians also considered the other points in which
Lacedaemon had failed in her compact, and thinking that they had been
overreached, gave an angry answer to the ambassadors and sent them away.

The breach between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians having gone thus
far, the party at Athens, also, who wis