hed to cancel the treaty,
immediately put themselves in motion. Foremost amongst these was
Alcibiades, son of Clinias, a man yet young in years for any other
Hellenic city, but distinguished by the splendour of his ancestry.
Alcibiades thought the Argive alliance really preferable, not that
personal pique had not also a great deal to do with his opposition; he
being offended with the Lacedaemonians for having negotiated the treaty
through Nicias and Laches, and having overlooked him on account of his
youth, and also for not having shown him the respect due to the ancient
connection of his family with them as their proxeni, which, renounced
by his grandfather, he had lately himself thought to renew by his
attentions to their prisoners taken in the island. Being thus, as he
thought, slighted on all hands, he had in the first instance spoken
against the treaty, saying that the Lacedaemonians were not to be
trusted, but that they only treated, in order to be enabled by this
means to crush Argos, and afterwards to attack Athens alone; and now,
immediately upon the above occurring, he sent privately to the Argives,
telling them to come as quickly as possible to Athens, accompanied by
the Mantineans and Eleans, with proposals of alliance; as the moment was
propitious and he himself would do all he could to help them.

Upon receiving this message and discovering that the Athenians, far from
being privy to the Boeotian alliance, were involved in a serious quarrel
with the Lacedaemonians, the Argives paid no further attention to the
embassy which they had just sent to Lacedaemon on the subject of the
treaty, and began to incline rather towards the Athenians, reflecting
that, in the event of war, they would thus have on their side a city
that was not only an ancient ally of Argos, but a sister democracy
and very powerful at sea. They accordingly at once sent ambassadors to
Athens to treat for an alliance, accompanied by others from Elis and
Mantinea.

At the same time arrived in haste from Lacedaemon an embassy consisting
of persons reputed well disposed towards the Athenians--Philocharidas,
Leon, and Endius--for fear that the Athenians in their irritation
might conclude alliance with the Argives, and also to ask back Pylos in
exchange for Panactum, and in defence of the alliance with the Boeotians
to plead that it had not been made to hurt the Athenians. Upon the
envoys speaking in the senate upon these points, and stating that