Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/147

PROPOSITIONS OF SPAKTA. 125 either for Persia, or for her Peloponnesian confederates ; indeed, past experience had shown that she could not do so with effect. By accepting the propositions, therefore, Athens would not really have obtained relief from the entire burden of war ; but would merely have blunted the ardor and tied up the hands of her own troops, at a moment when they felt themselves in the full current of success. By the armament, most certainly, and by the gener- als, Alkibiades, Theramenes, and Thrasybulus, the acceptance of such terms at such a moment would have been regarded as a disgrace. It would have balked them of conquests ardently, and at that time not unreasonably, anticipated ; conquests tending to restore Athens to that eminence from which she had been so re- cently deposed. And it would have inflicted this mortification, not merely without compensating gain to her in any other shape, but with a fair probability of imposing upon all her citizens the necessity of redoubled efforts at no very distant future, when the moment favorable to her enemies should have arrived. If, therefore, passing from the vague accusation that it was the demagogue Kleophon who stood between Athens and the conclu- sion of peace, we examine what were the specific terms of peace which he induced his countrymen to reject, we shall find that he had very strong reasons, not to say preponderant reasons, for his advice. Whether he made any use of this proposition, in itself inadmissible, to try and invite the conclusion of peace on more suitable and lasting terms, may well be doubted. Probably no such efforts would have succeeded, even if they had been made ; yet a statesman like Perikles would have made the trial, in a conviction that Athens was carrying on the war at a disadvantage which must in the long run sink her. A mere opposition speaker, like Kleophon, even when taking what was probably a right measure of the actual proposition before him, did not look so far forward into the future. Meanwhile the Athenian fleet reigned alone in the Propontia and its two adjacent straits, the Bosphorus and the Hellespont ; although the ardor and generosity of Pharnabazus not only sup- tho Athenians rejected the proposition as insincerely meant : irpta{3e.voafiEvuv rrfpt ftpiivt/f uiriarJ/aavTef ol 'Ai9^vatot ov T compare also Schnl. ad Eurip. Orest. 772, Philochori Fragment.