With great difficulty, when the debate was
resumed on the following day, he prevailed upon the people to break
off the negotiations with Argos, and to send him as ambassador to
Sparta, promising that he would bring matters to a prosperous issue.
Accordingly he proceeded to Sparta, where he was treated with great
respect as a man of eminence and a friend of the Lacedaemonians, but
could effect nothing because of the preponderance of the party which
inclined to the Boeotian alliance. He was therefore forced to return
ingloriously, in great fear of the anger of the Athenians, who had
been persuaded by him to deliver up so many and such important
prisoners to the Lacedaemonians without receiving any equivalent. For
the prisoners taken at Pylos were men of the first families in Sparta,
and related to the most powerful statesmen there. The Athenians,
however, did not show their dissatisfaction with Nikias by any harsh
measures, but they elected Alkibiades general, and they entered into a
treaty of alliance with the Argives, and also with the states of Elis
and Mantinea, which had revolted from the Lacedaemonians, while they
sent out privateers to Pylos to plunder the Lacedaemonian coasts in the
neighbourhood of that fortress. These measures soon produced a renewal
of the war.
XI. As the quarrel between Nikias and Alkibiades had now reached such
a pitch, it was decided that the remedy of ostracism must be applied
to them.
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