27.
After the conclusion of the fifty years' peace and of the subsequent alliance, the ambassadors1 who had been invited to the conference from the other states of Peloponnesus left Lacedaemon.
[2]
They all went home except the Corinthians, who turned aside to Argos and opened communications with certain of the Argive magistrates, saying that the Lacedaemonians had made peace and alliance with the Athenians, hitherto their mortal enemies, to no good end, but for the enslavement of Peloponnesus, and that the Argives were bound to take measures for its deliverance. They ought to pass a vote that any independent Hellenic city which would allow a settlement of disputes on equal terms might enter into a defensive alliance with them. The negotiation should not be carried on with the assembly, but the Argives should appoint a few commissioners having full powers, lest, if any states appealed to the people and were rejected, their failure should become public. They added that hatred of the Lacedaemonians would induce many to join them.
[3]
Having offered this recommendation, the Corinthians returned home.
1 The Corinthians go to Argos and flatter the Argives with the notion that they must become the centre of a great anti-Laconian confederacy.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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