28.
The Argive magistrates, after hearing these proposals, referred them to their colleagues and1 the people. The Argives passed a vote accordingly, and elected twelve commissioners; through these any of the Hellenes who pleased might make an alliance with them, except the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, who could only be admitted to the league with the sanction of the Argive people.
[2]
The Argives were the more inclined to take this course because, their truce with the Lacedaemonians being about to expire, they saw that war was imminent. Moreover they were encourage by the hope of becoming the leaders of Peloponnesus. For at this time the reputation of Lacedaemon had fallen very low; her misfortunes had brought her into contempt, while the resources of Argos were unimpaired.
[3]
For the Argives had not taken part in the war with Athens, and, being at peace with both parties, had reaped a harvest from them.
1 The Argives, seeing that war with Lacedaemon was imminent and hoping to lead Pelo ponnesus, enter warmly into the idea.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.