10 - The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition

Summary

THE FAILURE OF THE PEACE

Athens had won the war, but it quickly proved to be a hollow victory. Sparta had abandoned her project of liberating the subjects of Athens and her own alliance was in some disarray, but she was very far from being crushed; and though the terms of the Peace of Nicias were decidedly favourable to Athens the latter was in no position to enforce them. There follows a period of confused negotiation and inconclusive conferences, on which Thucydides has not succeeded in imposing that degree of order which he seems in general to aim at.

The difficulty of implementing the Peace made itself felt at once. The lot obliged Sparta to act first, and she released the prisoners she held; but when Clearidas claimed that he could not hand over an unwilling Amphipolis, the home government allowed him instead merely to withdraw his troops. Roughly at the same time a meeting of her allies at Sparta reiterated the refusal of several of them to accept the Peace. To counter this and for security from Argos (below), the Spartans negotiated a defensive alliance with Athens, which procured them the return of the Pylos prisoners, but nothing more, and the main effect was to foster suspicion that Sparta and Athens were conspiring against the rest of Greece. Corinthian envoys on their way home from Sparta called on the Argives to come to the rescue of the Peloponnese by setting up a defensive alliance of their own.