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The period of truce terminating without any definite peace being arrived at, the summer of the tenth year is chiefly notable for the expedition sent under Cleon to recover Amphipolis, and for a recrudescence of the old quarrel in Sicily between Leontini and Syracuse. Before Amphipolis, the incompetent Cleon was routed by the skill of Brasidas; but the victor as well as the vanquished was slain, though he lived long enough to know of the victory. Their deaths removed two of the most zealous opponents of the peace for which both sides were now anxious. Hence at the close of the tenth year a definite peace was concluded.

The Lacedæmonians, however, were almost alone in being fully satisfied by the terms, and the war was really continued by an anti-Laconian confederation of the former Peloponnesian allies, who saw in the peace a means to the excessive preponderance of Athens and Sparta. Argos was brought into the new confederacy in the hope of establishing her nominal equality with Sparta. For some years from this point the combinations of the states were constantly changing, while Athens and Sparta remained generally on terms of friendliness, the two prominent figures at Athens being the conservative Nicias and the restless and ambitious young intriguer Alcibiades.

In the fourteenth year there were active hostilities between Argos, with which by this time Athens was in alliance, and Lacedæmon, issuing in the great battle of Mantinea, where there was an Athenian contingent with the Argives. This was notable especially as completely restoring the prestige of the Lacedæmonian arms, their victory being decisive. The result was a new treaty between Sparta and Argos, and the dissolution of the Argive-Athenian alliance; but this was once more reversed in the following year, when the Argive oligarchy was attacked successfully by the popular party.

The next year is marked by the high-handed treatment of the island of Melos by the Athenians. This was one of the very few islands which had not been compelled to submit to Athens, but had endeavoured to remain neutral. Thither the Athenians now sent an expedition, absolutely without excuse, to compel their submission.

The Melians, however, refused, and gave the Athenians a good deal of trouble before they could be subdued, when the adult male population was put to death, and the women and children enslaved. At this time the Athenians resolved, under colour of an appeal for assistance from the Sicilian city of Egesta, deliberately to set about the establishment of their empire in Sicily. The aggressive policy was vehemently advocated by Alcibiades, and opposed by Nicias. Nevertheless, he, with Alcibiades and Lamachus, was appointed to command the expedition, which was prepared on a scale of unparalleled magnificence. It was on the point of starting, when the whole city was stirred to frenzy by the midnight mutilation of the sacred images called Hermæ, an act laid at the door of Alcibiades, along with many other charges of profane outrages. Of set purpose, however, the enemies of Alcibiades refused to bring him to trial. The expedition sailed. The Syracusans were deaf to the warnings of Hermocrates until the great fleet had actually arrived at Rhegium.

Nicias was now anxious to find an excuse, in the evident falsity of statements made by the Egestans, for the fleet to content itself with making a demonstration and then returning home. The scheme of Alcibiades, however, was adopted for gaining over the other Sicilian states in order to crush Syracuse. But at this moment dispatches arrived requiring the return of Alcibiades to stand trial. Athens was in a panic over the Hermæ affair, which was supposed to portend an attempt to reestablish the despotism which had been ended a hundred years before by the expulsion of the Pisistratidæ. Alcibiades, however, made his escape, and for years pursued a life of political intrigue against the Athenian government.

Nicias and Lamachus, left in joint command, drew off the Syracusan forces by a ruse, and were thus enabled to occupy unchecked a strong position before Syracuse. Although, however, they inflicted a defeat on the returned Syracusan forces, they withdrew into winter quarters; the Syracusans were roused by Hermocrates to improve their military organisation; and both sides entered on a diplomatic contest for winning over the other states of Sicily. Alcibiades, now an avowed enemy of Athens, was received by the Lacedæmonians, whom he induced to send an able Spartan officer, Gylippus, to Syracuse, and to determine on the establishment of a military post corresponding to that of Pylos on Attic soil at Decelea.

IV.--The Disaster of Syracuse

In the spring the Athenians succeeded in establishing themselves on the heights called Epipolæ, overlooking Syracuse, began raising a wall of circumvallation, and carried by a surprise the counter-stockade which the Syracusans were raising. In one of the skirmishes, while the building of the wall was in progress, Lamachus was killed; otherwise matters went well for the Athenians and ill for the Syracusans, till Gylippus was allowed to land at Himera, force his way into Syracuse, and give new life. Nicias was guilty of the blunder of allowing Gylippus to land at Himera, to aid the defence, at the moment when it was on the point of capitulation. A long contest followed, the Athenians endeavouring to complete the investing lines, the Syracusans to pierce them with counterworks. Nicias sent to Athens for reinforcements, while the Syracusans were energetically fitting out a fleet and appealing for air in the Peloponnese. Nicias, in fact, was extremely despondent and anxious to resign; the Athenians, however, answered his dispatches by preparing a great reinforcement under the command of Demosthenes, without accepting the resignation of Nicias. The Lacedæmonians, however, also sent some reinforcements; at the same time they formally declared war, and carried out the plan of occupying and fortifying Decelea, which completely commanded the Athenian territory and was the cause of untold loss and suffering.