30 HISTORY OF GREECE. It is probable that if these envoys had been able to make an effective reply to Kleon, and to defend their proposition against his charge of fraudulent purpose, they would have been sustained by Nikias and a certain number of leading Athenians, so that the assembly might have been brought at least to try the issue of a private discussion between diplomatic agents on both sides. But the case was one in which it was absolutely necessary that, the envoys should stand forward with some defence for them- selves ; which Nikias might effectively second, but could not originate : and as they were incompetent to this task, the whole affair broke down. We shall hereafter find other examples, in which the incapacity of Lacedaemonian envoys, to meet the open debate of Athenian political life, is productive of mischievous results. In this case, the proposition of the envoys to enter into treaty with select commissioners, was not only quite reasonable, but afforded the only possibility though doubtless not a certainty of some ultimate pacification: and the manoeuvre whereby Kleon discredited it was a grave abuse of publicity, not un- known in modern, though more frequent in ancient, political life. Kleon probably thought that if commissioners were named, Nikias, Laches, and other politicians of the same rank and color, would be the persons selected ; persons whose anxiety for peace and alliance with Sparta would make them over-indulgent and careless in securing the interests of Athens : and it will be seen, when we come to describe the conduct of Nikias four years afterwards, that this suspicion was not ill-grounded. Unfortunately Thucydides, in describing the proceedings of this assembly, so important in its consequences because it inter- cepted a promising opening for peace, is brief as usual, telling us only what was said by Kleon and what was decided by the assembly. But though nothing is positively stated respecting Nikias and his partisans, we learn from other sources, and we may infer from what afterwards occurred, that they vehemently opposed Kleon, and that they looked coldly on the subsequent enterprise against Sphakteria as upon his peculiar measure. 1 It has been common to treat the dismissal of the Lacedaemo- nian envoys on this occasion as a peculiar specimen of dem Dcrat-
1 Plutarch, Nikias, c. 7; Philochoras, Fragm. 105. ed. Didot.
