354 HISTORY OF GREECE. Boeotia, points which Sparta could not concede by negotiation, since they were not in her possession ? Though these specula- tions failed, as we shall see in the coming chapter, yet there was nothing unreasonable in undertaking them. Probably, the almost universal sentiment of Athens was at this moment warlike, and even Nikias, humiliated as he must have been by the success in Sphakteria, would forget his usual caution in the desire of retrieving his own personal credit by some military exploit. That Demosthenes, now in full measure of esteem, would be eager to prosecute the war, with which his prospects of personal glory were essentially associated, just as Thucydides 1 observes about Brasidas on the Lacedaemonian side, can admit of no doubt. The comedy of Aristophanes, called the Acharnians, was acted about six months before the affair of Sphakteria, when no one could possibly look forward to such an event, the comedy of the Knights, about six months after it. 2 Now, there is this re- markable difference between the two, that while the former breathes the greatest sickness of war, and presses in every pos- sible way the importance of making peace, although at that time Athens had an opportunity of coming even to a decent accom- modation, the latter, running down Kleon with unmeasured scorn and ridicule, talks in one or two places only of the hard- ships of war, and drops altogether that emphasis and repetition with which peace had been dwelt upon in the Acharnians, al- though coming out at a time when peace was within the reach oi the Athenians. To understand properly the history of this period, therefore, we must distinguish various occasions which are often confounded. At the moment when Sphakteria was first blockaded, and when the Lacedaemonians first sent to solicit peace, there was a con- siderable party at Athens disposed to entertain the offer, and the ascendency of Kleon was one of the main causes why it was 1 Thucyd. v, 16.
- The Acharneis was performed at the festival of the Lensea, at Athens,
January, 425 B.C. : the Knights, at the same festival in the ensuing year, 424 B.C. The capture of Sphakteria took place about July, B.C. 425 : between the
two dates above. Pee Mr. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, ad ant
