This remarkable anecdote comes in all its main circumstances from Thucydidês. It illustrates forcibly that unprincipled character which will be found to attach to Alkibiadês through life, and presents indeed an unblushing combination of impudence and fraud, which we cannot better describe than by saying that it is exactly in the vein of Fielding’s Jonathan Wild. In depicting Kleon and Hyperbolus, historians vie with each other in strong language to mark the impudence which is said to have been their peculiar characteristic. Now we have no particular facts before us to measure the amount of truth in this, though as a general charge it is sufficiently credible. But we may affirm, with full assurance, that none of the much-decried demagogues of Athens—not one of those sellers of leather, lamps, sheep, ropes, pollard, and other commodities, upon whom Aristophanês heaps so many excellent jokes—ever surpassed, if they ever equalled, the impudence of this descendant of Æakus and Zeus in his manner of overreaching and disgracing the Lacedæmonian envoys. These latter, it must be added, display a carelessness of public faith and consistency, a facility in publicly unsaying what they have just before publicly said, and a treachery towards their own confidential agent, which is truly surprising, and goes far to justify the general charge of habitual duplicity so often alleged against the Lacedæmonian character.[74] [74] Euripid. Andromach. 445-455; Herodot. ix, 54. The disgraced envoys would doubtless quit Athens immediately: but this opportune earthquake gave Nikias a few hours to recover from his unexpected overthrow. In the assembly of the next day, he still contended that the friendship of Sparta was preferable to that of Argos, and insisted on the prudence of postponing all consummation of engagement with the latter until the real intentions of Sparta, now so contradictory and inexplicable, should be made clear. He contended that the position of Athens, in regard to the peace and alliance, was that of superior honor and advantage; the position of Sparta, one of comparative disgrace: Athens had thus a greater interest than Sparta in maintaining what had been concluded. But he at the same time admitted that a distinct and peremptory explanation must be exacted from Sparta as to her intentions, and he requested the people to send himself with some other colleagues to demand it. The Lacedæmonians should be apprised that Argeian envoys were already present in Athens with propositions, and that the Athenians might already have concluded this alliance, if they could have permitted themselves to do wrong to the existing alliance with Sparta. But the Lacedæmonians, if their intentions were honorable, must show it forthwith: 1. By restoring Panaktum, not demolished, but standing. 2. By restoring Amphipolis also. 3. By renouncing their special alliance with the Bœotians, unless the Bœotians on their side chose to become parties to the peace with Athens.[75]