peace and alliance between Athens and Lacedæmon, which stood in conspicuous letters on pillars erected in both cities. [94] Plato, Symposion, c. 35, p. 220. δεινοὶ γὰρ αὐτόθι χειμῶνες, πάγου οἵου δεινοτάτου, etc. Coming to Argos at the head of a few Athenian hoplites and bowmen, and reinforced by Peloponnesian allies, Alkibiadês exhibited the spectacle of an Athenian general traversing the interior of the peninsula, and imposing his own arrangements in various quarters, a spectacle at that moment new and striking.[95] He first turned his attention to the Achæan towns in the northwest, where he persuaded the inhabitants of Patræ to ally themselves with Athens, and even to undertake the labor of connecting their town with the sea by means of long walls, so as to place themselves within the protection of Athens from seaward. He farther projected the erection of a fort and the formation of a naval station at the extreme point of Cape Rhium, just at the narrow entrance of the Corinthian gulf; whereby the Athenians, who already possessed the opposite shore by means of Naupaktus, would have become masters of the commerce of the gulf. But the Corinthians and Sikyonians, to whom this would have been a serious mischief, despatched forces enough to prevent the consummation of the scheme, and probably also to hinder the erection of the walls at Patræ.[96] Yet the march of Alkibiadês doubtless strengthened the anti-Laconian interest throughout the Achæan coast. [95] Thucyd. v, 52. Isokratês (De Bigis, sect. 17, p. 349) speaks of this expedition of Alkibiadês in his usual loose and exaggerated language: but he has a right to call attention to it as something very memorable at the time. [96] Thucyd. v, 52.