of besieging, not without showing their suspicion of the innovating spirit of their ally.(831) In the tenth year of the siege, 455 B.C., Ithome surrendered on terms; and the Messenians, together with their wives and children, quitted Peloponnesus, under a promise of never again entering it. It appears that the war between Lacedæmon and Arcadia was concluded upon conditions, of which one was, that no person should be put to death for the sake of the Lacedæmonian party at Tegea; and another, that Sparta was to expel the Messenians from the country, but not kill them—which were inscribed on a pillar on the banks of the Alpheus.(832) The Athenians, however, gave the fugitives the town of Naupactus, which they had shortly before conquered, and which was conveniently situated for tempting them, against their promise, to make inroads and forays in Peloponnesus. The Messenians still continued, in the Peloponnesian war, to be distinguished from the neighbouring people by their Doric dialect.(833) 11. Immediately after the dismission of the Athenians from Ithome, the people of Athens, in order to resent the affront, annulled the alliance with Sparta, which had subsisted since the Persian war;(834) entered into a treaty with Argos, the enemy of Sparta, and also with the Thessalians; and even joined to itself Megara, which was dependent on its commercial intercourse. Then followed the war with the maritime towns of Argolis, in which Athens, after many reverses, at length succeeded in destroying the fleet of Ægina, and subjugating that island (457 B.C.).(835) Sparta was compelled to be a quiet spectator of the subjection of so important a member of her confederacy, as she was still occupied with the siege of Ithome, and in the same year had sent out an army to liberate her mother country, Doris, from the yoke of the Phocians. But when, after the execution of this object, the Spartans were hastening back to Peloponnesus, they were compelled to force their passage home by the battle of Tanagra, which, with the assistance of the Thebans, they gained over an army composed of Athenians, Ionians, Argives, and Thessalians. This aid was afforded to them on the condition that they would help the Thebans to regain their supremacy in Bœotia, which the Thebans had lost by their defection from the Grecian cause in the Persian war.(836) Sparta, however, after so decisive a victory, concluded a four months’ armistice with Athens, during which that state conquered the Thebans at Œnophyta, finished the blockade of Ægina, subdued all Bœotia with the exception of Thebes, and Phocis, and extended its democratical constitution, which after the battle of Tanagra was nearly threatened with destruction,(837) even to the city of Thebes. The inactivity of Sparta during these astonishing successes of her enemy (for when she concluded the armistice with Athens she must have partly foreseen its consequences) seems to prove