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their arms drop to their sides. He therefore strove to unite the two cities in friendship, and to free the rest of the Hellenes from ills, as well as to give him- self a season of rest, and so to make secure for all coming time the name which he had for success. The men who were well-to-do, and the elderly men, and most of the farmers, he found inclined to peace from the first; and after he had talked privately with many of the rest, taught them his views, and blunted the edge of their desire for war, then he at once held out hopes to the Spartans, and urgently invited them to seek for peace. They had confidence in him, not only because of his usual fairness towards them, but especially because he had shown kind attentions to those of thcir men who had been captured at Pylos and kept in prison at Athens, had treated them humanely, and so eased their mis- fortune. The two parties had before this made a sort of stay of mutual hostilitics for a year, and during this time they had held conferences with one another, and tasted again the sweets of security and leisure and intercourse with friends at home and abroad, so that they yearned for that old life which was undefiled by war, and listened gladly when choirs sang such strains as “Let my spear lie unused for the spider to cover with webs” and gladly called to mind the saying, “In peace the sleeper is waked not by the trumpet, but by the cock.” Accordingly, they heaped abuse on those who said that the war was fated to last thrice nine