means alone they would effect their purpose.  The ambassadors were deceived by his protestations, and, forsaking Nikias, relied entirely upon him.  Upon this Alkibiades brought them into the public assembly, and there asked them if they came with full powers to treat.  When they said that they did not, he unexpectedly turned round upon them, and calling both the Senate and the people to witness their words, urged them to pay no attention to men who were such evident liars, and who said one thing in one+ assembly and the opposite in another.  The ambassadors, as Alkibiades expected, were thunderstruck, and Nikias could say nothing on their behalf.  The people at once called for the ambassadors from Argos to be brought before them, in order to contract an alliance with that city, but an earthquake which was felt at this moment greatly served Nikias’s purpose by causing the assembly to break up.  With great difficulty, when the debate was resumed on the following day, he prevailed upon the people to break off the negotiations with Argos, and to send him as ambassador to Sparta, promising that he would bring matters to a prosperous issue.  Accordingly he proceeded to Sparta, where he was treated with great respect as a man of eminence and a friend of the Lacedaemonians, but could effect nothing because of the preponderance of the party which inclined to the Boeotian alliance.  He was therefore forced to return ingloriously, in great fear of the anger of the Athenians, who had been persuaded by him to deliver up so many and such important prisoners to the Lacedaemonians without receiving any equivalent.  For the prisoners taken at Pylos were men of the first families in Sparta, and related to the most powerful statesmen there.  The Athenians, however, did not show their dissatisfaction with Nikias by any harsh measures, but they elected Alkibiades general, and they entered into a treaty of alliance with the Argives, and also with the states of Elis and Mantinea, which had revolted from the Lacedaemonians, while they sent out privateers to Pylos to plunder the Lacedaemonian coasts in the neighbourhood of that fortress.  These measures soon produced a renewal of the war.

XI.  As the quarrel between Nikias and Alkibiades had now reached such a pitch, it was decided that the remedy of ostracism must be applied to them.  By this from time to time the people of Athens were wont to banish for ten years any citizen whose renown or wealth rendered him dangerous to the state.  Great excitement was caused by this measure, as one or the other must be utterly ruined by its application.  The Athenians were disgusted by the licentiousness of Alkibiades, and feared his reckless daring, as has been explained at greater length in his Life, while Nikias was disliked because of his great wealth and his reserved and unpopular mode of life.  Moreover he had frequently offended the people by acting in direct opposition to their wishes, forcing them in spite of themselves to do what was best for them.  On the one side were arrayed the young men and those who wished for war, and on the other the older men and the party of peace, who would be sure to vote respectively, one for the banishment of Nikias, the other for that of Alkibiades.  Now