When the reader stops to examine th

When the reader stops to examine the documents and their setting more closely, a further function becomes evident. In each case there is a vast discrepancy between what the document proclaims and what actually occurs. The Peace of Nicias, for example, begins with a guarantee of access to the common sanctuaries of the Greeks--Delphi, Olympia, and the Isthmus. But the ineffectiveness of the treaty soon becomes evident in the exclusion of Spartan contestants from the Olympic games (5.49.1). The next section of the treaty specifies that it is to last fifty years. Within the same year mutual suspicion and distrust lead to the refusal to return Amphipolis to Athens or Pylos to Sparta (5.35.3ff). The one-hundred-year treaty between Athens and Argos (5.47.1) is even less enduring. The provisions for nonaggression in the Peace of Nicias and for mutual assistance in the ensuing alliance between Athens and Sparta become a mockery when Athens and Argos ally and when open hostilities break out (esp. 5.47). The effect of the documents, then, is ironic for they emphasize the discrepancy between professions of enduring stability and the rapidly shifting reality of events.