Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/408

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

overthrow our empire and establish your own, you would soon alienate the good-will which you have gained because we are feared,—if you are to continue the policy of which you gave a specimen during your brief leadership of Greece against Persia. The usages of your community preclude intercourse with others, and moreover a Spartan citizen on foreign service observes these usages as little as those of Hellas at large[1]." There is a manifest reference here to the period after the close of the war, when the Spartan promises of "liberating Greece" were falsified. And the reference to the misconduct of the Spartan citizen abroad was certainly not suggested by the case of Pausanias alone. The war had furnished two signal instances. Gylippus had been convicted by the Ephors of appropriating part of the treasure taken after the capture of Athens[2]. Lysander—the first Greek who received divine honours from Greeks—had surpassed the arrogance of Pausanias[3].

8. The striking speech of Brasidas to the Acanthians (424 B.C.) deserves to be considered in this connection. It is throughout an emphatic assertion that the cause in which Sparta fights is the cause of Greek liberty. "I have not come," he says, "to support a party. I do not consider that I should be bringing you freedom in any real sense if I should disregard your constitution, and enslave the

  1. Thuc. i. 77 § 6.
  2. Plut. Lys. 16—17, Nic. 28, cf. Diod. xiii. 106.
  3. With Plut. Lys. 18 cf. Paus. vi. 3 §§ 14—15, Athen. xv. 696.