g6 HISTORY OF GREECE. reduction of various allies who revolted, Athens had gradually become unpopular, while Sparta too had become her enemy instead of her friend. To relax her hold upon her allies would have been to make them the allies of Sparta against her ; and thus the motive of fear was added to those of ambition and revenue, in inducing Athens to maintain her imperial dominion by force. In her position, no Grecian power either would or could have acted otherwise: no Grecian power, certainly not Sparta, w r ould have acted with so much equity and moderation, or given so little ground of complaint to her subjects. Worse they had suffered, while under Persia ; worse they would suffer, if they came under Sparta, who held her own allies under the thraldom of an oligarchical party in each city ; and if they hated Athens, this was only because subjects always hated the present dominion, whatever that might be. 1 Having justified both the origin and the working of the Athe- nian empire, the envoy concluded by warning Sparta to consider calmly, without being hurried away by the passions and invec- tives of others, before she took a step from which there was no retreat, and which exposed the future to chances such as no man on either side could foresee. He called on her not to break the truce mutually sworn to, but to adjust all differences, as Athens was prepared to do, by the amicable arbitration which that truce provided. Should she begin war, the Athenians would follow her lead and resist her, calling to witness those gods under whose sanction the oaths were taken. 2 The facts recounted in the preceding chapters will have shown, that the account given by the Athenian envoy at Sparta, of the origin and character of the empire exercised by his city, though doubtless the account of a partisan, is in substance correct and equitable ; the envoys of Athens had not yet learned to take the tone which they assumed in the sixteenth and seventeenth years 1 Thucyd. i, 77.
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