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 348 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE could from the Maritime League. In 357 the league broke up in open war, which only ended in the aban- donment by Athens of all her claims. She sank to the level of an ordinary large Greek town, and, under the guidance of Eubulus, devoted her energies to financial retrenchment and the maintenance of peace. Isocrates was one of the few men who saw what the policy meant — a final renunciation of the burden of empire. In the treatise On the Peace, he pleads for the autonomy of the allies, and actually uses some of the arguments of that anti-Athenian party in the islands which he had confuted in the Panegyricus. About the same time, in the Areopagiticus, he preaches the home policy of the moderates, of Phokion and Aristotle — a return to the habits of old Athens, to the irdrpLO'i TToXneia, which he associates with the Areo- pagus. In its more obvious aspect, the speech is a manifesto in support of Eubulus, like Xenophon's Finances. But it is at the same time an interesting illustration of the moral sensitiveness and self-distrust of the age — the feeling which leads Demosthenes to denounce all Hellas, and Demades to remark that the Virgin of Marathon is now an old woman, with no thought beyond slippers, gruel, and dressing-gown! It was just before the end of the Social War that Isocrates turned to Archidamus of Sparta with the same invitation as he had addressed before to Diony- sius. Who else could so well lead the crusade against barbarism ? Agesilaus, his father, had made the at- tempt, and won great glory. He had failed because he had been interrupted, and because he had tried to reinstate exiles of his own party in their cities. Archi- damus should confine himself to the one great task of