Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/222

 200 HISTORY OF GREECE. that of the envoys from Mitylene delivered at Olympia to the Spartan confederates, when the city had revolted from Athens and stood in pressing need of support, the discourse of Brasidas in the public assembly at Akanthus, and more than one speech also from Hermokrates, impressing upon his Sicilian countrymen hatred as well as fear of Athens. 1 Whoever reads these dis- courses, will see that they dwell almost exclusively on the great political wrong inherent in the very fact of her empire, robbing sc many Grecian communities of their legitimate autonomy, over and above the tribute imposed. That Athens had thus already en- slaved many cities, and was only watching for opportunities tc enslave many more, is the theme upon which they expatiate. But of practical grievances, of cruelty, oppression, spoliation, multi- plied exiles, etc., of high-handed wrong committed by individual Athenians, not one word is spoken. Had there been the smallest pretext for introducing such inflammatory topics, how much more impressive would have been the appeal of Brasidas to the sympa- thies of the Akanthians ! How vehement would have been the denunciations of the Mitylenaean envoys, in place of the tame and almost apologetic language which we now read in Thucydides ! Athens extinguished the autonomy of her subject-allies, and pun- ished revolters with severity, sometimes even with cruelty. But as to other points of wrong, the silence of accusers, such as those just noticed, counts as a powerful exculpation. The case is altered when we come to the period succeeding the battle of JEgospotami. Here indeed also, we find the Spartan em- pire complained of (as the Athenian empire had been before), in contrast with that state of autonomy to which each city laid claim, and which Sparta had not merely promised to ensure, but set forth as her only ground of war. Yet this is not the prominent grievance, other topics stand more emphatically forward. The decem- virs and the harmosts (some of the latter being Helots), the standing instruments of Spartan empire, are felt as more sorely painful than the empire itself; as the language held by Brasidas at Akanthus admits them to be beforehand. At the time when Athens was a subject-city under Sparta, governed by the Lysan- drian Thirty and by the Lacedaemonian harmost in the acropolis, 1 Thucjd. iii, 9; iv, 59-85; vi, 76,