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 258 HISTORY OF GREECE. having only a small force, and being in no condition to employ constraint, found himself obliged to return home.i This incident, though not a declaration of war against Sparta, •was the first open renunciation of her authority as presiding state among the Greeks ; the first avowed manifestation of a competitor for that dignity, with numerous and willing followers ; the first separation of Greece — considered in herself alone and apart from foreign solicitations, such as the Persian invasion — into two distinct organized camps, each with collective interests and projects of its own. In spite of mortified pride, Sparta was constrained, and even in some points of view not indisposed, to patient acquiescence : for she had no means of forcing the dispo- sitions of the Ionic allies, while the war with Persia altogether, — having now become no longer strictly defensive, and being withal maritime as well as distant from her own territory, — had ceased to be in harmony with her home routine and strict discipline. Her grave senators, especially an ancient Herakleid named Hetoemaridas, reproved the impatience of the younger citizens, and discountenanced the idea of permanent maritime command as a dangerous innovation : they even treated it as an advantage, that Athens should take the lead in carrying on the Persian war, since it could not be altogether dropped ; nor had the Athenians as yet manifested any sentiments posi- tively hostile, to excite their alarm.^ Nay, they actually took credit in the eyes of Athens, about a century afterwards, for having themselves advised this separation of command at sea from command on land.3 Moreover, if the war continued ' Thucyd. i, 95 ; Diodorus, xi, 44-47. 2 Thucyd. i, 95. rollowing Thucydides in his conception of these events, I have embodied in the nan-ative as much as seems consistent with it in Diodorus (xi, 50), who evidently did not here copy Thucydides, but proba- bly had Ephorus for his guide. The name of Hetoemaridas, as an influ- ential Spartan statesman on this occasion, is probable enough ; but his alleged speech on the mischiefs of maritime empire, which Diodorus seems to have had before him, composed by Ephorus, would probably have repre- sented the views and feelings of the year 350 B.C., and not those of 476 B.C. The subject would have been treated in the sajne manner as Iso- krates, the master of Ephorus, treats it, in his Crat. viii, De Pace, pp. 179, 180. ' Xenophon, Hellen, vi, 5, 34. It was at the moment when the Spartanj