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 84 HISTORY OF GREECE. bors like yourselves in character : but as to dealings with Athens^ your system is antiquated and out of date. In politics as in art, it is the modern improvements which are sure to come out victo- rious : and though unchanged institutions are best, if a city be not called upon to act, yet multiplicity of active obligations requires multiplicity and novelty of contrivance. 1 It is through these numerous trials that the means of Athens have acquired so much more new development than yours." The Corinthians concluded by saying, that if, after so many previous warnings, now repeated for the last time, Sparta still refused to protect her allies against Athens, if she delayed to perform her promise made to the Potidseans, of immediately invading Attica, they, the Corinthians, would forthwith look for safety in some new alliance, and they felt themselves fully justified in doing so. They admonished her to look well to the case, and to carry forward Peloponnesus with undiminished dignity as it had been transmitted to her from her predecessors. 2 Such was the memorable picture of Athens and her citizens, as exhibited by her fiercest enemy, before the public assembly at Sparta. It was calculated to impress the assembly, not by appeal to recent or particular misdeeds, but by the general system of unprincipled and endless aggression which was imputed to Athens during the past, and by the certainty held out that the same system, unless put down by measures of decisive hostility, would be pushed still farther in future to the utter ruin of Pelo- ponnesus. And to this point did the Athenian envoy staying in Sparta about some other negotiation, and now present in the assembly address himself in reply, after having asked and obtained permission from the magistrates. The empire of Athens was now of such standing that the younger men present had no personal knowledge of the circumstances under which it had grown up : and what was needed as information for them would be impressive as a reminder even to their seniors. 3 1 Thucyd. i, 71. upxaiQ-po-Ko. ifiuv TO, iiriTrjdevftaTa. ?rpof av-oi? 'AvayKTj 6',uoT7Ep Te^vrjf,uel TO. tni-yiyvo/teva Kparelv Kal jjovxafo iro'Aei T" uKLVTjra vofitfja apiara, TpQf TTO^U <5 avayKafrfievotf levai, 7 tal r.-f IKITSIVTIOM; <??<, * Thucyd. i, 71 Thii'-vd. i. 72