120
One may best comprehend how great is the reversal in our circumstances if he will read side by side the treatiesSee Isoc. 4.115 and note. which were made during our leadership and those which have been published recently; for he will find that in those days we were constantly setting limits to the empire of the King,Cf. Isoc. 4.118 and note. levying tribute on some of his subjects, and barring him from the sea; now, however, it is he who controls the destinies of the Hellenes, who dictatesCf. Isoc. 4.175; Xen. Hell. 6.3.9. what they must each do, and who all but sets up his viceroys in their cities.
121
For with this one exception, what else is lacking? Was it not he who decided the issue of the war, was it not he who directed the terms of peace, and is it not he who now presides over our affairs? Do we not sail off to him as to a master, when we have complaints against each other? Do we not address him as “The Great King” as though we were the captives of his spear? Do we not in our wars against each other rest our hopes of salvation on him, who would gladly destroy both Athens and Lacedaemon ?
122
Reflecting on these things, we may well be indignant at the present state of affairs, and yearn for our lost supremacy: and we may well blame the Lacedaemonians because, although in the beginning they entered upon the warThe Peloponnesian War. with the avowed intentionSee words of Brasidas in Thuc. 4.85. of freeing the Hellenes, in the end they delivered so many of them into bondage, and because they induced the Ionians to revolt from Athens, the mother city from which the Ionians emigrated and by whose influence they were often preserved from destruction, and then betrayed themBy the Treaty of Antalcidas, negotiated by Sparta, the Ionian cities of Asia Minor and the neighboring islands were given over to Persia (Xen. Hell. 5.1.31). to the barbarians—those barbarians in despite of whom they possess their lands and against whom they have never ceased to war.
