54
For our fathers tried to persuade their allies to establish the very same polity in their cities as they themselves had continually cherished;See Isoc. 4.104-106. and it is a sign of good will and friendship when any people urge it upon others to use those institutions which they conceive to be beneficial to themselves. The Lacedaemonians, on the other hand, set up in their subject states a polity which resembled neither that which obtained among themselves nor those which have existed anywhere else in the world; nay, they vested in ten menFor these “decarchies” and their misrule see Isoc. 4.110-114. alone the government of each of the states—men of such a character that were one to attempt to denounce them for three or four days without pause he would appear to have covered not a fraction of the wrongs which have been perpetrated by them.
55
To attempt to review these wrongs in detail were foolish; they are so many and so grave. Were I a younger man, I might perhaps have found means to characterize all of their crimes in a few words which would have stirred in my hearers an indignation commensurate with the gravity of the things which these men have done; but as it is, no such words occur to me other than those which are on the lips of all men, namely, that they so far outdid all those who lived before their time in lawlessness and greed that they not only ruined themselves and their friends and their own countries but also brought the Lacedaemonians into evil repute with their allies and plunged them into misfortunes so many and so grave as no one could have dreamed would ever be visited upon them.
