98
But it is not the fault of the Athenians that these complaints are made and many others more bitter than these, but rather of those who now in what is being said, as in times past in all that has been done, have been in the opposite camp from us. For no man can show that our ancestors during the countless years of our early history ever attempted to impose our rule over any city great or small, whereas all men know that the Lacedaemonians, from the time when they entered the Peloponnesus, have had no other object in their deeds or in their designs than to impose their rule if possible over all men but, failing that, over the peoples of the Peloponnesus.
99
And as to the stirring up of faction and slaughter and revolution in these cities, which certain critics impute both to Athens and to Sparta, you will find that the Lacedaemonians have filled all the states, excepting a very few, with these misfortunes and afflictions,See Isoc. 4.114. whereas no one would dare even to allege that our city, before the disaster which befell her in the Hellespont,At Aegospotami, 405 b.c. See Isoc. 4.119. ever perpetrated such a thing among her allies.
100
But when the Lacedaemonians, after having been in the position of dictators over the Hellenes, were being driven from control of affairs—at that juncture, when the other cities were rent by faction, two or three of our generals (I will not hide the truth from you) mistreated some of them, thinking that if they should imitate the deeds of Spartans they would be better able to control them.See, however, Isocrates’ bitter attack upon the Athenian militaristic policy in On the Peace, especially Isoc. 8.44. Among the Athenian generals, he is here thinking mainly of Chares (the enemy and opposite of his friend and pupil, Timotheus. See Isoc. 15.129 and note), who seems to have uniformly preferred force to persuasion or conciliation in the treatment of the Athenian allies. See Introduction to Isoc. 8.
