On the Peace (96-100)

For in place of the ways of life established among them it filled the citizens with injustice, indolence, lawlessness and avarice and the commonwealth with contempt for its allies, covetousness of the possessions of other states, and indifference to its oaths and covenants. In fact they went so far beyond our ancestors in their crimes against the Hellenes that in addition to the evils which already afflicted the several states they stirred up in them slaughter and strife,[*] in consequence of which their citizens will cherish for each other a hatred unquenchable.

And they became so addicted to war and the perils of war that, whereas in times past they had been more cautious in this regard[*] than the rest of the world, they did not refrain from attacking even their own allies and their own benefactors; on the contrary, although the great King had furnished them with more than five thousand talents[*] for the war against us, and although the Chians[*] had supported them more zealously than any of their other allies by means of their fleet

and the Thebans[*] had contributed a great number of troops to their land forces, the Lacedaemonians no sooner gained the supremacy than they straightway plotted against the Thebans,[*] dispatched Clearchus with an army against the King,[*] and in the case of the Chians drove into exile[*] the foremost of their citizens and launched their battle-ships from their docks and made off with their whole navy.[*]

However, they were not satisfied with perpetrating these crimes, but about the same time were ravaging the Asiatic coast,[*] committing outrages against the islands,[*] subverting the free governments in Italy and Sicily, setting up despotisms in their stead,[*] overrunning the Peloponnesus and filling it with seditions and wars. For, tell me, against which of the cities of Hellas did they fail to take the field? Which of them did they fail to wrong?

Did they not rob the Eleans of part of their territory,[*] did they not lay waste the land of the Corinthians,[*] did they not disperse the Mantineans from their homes,[*] did they not reduce the Phliasians by siege,[*] and did they not invade the country of the Argives,[*] never ceasing from their depredations upon the rest of the world and so bringing upon themselves the disaster at Leuctra? Some maintain that this disaster was the cause of the misfortunes which overtook Sparta, but they do not speak the truth. For it was not because of this that they incurred the hatred of their allies; it was because of their insolence in the time preceding that they were defeated in this battle and fell into peril of losing their own city.