It would still remain for me to speak about our city, had she not come to her senses before the others and made peace; but now I need only say this: I think that she will join forces with you in carrying out your policy, especially if she can be made to see that your object is to prepare for the campaign against the barbarians.

That it is not, therefore, impossible for you to bring these cities together, I think has become evident to you from what I have said. But more than that, I believe I can convince you by many examples that it will also be easy for you to do this. For if it can be shown that other men in the past have undertaken enterprises which were not, indeed, more noble or more righteous than that which I have advised, but of greater magnitude and difficulty, and have actually brought them to pass, what ground will be left to my opponents to argue that you will not accomplish the easier task more quickly than other men the harder?

Consider first the exploits of Alcibiades.For the career of the brilliant, unscrupulous Alcibiades see Grote, vi. pp. 301 ff., vii. 49 ff., and Plut. Alc. Although he was exiled from AthensHe was exiled on the charge of having profaned the Eleusinian Mysteries. and observed that the others who had before labored under this misfortune had been cowedFor example, Themistocles. because of the greatness of the city, yet he did not show the same submissive spirit as they; on the contrary, convinced that he must attempt to bring about his return by force, he deliberately chose to make war upon her.By stirring up and aiding, through his great personal influence and his sagacity, all the enemies of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.

Now if one should attempt to speak in detail of the events of that time, he would find it impossible to recount them all exactly, and for the present occasion the recital would perhaps prove wearisome. But so great was the confusion into which he plunged not only Athens but Lacedaemon and all the rest of Hellas as well, that we, the Athenians, suffered what all the world knows;The defeat at Aegospotami, and after that the rule of the “thirty tyrants,” and later the “decarchy.”

that the rest of the Hellenes fell upon such evil days that even now the calamities engendered in the several states by reason of that war are not yet forgotten;Under the rule of the decarchies described in Isoc. 4.111 ff. and that the Lacedaemonians, who then appeared to be at the height of their fortune, are reduced to their present state of misfortune,—all on account of Alcibiades.Isocrates does not much exaggerate the mischief he wrought in Greek affairs generally.