yet the most intelligent among them, who possess and admire certain of your writings,
 will not misapprehend anything of what is said in this discourse if they can find someone
 who will interpret it to them, and if they can take the time to ponder over it by
 themselves; on the contrary, they will appreciate the praise given to their own city,
 which is based on proof, while they will dismiss with contempt the abuse, which is uttered
 at random with no regard to the facts, and is offensive only in the words employed; and
 they will think that envy slipped in the calumnies which are found in your treatise, but that you have recorded the exploits and the battles in which they themselves take
 great pride and because of which they enjoy a high repute with the rest of the world, and
 that you have made these achievements memorable by collecting them all and placing them
 side by side with each other and so have brought it about that many of the Spartans long
 to read and peruse your accounts of them, not because they crave to hear of their own
 deeds, but because they wish to hear how you have dealt with them. And as they think and dwell
 upon these deeds, they will not fail to recall also those ancient exploits through which
 you have glorified their ancestors, See 239 note. 
 but will often talk of them amongst themselves; and first of all they will tell of the
 time when, being still Dorians, they saw their own cities to be inglorious and
 insignificant and in need of many things, and, feeling them to be unworthy, took the field
 against the leading states of the Peloponnesus—against Argos and Lacedaemon and Messene — conquered them in battle and drove the vanquished both from their cities and from their
 lands, and seized for themselves at that time all the possessions of the enemy and have
 continued to hold them to this day. And no man can point to a greater or a more marvellous
 achievement in those times nor to an enterprise more fortunate or more blessed of the gods
 than that which delivered those who engaged in it from their own poverty and placed them
 in possession of the prosperity of others. “These were victories won with the aid of all who joined in that expedition. But after
 they had divided the territory with the Argives and the Messenians and for themselves had
 settled in Sparta—at this juncture, as you say, they were so proud that although they then
 numbered no more than two thousand men The Spartans at the
 time of the Persian Wars numbered eight thousand according to Hdt.
 7.234 . Aristotle ( Aristot. Pol. 2.9 )
 states that in his day there were hardly one thousand. they considered themselves
 unworthy to live unless they could make themselves masters of all the cities in the
 Peloponnesus .