Panathenaicus (56-60)

You can see at once from this instance best of all how much milder and more moderate we were in our supervision over the affairs of the Hellenes, but you can see it also from what I shall now say. The Spartans remained at the head of Hellas hardly ten years,[*] while we held the hegemony without interruption for sixty-five years.[*] And yet it is known to all that states which come under the supremacy of others remain loyal for the longest time to those under which they suffer the least degree of oppression.

Now both Athens and Lacedaemon incurred the hatred of their subjects and were plunged into war and confusion, but in these circumstances it will be found that our city, although attacked by all the Hellenes and by the barbarians as well, was able to hold out against them for ten years,[*] while the Lacedaemonians, though still the leading power by land, after waging war against the Thebans alone and being defeated in a single battle,[*] were stripped of all the possessions which they had held and involved in misfortunes and calamities which were very similar to these which overtook ourselves.[*]

More than that, our city recovered her power in less years than it took to overthrow it, while the Spartans after their defeat at Leuctra have not been able even in a period many times as long to regain the position from which they fell, but are even now[*] no better off than they were then.

Again, I must set forth how these two cities demeaned themselves toward the barbarians;[*] for this still remains to be done. In the time of our supremacy, the barbarians were prevented from marching with an army beyond the Halys river[*] and from sailing with their ships of war this side of Phaselis,[*] but under the hegemony of the Lacedaemonians not only did they gain the freedom to march and sail wherever they pleased, but they even became masters over many Hellenic states.

Well then, does not the city which made the nobler and prouder covenants with the Persian king, which brought to pass the most and the greatest injuries to the barbarians and benefits to the Hellenes, which, furthermore, seized from her foes the sea-coast of Asia and much other territory besides and appropriated it to her allies,