At the end of this century, however, Sparta came into conflict with cities which, unlike the mountain and maritime hamlets situated roundabout Laconia and Messenia, were too strong and high-spirited to submit to Spartan control. They had, therefore, to be treated leniently, since Sparta could not crush them altogether and would not leave them alone. And the reasons for conciliatory action were strengthened by the fact that Sparta had now to act abroad with a sharp eye to the possibility of a servile insurrection at home. There was never anything mechanical or idealistic in the foreign policy of the ephors. Hence, first with Tegea at about 560 B.C., and thereafter with all the states in the Peloponnesus, excepting Argos and Achæa, Sparta concluded a treaty, the imperialistic aspect of which was that they agreed individually to accept Sparta's leadership in all defensive wars and in offensive wars to which they had assented. The Peloponnesian league, thus formed, stood for the autonomy and freedom of its members; but Sparta, by championing aristocracies against tyrants and democracies, and using to its own advantage the jealousies of its allies as well as their fears of outside powers, dominated it for one hundred and eighty years, and made it during all that time the main steadying influence in Greek politics. Twice it was enlarged into an Hellenic league, first during the three years of the great Persian invasion (480-478 B.C.), and again for ten years after the dissolution of the Athenian empire (405-395 B.C.). On the earlier occasion, the ephors felt relieved of an intolerable burden when in 477 B.C. the Ægean cities, over four hundred and twenty in number, abandoned Spartan for Athenian leadership. And in the forty-six years that followed, not they but the Athenians were the aggressors. During that epoch of democratic fervor,[40] it was an uphill struggle for the champions of aristocracy to maintain their position; and the war of political principles was even carried into Sparta, when, in 464 B.C., the Helots of Messenia made a last desperate fight for their liberty. The Spartans profited, however, during the last third of the fifth century B.C., by the discredit into which democracy came among cultivated people through the mistakes and excesses of Athens; and at the end of the Peloponnesian War they were again able to make the Peloponnesian league an Hellenic league by incorporating into it Athens and the Ægean cities which they had just "liberated" from Athenian tyranny. A successful war may strengthen a nation, but not when victory lays upon it a task that is beyond its powers to perform. Such would have been the case had Athens won at Syracuse. Such was the issue of Ægospotami. This we can readily see by examining briefly, first the situation in Sparta, and then the position of Sparta in Hellas, during the existence of her second Hellenic league.